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RHatch89- Thanks :)

Notes: Sorry for the delay on this, there's a lot of moving parts and I really wanted to get it right, and I'm hoping it's there now... plus this is an extra-long chapter to make up for it. ALSO, I've realised that I'm an idiot and have been spelling Jessie's name wrong through this whole thing... sorry about that.

Mikey and Ron are folded up on the floor, shielding their eyes from the dust storm that sweeps over us following the tower's collapse, growls emerging from the cloud.

Barely a second goes by before Carl seizes Mikey by the arm, dragging him to his feet. Mikey's shaking violently, eyes pinned in horror to the wall that's kept him safe, watching as it's finally breached. I grab Ron, pulling him up too, shouting at the three of them that we need to move.

I hear yelling, whipping my head around to look. People are screaming as they desperately scramble away from the torn hole in the wall. Some Alexandrians make it back while others are torn apart by a hundred hands. I see Rosita and Tara helping a bleeding Tobin to his feet and grabbing a terrified Eugene before the four of them retreat in the direction of the Brownstone apartments.

I point in their direction, but walkers are already behind them, cutting our paths apart.

I hear Rick roaring for everyone to get inside as the sound of his hand cannon blasting through walkers comes from towards the wall. I see him racing out from between narrow gaps of the solar panels, the dead funnelling through after him, spilling out onto the grass as he blows away as many as he can. Deanna is ensuing beside Rick, yelling for him to retreat with the rest, firing four poorly placed shots at a walker's chest, none of them phasing it.

I stand statue-still, scanning around desperately for the sight of Maggie, knowing she was on guard duty, only to see her post sitting empty. I hear shots and see flashes from past the horde, spotting her as she crawls backwards from sneering walkers, trying to get up as she trips and stumbles away from the dead clawing at her back, desperately trying to escape their teeth and her looming extinction.

"Maggie!" I shriek over the crowd, several walkers snapping their heads towards my cries.

"Go back!" she screams, finding her feet and firing her revolver into the horde.

My legs try to take me in that direction, but I gag when Carl takes a grip on my collar and doesn't let go, choking me as he pulls me away. "Come on!" Carl drags me off the lakeside grass and towards the road, Ron and Mikey following behind us.

Carol and Morgan are weaving between the dead, disappearing into the Brownstone basement where he used to live. Carl propels us towards them, but we're cut off from there, too, the dead swarming us from all angles.

I pull my gun from behind me, firing at a walker that grabs Mikey's arm, leaving him shrieking as its head explodes, the blood of a monster he's never encountered covering him, inky insides coating his face.

Carl does the same, dropping three as they approach a staggered Ron.

We know it's a losing battle, our bullets not enough to scratch the ranks of the departed. One get's behind Mikey before I can stop it, its teeth bared as it bites towards his shoulder... There's a flash of white... A flurry of silver... Singing steel whistling past my head as Michonne materialises from behind me and splits the walker in half with her sword before it makes its mark on Mikey. Gabriel's with her, the priests face grim and a surprisingly bloody machete in his hand.

"We need to move," Michonne barks, cutting us a path with her katana, blood and guts spraying around her.

"Rick!" Michonne yells, the way she carves leading us to him and Deanna.

"Mom!" Mikey cries, seeing blood oozing from his mother's side and leg as Rick hauls her down the middle of the road.

"I'm okay," she winces, clutching at her bleeding side. Clearly not okay.

The eight of us storm ahead of the walkers, only for more to appear from in front of us. Their force, somehow already infesting inside our walls.

Gabriel slashes one across the face when Deanna points to it, groaning in pain as her side continues to bleed. Carl gets the next, using his knife to save bullets. Mikey trips, crashing to the concrete, his hands scraping against it as the others keep running, not noticing his fall. My feet skid as I stop myself full sprint, rushing back for Mikey, grabbing his arm and practically throwing him to his feet, the look of absolute dread still ghostly on his face.

