Rick and Michonne found gas.

It almost makes things seem a little better.

But a few hours later, we get to the junkyard.

The trash people are all dead. Rick and Michonne went in while I stayed in the truck. They tell me that Jadis was the only one left when they get back to the truck. I ask if she's coming with us, but Michonne just stares at me in the rearview mirror until she can't anymore.

As we're driving away, I ask if they left her to die.

Neither of them answers me.

Then I tell them that I spoke to Negan back at the gas station.

It's like neither of them can speak for a long time after I tell them that. Like I accidentally cursed them both into an eternal state of astonishment. Then they're lecturing me and asking why I tried speaking to Negan.

Now it's my turn to not answer them.

After they give up, I realise how quiet and long the drive to Hilltop is. I ask Michonne to roll her window down so I can feel the air on my face; the smell of unsmoked air refreshing in my nostrils.

When we arrive, the gates open, and everyone is waiting for us.

They made it.

I didn't think about how we would have to tell everyone that we didn't find Mikey; that they might still have had hope. Their faces are almost worse then knowing there isn't any. Enid's red and sore-looking eyes start crying again for what I imagine is the third or fourth time today. I feel bad for breaking her heart all over again, but she kisses my cheek and tells me she's glad I'm home. Sasha's eyes are the same as Enid's, and I hug her the tightest to make up for it.

The Kingdom is here, too. Seeing Ezekiel, Jerry, Jenny, Mateo, and the rest of them again helps, but again, it's just more people to tell. Jenny and Teo's faces try their best to stay hard, while Jerry and the King look like their already broken pieces just got shattered again. I guess even when you don't know them that well, kids dying never gets easier to hear about.

Rick squeezes Carl tightly around the shoulders before taking Judith from Barbara and marching up towards the trailers and Glenn and Abraham's graves. Carl leads me by the hand towards Barrington house, only stopping when Daryl puts a hand on my shoulder to say, "He did good."

I mumble something that sounds like thanks to Carl while he pulls the shirt that still reeks of sewer over my head and hands me a blue china bowl of hot water and a cloth. We're in the same room Jesus gave us last time, the faint sound of horses whinnying below the open balcony door. There's a pile of wet clothes in the corner that smell worse than mine do.

"We had to go through a swamp to avoid the Saviors," Carl tells me when he notices me staring at them.

Pumpkin is sleeping on the pillow beside me. According to a very weary Ezekiel, Henry saved her on the way out of the Kingdom. I try to focus on the sound of horses.

"I hope Downy made it out of Alexandria," I say once I don't smell so bad and my arms are scrubbed clean of blood and ash.

Carl is sitting beside me. He takes the cloth from me and gets me to face the opposite way, gently rubbing circles on my back with the warm water.

"I think he'll be okay," Carl whispers, kissing my shoulder blade as he mops at my lower back.

"How do you know?" I mumble into my hands as I rub the exhausted muscles in my face.

Carl smiles into my shoulder. "Got a feeling."

I hate that he has to do this for me. That he has to be stronger. It's never been fair. Carl loved Alexandria more than I ever could. He wanted it for his sister and everyone else. But somehow, here we are. Carl, comforting me over a damn horse.

It's always been his job, though, hasn't it?

To be stronger.

To care.

To push both of us forward with more strength than I can find to move one leg in front of the other.

I think about what Maggie told me when I first came back from Kingdom. While we sat by Glenn's grave and she told me how she does it.

"I'm okay," I tell him.

"It's okay if you're not."

"I can't let this break me," I say. "Mikey would have hated me if I let it. We've all got jobs to do, and we can't be sad right now. We can still get them back for what they did to him."

Carl pulls on my shoulder until I turn to face him.

"And if we don't win," I say, smiling. "If we all die tomorrow or the next day... I don't want to have been sad. I don't want them to be able to take today away from us, too."

I kiss him.

"Now is the time to laugh and all that other stuff," I say. "We can be sad after."

