-Mikey-

Eugene lies motionless in one of the empty beds in the infirmary. Rosita's standing over him with a small bottle of antibiotics in hand. Daryl's leaning against the white frame of the window by the door, staring out over the lake's still water. Mikey's sat in the corner of the room, watching them all.

Abraham walks in through the front door and they all look up.

Abraham nods to them, a faint smirk on his lips that seems played out.

"Sent Rhys to get Rick. He'll be here soon."

Abraham reaches Eugene's bed, looking over him.

He quietly asks Rosita a question.

"How is he?"

She tells him the answer without speaking to him, without looking at him.

"Bullet just grazed him."

She looks at Mikey then, instead. Tells him instead.

"It's a good thing we got him back when we did."

She holds up the bottle in her hand and tells him again.

"Antibiotics we picked up could save him from an infection. Could save his life."

Mikey doesn't smile, so Rosita tells him the point.

"That's what Denise did."

Mikey nods saying something of his own.

"She would be happy that he made it."

Eugene starts spluttering, reaching for the water beside his bed. Rosita pours him a glass.

When Eugene's done spluttering through a few sips and his coughs subside, Rosita asks him something.

"You here?"

He nods lightly, croaking a response.

"Present."

Abraham sighs.

"Good."

Eugene looks around the room, taking in every face, frowning when he can't seem to find the right one.

He turns back to Abraham and raises his query.

"Is Rhys here?"

Abraham shakes his head.

Eugene looks disappointed before going on.

"I wanted to apologise to him... and you. I was not trying to kill you two when I pointed those men to your barrels. I was looking for a moment."

Abraham puts a hand on Eugene's shoulder, looking very sincere and telling him the truth.

"You found it."

Eugene raises another inquiry.

"Do you apologise for questioning my skills?"

Abraham nods.

"I apologise for questioning your skills. You know how to bite a dick, Eugene. I mean that with the utmost of respect. Welcome to stage two."

Eugene shakes his head.

"Don't need to welcome me. I've been here a while."

After that, they all leave Eugene to rest. All of them acknowledge how fast the end can come. How close another enemy is, and how unimportant that has to be right now. Denise died telling them all their truths, breaking them down but dying before she could finish putting them back together. They all realise that they have to figure that out for themselves now.

Rosita and Mikey leave together, the dinner Spencer offered still on the table. Mikey realises he needs his brother. Rosita just concedes that she needs to not be alone, like Denise said.

Daryl finds Carol, and she sees all his pain through a beaten shutter that he's closed on the rest of them. She holds him like a mother might.

Rhys' harsh words to him somehow resonate in Abraham after all the gunfire and bullets stop rattling around inside his head. He goes to Sasha with flowers he picks from beside the lake, and she lets him in with a smile on her face.

-Rhys' POV-

Daryl and I take the run truck back to the tracks later in the day. Denise's body is still where we left it. Flies are settling on her gouged eye. As gently as we can, the two of us carry her body into the back of the run truck, setting a clean white sheet over her after Daryl gets the arrow out. A stain of red starts to grow where the sheet touches her face. Before we leave, Daryl grabs something from the floor where she fell. So do I.

Carol helps Daryl bury Denise in the ever-growing graveyard. I attempt to help, but my ribs make a scraping sound when I try. Daryl holds up the thing he took from the tracks— a small name tag for a key chain. I manage to read it before he pockets it again.

Dennis

I tell him it's spelt wrong, and he ignores me because he obviously knows, and I obviously don't get it.

Mikey gets to the burial just after I leave. I can hear them talking, so I listen from around the corner of the church, hidden behind a shrub.

"I'm on my own now," Mikey sighs sadly.

"What d'you mean?" Daryl asks him. I'm surprised he speaks at all.

"Dunno. I suppose she reminded me of me. Because I suck at being out there like she did. I suppose she made me feel less useless."

When I get home, Carl's there, lounging on the sofa with one of his poetry books. He sees what I picked up.

"Soda?" He asks, shutting his notebook and putting it aside, looking at the orange can I haven't put down since I took it from the tracks.

"Mikey asked me to get it... apparently Denise wanted to give it to Tara when she gets back."

I put it in the kitchen before collapsing on the sofa beside him.