We cleave ourselves a new path, but the walkers seem to surround us again. An earsplitting bang lets off a dozen times, another route clearing in front of us as walkers drop, holes where their faces were, Minnie on the other side, her shotgun raised and smoking from the barrel. Jessie's there too, firing the gun that Rosita trained her with. The last five walkers in front of us drop to the ground. "Come on, I have Judith!" she yells.

The ten of us race up her porch steps, stumbling through the door and slamming number 96 shut.

Rick shoves me over the threshold of the Anderson house, sending me tripping into Carl's back as Rick slams the door behind us. Open palms start to press against the windows, rotten shoulders ramming into the front and back doors. I help Michonne and Mikey move a tall cupboard from the living room to the front door and block it with the heavy furniture. Carl rockets past us and up the stairs to find his crying sister, Ron helping Deanna up there after him. Gabriel pushes past me as he draws curtains and slams down a window left open. Rick and Jessie use a fridge to hold down the back door. Minnie is standing with her shotgun up, swinging it around at every bang and crash from elsewhere in Alexandria.

The chilling realisation starts to set in that we may have just fortified our own tomb from the inside.

Rick ushers from my bad side for us to all retreat upstairs, dragging me by the arm when I don't hear him.

All the shouting and banging is making my missing ear start to ache.

Deanna is lying on a small bed in an office room, groaning through gritted teeth, a miserable look on her face as Michonne tends to her wounds. Judith is rushed out of the small office and into Ron's bedroom when she starts to scream at all the blood leaking from Deanna. Mikey is knelt with his mother, crying hysterically.

I grab at my wounded head, the feeling of dust and dirt seeping beneath my bandage, my missing ear itching and burning.

Sam is pestering me, tugging at my arm and asking me what's happening. Asking me why everyone is screaming.

The temptation to yank the bandage from under the lopsided haircut I gave myself becomes overwhelming as I feel a panic attack settling in, an icy grip around my throat as I try to calm my breathing.

"Rhys!" Jessie's shaking my by the shoulders, bringing me back to the terror. "Get towels!"

I nod at her, not stopping as I hurtle hysterically into the bathroom, not finding anything as I storm through cabinets and tear open a laundry basket. I skid back into the hallway, finding a closest, eventually locating what Jessie wanted, almost forgetting in the panic. Rick's snatching them from me before I can make it out of the closet. Leaving me standing in the dark. The closet is quiet. I press my back against some shelves sinking down to my knees and getting my chest to stop pounding.

When I get back to the room Deanna's in, everyone's staring at her, jaws agape. I see it too, my hand jumping to cover my mouth. The blood Michonne wiped away, revealing a bite in Deanna's side.

Deanna stares at it with sunken eyes, sighing deeply before looking at the rest of us. "Well, shit."

The walkers outside have gotten quieter. A low hum of the horde's moaning is all that's audible now.

I'm sitting on the landing, my legs hanging through the bannisters as I watch the front door, the job Rick has assigned me with. Mikey's sitting next to me. Michonne had instructed him to leave when the sight of his mother's bite gave him a short-lived panic attack.

I watch from above as Ron goes into the house's connected garage, a silent scowl on his face. Carl follows him in. I wonder if there could be a car in there, conceding that it wouldn't help us much.

"We're going to be okay," I tell Mikey quietly, barely believing myself as I watch my shaking hands.

Mikey's quiet. So quiet that I have to glance at him to make sure he's still with me. He is. He's just quiet. His head's pressed into the bannisters as he stares out at nothing.

"We'll be okay," I repeat.

Mikey remains silent.

"Rhys," Jessie says with a sad attempt at a smile, her and Gabriel passing us with more towels. "He's in shock... he needs time."

I nod slow and small nods at her as the two head to the little office.

"I'm not in shock," Mikey tells me when Jessie's gone, his voice dry and raspy from all the crying. "I just don't know what to say."

"Say that you'll be okay."

Mikey says something else.

"Do you want my gun?"

I shake my head, almost smiling. "You haven't got any ammo."

