After spending the past few days clearing and working, Rick decided we could do with a break or at least, a day to plan our next actions. No one had anything specific to do but we could find plenty of tasks to occupy ourselves if we wanted to. We didn't exactly have much in the way of leisure items with us and we hadn't yet cleared the prison library. I was looking forward to that. For the moment though, I chose to sit and vegetate but out in the sunlight. It was only March and so it was cool outside but the cell block was colder. The sun out here was pleasant and it seemed to me that the surrounding trees masked the scent of the prison. With all our burning, we had disposed of a lot of the trash in the upper yard but the place was still a mess. One thing at a time. The view from the bleachers was not great but it was better than inside the cell block.

Andrea and Dale were at the gates, up in the tower keeping an eye on things or at least resting up there. I didn't know what they talked about when they stood around together because I gave them their space but I sensed that mostly they spoke about what they needed to get by. Therapy in its way. That was good for them. Rick and Hershel were in the field, talking about turning it into an actual crop field and as Beth was with Hershel; that meant Carl was with Rick. I couldn't take too much amusement from that though because Sophia was with me.

"This place isn't so bad now." She said.

"Now." I repeated. It was still a prison and that bothered me.

"We could still be out there."

"That's what I remind myself every morning." And night for that matter. As grim as I found sleeping in a cell, the fences and locked doors made it just a little bit easier to fall asleep at night. For a while there, we hadn't been sleeping so much as passing out from exhaustion. "It'll get better. Bit by bit." I imagined a hose in the creek so we could pump water straight through the fences safe from any walkers. I saw Daryl going out and hunting, maybe turning some room into a slaughterhouse for what he brought back. And down there, Hershel growing whatever the soil would permit. "Strange though. Building a farm in a prison."

"You said it was a good idea." She said. "We came somewhere no one else would go in the middle of nowhere and it already has fences around it. Now we just have to start growing things."

It took me a moment and then I remembered our conversation when it had been just the two of us, alone and marooned in a house with no idea if we would see the others again. Back when I had possessed ten fingers. "I did, didn't I?" We had left that place for the idyllic refuge of the farm and then it had fallen to the walkers and now here we were, in a grim fortress.

"You look unhappy." Sophia accused.

"I'm just getting used to it. Having regular meals. Having my own bed to sleep in." Luxuries. "It's weird."

"They're all good things!"

"I'm getting used to good again." I didn't know how to explain it to her. How could I explain to her that in many ways I was better off now than I had been in my past life? The prison food might not have been top quality but it was still prepared by people who knew how to cook, unlike me. The food on the farm had been amazing. And grim as my cell may have been, it was better in many respects than the apartment I had been renting. I couldn't tell anyone that in many ways my life had improved through all this because it would freak them out. And anger them when it made them think about what they had lost.

"You should be happy." She said. "Not making excuses to be unhappy."

"Listen to you, doctor." I replied. I enjoyed it when she talked like this. When she was assertive. It was a far cry from when she had been afraid to speak at all. "If you want to treat my issues, you'll have a full time job."

"I can't be an artist all the time." She declared rather loftily and it was amazing how much this place had cheered her up. She was right that I was being unnecessarily miserable.

"I don't know what I'm going to do here. A farm doesn't need a thief… So I guess I'll be going back out there when we start doing runs again."

"Do you have to?"

"I open things." I shrugged. "That's useful."

"Do you want to go back out there?"

"No one does. They'd be crazy if they did." Daryl obviously didn't count; he had to go out there to hunt. "But we all have to pitch in."

"I think I'm going to be helping cook a lot then."

"Feeding people is good. You know we're much happier when we've had a good meal. Not when we've just eaten cold soup… Or flour pancakes…" Flour and water in a frying pan. Perhaps eating flour straight from the sack would have been better.

"It doesn't feel… Couldn't I do more?"

"You want to be like Carl, and shoot walkers?"

She shook her head but I noted she still had her sidearm. She wasn't letting go of that. I was still keeping my crowbar with me though so I was in no position to judge.

"Stay in your weight class." I said, reminding her of the advice I had given her and Carl on the farm that day. "We're going to get the boring chores to do… But it could be worse." She hadn't had to tend to burning bodies as I had even if she had plentiful experience with corpses.

"So we have to make the best of everything!" She decided brightly. "Even here."

"Even here." I agreed.

"Okay then." She said and made a decision.

Sophia kissed me.

I had been hit by a car once. It had struck me in the side and sent me tumbling over the sidewalk and amazingly I hadn't broke my hip or shattered my pelvis. But I remembered the hammer blow and being tossed through the air vividly. And being kissed by a thirteen year old felt remarkably similar.

I pushed her back. "What are you doing?" My voice cracked, betraying my youth.

She shrugged happily. "Making the best of things." She said and her voice was steady. Confident. Terrifying.

"You can't do that!"

"Why?"