We're right beside each other, but it feels like a whole world away.

I decide that I should close that gap, scooting closer and leaning in real close until the deep breaths coming from his nose are tickling my upper lip. His mouth twitches a little into a smile, so I kiss it. Kiss him and his smile, breathing deeply against his cheek.

He's still smiling at me as I pull away, but I'm not done. I shuffle myself across him until I'm sitting on his lap and facing him. Carl looks confused but lets me keep kissing him.

Much to my dismay, he pulls away after a moment and looks up at me.

"Are you okay?" he asks softly.

"Yeah," I smile, leaning in again, but he pulls back a little.

"Rhys," he says very delicately. "Denise just died. You almost did. You don't have to be okay."

"But I am okay," I tell him.

He doesn't look like he believes me. He looks more like he's worried about not being able to believe me. Like he feels sorry for me. Like I can't know myself anymore.

I tip forward until I'm resting my forehead against his chin. I sigh.

"I didn't kill anyone," is the first thing I tell him.

"I didn't ask if you did," Carl says quietly.

"I know, but after what you said that night, I've been thinking and—"

"I'm sorry I said those things," Carl interrupts.

"But you meant them, right?"

He thinks for a second.

"Yeah," he nods. "I didn't mean the way that I said them, but I still meant them."

"We can just start over," I tell him in a shaky voice.

"I'm worried about you," he breathes like he's been holding a breath with those words in it for weeks. "I want you to be okay."

"Why don't you believe me when I tell you I am okay?"

"Because I don't think you know that you're not," he says sweetly, almost diplomatically. "I love you, and I need to know you're okay."

I slide off his lap, sitting next to him on the sofa. "What can I do?" I ask, feeling myself start to get upset. "I'm sick of everyone thinking that I'm not okay."

"We're just worried."

"Well, stop," I say quietly. "I'm not going to break if you kiss me. I'm not going to hurt myself or whatever if you just act like everything's okay."

"But is everything okay?"

"Yes," I groan, rubbing my eyes irritably. "Before we went to the satellite outpost, you told me that you needed me to stay. I'm right here."

"I know," Carl nods like he's trying to keep up with me and my point. "I know you're here."

"I guess that was a bad night," I chuckle into my hand, shaking my head.

Carl nods, still looking concerned. "You never said much when I told you about what I said to Enid."

"Is this because of what you said to Enid?"

He takes a brief pause, like he wants to be annoyed at me for asking that and needs to calm down in his head. "Why would you think that?"

I take a pause that's just as long. "You guys would be good together."

"That's not what I'm saying," Carl groans, clearly wishing he hadn't brought it up.

"I'm not having a go," I tell him, feeling gross in my own skin. "I really think you guys would."

Carl looks really lost.

"I still love you too," I tell him.

"I want to help you," Carl tells me.

I lean forward, hiding my head in my hands. "I just want us to be where we were."

"Maybe it's a good thing that we're not?" Carl phrases it like a question. "I want you to be able to tell me how you feel and to help you if I can. Isn't that a good change?"

I hold my face tighter, somehow believing it will stop the emotions that I seem to always be stuffed with. "But it's my fault," I whisper. "I'm the one that's changed, and you have to put up with it. I just want to be who I was before I—" I stop. "I just want to be normal. I want you to treat me like I'm normal."

"I think sometimes it takes time," Carl tells me. "Just because I'm not ignoring how you feel doesn't mean we're not the same as we were."

After a while of head in hands, and when I'm sure it's all going to stay in, I pull away and smile weakly at him.

Carl puts an arm around my shoulders and lets me rest my head on his chest.

I feel bad again.

After a little while, I leave to find Sasha, but when I climb the porch steps of 99 next door, I hear laughter from inside. I follow it to a window, peering in, and there she is, sitting with Abraham, both of them smiling and laughing— sitting in the living room of 99. It makes me smile, too. I watch them through the window, ducking out of sight when Sasha looks up. I think about going in, but I decide to steal away.

I go to knock at Mikey's door, but again, I hear people laughing. Chatter is coming from the dining room. Excepting that looking through windows is just my thing now, I peer into the Monroe house through the dining room window. I see Mikey. I see Rosita. Spencer, too. They're eating something that looks like it could be jerky, and they all look happy. I sit below the window for a while, listening to them talk about things that don't include broken boys or dead doctors or murdered Saviors. They just seem to laugh and be happy, so I leave them, too.