Mikey's gaze falls to the hallway below us, guilty eyes avoiding mine.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Ron- he snuck into the armoury yesterday and stole bullets for his gun... gave me some too. He said we'd need them to protect ourselves- protect others."

I think about this.

Something clicks. Two oddly moulded pieces of a puzzle snapping together, a bulb glowing gently in my head for a room I can't seem to find.

"Ron has bullets?" I murmur. Mikey nods, but the question was rhetorical and I'm searching my brain thoroughly.

Then I find that room, the light bulb sparking.

I remember how Ron had his gun out, following Carl before the wall fell.

I'm up and flying down the stairs before Mikey can blink, pushing past Rick and Minnie as I go.

The garage door is locked, so I call out Carl's name, Ron's too, pounding my fists on the sturdy door.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rick hisses, having followed me. "We need to keep quiet or-"

But a crash from inside the garage stops him in his tracks. I'm throwing all my weight into the door now, the sound of glass breaking behind it. The frame's barely reacting to my light build.

"Back up," Rick barks, pushing me aside, tugging a hatchet out from his belt and striking it against the door handle with loud clunks. Jessie rushes down too, calling out for her son to no response, only more crashes, both of them grunting and yelling on the other side.

I can hear growls now, too, mixed in with the yelling.

The handle bends and snaps, and Rick cracks his boot against the door, kicking it the rest of the way. Ron and Carl scramble out as walkers flood into the garage through a broken door leading to the outside.

Once the two are out, Rick disappears into the next room, leaving Jessie and me to slam the door shut and hold it there. Bodies quickly pile against it from the other side, a tsunami of dead pooling into the garage. Ron and Carl turn to help us, Minnie with them, only just managing to keep it shut before Rick reappears with Gabriel, the two of them acting just in time as they stuff an entire couch against the broken door, holding it steady for now.

Minnie and Gabriel rush to find more furniture.

"What the hell happened in there?" Rick grunts to Carl as we all stay leant against the sofa, praying for the dead to lose interest.

"We were looking for tools and knocked over a shelf," Carl lies convincingly.

"We heard yelling," Jessie says, looking between the boys on either side of her.

"Yeah, Ron saw them break through the gates... We had to move."

"Carl..." I hiss.

"That's what happened," he hisses back at me.

Ron's mouth is agape for a second like he doesn't know what Carl's saying, but he snaps it shut, shaking his head before saying, "Carl, there's a nightstand in my mom's room. We can brace the couch with it."

Jessie grabs the back of her sons head, trying to force eye contact, but he resists.

"Hey-"

"What?" Ron snipes.

"-It sounded like you were fighting."

"Yeah, but we were fighting them," Ron pulls away, moving down the hall. Carl goes to follow him, both Rick and I calling his name at the same time.

Carl turns to look back at us.

"Don't..." I warn him.

"It's okay?" Rick asks his son over me.

"It's okay," Carl nods to the both of us.

When neither of them goes for the stairs, I keep worrying, watching Carl and Ron disappear behind the hallway corner.

Minnie and Gabriel finally bring more furniture and secure the door. Michonne comes downstairs too, helping build the new barricade, our furniture supplies dwindling. Not needed anymore, I race after Carl and Ron, searching behind every door, tripping over a can of paint in the hallway, finally hearing their voices when I reach the closed dining room.

"-I get it... my dad killed your dad, but you need to know something. Your dad was an asshole."

"-Carl, I didn't mean to... I wasn't going to use it. I swear... I just-"

I launch the door open, storming into the room.

"Rhys..." Ron tries, sounding sorry.

"Where's the gun?" I cut him off, furious as I march up on them. I'm finished with feeling sorry for him, done with making his excuses.

Ron's hand does a small gesture towards Carl, his eyes fixed to the floor submissively.

"I've got it," Carl tells me, touching one of my shoulders as they rise and fall, trying their best to keep up with my heavy breathes. I glare at Ron, feeling like a fluffed-up cat, full of this protective fury I can't shake.

Ron shakes his bowed head. "My dad's gone because of you people..." he whispers, his voice breaking as he gets closer to tears.