This question threw me and as she stared at me, completely at ease, I could only splutter as I tried to recover myself and marshal my thoughts. "You're thirteen! And I'm not!" She continued to gaze steadily at me. "I'm practically an adult!"

"And I'm just a kid?" She asked and I almost fell for it. Almost.

"You're not just a kid." I was pretty sure she was smarter than me and in a few years that would be obvious. But I wasn't going to fall for her attempt to guilt me. "But there's five years between us."

"You said you were nineteen once."

"Which would make me even older and this even weirder!" I pointed out and her expression didn't change. I had seen her scared out of her mind and happy as could be. This look however was new. She looked serene. I didn't know how to deal with serene. "Sophia, I'm way too old for you. There's a whole set of rules…" I was being defeated by those big eyes of hers. "You can't do that again."

She nodded and then shrugged. "We'll see." She said and slipped off the bleachers.

"We'll see?" I repeated dumbly.

"We'll see." She said and then she walked… No, she strolled away without a care in the world and I watched her open the gate to the field, close it behind her and then head down to join the others there. I felt the car hit me again and I knew what I had to do. I ran to the cell block.

Glenn and Maggie were there, which was good because I did want witnesses. But so was Daryl which I really wouldn't have chosen. Carol looked at me and something in my expression alarmed her. "Where's Sophia?"

"She's fine. She's down in the field with Carl and his dad and Beth and Hershel." I babbled like a loon.

She stopped what she was doing to look at me. "So why do you have that look on your face?"

I tried to speak and the words wouldn't come. I raised my right hand and waved it about a few times but it didn't do anything besides gain Glenn and Maggie's attention. I tried again and again, and all the while Carol was looking at me with raised eyebrows and folded arms. Finally I got it out.

"Sophia kissed me."

Carol blinked and it was kind of like hearing a garage door crashing down and then flying back up. "Excuse me?"

"She kissed me."

"Hmmm." She said. "I guess she was serious then."

"Whut?!" I squeaked.

"When you say kissed." Glenn inquired. "You mean like?" He mimed a little peck.

"No, I mean like it's the end of the movie and it's the big damn kiss with all the music!"

Maggie snorted. She actually snorted and then tried to present an impassive face and only snorted again. "I'm sorry!" She said from behind a hand that did nothing to hide her massive grin.

"This isn't funny!"

"No. No, it isn't." She said and then just outright laughed at me. But what Carol had said hit me then.

"What do you mean she was serious?"

"She was saying that now we're here and settling in, we have the time to have lives again and there were things she wanted to do." Carol explained and then shrugged. "When she said she wanted to kiss a boy and said she was going to kiss you, I thought she was just… You know…"

"What?"

"Well you know she has a crush on you."

"There's a big difference between crush and…" I couldn't say it again and the 'squickiness' of it made me wipe at my mouth which sent Maggie into fresh hoots of laughter. "This isn't funny!" I snapped.

"You can't see you." Glenn replied and while he wasn't laughing like his girlfriend, he agreed with her and the sight of her cracking up was a delight to him.

I turned back to Carol. "How is this not disturbing for you?"

Carol unfolded her arms and there was an odd cast to her eyes. "When did this happen?"

"Minutes ago."

"So the first thing you did was come and talk to me." She said in a creepily upbeat manner. "If you hadn't, and you'd told her it was 'our little secret'." She chose these gross words deliberately and her sing-song voice was unnerving even before she smiled at me. "Well then I'd be telling her Aunty Maggie and Uncle Daryl to hog-tie and castrate you."

Maggie grinned and suggestively stroked the knife at her belt. But her vivid green eyes were full of mischief. Daryl's hands weren't near any weapons and didn't need to be because his baleful blue eyes were all the threat he needed. All Carol had to do was say the word and it would happen.

"Don't I get to do anything?" Glenn asked.

"I'm sure you'd think of something." Carol answered, still smiling sweetly at me.

"This isn't funny." I said for a third time.

"The kids are growing up." Carol said seriously. "They've had to grow faster than we'd like in many ways, and in others… She's thirteen. If she was in school I'd be worried about boys beginning to notice her and pulling her hair. Instead she's here and she's seen a lot, and she's thinking about all the life that she might not experience before… Before she dies a horrible death." Carol swallowed and it swept the humour clear out of Maggie. "She said she wanted to kiss a boy. I didn't think she'd actually go through with actually trying to kiss you, so I didn't warn you. I'm sorry."

"No! You don't apologise to me!" It freaked me right out to hear this from her. "I apologise to you for whatever I did to make her think doing that was okay!"

"If I thought for a second you had done anything to encourage her-"

"I know. Daryl. Knives. Pain. Lots of pain." I glanced at Daryl. He still hadn't said anything and I didn't know what to make of it.

"You saved her life." Carol said. "You're her hero." She shrugged. "It's all very fairy tale in her eyes. You're her prince."