Finally, I head to Tobin's house. I don't hear any laughter when I arrive.

I knock.

Carol is the person to answer. As much as I hate to admit it, she's the person I hoped for.

"Why are you here?" she asks out the corner of her mouth, glancing over my shoulder onto the empty street.

I don't really have a reason, so I just ask, "Do you have any cigarettes?"

She rolls her eyes at me, shaking her head disapprovingly.

"Please," I ask through gritted teeth.

Carol opens the door a little wider, letting me slip inside before she disappears upstairs. There's a backpack slung against an armchair in the hallway. It looks full.

"Where's Tobin?" I ask absentmindedly.

"Talking with Maggie about preparation for Denise's funeral tonight," Carol calls from upstairs.

There's a piece of paper sticking out from the front pocket of the bag in the armchair. Resting on the side table beside the armchair is a tattered brown jacket with its seam freshly sewed. I take the paper from the bag, unfolding it.

My eyebrows knit together as I study the page. It's one of the sketches for the new spiked-car defenses on the wall's outer perimeter— I've seen similar ones in Maggie's office. One of the cars is circled in red highlighter— a car sat by the base of the old watchtower. There's writing next to it.

'Hidden from guard posts A and C.

Guard's swap over at six.

The tank should still be full.'

Underneath the paper is a folded map. A few roads heading east are highlighted in blue ink.

There's a letter, too.

'I wish it didn't have to end. Not this way. It was never my intention to hurt you. But it's how it has to be. We have so much here. People, food, medicine, walls, everything we need to live. But what we have, other people want, too, and that will never change. If we survive this threat and it's not over, another one will be back to take its place. To take what we have. I love you all here. I do. And I have to kill for you. And I can't. I won't. Rick sent me away and I wasn't ever gonna come back, but everything happened and I wound up staying. But I can't anymore. I can't love anyone because I can't kill for anyone. So I'm going like I always should have. Don't come after me, please.'

I hear Carol coming back, so I replace the papers neatly as they were.

Carol stops at the far end of the hallway by the stairs. She doesn't have any smokes with her.

"Gave them to Daryl," she tells me. "Sorry."

"No worries."

When I go back to 99, Sasha and Abraham are gone.

I grab a notepad from Maggie's office downstairs, head upstairs to my room and toss it on my desk before I start to pack a bag, stuffing it under my bed afterwards. I grab one of Carl's green pens that he left on my desk and start writing.

When I'm finished with my scribblings, I rip the page from the pad and stuff it into my pocket before heading downstairs.

"Hey, Rhys."

I jump out of my skin, bashing my elbow against a lamp, dashing to catch it as it falls.

"Sorry," Glenn rubs the back of his neck, standing by the front door. I give a strange look to his outfit, his smart black jeans and a shirt tucked in.

"Why are you dressed weird?" I ask.

"Denise's funeral, man," he points a thumb over his shoulder. "I came to get you."

"Right," I nod.

I go for the door, but Glenn puts a hand on my shoulder.

"How are you?"

"Erm— fine." I smile at him wide.

Glenn sees through it.

"What's up?" he asks.

When I don't answer, Glenn takes me by the shoulders and pulls me into him, holding me against his chest tightly.

"I'm fine," I whisper into him, hoping that he's about to let go, not knowing how much longer I can hold it.

"It's okay if you're not," Glenn says into my hair.

He doesn't let go of me, not even when I start to cry. Glenn just hugs me tightly and allows me to let go.

We sit down on the sofa sometime after the tears stop, he listens, and I tell him.

I tell him that Maggie can't look at me anymore.

"She loves you," Glenn tells me. "She just needs time after what happened."

He sighs, looking at me with a sad smile, like he can see that I don't quite get it and that it really hurts.

"She's scared," he tells me. "Soon, the three of us will sit down, and we'll talk about it, okay? She'll tell you why."

Then I tell him that I think I'm hurting Carl just by existing.

"He loves you, too," Glenn says. "Sometimes when you love someone so much, you're willing to hurt for them... because the things that come after are worth it."