On any other day, I'd feel sorry for him. Any other second I would pity him. But I know he knows that, and it makes me angrier.

"You try anything like that again..." I tell him, getting inches from his face this time, his short breaths hot against my nose as I square up to him. "I'll kill you."

"You wouldn't," Ron attempts to stand up to me. "You're not like them..."

"You don't have a fucking clue what I'm like," I growl, pushing my forehead into his, my rage drawing me in. "I'll kill you," I repeat.

Ron looks up at me stunned, unbelieving of what I'm telling him, he goes to move, and I let him walk around me, making the decision in my head to let him leave.

I stand there, still staring in the direction Ron left from, my eyes hazed, not seeing anything but red.

Carl's hand finds my shoulder again.

"I'm okay," he tells me, his voice soothing.

"He could have-" I start through clenched teeth, unable to say the rest.

"I'm okay," Carl says again, moving around me so I can see him. Letting me see something other than red. "I'm here."

I let a minuscule nod come to me and Carl pulls me into him, draining my fury and holding on until my breathing slows to match his.

"I'm okay."

We head into the living room, where Michonne and Gabriel are sharing hushed whispers with Rick. The three of them gathered around a covered window.

Jessie walks in. "They knocked the owl sculpture over," she tells us, sounding disappointed as she peers out a cracked curtain and onto the porch.

"All that noise, it's drawing more," Michonne whispers, her face disturbed as she peaks past the curtains too.

"The garage door's not gonna hold," Minnie tells us, jogging in from that direction. She pulls back the pump on her shotgun, letting an empty cartridge fly out.

Judith starts crying upstairs, so Rick goes to check on her, Mikey walking into the room as he leaves it.

"What happened," he sniffles, hugging himself and watching as Ron stands off to the side of the room, hovering near his mother.

"Nothing," Carl sighs, somehow doing it with his whole body.

"Ron tried to kill Carl," I tell Mikey in a low voice, making sure he and Carl are the only ones to hear.

Mikey's eyes droop as he looks devastated with the world, overwhelmed by everything he knows turning rotten. He slowly brings his gun out, trying to hand it to me meekly.

"Keep it," I tell him, "the doors won't hold forever."

"Did you save Carl?" Mikey asks, nodding as he returns the gun to under his belt.

I shake my head. "He saved himself."

A thunderous crack comes from the front door as it buckles. We all race to the hallway, watching horrified as decomposing arms reach through the entry as the lock snaps, only an upturned cupboard keeping them from getting in.

Ron, Carl, and Mikey help Jessie and Gabriel ram against the door and cupboard, narrowly avoiding arms that swipe at their ducking heads, trying their best to keep the dead on the porch. Rick skids into the room, sprinting to join them. Michonne's pulling me to help her move more furniture.

Then we hear the back door break open.

"Everybody upstairs now!" Michonne shoves me towards the staircase, yanking her katana from her back and cutting down the dead as they swamp through the kitchen. I stagger past Minnie as she fires her shotgun, both my missing and whole ear ringing from the blast as I clamber up the staircase. Everyone else is close behind me, Rick and Michonne the last, using the sofa from the garage door to block the stairs as they retreat up.

Rick looks around to make sure everyone's here, his face drenched with blood and sweat as he draws his hatchet again, bringing it down on a couple of walkers that try their best to squeeze past the sofa. Rick seizes one of them by the shoulders, pulling it all the way through. "Get the other," he grunts at Michonne, "we're gonna need two."

The two walkers are set down on Jessie's bedroom floor, Rick and Michonne carving into their bellies, cold guts spilling onto the grey carpet and turning it to a stained and stinking red.

Carl's told me about this before, cover yourself in the dead, and you can walk right past them.

As long as you hold your nerve, you're one of them.

"We're gonna need bedsheets, enough for everyone," Rick tells Gabriel, who hurries down the hall to the same closet I found the towels in.

"Bedsheets for what?" Jessie asks, holding her nose at the stench of innards, Ron doing the same behind her.

"We all go to the armoury," Rick tells her.