The childishness of it didn't help me. "That's not… That's…"

"That's how it is. She sees Carl as a friend and he likes Beth so…"

"I should probably warn her." Maggie mused. "If Sophia tells Carl, he might get ideas-"

"Why the hell are you enjoying this so much?" I demanded.

Glenn answered this for her. "Dude, you look like your head's about to explode, and you've seen heads explode! This is funny!"

"And it's not like we have TV to watch." Maggie added.

None of this was helping and I turned back to Carol. "What do we do?"

"What did you say to her when it happened?"

"That she's thirteen and I'm pretty much eighteen and this can't happen!"

"Was she upset?"

I exhaled. "No…" I said and caught the looks of surprise on Glenn and Maggie's faces. "She got it but… It was like she thought I'd… Come around…" It was hard not to shudder.

"Well we need to fix that."

"Ya think?!" I demanded and Carol gave me a look. "Sorry, ma'am."

"Maybe she's gotten it out of her system now and I'll talk to her. Tell her what is and isn't appropriate." She said grimly and then smiled suddenly. "I made a deal with her when she was a little girl. She was going to skip puberty and head straight to adulthood so I wouldn't have to deal with anything like this."

None of this was going the way I thought it would and that didn't feel like a good thing. Daryl's baleful stare actually felt good because he was the only one judging me.

"This has really got you messed up." Glenn remarked.

"Have you ever been kissed by a kid?" I asked.

"One of my cousins kissed me… But we were both seven so it was just kinda gross to be kissed by a girl." He grinned at whatever look I shot at him. "Seriously, dude. You've never looked so freaked out."

I pulled a face. "Tha-wz-m-furz-kiz."

"What?"

"That was my furzt…"

"That was your first… What?"

"That was my first kiss!" I snapped.

For a moment Glenn and Maggie nodded and swayed back and forth. Then they both exploded into laughter that was so hard tears burst from their eyes. They actually clutched at each other and it was a good thing I rarely carried a gun.

"You know that's the one thing you could say to make me feel better about this." Carol declared, but she was not amused. Unlike the two hyenas.

"Oh well that's great. That's terrific." I said. "If anyone wants me I'll be hanging from the light in my cell."

[][][][][][]

"Are you hiding?"

"Yes."

"You can't stay in here forever."

"I can try."

Beth sat down and in the gloom of my cell, her pale skin and blue eyes looked unnaturally bright. So did her teeth as she grinned at me.

"You know then."

"Maggie may have told me." She said with considerable glee.

"I'm never leaving this cell."

"I can lock you in if you'd like."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You have to come out some time."

"No I don't." I declared and my stomach protested loudly which made Beth giggle. "I can't go out there."

"Why? Do you think people will laugh at you?"

"No, I think they'll be creeped out by me."

"She kissed you. Not the other way round."

"That doesn't mean anything. They'll still see me and her and… Eww."

"And that was your first kiss?"

I winced. But I nodded.

"You never told me that." She said, referring to a discussion we had once had about our love lives.

"I said there wasn't much to tell. I wasn't lying. But that's why I told you to talk about your exes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Honestly, I thought if I told you I'd never had a girlfriend, you'd think I was hitting on you."

Beth thought about it and then nodded. "It would sound that way. Making me feel all sorry for you and trying to help you make up for lost time while we still had the chance."

"Exactly!" I said and had the thought that I was surrounded by women who were much smarter than me. "There ain't a way to bring it up without it sounding… Y'know."

"How weird was it to have your first kiss with a thirteen year old?" She asked the question in an innocuous tone and with as innocent an expression as she could but her eyes betrayed her.

"I feel dirty." I said and she giggled. "Like, drown me in a vat of bleach dirty." She giggled again. "It's not funny."

"What happened isn't funny." She agreed reassuringly. "You're funny though. Glenn's right; your head does look like it's exploding!"

"Damn you Greenes. And Rhee." I declared and she laughed. "This is serious!"

"Naaah." She replied in a Maggie-like manner. "It's good. Think about it. Sophia's looking on the bright side. She believes in this place. That's great!"

"Not great for me. Or her mother."

"Her mom's happy to see her happy. And to see you unhappy."

"I am never going to be able to look her in the eye again."

"Sophia, or her mom?"

"Her mom. If I ignore Sophia, don't look at her, well then I'm just an evil monster. I'm still her friend…" I thought about that and didn't like it. "Christ! …Sorry."

"You are friends."

"It's gonna be weird now."

"For you. Not for her…"

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Glenn and my sister did say we don't have much entertainment around here." Beth shrugged happily.

"What does everyone else think?"

"Hard to say. We're all just kids, right?" She said, meaning herself, me, Carl and Sophia. Andrea and Theodore had no reason to care while Dale would only think about how it might affect the group's cohesion which would be Rick's concern too. Daryl bothered me but he always bothered me. His baleful stare wasn't going to leave me anytime soon.