Carl nods, touching my cheek like I might have tears running down it. But I don't, and I think that's how he knows I'm not lying. How he knows I'm okay.

Maybe it will make the after harder.

When I do feel it.

But right now...

I smile.

"Maggie said Siddiq is in the infirmary," I say after Carl finishes washing my back and heads to the dresser to get me a button-up cotton shirt that must be Jesus' on account of it being three sizes too big.

"Yeah," Carl sighs, taking a second to look just a little proud of himself, the corner of his mouth curling into a smirk. "Turns out he's a resident... or was a resident, I guess."

"What's that?"

"Like a med student," Carl says. "He passed his training to be a doctor."

We spend the rest of the morning up here. Carl makes me laugh with a joke about frogs and then tells me about the time Shane tried to teach him how to catch them. He's laughing too by the time he's done.

"Wait— wait..." I gasp between laughs pressed in my stomach, holding my middle and staring at him with wide eyes. "I need to see your mean face."

"What?"

"Your mean face!"

"Nope, no way. that wasn't part of the story!"

"Oh, come on!"

Carl's giggling and shaking his head. "I can't even remember it! Shane got me all hyped up for it."

"Come on!"

"No!"

"Show me your mean face!"

There's a pause. A moment. Carl's laugh. Then he's snarling. Growling. Creasing wrinkles into his freckled cheeks and baring his teeth at me before breaking into hysterics.

"And you're telling me that didn't catch you any frogs?!" I howl.

Carl wipes a tear from his eye, still chuckling. He shakes his head. "Just mud."

Rosita comes upstairs to say hi later on, after Carl and I have resigned ourselves to reading a boring book about solar panels together. She tells Carl that his dad has left to join the scout crew.

There are six every half-mile in the direction of the Sanctuary. I guess the idea is that once the furthest sees any signs of the Saviors, they start a chain of car horns back to Hilltop. Alongside Rick — Morgan, Bertie, Scott, and Daryl are out there.

"I'm sorry about Mikey," Rosita tells me with a sternly held face.

"We just need Negan dead," I say dryly. Again, I feel that anger at myself boiling when Carl shifts in his seat on the sheets uncomfortably.

But I don't want to lie.

"You and Maggie both," Rosita says.

"Not you?" Carl asks her, looking up.

She shrugs and shakes her head, dismissive of the question. "As long as it's over."

Rosita's doing the funny swaying thing in the doorway that she does when she has more to say.

"What?" I ask her.

"There's a letter... it's a whole thing." She knocks her shoulder against the door frame and breaths in through her nose. "You guys should come and see it."

There's a car parked down by the gates with its trunk popped. Michonne, Enid, and Maggie are already down there. Carl reads the letter out loud while I study the black milk crates in the back of our car that Maggie and Rosita found outside the walls.

"'If you fill the crates with food or phon-o-graph records, I will gladly exchange them for a key to your future." Carl frowns at a list of numbers on the back. "What is it?"

"A phonograph— it's like a record player," I say absentmindedly.

"I meant the numbers."

"It's a list of coordinates for a meeting spot," Rosita tells him.

Michonne and Enid are looking over the crates, too. Neither of them look like they buy it.

"Could be them," Carl says, handing the letter to Enid who reads it over like he might have missed something.

"This isn't the Saviors," Michonne says, shaking her head at us. "They'd blow through the gates, make a big show."

"I wouldn't put nothin' past 'em," Maggie says.

"Well, if it is a trap, it's kinda obvious," Rosita says.

"Which is what could make it a trap," Maggie tells her.

We all watch Maggie as she walks a few paces away from the car and looks up at Barrington house at the top of the hill like it might fall any minute.

"What if..." Michonne speaks, reading the letter over Enid's shoulder. "What if it's someone who actually wants to help?"

"What if it's not, and they kill us?" I ask.

Maggie watches me for a second, then bites her bottom lip and nods. "If someone is trying to help us and we miss out, we miss out. If someone's tryin' to kill us, we die."