"Everyone thinks I'm broken," I say, my voice trembling.

Glenn smiles because he knows that I know what he's going to say next.

"People only make you feel like that because they know the real you even if you don't always want them to. They do it because they love you. That's why you're confused with Maggie right now. It's why Carl's trying to help you. It's why I came to find you."

I wipe my face and nod a few times.

"I love you, too," I mumble.

"You coming to the funeral?" Glenn asks, smirking and patting my leg before standing up. "Or are you going to make me do it by myself?"

I nod and stand up, following him out the door.

The funeral is quiet, and I know Dennise would have liked it for that.

Gabriel says a prayer for her, and everyone bows their heads in solace.

Minnie cries.

So does Mikey.

Daryl isn't here.

Nor is Carol.

Spencer says a few words.

"When the walls fell, Denise was almost killed by one of those wolves... he took her hostage, and when he was bit, Denise tried to save him. Then she got back to the infirmary, and she saved countless others..."

I glance at Carl, who's subconsciously covering his bandaged eye.

Spencer goes on.

"That's who Denise was... she saved people. She died out there trying to get medicine to save people. That's who she was."

When the graveyard starts to clear out, Mikey catches me by the arm. Enid's with him, and she's wearing a black dress with red roses sewn into it. She looks sad and beautiful.

"Thanks for out there," Mikey says.

"That was a nice speech your brother gave," I dodge the compliment.

"He is a Monroe," Enid smirks.

"You want to come back to my place?" Mikey asks quietly. "Enid is, and Carl said he would... could be just like old times."

I shake my head. "I— I can't."

"Right," Mikey nods, looking disappointed.

"Bye, guys," I force a smile.

The note I wrote— I left it in Carl's room.

I waited until the sun fell beyond the walls— even longer until the hands on my watch called it almost midnight.

I slung my bag out my open window and followed it onto the porch roof below.

I lowered myself to the grass.

I climbed over the wall.

My ribs hurt through all of it, but I pushed on.

Minnie was standing atop the wall on guard over the front gate.

I waited for her to realise the time.

Waited for her to leave her post for the guard swap.

Now I'm sitting in the backseat of a car with spikes sticking out its body. Hidden in the shadow of what remains of the old watchtower. It was hard enough getting in with the wooden spikes jutting from every angle. The car kinda looks like a pufferfish.

Finally, the driver-side door opens. Carol gets in, not seeing me in the shadows of the backseats.

I clear my throat.

"Christ!" She spins around to face me, hand on her knife.

"Sup," I say, nodding at her coolly.

"What the hell are you doing?" she hisses, glancing for any other surprises in the small car.

"I could ask you the same," I tell her.

She frowns, gripping the wheel and peering out the dirty window on the passenger side.

"I don't have time for this," Carol growls.

"You're right," I nod, checking my watch. "Sasha starts her watch in two minutes, won't be another shift change 'till six."

"Get out!" Carol barks.

"No."

"I'm leaving," she yells at me, sounding desperate. "Isn't that what you want? Ever since I killed Karen. Isn't that all you've wanted?"

"I'm coming with you," I tell her, ignoring the rest of what she said.

"I don't want you with me," she huffs.

"Don't care what you want." I shrug. "Besides, your letter to Tobin said you want to leave 'cause you don't want to kill for the people you care about. You care about me about as little as I care about you... so we'll make a good team."

"Why?" Carol stutters, "Why are you doing this?"

I shake my head. "I'm not really coming with you, wherever you're going... I just want a ride."

"A ride where?" Carol glances at me in the rearview.

"You're going east, yeah?"

Carol hmms.

"Tara and Heath went east after the satellite outpost on their long-distance supply run," I explain. "I got their route from Denise's place... I'm going to find them."

"Why?"

"Because she should know what happened to Denise."

"What's the real reason?" Carol ignores my last.

I glance down at my watch again.

"You've got a minute to decide," I tell her. "If you don't go right now, Rick will never let you leave."

Carol hits the dash out of frustration before she twists the keys and peels onto the road.

A/N

Changed up the dialogue style in Mikey's bit in the beginning to match the way the dialogue was back when Eugene admitted that he wasn't a scientist. Didn't really have a reason. Just made me feel all nostalgic, I guess.