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RHatch89- Thank you, buddy :)

Mikey is starting to trail behind on our way to the armoury, kicking odd stones that keep clipping the back of my heels.

"You wanna hurry up?" I ask, entertained by his attitude.

I hear him sigh as he trudges after me. "I'm not so sure this is a great idea anymore..."

"You asked me to teach you how to kill walkers," I tell him simply as we arrive at Olivia and Enid's back door, the basement steps closest to the armoury. I trot down the concrete steps and wrap my fist against the door three times.

"Won't it be too dangerous?" Mikey asks with pause in his voice.

I shake my head, turning to face him as he lingers at the top of the concrete steps leading down.

"I've got patrol with Rosita today," I tell him. "I spoke to her about it, and she's fine if you tag along... kinda."

"Kinda?" Mikey frowns.

"It's fine."

"But what if we run into a horde? What if we get stuck out there? What if-"

"Dude!" I interrupt him. "It's going to go fine. There is no one I trust more out there than Rosita."

That seems to put Mikey at ease.

Alexandria isn't the only thing that's changed in the last two months. I tried explaining it to Denise. But ever since Carl slipped into his coma, my head hasn't stopped. Hasn't stopped hating me. Hasn't stopped shouting at me. I tried to block it out with Mikey and Enid at the start. Spending my days playing questions and answers or sneaking booze out of the pantry reserves. But eventually, I always ended up back at the infirmary, sitting beside the same bed. I tried therapy with Denise. I tried helping with the expansion. But the infirmary didn't stop calling me. It wasn't until I joined the patrol crews that I could finally clear all the angry noises and guilty stomachaches. Maggie and Rick weren't keen on the idea at first. The two had given their best sceptical eyebrow raises when I propositioned it. But Glenn helped me talk them round, Sasha and Rosita too. Now I tend to out there more than in here. At least, that's what Mikey and Enid keep complaining about.

The door to Olivia's finally swings open, Enid on the other side, letting us in and leading us to the armoury, telling us on the way, "Olivia's busy doing a food stock check, so I'll sign your stuff out."

"Sure you don't want to come?" Mikey asks hopefully.

Enid crinkles her nose and shrugs, scratching her head with her wrist. "I'm good."

I sign out my rifle. Mikey takes the pistol Rick gave him in his shooting lesson. Since shooting Ron, Mikey's decided he doesn't want to carry it around with him inside the walls. He told me once that he thinks it hates him.

"Want a machete?" Enid hums, her hoodie sleeves covering her hands as she wraps them under and around the weapon stock book.

I pat on my hammer and shake my head. "You grab one, Mikey."

"Which?" he stares up at the rack of sharpened blades.

"Whichever feels best."

We meet Rosita by the front gate, Mikey fiddling uncomfortably with the red-handled machete strapped to his leg in its pale leather sleeve. As the three of us leave Alexandria, I notice him hold his breath, like he's trying to draw out every second before leaving this place for the first time since it began. But as we walk away from our walls, his lungs give, and he takes in the unknown.

Ron's watch tells me half an hour has passed.

The three of us are walking side by side on the outskirts of a neighbouring town to Alexandria, keeping our eyes peeled. The leaf dusted road is stitched over with zig-zagged cracks and patchy grass sprouts poking up their heads.

Mikey's been amusing me for the last minute. I can tell he's working his way up to asking a question from the way he keeps hopping every other step, but his tongue keeps stopping before the words can form.

"What are we looking for?" he finally squeaks.

"Walkers," Rosita answers plainly. Sometimes I forget how blunt she is when she's not talking to me. Sometimes even when she is talking to me.

"Yeah..." Mikey bobbing his head up and down, sounding like he has more to say. "But, like, why? We're so far from home. What will killing a few walkers help?"

Rosita stops in her tracks, Mikey and me doing the same. She points towards the heart of the abandoned town that we're patrolling the perimeter of. "This is where we do most of our runs... where Glenn, Tara, and Heath take groups. Keeping these roads clear is how we help them," she tells him.

Mikey looks intrigued as we all start walking again.

"Plus," I add, "Walkers cluster pretty quick... they group up if they don't get thinned out. Then we'll get another quarry horde."

"How?" Mikey sounds fascinated now. "Do they have a rudimentary way of communicating, like some plants and animals do? Do they have a notion of group security? Can they take into consideration that together, they're better at hunting?"