"Not if we're careful," Michonne sighs.

Enid takes a few steps away from Carl and Michonne, standing beside Maggie and me in an attempt to show sides I didn't realise existed until now. "Being careful is staying here."

Rosita's standing off to the side, but I can feel her leaning towards the potential of help from strangers.

Carl's not speaking. His fingers are tapping against one of the crates like food might magically appear in them without the risk.

"I'll go," Michonne tells us. "I'll see what's up."

"You go, I go," Rosita tells her.

"Rick wants us here," Enid says.

"I know," Michonne says softly. "But the last time we took a chance like this, it changed everything."

I think about that night in the barn. The storm that pulled us all together one last time before we didn't need it to be all of us together. Before we took a chance and suddenly we were safe.

"Rick didn't agree with me then," Michonne says. "He may not understand me now."

"He won't," Maggie tells her.

"But eventually, he will. He will."

Michonne looks at Carl to pitch in, but he's keeping quiet. He glances at me nervously. A thousand words are exchanged in a look, and suddenly I understand.

He's still thinking about me and what I want.

Then I see that chance that only happens once in a moonbow. The kind of chance that reads like Romeo calling his up to a balcony that stands a thousand worlds away, separated by distance and people and everything else that doesn't come in spoken word.

I take the chance.

"We should go," I say. "Michonne's right. If we didn't take the last chance like this we would still be on the road. We wouldn't have Hilltop or Kingdom, either."

Carl looks at me.

Maggie's face gets very tight and sharp.

Carl nods. "I think we should check it out," he says.

Michonne smiles between us. Rosita's nodding.

"But," Enid frowns and sighs, "it might not work out."

"Carl took a chance with Siddiq," Rosita tells her. "Now Hilltop has a doctor again."

"Jesus, Sasha, and the others have been scavenging, and we're still starving," Maggie says. "Maybe this person does have something that can help."

Enid uncrosses her crossed arms. "Then I'm coming with you."

"Okay," Maggie nods. "I'll grab records, 'case this is real. Rhys and Enid, you get extra clips in case it isn't."

"I'm not coming," I say quickly.

Everyone looks at me like I'm suddenly not the boy that snuck away from home and discovered a magical Kingdom with a tiger.

Everyone kinda nods and heads off to get ready. Carl pulls me behind the car when he gets his curious eyebrows on.

"You're gonna stay?"

I nod. "I wanna get to know Siddiq, and someone should stay back."

Carl nods, smirking.

"What?" I frown.

"Nothin'," he says, slipping into his father's southern drawl. "Jus' really love you is all."

"I love you, too," I say, smirking at him. "Just come back in one piece, babe."

He barks a laugh at me.

I grimace at myself.

"Babe?" he snorts.

"Yeah," I groan. "I heard it."

"That's erm..."

"Yeah," I whine, rubbing the back of my neck when it gets hot. "I was trying something out— it didn't work. We can move on."

Carl shakes his head, cheeks all rosy and turned up by his grin. "I don't know... kinda liked it."

"No. Just no."

"Okay, okay," he snickers. "I'll see you when we get back... babe."

"OH MY GOD."

When the five of them leave in search of the X on the potential death-trap treasure map, I decide to just be useful the best I can. Siddiq asks for some herbs from Bertie's garden that Edwardo helps me find when I can't pronounce the names on the list. The doctor from Kingdom, Dana, yells at Siddiq a lot and is kind of a hard ass, but I think she's alright.

All the Savior prisoners that Jesus and Tara brought back from the Satalite outpost are being held in a pen by the gate. Gregory is in there too, huddled in a corner with a rain cloud over his head. I find Henry sitting nearby with Carol watching over them. Morgan's sharpened staff is with him— I guess Morgan forgot it. I can't help but notice the blood on the tips of both of their spears.

After jumping up and colliding into me, Henry pulls away from the hug to grin up at me with his whole face.

