Michonne hauls the gate open for us when we get home, and I hand her Carol's note after we get out the van. She reads it, then hands a note each to Carl and me.

I recognise Maggie's cursive writing straight away on mine.

'We beat them at the satellite outpost. But things got complicated. Jesus took prisoners, brought them back home. We're holding them outside our gates for now until we decide what to do. Until I decide.

Maggie Rhee, Hilltop.'

Carl's letter is from his dad. I'm sure he recognises the rougher writing because he tensed up when he saw it.

'The plan is working. We're doing this. We're winning. We had a hard fight. We lost people, brave people who gave their lives to make sure we won. By the time it was over, there weren't any Saviors left standing. All of it is scarier than I thought it would be, but we're doing it. We have to. We've lost so many up to this point and now there's been more. The sacrifices are real. We need to make it right for them.'

I stop reading, but Carl points out the writing on the back.

'The rest of the plan's still a go. We're moving on to the next step. I'm heading there now to talk with Jadis and her people, get them back on our side because we still need the numbers. The Sanctuary is still surrounded by the dead. They're trapped, cut off from their supplies. Every hour that goes by, we're making them weaker. We meet there in two days to end this. To win it all. It's not like we haven't fought before. We fought every step of the way to this place. To this moment. The path has led us here, to who we are, to each other, to now. And we're so close. This can be our last fight.

Rick Grimes, Alexandria.'

There are photos, too. Polaroids of outposts surrendering.

Tara and Scott are back from the outposts, three cars of people with them. Scott tells us that Eric's dead. Tara tells us that Morgan left to do things his own way.

Just as we're about to go to 101, Tara stops me on the porch, handing me another note. I unfold the crumpled paper and read it.

'Rhys, things are getting harder here. Feels like a hundred voices telling me what to do with these prisoners, and I don't know what's right anymore. I know you're safe in Alexandria until this is over, but maybe you should come home after.

Love, Maggie.

Carl reads it over my shoulder when I tilt it in his direction, and he doesn't say much about it. I stuff the letter in my pocket, and we go to 101. I guess he was right about Michonne getting why we were out there because he barely said two words before we left her at the gate.

Carl leads me to his room, where he tells me that he's glad I helped the Kingdom.

"Same reason you helped that guy, right?" I ask.

Carl shakes his head. "I didn't help him yet."

And that starts the conversation that leads to tomorrow. Carl's not ready to give up on helping, and I guess I'm not ready for him to either because I help him load the truck back up in the morning. Carl wants to tell Michonne what we're doing, and I want to do the same with Rosita, but we can't find them anywhere, so we just decide to go.

Carl drives us back to the gas station for the third time in the last three days. He points towards the woods where the guy ran to after Rick fired over his head.

"You can wait here if you want," Carl says, grabbing the rucksack I filled with food and straightening his eye bandage in the rear view mirror like a tie.

"Suck my nuts, dude. I'm not letting you go alone. What if the guy's not as friendly as you want him to be?"

Carl makes this sad sort of smile before opening his door. I grab his arm across the seats.

"Sorry," I say. "I want him to be good, too."

Carl doesn't look like he believes me, so I decide to prove it to him.

I pull out a map from the glove compartment and spread it across our legs, pointing to a town a little under six miles out from Alexandria.

"What's this?" he frowns.

"I was checking earlier when I was waiting in the van and you were trying to find your hat," I explain. "There's a synagogue on the south edge of town. Maybe this guy would like us to help search it for a Quaran once the war's over."

Carl actually smiles then, and I know he believes me.

"I don't agree with you about Negan," I tell him. "But Glenn would have helped this guy."

"Then let's go find him."

By the time I hop out the truck, Carl's already around to my side and walking towards the gas station.

"What are you doing?" I call after him. "The guy ran into the woods, right?"

"We never checked this place, though," he calls back. "Might be good stuff."

"Make sure to check under the register," I call after him.

"Why?"

"Nothing left in this world left taking that isn't hidden, man."

I get our stuff out the back while Carl goes inside. He's back in less than five minutes which is never promising.

"Anything under the register?" I ask him.

He shakes his head, holding up a tin of sardines. "Found these under a shelf that fell over. I also found—"

He pauses, biting his lip. I notice how lavishly red his face has gotten.