Rosita stops, turning to face Mikey, nodding and looking like she's thinking, humouring his theories. Then she says, "I think it's just the smell."

She turns and keeps leading.

Mikey stares at me. "Awesome!"

Another ten minutes on the fractured road, and we find a walker. It's a small woman, dragging her feet and making her way towards us from down the sidewalk, her ragged summer dress catching under her feet and making her stumble every other step. Her eyes are on the ground, so it doesn't look like it's seen us.

Rosita whistles, catching the short walker's attention with a growl and a snapping of its jaw. Then Rosita turns to Mikey. "You're up, kid. Use the machete. Not the gun."

"I... but-" Mikey's staring at the gradually closing walker. "I know how to, um, to kill them... I did it when the walls fell."

Rosita shakes her head. "It's not the same," she tells him. "When you're fighting a hundred walkers, you're on autopilot. You get pumped up with adrenaline, and your body takes over." Rosita points her drawn knife towards the walker as it inches closer. "But now? Now you're driving. You've got to think about how you kill it. Think about how you stop it from killing you."

"How do I do that?" Mikey looks at her with anxious eyes.

Rosita keeps her blade pointed. "Notice how it's tripping on that dress?"

Mikey nods.

"If you're not careful... it tripping could catch you off guard. It'll be on you too fast." She points her knife at him. "Dead."

"How do I stop that from happening?"

"Make the first move..." I tell him. "Wait for your opening, then kill it."

Mikey pulls his blade awkwardly from his hip, stepping forward, mumbling the instructions. "Don't get caught off guard. Wait for an opening. Kill it."

The walker reaches him.

Mikey brings down the machete.

The walker's head splits in two, blood spraying across Mikey's face. He yanks the blade out and pivots to face us with a beaming grin.

"Sick," I laugh, patting his shoulder.

"Nice," Rosita nods. "Try to stab over slice, though. Less blood that way."

The rest of the patrol goes quick. Rosita and I deal with the rest of the few and far between dead while Mikey keeps his chest puffed and his blood-splattered face full of pride over his kill.

"You went by the infirmary today?" Rosita asks me out the side of her mouth.

I mmm-hmm at her.

She nods.

"You had your swimming lessons this morning, too?" she asks.

I make the same sound.

"And then you came straight here?"

I roll my eyes. "You can just ask me what you want to ask me."

"Fine," she frowns. "Did you change your bandage today?"

I nod.

"Good," she nods. "Good."

Rosita's gotten into the annoying habit of this. Asking me roundabout questions that don't start any real conversations, in the hopes I'll tell her I'm looking after myself, and she can move on.

"I'm okay, you know?" I tell her.

"Yeah, I know," she smirks. "Just want you to stay that way."

"I'm good."

"It took you weeks to talk to anyone after Carl got shot, and I'm just making sure that-"

"Rosita..."

"What?" she hisses at me like she's angry.

"I'm okay. Patrol helps keep my mind off it."

"Alright," she sighs, holding her hands up. "I'm dropping it."

We get home around noon, Rosita telling us, "Next time we'll start on gun training."

When Mikey's finally done with over thanking Rosita, I watch as he and his brother have this awkward exchange.

"You okay, Mikey?"

"I'm okay."

"Why are you covered in blood? Did you get- you know. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Spencer."

Spencer walks away after that, following Rosita in the direction of the armoury. I nudge Mikey's arm.

"Come to mine. I'll make lunch."

Mikey's adrenaline is gone by the time we're at my house, a frown replacing his contentment for his first patrol.

"Wish Spencer had at least said well done for going out there," Mikey sits at the kitchen island and pouts at me as I open a can of kidney beans. He cleans his face with a damp cloth that I hand him.

"At least he let you go," I shrug.

"He only did it because Rosita asked him. I swear he's got, like, a mega crush on her. Like the super obvious kind of mega crush. It's embarrassing."

That makes me laugh. "Why's it embarrassing?"

"Because," Mikey shrugs, pressing his head to the counter. "Rosita's cool. I don't want her to think I'm a dork like him."

"She doesn't think that."

"You think Rosita likes me?" he perks up.

"She said there'll be a next time, didn't she?"

When the food is made, I tell Mikey I'm going to eat at the infirmary, so he thanks me for the tortilla and heads home.