"I got him, Rhys!" he tells me. "Gavin... the guy that killed my brother, I got him."

"You got him?"

Carol stares at me, her eyes flicking to the blood on Henry's staff. She looks worn to the bone. Jerry told me about how the people of the Kingdom only just made it out of there before the Saviors took it.

I don't know what to say, so I just hug Henry again and ask if he's eaten.

"He hasn't," A familiar voice says from behind, Jenny making her way down the hill towards us, struggling with her crutch on the uneven ground.

"Looks like you've gotten him to stand up for the first time in hours, though," Jenny says quietly. "Do you reckon you can make him something to eat?"

I nod, giving her the kind of open-ended smile that asks if she's okay.

Jenny nods a few times, each smaller than the last. "Everyone made it."

"Your dad?"

She glances towards the infirmary. "He's okay. Just tired, I think."

"I thought you were getting the kid something to eat?!" another familiar voice calls from the pen. I spot Jared by the gate. "He's kinda creeping everyone out."

I watch Carol's grip get tighter on her rifle. She and Morgan told me that Jared was the one who actually killed Benjamin.

"See you got a new pretty bandage to replace that ugly ear of yours, too, huh?" he grins through the chicken wire at me, clinging to it.

"I see you didn't get a new face to replace that ugly rat one, huh?" I pout back, leading Henry by the shoulder in the direction of Barrington before Jared can think of another weak response.

"How comes you get a bedroom in the huge house, and I have to sleep in a tent with Jerry?" Henry groans.

"Because I'm super cool," I tell him, scratching the tip of my nose and shrugging.

Henry looks down at his feet as we walk.

I smirk at him. "Think I deserve it, too, after being forced to sleep in that tiny shoebox in your apartment."

"I miss it," Henry frowns.

"Me too, bud."

"Do you and Carl sleep in there together?" Henry asks then.

"Erm, yeah, I guess."

"So that's why you get the nice room? So you can have sex and stuff?"

"Christ, okay, no, this conversation is not happening."

Henry shrugs. "I haven't met him yet."

"Carl?"

He nods.

I smirk. "Have you seen the other super cool guy walking around Hilltop? Like, maybe even a little, tiny, smidge cooler than me. Don't tell him I said that."

Henry giggles and I make my eyes wide to prompt his answer.

"No," he says with a straight face.

"Okay, well, he's the one with the eyepatch."

Henry jumps to look at me. "The pirate?"

"The what?" I laugh.

"When I couldn't sleep this morning, and all the survivors from Alexandria were showing up, Jerry played a game with me to make me feel better or something." He grimaces at himself like he hates remembering that he's a kid. "It was fun, I guess. We were giving stories to the people that walked in, even though they looked so sad. I guess we were doing it to make them seem a little less sad."

"Sounds very Jerry," I say.

Henry nods. "Carl was a pirate that lost his eye saving a whale from a school of sharks."

I break into a laugh at that. "He totally would do that."

As we get into Barrington house's kitchen, and I start scavenging food from the very bare cupboards, I ask Henry something.

"Why couldn't you sleep?"

Henry frowns at himself. It's like the answer doesn't make any sense to him.

"I keep thinking about where Ben would be if he was alive," Henry sighs. "Like where he'd sit. Where he would sleep. What he'd be doing. Reading to me or practising with his staff."

"You miss him," I tell him.

"It's dumb."

"Why?"

"Because I should be strong and stop thinking about it. Like you or Morgan."

I frown at him, grabbing a scratched-up chopping board and quartering an apple on it that I find in a blue rucksack Michonne brought with us. "I miss people," I tell him.

"Really?"

"All the time," I smile, nodding. "I miss my parents. My friends, Beth and Noah. I miss your brother. I miss Mikey."

"I'm sorry that he's dead," Henry says.

I nod. "Missing someone is a way to make sure you don't forget what you're fighting for."