"How?" Minnie gags into her sleeve, studying the scene as Michonne dips her hand into the chubbier walker and scoops out a handful of dripping sludge.

I back up into the hallway, the smell getting to me in the stuffy room.

Over the growls downstairs, I hear a faint voice from behind me, turning to see Deanna on Ron's bed, the door just enough ajar that we can see each other's faces. Hers is ghostly and pale. Someone must have moved her in there.

"Rhys," she croaks when I open the door further, dark circles around her eyes. Her body, frail and curled on the bed. "Any chance I could get some water?"

"Right," I bob my head, stepping over to the small side table beside her, a glass already filled there that someone else must have gotten her. I lift it to her lips.

"Thank you," she offers a half-cocked smile when I replace the glass on the side table. I can see she's not relishing needing to ask for help to drink the water.

"One more thing," she groans at me just as I'm about to go. "Could you fetch my son?"

Mikey's standing on watch at the top of the stairs with Carl. I nudge his arm and lead him quietly to Ron's bedroom.

I go to leave, hand resting on the doorknob.

"Stay," Deanna coughs at me, pushing herself to sit a little higher on the robot printed bedsheets.

I do as I'm told, closing the door and standing silently beside it, trying to be as small and invisible as possible.

Mikey gradually inches towards his mom, kneeling on the floor beside the bed, looking up at her with wide eyes, sad and grey and impossibly heartbroken.

Deanna reaches out a shaky hand, touching her son's hair. "Did I ever tell you that you're my favourite son?"

Mikey laughs, choking too, crying as he shakes his head at her. Every emotion somehow displayed on his face at once.

"It's true," Deanna insists with a smirk. "We're not normally meant to have favourites... but we're not a normal family, are we?"

"Mom..." Mikey whines, like her words hurt.

Deanna keeps going.

"Spencer... he's sharp. Aiden was strong. But you can learn to be those things." She smiles, clenching her hand in his hair, holding him tight, rubbing a thumb across his forehead as he peers up at her through wet eyes. "You, Mr, you were born positive... that's not something you pick up so easy."

I watch as Mikey twists around in her grip, climbing onto the bed and holding his mother tightly around the middle.

"You can't go..." he pleads.

"Oh, you just watch me," Deanna chuckles.

"It hurts..."

"Dolor hic tibi proderit olim," Deanna whispers the Latin into his dark hair, and Mikey nods, understanding it. "Your father always used to say it, so don't you forget it."

I watch as the two hold each other, Deanna finally letting go, looking up to me. "You'll keep him safe?" she nods, more a command than a question.

"I will," I promise her.

"Do you remember the first time we met?"

The question makes me frown. I do remember. I just don't understand why it matters.

"I've watched that recording a few times," Deanna tilts her head so she can rest it and keep looking at me. "I never did find you the right job."

"You found me a job," I say.

"The right job," she flashes me a clever smile, one that she always seems to manage.

I nod, not sure what to say. What can you say to a woman that's dying? Dying with her son in her arms.

"I think I know the perfect job for you now," she gives a small and strained wink.

"What?"

She purses her lips into a curled smile, keeping it tight enough that all those secrets don't spill out.

"I think you're going to work it out for yourself. I had a lot more to tell you, Rhys Washburne," Deanna smiles. "I know why Maggie likes you so much."

"Why's that?" I ask.

"Because you're like her. You'll be so important to this place one day. I see it, even if you don't. Even when you can't. You'll help guide this place into what it's meant to be."

"What it's meant to be?" I ask her, watching as she lies there with all her secrets.

"Civilization," she tells me. "This place will be civilization."

The first floor is packed with the dead, the lower floor of Jessie's home lost. We leave Deanna in Ron's room. Rick gives her a loaded gun, six bullets in the chamber, one ready for when she is.

Carl's placing a poncho made from bedsheets over my head.

"I know it's not as fancy as your old one," he jokes, grabbing a fistful of walker guts and smearing it across my chest, Michonne doing the same to his back.