"What?" I tilt my head at him, noticing his hand behind his back.

"Well, there was a magazine that caught my eye and I checked it and it's just weird, okay?" Carl says all in one breath.

"What was it?"

"I don't know," he frowns. "Just, like, a bunch of dudes and stuff."

I laugh at how strange he's being.

"Naked," he adds.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Okay."

"Yeah," Carl huffs.

"You mean you found porn?"

"I guess."

I smirk at him. "It caught your eye, did it?"

"Shut up, man," Carl groans, stuffing the magazine in his pack without showing me.

After an hour of trekking through thickets of dense trees, we finally spot something. A walker is reaching up for a dirty plastic bag snagged on a tree branch above a small grassy hill. The walker is impaled on a sharpened stick planted deep in the ground; one of many spikes that surround the rustling bag.

As we creep closer, a young man appears from the bushes and puts the walker down from behind. I only saw him briefly before, but I'm sure it's the stranger.

"Hey," Carl calls out to him without warning, making me and the guy jump.

The stranger looks ready to run.

"It was my dad," Carl tells him quickly, arms out in peace, holding a ziplock bag of water and a few brownies that he asked me to make last night. "They were warning shots above your head. He wasn't shooting at you."

I stay a few feet back, my hands out, too, following Carl's lead.

The stranger stares between the two of us like a deer in headlights or a rabbit cornered to the back of its cage. His knife is clutched tightly in his fist.

I get a better look at him now. He's tall and skinny, with shaggy black hair and a scruffy beard. His torn green jacket is beaten-up and dirty like the rest of him. He looks tired and hungry.

"I'm Carl... this is Rhys."

The stranger looks like he hasn't talked in years, his lips trembling as he opens them and touches his chest with a shaky hand.

"Siddiq," he mutters.

"Food and water," Carl says, holding the bag out. "The brownies are good..."

Siddiq's eye twitches, and he takes a step back. "Why?"

Carl's shoulders tense. "I guess you were talking about something your mom said... about helping people. And my mom told me that you got to do what's right. It's hard to know what that is sometimes, but sometimes it's not."

Carl tosses the bag on the floor between him and us. Far enough that there would be enough time for him to run, but close enough still that he has to come closer. And he does. Siddiq stumbles forward a few steps, dropping to his knees and scrambling to drink the water Carl put in there. He drinks it like we drank water before we found Alexandria. I forgot how that felt and how different it could taste. But just watching this guy drink makes the taste return to my mouth a little. We wait until he stops drinking.

"Thanks," he whispers, his voice still hoarse, like he hasn't used it in a long time.

"Glad we found you," Carl says with a voice that tells me he's smiling up front.

"You were looking for me?"

"Yeah, we scavenged the sardines, found—" Carl pauses, glancing back at me, "...other stuff, too. I'm sure the sardines probably suck, but, like I said, the brownies are good."

The guy looks at me then like he's suspicious. I just now realise that I haven't spoken.

"Hi," I say, waving awkwardly, scratching the bandage over my ear.

Siddiq manages a faint smile.

"We're from a community," Carl tells him, taking a few steps closer. Siddiq's eyes go a little wider at that. "I'm gonna ask you a few questions. I need you to answer honestly, okay?"

"Okay."

"How many walkers have you killed? I know it's hard to keep track, but—"

"Two hundred and thirty-seven."

"But, like, actually or—?" I point at the walker dribbling blood on the spike behind him.

"Give or take a couple," he says, glancing back at the walker.

"How many people have you killed?" Carl asks.

"One."

I ask the last question before Carl can. "Why?"

"The dead tried to kill him, but... they didn't."

Carl and I both nod at the same time.

"What's with the walker bait?" I ask, stepping forward until I'm beside Carl, only a few steps between the guy and us.

"Is that how you killed so many?" Carl asks.

Siddiq looks between us like he's trying to decide if he's overwhelmed by our presence. "It's only part of it," he says with a dry swallow in the back of his throat. "My mom thought or hoped that killing them would... free their souls." He tells it like it sounds crazy. I guess it does a little, but I think I like it, finding myself smiling a little at the idea.

Siddiq seems to pick up on my smile. "You know, maybe— maybe she was right."