While he thinks on that, I slide him a plate of apples Michonne brought from Alexandria's orchard and a jar of Hilltop honey from the beehives Maggie had built behind Barrington house.

"Ben would be happy you saved Pumpkin," I tell Henry, watching him poke at the apple slices.

"I think he misses Shiva."

"Me, too"

Henry glares at his plate. "Why? She was just a cat."

"Yeah." I shrug. "But she wasn't just a cat, was she."

Henry sighs, finally eating. "Yeah, I guess not."

Sasha helps me go through the records and fill the crates in Maggie's office. Maggie left with the intention to just take what these people have, but I've got a feeling that it won't go that way. Not with Carl and Michonne there.

"Oh, hell yes," Sasha whispers to herself, her cheeks alive with an infectious smile as she pulls a box of music records away from me and towards her, leaning to grab one from the back that I didn't give a second glance to. She sits with her legs crossed on the carpet as she reads the cover. I'm sat the same, watching her, all the splayed out music sleeves between us.

"Extensions of a man... Donny Hathaway," I say, reading the front when she spins it around to see the back, my voice all nasally from craning my neck to the awkward angle she's holding the sleeve at.

"The Donny Hathaway," she says, still grinning a toothy grin that makes me giggle.

I wait for her to elaborate. She stands up and puts it on the old phonograph letting a song play quietly for a bit before she speaks.

"When our dad died," Sasha sighs, taking a deep breath and listening to the soft music, "Ty and me... we were joined at the hip for the whole thing. I mean, we did all of it together. All that paperwork, the funeral arrangements, everything. I think I did most of it... he was how he could get when people died, you know? All quiet and thoughtful. But I don't know, when I got home after it was all done, and he wasn't there to soak up all that sadness, I just started crying. And I mean really crying. Cried 'till the sun went down. When I finally got the strength to stand up and take a breath, I turned on some radio station I'd never listened to before, and this song was playing. And when it was over, I decided I wanted to be a firefighter. Don't know why. Just something about the way it kept playing for me after it finished."

I'm about to speak, but we hear cars pulling up outside. When we step out onto the porch, everyone's back, a smooth black truck with tall wheels lifting it far off the ground is with them. Rosita hops out of the driver's seat, pulling three strangers out at gunpoint.

Their leader's name is Georgie. She's a short, stout woman with a clean grey suit that reminds me of Gregory a little. Her hair is pale blonde and cut above her ears, a pair of clean round spectacles perched on her button nose. The two with her, Hilda and Midge, are pretty interchangeable. Both are dressed in camo hunting outfits and wearing dark sunglasses.

They look like they come from a community, but Maggie says they won't talk much about themselves. All they want is food and music in exchange for some knowledge that's meant to help our future or something.

Now they're sitting outside by their truck, Michonne, Rosita, and Enid guarding them while the rest of us stand around Maggie's desk and discuss the options. Jerry just left. He said the scouts have signalled that the Saviors are coming. It'll be dark soon, and Maggie told him to get everyone ready for a fight that seems inevitable.

"Sounds like a good deal," I say first, watching Maggie pace behind her desk with a hand on her chin.

"Agreed," Carl says.

Sasha's nodding, but Maggie keeps frowning, shaking her head as she loses herself in thought.

Then Michonne strides in with Enid on her heels. "They're right," she sighs. "We should make the deal and let them go before the Saviors get here."

"I can't let Georgie go," Maggie finally says, walking around her desk and scowling at us all. "Not with what they have."

Michonne's eyes get wider, like the person in front of her isn't the one she expected to find in here.

"I got too many mouths to feed," Maggie adds. "They have crates of food in that van. People here could be starving soon."

"Maggie's right," Enid says, turning her head from the look that Carl shoots her way. "We take their stuff. Otherwise, someone else will. Someone else will kill them."

"You don't know that," Carl groans.

"I do!" Enid snaps at him. "It's a miracle they're still alive, anyways."

"Helping them might help us in the future," Michonne says.