When I reach Carl's room, I'm shocked to find that he's not alone.

Enid sits in a chair beside his bed. She has her legs pulled to her chest with her chin rested atop a rip in her jean knee.

"Hi," she whispers. Whispers like she's worried that she'll wake him.

"Hey," I tell her, keeping my voice loud. Hoping for the opposite.

I give her my tortilla when I discern that I'm not actually hungry.

I open the curtains, not asking why she left them drawn. I sit in the chair Rick sat in all those months ago, the one he still sits in when he does visit. Enid's sat in mine.

"Can he hear us?" Enid asks me.

"I like to think so," I smile.

"Do you talk to him?"

I nod. "When he wakes up, he's probably gonna tell me that he got sick of my voice." I pause. "Do you talk to him?"

Enid shakes her head.

"Why not?" I ask her.

Enid shrugs at me. "There's something I want to tell him... but it's something I want to know he hears."

"You can say it," I tell her, moderately curious as to what it is. "He'll hear it."

"You don't know that..." Enid sighs.

I watch Enid across the bed as a ray of the outside light dances across her pale cheek from the window, warming it as she shifts to rest the other on her knee.

"I want to tell him that I'm sorry," Enid huffs, surprising me when she opens up. Usually, getting Enid to speak about something she would rather not falls on the far side of impossible.

"Why?"

Unlike me, Enid keeps her eyes on Carl's face as she talks, seemingly more scared of the conscious than the dreaming. "I told him that I was scared of him when we snuck over the wall... I'm not. I think it upset him."

"He knows," I tell her. "He likes you."

"How do you know?"

"Jus' do," I shrug. "I think he likes you more than me sometimes."

"Not sure about that."

I nod, feeling that pit in my stomach that you get when you're about to cry, only I don't. "I think you two are more similar in a way. You remind me of Carl when I first met him."

"I doubt that..."

"He didn't want any friends... too scared of getting close in case they ran away. He also pretended he didn't care as much as he did, and he blamed himself for everything. Still does that last one."

"He loves you," Enid says it like I need reminding. The way she says it starts me wondering if I do need it.

"I know," I tell her after a pregnant pause. I leave another before saying, "I left to find you and the others when the horde surrounded us... Carl couldn't go after you. I promised him I wouldn't go. I did. I didn't tell him. I lied about it. But he found out anyway."

Enid's watching me like a cat. All wisdom and nothing to read.

"I've never seen him as angry as he was then," I whisper. "He told me we were going to talk about it after the dead were gone. That's the last thing he said to me before..."

"You're worried about what he's going to say?" Enid asks.

"No," I shake my head slightly. "I've been living the last few months not knowing. Whether he forgives me or hates me... I think I just need to hear what he has to say."

Glenn turns up to bring me home a few hours later, a grimace on his face that says it's urgent. He's scowling at Enid for a reason I don't understand, telling her, "You were meant to bring him to 99 an hour ago." Enid apologises, seemingly wanting me to stay. But Glenn insists, and I follow him home, still confused by the urgency.

When we walk in the front door of 99, I'm so wrapped in thought that I almost don't notice the candle-lit cake on the dining room table. Maggie and Glenn are shouting about someone's birthday. I only know that it can't be mine. I didn't mention it. I already decided that it wasn't today anymore.

When I stand there blankly, Glenn drives me to sit down at the table. He's holding my shoulders in case I decide to run. I'm definitely debating it.

"How-?" I stutter.

Maggie shakes her head at me. "I know it's your birthday, Rhys. Just because you don't remind me a month before doesn't mean I'll forget."

I glower at my plan being thwarted, realising that it was hoping for a lot that I've never told anyone but Carl which day it's on.

"Carl practically started planning your birthday the day after his," Maggie smirks. "He told me the date."

Before I say anything, Maggie speaks again. "I know you want to wait for him. I know. But you can't always do that. I made sure it was quiet, just the three of us."

I lean back in my seat, folding my arms at the situation. Not finding it fair.

"I have told the others, though," Maggie shrugs like she couldn't help herself. "So expect to be fussed over tomorrow."

I blow out the candles, and Maggie slices into the homemade carrot cake.

AN-

This was one of those chapters that I could keep editing forever.

Also, I love Rhys and Rosita teaching walker tips together, and I wish I could make the rest of the fic just that.

:)