Carl looks confused. "Doing that... doesn't that just make things harder for you while you're trying to survive?"

He shrugs, his eyes telling me he's never thought about it that way.

"I don't know. I— you gotta— you gotta honour your parents, right?"

"If I was honouring my dad, we wouldn't be talking right now," Carl smirks. "And we definitely wouldn't bring you back to our community."

"A community where you can make brownies?" Siddiq asks, like it's ridiculous.

I suppose it is, really.

"Yeah," Carl says. "Well, I can't... but my boyfriend, Rhys, he's pretty alright at it."

I wave again. "Beets make them sweet."

Carl's definitely better at being in the woods than me. We've been walking back for five minutes, and I'm already lost. Then again, maybe he is, too, since he keeps turning left. I start worrying we're going in a circle until I hear growling, seeing a group of walkers feeding on a dead deer up ahead through the trees.

"We should go around," I whisper as the three of us crouch and count three of them. "Not worth the risk."

"No..." Carl shakes his head, looking at Siddiq. "For your mom."

"Carl," I hiss, but he's already dropped his bag and started moving towards the dead.

Siddiq steps on a twig, and the three walkers turn to see us.

"Sorry," he says, grimacing at his feet.

Carl and Siddiq grapple the first two. I walk around them, driving the claw end of my hammer through the third walker's eye socket.

When I turn, the other two have dealt with theirs just in time as four more stumble out from the direction we came from. One has a spike stuck through its chest from one of Siddiq's traps.

"Just go," Siddiq yells at us suddenly. "You don't have to do this!"

He wrestles the first as it lunges for him. Carl tries to help but gets knocked back, the second walker grabbing on to him, both of them falling into the deer carcass with a splat of red.

"Carl!" I yell, dodging around the spike walker and tearing the stake out of it from behind before driving it up through the back of its head. Siddiq manages to impale his walker on a jutted tree branch, rushing to pull the walker off of Carl. I use the stake to kill it.

The last walker stumbles forward, and I square up to it, pissed off and wanting to make a point. I force the wooden spike through its gaping jaw, twisting it to the side until the walker's head tears in half in an gruesome explosion of red mush that paints the forest floor.

I glance around for anymore, but it's just the three of us now. The walker Siddiq impaled is hissing, still firmly skewered on the branch. Everyone is breathing heavily. Carl pulls himself out of the deer, his flannel shirt covered in guts.

"Well, that was fucking stupid!" I bark at him.

Siddiq looks between us, not sure what to do. "Are you okay?" he asks Carl, who's just staring at me like he's angry that I'm making a scene. Like I'm somehow ruining this. It just makes me more furious.

"Yeah," Carl says to Siddiq.

"He is right," Siddiq mutters. "You could have left."

"No," Carl says, talking to Siddiq with his eye still on me. "I'm responsible for you now. That's how it works."

I wait for a moment, taking my time to cool off. I march over to the walker on the tree branch, sticking Sasha's knife into the base of its skull. It goes quiet.

"I don't want to make any trouble," Siddiq tells us.

"You're not," I tell him, wiping the blade clean on the walker's shirt before sheathing it. I frown at Carl. "Warn me next time, yeah?"

He nods, still a little breathless.

"Your dad didn't want anything to do with me," Siddiq says.

"He didn't," Carl answers. "But sometimes kids have to find their own way to show their parents the way."

When we're back to the truck, I tell Siddiq to hop in and for Carl to take off his flannel. He does, and I give him mine instead from under my jacket, buttoning it up for him when there's still blood on his t-shirt.

"Michonne will flip her lid if you show up covered in blood," I tell him.

"About back there—" he starts as he pulls on his new shirt, and I toss the old one into the open window of an abandoned car.

"Don't," I cut him off. "I'm sorry. When I ran off to help the Kingdom yesterday, I didn't run that by you. That was stupid. Not fair for me to demand it from you."

Carl smiles queasily.

"I was just scared," I say, rubbing the back of my neck.

"How about we just agree to run stuff by each other from now on?"

"Agreed."

He inches closer to kiss me, but I lean back, putting a hand on his chest and letting out a small, breathy chuckle.

"You need a shower."

Carl smirks, wiping his hands against his knees. "Yeah."