Enid squares up to her, staring up at the stoic woman. "The Saviors are on their way. We're gonna fight, and some of us will die, so why should we give a shit about people who don't give a shit about themselves?" She grits her teeth, seething. "I mean, out there, living like that? We take their stuff, and we use it. We stop pretending that things just work out. They don't."

Enid told me that she and Aaron left to convince Oceanside to fight after the attack on the Sanctuary. She killed Natania because Natania tried to kill them.

Sasha grimaces and bows her head. "Enid's not wrong. The Saviors are coming, and even if we survive, we've barely got enough food for another few days."

Michonne doesn't take her eyes off Enid, staying very still and very calm. "Carl and Rhys rescued Siddiq, and now we have a doctor. And we have a friend." Her eyes glance down to the revolver that Enid's holding. She takes it off her. "Mikey risked his life so that we could all make it. Mikey was brave and tried to reason with Negan. Tried to see the best in someone."

"And now," Enid hisses, tears in her eyes, "he's dead."

Sasha takes a step forward, very suddenly not on Enid's side anymore. "Go cool off. Now." There's grit in her voice, and her fists are tight.

Enid looks around at us, but even Maggie doesn't speak up for her. She storms from the room and out the front door. I start to feel lightheaded.

"Things don't just work out," Maggie says then.

"No, they don't," Carl says. "But if we give up on being the good guys, then why are we even fighting?"

"He's right," I say when Maggie looks at me for long enough for me to realise she wants my input. "Mikey's mom took us in when she could have just not. Would have been easier that way."

Then Maggie takes a deep breath and makes a decision. Carl and I help carry four boxes of music records out to Georgie and her friends, he's grinning the whole time, and I call him a dork for it. But Georgie only takes one crate. Then she gives us half her food. When Maggie asks why, Georgie tells her that Hilltop looks like we need it more than they do.

"Why?" I ask when none of it seems to make sense to anyone but Georgie. "What do you want in exchange."

She smiles at me cleverly and says, "Records and good faith. To be clear, this isn't a gift... it's barter. I'll be back. Maybe not for a while but I will, and by then, I expect great things."

Then she walks over to her truck, dodging around Midge and Hilda as they unload boxes of food at Sasha and Rosita's feet. Georgie reaches into a hidden compartment under one of the seats and pulls out a scrappy-looking book.

"Here is the aforementioned key to a future."

She hands the book to Maggie. The cover says exactly what Georgie did.

A Key To A Future.

"Inside, there are handwritten plans," Georgie says, "for windmills, watermills, silos, hand-drawn schematics, guides to refining grain, creating lumber, aqueducts. A book of medieval human achievement so we may have a future from our past."

Maggie's face is nothing short of astounded, and it makes Georgie smile. "Yes, I know... the originals are in my head, but I made photocopies. Still, it's been an evolving document since the copy shop."

"Thank you," Maggie says.

"Build this place up," Georgie tells her. "I want those other crates filled when I get back. Cheeses for Hilda, pickles for Midge."

Maggie nods, handing the book to me when she notices me squirming on the spot to read it. "We'll see what we can do."

Georgie pats her shoulder and smiles. "You will."

Then they drive out the gates and into the sunset. Enid and Michonne go to stand guard on the walls. Sasha heads off with Maggie towards Barrington house. Rosita and Jerry start working on getting everyone armed and ready for the Saviors.

"We've got a little while until we have to fight," I tell Carl.

He nods.

I hold the book tightly to my chest and sway on the spot. "Wanna go in Jesus' trailer and check this book out?"

He laughs and asks me who the dork is now before the two of us go inside.

A/N

The song was Someday We'll All Be Free by Donny Hathaway.

I really wanted to come up with something special for bringing that song into the story. I mean, it is the song Sasha picked to listen to while dying. When I looked up the song, I read that when Hathaway was listening to it back he sat in the studio and cried, and that kinda just gave me the idea for the Sasha story, because I don't think many things can make her cry like that.