"Just kids." I would turn eighteen soon. Not that that meant anything. "I'm not leaving this cell."

"You have to sometime."

"When they make me." I said.

[][][][][][]

The others remarked about the roads being empty until we encountered some kind of snarl. Until the world had fallen apart, I had never had any real experience with cars and highways and so for me the empty roads covered in nature's debris was normal. All the leaves from the fall had turned to sludge in the rains and snow of the winter and now after the thaw, it was all just mud. Maybe when summer came it would bake into dust and the wind would sweep it clean. Or maybe the roads would turn into dirt tracks. I was having these odd musings because I was tired. Because a dark thought had come to me in the night and it had dug its way in and festered. It wouldn't go away. Thinking inanely about the state of the roads was better than that dark thought.

What was I doing out here? That was a hard question to answer. With all the work to do at the prison, sending three people out on a run seemed unnecessary but I guessed Rick was trying to organise for the future. Send us to the town to get our bearings for later outings. I was interested in acquiring a decent pillow because these days that was one of the few luxuries I could enjoy. And books. Rick wasn't prioritising the prison library for clearing and we had never burdened the convoy with reading material. I was partly here to avoid any awkwardness at the prison between myself, Sophia and Carol. Also Daryl who kept staring at me. Rick obviously thought sending me away for a while would be a good idea. Also, I could chaperone Glenn and Maggie and keep them focused on the job.

I actually found myself enjoying being a third wheel for the simple fact that the two of them were too uncomfortable to say anything. Not even to mock me about Sophia. The cell block didn't give them any privacy and it wasn't like they could slip away without it being obvious what they were up to. That only left the watch towers when they were standing guard and they couldn't neglect keeping watch too often or obviously. Going on a run would have been a great opportunity for them and instead here I was ruining it.

I had seen so many fleapit little towns that they all blurred together in my mind. This one was no different. There was a gas station, a convenience store, a bar and all were pretty torn up. They were the first places that people went which was why the gas station was covered in signs saying they were out of gas and why the bar and store no longer had front windows.

"Not worth it." Glenn declared and drove on. He took us to a residential area and in contrast to the main street, it was pristine. Pristine as in untouched by the end of civilisation. The winter had taken its toll though, making everything grubby. That was the best word for it; grubby. Not desolate. Not decayed. Grubby.

One house was as good as another and Glenn decided to let me unlock it with my picks rather than attempt to break in. We had seen no walkers, not a one, but experience said quiet was better than loud.

Houses where people had packed up and fled, securing the door behind them were the ones that unsettled me most. When they were broken in and torn apart, bloodstained or corpse strewn; that didn't bother me. But these places where the owners had thought they would be back soon and were left frozen in time…

It mean I could find that pillow at least.

"That's your priority?" Maggie asked.

"I'd drag the bed out if I could." I meant it too, even with two mattresses that bunkbed wasn't comfortable. I thought it was uncomfortable… I had slept on concrete more times than I could recall and I found my new bed uncomfortable… "Smells better too." This place was dry so no musty odour.

Maggie found what supplies were usable. Glenn was focused on the little necessities that might be forgotten; things like toothpaste, toilet paper, batteries etc. He emptied the medicine cabinet and found a first aid box. I ensured a few people would have a better night's sleep. I put my contribution in the SUV and came back to see them making googly eyes at each other.

"I'm going to look around." I said. "I'll be twenty minutes."

Glenn pulled a face but Maggie was quicker on the uptake. "Or thirty?" She replied.

"Something like that." I said, already leaving.

"Where are you going?" Glenn protested. "It's not safe. Hey!"

I went out to the car and wondered how grateful he would be later. Maggie wasn't grateful, not like that, I knew she found me considerate though. Discreet. Glenn would be embarrassed I was giving them a chance for a quickie while Maggie would just accept the opportunity. She was practical that way. It was possible Rick had sent me out here to save Herschel some blushes but I doubted it. For Herschel, out of sight was out of mind it seemed. Glenn would be awkward, probably feeling he owed me a debt.

I just wanted to stretch my legs and take the opportunity to be alone. Actually alone.

As Glenn said, it wasn't safe but that was relative. I didn't stroll down the middle of street, I crept like a rat; scurrying along from building to building in quick movements before surveying my surroundings. Walkers told you they were coming, when they had spotted you, but it was quiet. There was the danger of blundering into a walker or a whole pack of them standing silently in some place though and that was why I was creeping.

So far as I could see though, the town was utterly dead. For the moment. We had seen it before but it never lasted. The dead wandered and they would drift back, maybe a couple, a dozen or several hundreds. It would be bleak of me to assume they would drift back while we were here. I would have believed it would happen before the prison but now I was little more optimistic. I wasn't going to encounter a herd or a whole horde.