"No, man," I gasp, holding back my puke, "this has way more character."

I watch from the corner of my eye as Ron covers Mikey in guts, asking him quietly, "we still cool?"

Mikey just stares at him, like he can't comprehend him.

"Did you really do it?" Mikey asks. "Try to kill-"

"Shut the hell up, man," Ron hisses. His face softens, and he looks sorry after. "Sorry... about your mom, I mean."

Mikey keeps staring, "Why'd you do it?"

"They're not us," Ron tells him. "Not really."

Mikey doesn't agree with him, nor does he disagree, which worries me slightly.

"Mom?"

Sam is standing in the doorway, horrified as he watches us all cover ourselves in ooze from the bleeding bellies.

Jessie goes to him, half-covered already, bending down to face him, taking his hand when he steps back, his eyes staring at the walkers on the floor.

"You need to listen to me, okay?" Jessie tells him slowly. "We aren't safe here anymore. Okay, we need to do this so that we can be safe out there... we need to look like the monsters."

"No, please, no."

"Yes, honey, we have to go, okay? We have to go. We have to go, Sam. Honey, just- just pretend you're brave."

Sam is shaking, crying, trembling and nodding. Staying that way as his mother puts a sheet over his head and starts to smear the monster's insides over him.

Fully covered, everyone heads out of the room and onto the landing. Carl hooks my pinky finger with his, stopping me from going.

"Rhys- wait..." his breath hitches, and his eyes are suddenly wet. "I know you lied to me."

My heart's racing, my brow furrows. "What?"

"I wanted to thank Mikey the other day for the paint you said you spilt." Carl forces himself to look at me. "He had no idea what I was talking about."

"Why now?" I ask, flustered. "Why are you doing this now?"

"Because I don't want to hold anything back, not right now."

"I'm sorry..."

There's a void in Carl's eyes as they study over me. He's angry at me. I've seen him angry before, but not through his eyes. His eyes forgive me. They tell me that it'll be okay. They don't get angry with me. They're not supposed to.

"You promised me," Carl whispers, not a trace of bitterness in his voice.

But those eyes...

"You left, and I hate that you didn't tell me," Carl tells me.

"I couldn't tell you..."

"You could have. But you just ran away because it was easier."

I need those eyes to forgive me.

"I wasn't running. I was trying to bring everyone back," I say.

He doesn't say anything.

"Carl- if we don't make it..."

"We will," he tells me. "My Mom's dead... so are most of the people that got me here. But we're alive, and we're keeping my sister alive. For them."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," I put a hand under his cloak, grabbing onto his arm.

Carl pulls back slightly, his eyes refusing to change. "We'll talk about it when we're safe."

I try to kiss him, desperate for forgiveness, but Carl looks away.

I sob, and he looks back.

"I love you," he tells me.

"I love you so much," I whisper to him, choking on my tears.

On the landing, we join with the others. The dead are loud beneath our feet.

"I'll get Judith," Rick says.

"Rick," Gabriel stops him, a speck of blood on his exposed white collar. "I'm not gonna give up out there. I will not turn back, no matter what happens."

Rick nods, "Yeah, I know."

When Rick gets back with Judith, he and Jessie put her gently under Carl's bloody bedsheet, securing her with a makeshift sling from clean sheets around Carl's waist. She doesn't cry, holding her breath as she knows to keep quiet.

We all descend the staircase, holding hands to stay together. The moment the sofa is moved, walkers start pushing past us and up the stairs. Rick goes first, then Carl, followed by me, Jessie, Sam, Ron, Mikey, Gabriel, Minnie, and Michonne. Carl's grip is firm in my left hand ahead. Jessie's hand trembles in my right as she follows behind. Deanna's six shots ring out from the house behind us as we leave, I want to look back to Mikey, but I keep walking, focusing.

I step onto the porch behind Carl. Walkers keep bumping into me as they make their way past. I hold my breath as one studies its stagnant clouded eyes over my facade, inches away, teeth vibrating and grinding by my good ear as it tests for fear.

I give it none.

A/N