I found the grim remains of a body. A skeleton anyway. Walkers had stripped it down and then the animals had done the rest; I could tell by the tooth marks. I could also tell this unfortunate soul had been hit by a car as their legs and pelvis were shattered. I could hope they were already dead when they were eaten and not alive, conscious and crippled when the walkers had started feeding.

There were so many little horror stories like this one. You saw them everywhere. Every house had people who had a story and the fact we had seen so few signs of other people over the winter meant that those stories rarely had a happy ending. A lot of the stories ended in cars and with the mind screwing events taking place, it seemed very anti-climactic for them to end simply smashing into each other. And a lot of those car accidents had produced crawlers; you couldn't call them walkers when they didn't have legs anymore.

It was odd to come out here and see these domestic stories again after seeing the tale of the Fall of West Georgia Correctional Facility. The violence out here was nothing like the prison because ordinary people weren't capable of the same acts. That was why they were dead now. I was one of the few to survive long enough to be able to drive a piece of heavy metal through a human skull on a regular basis without freaking out entirely.

Dale had a watch. With everything there was up for grabs in the world now, I had somehow never acquired one. It made sense though. Every minute of my life had been dictated by the group and rarely had I been involved in any decisions, especially once Rick had taken over. I didn't need to know what time it was when my time wasn't my own. My former life meant I was pretty good at judging the passage of time though and so I knew when I had spent twenty minutes wandering this dead town.

There was a diner and though we were stocked up on food, more was always better and besides; prison food was not good. But there was no real difference I could see between the big cans of food found in a diner kitchen and a prison kitchen. It seemed to me they were made in the same place and had different labels slapped on them. I settled for loading up on candy. That would be welcome. Small luxuries and all that. Besides, they wouldn't last forever.

I left the diner to see a single walker shuffling along. It didn't notice me lurking in the doorway and I watched it, feeling my stumps tingle. I kept watching it and behind it to see if it had any friends but it was alone. That felt strange. But when there were walkers wandering in the thousands then you had to have those who were alone. Easy to take down. I clocked it in the back of the head with the crowbar and it dropped like a sack. Before I realised what I was doing, I had a wallet in hand and I had an ID. That girl had me well-trained. Enough for me to drag the body to the sidewalk so that it would be out of the way of any vehicles; ours or anyone else's. Not exactly reverential treatment but still better than nothing.

I trudged back to the house slowly. Slowly enough that they had forty minutes for whatever and I sat on the car just in case they had lost track of time. Sitting on a car in a dead town in a dead world and it was still a pleasant break from the prison. Sure, this hadn't been the nicest place before the end of the world but it was still a step up from an old bleak prison.

Christ, I was being judgemental about a prison and this neighbourhood when I had slept under a bridge more times than I could remember. Clearly I had been spoilt these past few months with the company I had kept if I now had standards.

"See anything out there?" Maggie was the soul of casual and she could have been asking after seeing me just five minutes ago. She brought out a box of stuff with her and though her hair was askew; it could have been from driving with the window down.

"Just one. Not a problem."

"Hey, dude. What's up?" Glenn was not casual. It took all of Maggie's strength not to roll her eyes.

"I released the soul of Jacob Atherton." I said and it gave Glenn something to be confused about rather than guilty.

"I thought that was Sophia's thing." Maggie replied.

"Girl has me brainwashed." I said. "I hope Mr Atherton was on business or on vacation, otherwise he walked here from Tennessee."

"Guess he could have walked here." She pulled a face at the idea. "Hope not." It would mean we were threatened by walkers from out of state when just the ones who were local were enough of a problem. "What you got?" She asked.

"Candy bars." I opened my bag to show her and she grinned.

"Beth will love you."

"So will the pregnant lady." I mused.

"Candy and pillows?" Glenn asked. "We'll go soft."

"Good." I said.

[][][][][][]

Andrea would have liked us to return with bags full of ammunition, not candy and toiletries. Rick was happy we came back with a full vehicle. The little comforts might not have been exciting after everything the prison had yielded so far but they would make things a little better. And that was all we could really do; a little at a time. Sophia's murals had cheered up the block somewhat and some pillows went a long way to making the cells look cosier.

"You read my mind." Lori gratefully took two of the pillows. "How did you know?"

"I didn't. I just don't like our foam pads."

"So you don't know about the needs of a pregnant woman." She was being overly friendly and I guessed she didn't even realise it. She was lonely.

"The only thing I know about pregnant women is that if they tell you to shut the hell up; you shut the hell up."

Lori smiled, and then she grinned. "There may be hope for you."

'Yes, ma'am."

I retreated to my cell to find how much of a difference a proper pillow and a blanket could make. A little bit. A little more to turn a prison into a home.

The thought that had kept me up during the night had been there with me while I was gone, burrowed in deep, and now I was back, it gnawed at me relentlessly. No amount of small comforts in this concrete box could make me ignore it so I got up again. They were in the communal area and I could hear them talking. Laughing.

Carol knew I wanted to talk the moment I caught her eye, but her expression didn't change. She masked it so well that someone else might have thought she didn't get the message but I knew as I walked out that she understood. I went and stood by the guard tower overlooking the field and waited.

The wind made ripples in the long grass. Like the sea. Would I see the ocean again? It had always been there in the background of my life, just a short distance away and now it was gone. Now there were trees and more trees. No more day trips to Tybee Island to escape my grim existence in Savannah. I had never gone thieving there, even though the tourists would have been easy pickings. Tybee Island to wherever we were now; that was the extent of my personal knowledge of the world. Some people flew all over the world and the only reason I had left the city of my birth was because of government orders to evacuate to Atlanta. Would I have spent the rest of my life in Savannah? Or travelled to live in a prison like this one?

Carol came up and stood beside me without saying anything. Telling her that her daughter had kissed me had been awkward but this was a whole other level. No one should have had to have conversations like this. There was no icebreaker.

"I had a thought last night. Lots of them actually… And I couldn't sleep and I won't sleep tonight…" I made it sound like it was about me and it really wasn't. "I wanted to talk about Ed."

I guessed that Carol was about five foot six. More than average height. But she shrank at the name. Shrank… Withdrew into herself like a turtle. And then resolutely lifted her head. "What do you want to know?"

No one should have had a conversation like this. "I knew he hit both of you. I noticed that, even when I was a vegetable… And you have that… Look. We talked about him, when it was just the two of us, me and Sophia, and she said she didn't want him to come back. She felt bad about that." I shook my head, still struggling to believe that she had been selfless enough to worry that it made her like a bad person. "She kept shivering when she was talking about him."

Carol closed her eyes. She kept them closed for a long time and I tried to find something to appreciate in the view. It wouldn't come though as I found myself focused on the razor wire of the fences and I remembered as a kid being caught in barbed wire. There was a scar on my left leg where it had ripped through my pants and into my thigh.

"He had stopped hitting her before this." Carol finally said. "He started again I guess because of the stress… I thought it was a good sign, y'know? Maybe he was finally starting to appreciate his daughter even if he didn't care for his wife." She said the latter part with steel. "Then he started being nice to her. A kind word here and there. A proud look. Wanted to spend more time with her… Sophia was always a quiet kid but that was when she started to get real quiet. Wouldn't look me in the eye." She breathed in and shuddered so much like her daughter that it made my skin creep. "I don't know how he laid his hands on her but I do know it was just his hands. I stopped them being alone as best I could but sometimes he made me clear out. And I knew one day-" She clapped a hand to her mouth for several seconds before recovering. "I prayed to the Lord for him to be punished for it. I guess he listened."

I couldn't think of any possible way to phrase what I had to say delicately. "I didn't think about her using my leg as a pillow all those times. Didn't think about her holding my hand or giving me hugs… I just thought she was being a kid. Kid with a crush…" I exhaled sharply. "Never had anyone have a crush on me before… Maybe I liked it. Maybe I didn't discourage her when I should have."

"You didn't do anything wrong." Carol said sharply. "And neither did she. …Not like that. She just wanted to be normal. You made it all seem so funny at the time but when I talked to her… I don't know who she is. Is she still my little girl who loves her art? Is she a kid who can shoot walking corpses in the face if she has to? Is she a victim trying to take control? I don't know. When I talk to her about you, one moment she sounds like a little girl and then it's how she thinks an adult would talk. Not like a kid trying to sound older but…"

"I know what you mean. Like when Carl tries to be a man, and you hear Shane talking… But what do you do? I didn't grow up normal and now my first kiss was with a kid. Now this place is going to be her normal." I looked around at the wire and the bleak buildings. "Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. Whatever it takes."

"You saved my baby." She said. "I can never repay you for that. I know you would never do anything to hurt her so all I want is you to keep looking out for her."

"But she-"

"I've told her." Carol cut me off. "And she understands. She does. It won't be a problem."

"What if it is?"

"Then it's our problem. You've done too much for her." She was making me feel uncomfortable like she had back on the farm. It still just felt too alien to accept that this woman cared about me.

I didn't know what to say. I was very confused by all of this because while I understood abuse, I knew nothing about relationships and those feelings and so I had no idea how they mixed in Sophia's head with her dark life experiences. And Carol obviously had no idea how to take what she knew and apply it to our new reality. None of it made sense.

"First night it was just us, I shut us up in the bathroom. …Door locked so I figured she would feel safer." I had no idea if Sophia had told her about this before but I had to talk about it. "I set her up in the tub while I slept on the floor, but it scared her. She thought she was alone. So she got on the floor with me. She was still scared… Just couldn't fall asleep. I put my hand on her arm… She went to sleep after that. Took me ages to fall asleep myself because it just felt wrong being there with her like that. Same the next night. …Then I got bit and it didn't matter so much we were sharing a bed. She never… She never seemed uncomfortable being around me."

"She trusts you."

"Why? Why though? Why did she trust me when she didn't even know my name?"

"Because you ran after her into the woods." Carol said. "That's all that matters."

That was very hard for me to hear because in all honesty, while I might have tried to live a more virtuous life than my parents there was nothing I could say that made me better than them. The absence of drugs in my life didn't make my thieving better than theirs. I had learned to pick locks so I could be… Cleaner? Classier? Professional. He had smashed in car windows for what might be on the back seat so everyone knew a crime had been committed. I had been a ghost. But still a petty thief. That made going after Sophia the one good thing I had ever done in my life. One good thing. I didn't know where to begin with that.

We watched Daryl return. Andrea drew the walkers away from the gate and he slipped in. The two of them cut the walkers down through the fence and then she returned to the guard tower and he walked up the track to where we were with that stride of his. Purposeful. He had had a good day out hunting the little critters and had a string of them. It wasn't necessary with all the food we had but it made him happy. And fresh meat was always welcome, especially when the cans of prison food were simply labelled 'MEAT'.

"Sumthin' wrong?" He asked, not liking the two of us standing together.

"Nothing to worry about." Carol told him. "We're just talking."

"Just talkin'." He didn't believe a word of it. "Right." But he respected Carol enough not to ask. He grunted at me and then stepped on.

"I don't think Uncle Daryl is fond of me." I thought aloud.

"He has his issues. Same as you." Carol replied firmly. "Same as all of us." She added and there was far too much truth there.

[][][][][][]

"Are you avoiding me?"

"Yes. And you shouldn't be here."

Early, early in the morning and I still couldn't get away. I could move quietly enough to escape detection by Daryl sleeping on the floor not far from my cell but not Sophia. How did that work? And why would she follow me into the depths of the prison courtyards?

"Are you upset?" I asked and she pulled a face. It was hard to reconcile this girl with the one who had wept at the mere sound of walkers. The winter had hardened her. Desensitized her. She could be out here in the dawn when the shadows left the spaces between prison buildings inky black and the walkers isolated behind the fences were snarling.

"Mom said I can't kiss you again."

Very hard to reconcile. "Good."

"I can wait."

"Not so good." I looked at her properly and she had a hard cast to her. She wasn't upset. She wasn't angry. She was simply resolute as if she had everything in the future planned out and I wasn't going to disrupt those plans.

"Are you upset?" She asked me.

"Yes." I wasn't going to lie to her. "You took me by surprise. And what you did wasn't right-"

"You sound like my mom."

"Good. She won't kill me." As sanguine as Carol had been, she was still a mother and with everything we had discussed about her husband it meant I could understand if she decided to hit me with a brick while I slept. Just to be safe. "Though she might if she finds you sneaking out and making her worry."

"You were sneaking out." She said and she sounded more childish.

"I don't have a mother." I reminded her. "Only the Sheriff makes rules for me."

"Why are you out here?" For a moment, she looked nervous about her surroundings but the mask slipped back into place. She was trying to act like an adult or how she thought an adult behaved and she had a definite Andrea cast to the way she set her shoulders. She wasn't the worst female role model, I guessed. Although Andrea had liked Shane and maybe that reflected Sophia's apparent poor choice in… men. I felt dirty again.

"I grew up alone. Lived alone. Now we're somewhere big enough and safe enough that I can be alone." I explained.

"Why would you want to be alone?"

Grim as her childhood had been, I didn't know how to explain to her what it was like to spend the first years of your life with two drug addicts, although she could relate to my dad dropkicking me from room to room. Then when he had overdosed, I had been stuck with the one drug addict who one day had vanished off the face of the earth and then I had been living on the streets which was only marginally worse than that house. It had been bad enough when it had been the two of them or just one but people like that always had friends. Friends who didn't want to see a kid when they were getting high because it reminded them of adult responsibilities or worse; I made them feel ashamed. I had plenty of marks from making people feel shame.

My one consolation was that I had only had physical marks. Not like her. Thinking about what Carol had said about Ed laying his hands on her… There was a reason I hadn't stopped Daryl beating Randall to a pulp.

"Sometimes I just need to get away from people." I said and she knew I wasn't telling her the truth. I could also tell that she knew I had my reasons for not explaining and I felt a stab of annoyance at her intelligence. She was smart enough to know that this crush of hers couldn't go anywhere for all the reasons that had been explained to her by me and her mother but she wasn't quite mature enough to accept it. And with everything else… "People make me nervous sometimes." Even if the group I was with were a far cry from the people I had known before.

"Do I make you nervous?"

The question did not sound right coming from a thirteen year old. "Depends what you mean by 'wait'."

"When I'm sixteen, you'll be twenty-one. When I'm eighteen, you'll be twenty-three." And this proclamation was worse.

"Nervous." I said, although obviously that meant I wouldn't have to worry about another surprise kiss if she was doing math. Not for another three or five years anyway. Hopefully. "You-"

I was a thief. I had excellent peripheral vision. Instead of taking the top of my skull off, the axe went into the fence as I ducked. I had seen enough of the blue suits around here for them to blur together but there weren't enough living eyes around me anymore for me not to know them and Andrew had crazy eyes; you had to have crazy eyes if you intended to hack up a couple of kids with an axe.

He swung again and I met it with the crowbar and while I might have been a stringy kid, I hadn't spent the winter rusting up in a locked cafeteria. He snarled and shoved me up against the fence as the two weapons crossed and he didn't expect me to break his nose with a headbutt. The surprise knocked him on his ass and I didn't hesitate, I went in swinging but he rolled out of the way and he smashed the blunt end of the axe into my leg. I went down and flailed with the crowbar, catching his wrist by accident rather than intent and he reflexively dropped the axe. But he was a convict and he wasn't going to go without his shiv.

I took one in the gut. Being stabbed didn't feel the way people expected. The sudden blow felt like a punch; not a cut. Two. It was a surprise for your body; a shock. Three. It would have been four but then his head exploded.

And Sophia looked like a little kid again, despite the pistol in her hand. She dropped it and then ran and I clamped my hands to the spreading warm stain on my middle. It was not the first time I had been stabbed but it felt like the last.

I had grown up hard. I had seen a whole bunch of horrid things that most people couldn't even begin to comprehend and yet when I had seen someone having a chunk of their face bitten off, it had scared me shitless. When I had seen it happen to Patricia at the farm, I had felt the same way. I had seen dead people but not dead people getting up and looking for warm flesh to gnaw on. That was new. That had been next to impossible for my brain to grasp. It had nearly gotten me killed and my consolation was that it had killed many other people. Everyone wanted to believe that when the shit hit the fan, they would step up and take care of business. That when shots were fired, they would run toward them rather than freeze up or run away.

I had locked up seeing everything I had on the road to Atlanta. When the walkers had attacked the camp at the quarry, I had come out of that freeze. I hadn't been much better than a walker in the days after that but then after the CDC, on the highway I had run after Sophia. Then I had tried to take on a walker by myself and lost two fingers. But I had watched Daryl casually brutalise Randall and even encouraged him. I had frozen up when Patricia had been torn up and then I had managed to knock myself unconscious. But I had been one of the ones who insisted we go back. Throughout the winter, I had been kept back from the dangers because of my age and so I had never had any sudden frights.

Then we had come to the prison where I had handled walkers just fine but I had run away from the threat of convicts having their throats cut and brains blown out.

I didn't know what I was. That answer had been straightforward in the past; thief. Unseen, unheard, and living off what I could get selling odds and ends to a few contacts who always had buyers. There was no need for thieves anymore, not when the most valuable currency was food. Scavengers, they had a purpose but it was a different skill set. A different routine.

What was I now? I was a thief who lived in a prison. My best friends were a seventeen year old girl and a thirteen year old girl. They were the only friends I had ever had. Both girls. Both wonderful people. So much more than the scum I had known.

And I had still ended up shanked in a prison yard.

Author's Notes:

One of the things that really depressed me about Sophia's death in the series were the hints of abuse from her father. First season had Ed grabbing her arm and telling her to 'keep him company' before Carol pulled her away. Season 2 premiere has Carol praying, saying she wanted Ed punished for 'looking at his own daughter with whatever sickness was growing in his soul. I prayed you'd put a stop to it.' The latter part leaves it ambiguous how much that meant, but it still meant that TV Sophia lived a cruel, short existence and died alone in the woods.

Writing her kissing Bas was not a pleasant experience. One of the pitfalls of the first person narrative. But I had already made it clear she had a crush on him in the preceding prison chapters. The idea she would pursue something, it's partly a reference to the film Léon and the character Mathilda. A traumatised 12 year old girl with a precocious crush who tries to act like an adult to avoid feeling that trauma. The American cut makes the crush more innocent. The International version is quite intentionally uncomfortable.

And I hope just how uncomfortable Bas is comes through. Léon explicitly states he's a virgin which removes some of the squick from Mathilda propositioning him in the film. Bas' own lack of experience I hope makes it less creepy. It's still meant to be creepy, obviously.

Glenn and Maggie, even Beth, may seem cruel teasing Bas about it. But it's meant to be that they think it's all entirely innocent and that they certainly don't think he's predatory. Read between the lines though and you see that Bas and Carol's first conversation is not humorous. The others don't know about Ed. Carol is worried about her girl's state of mind.

Andrew returns. Things don't play out like they did in the TV series because of two people who are alive in this timeline. It changes things a lot, and probably seems like I'm going out of my way to spare the lives of characters who died. Unfortunate side-effect.