Reviews:

SlumberingVoid — It would be lovely if Mikey could catch a break for a bit, but alas, it never seems to go that way for anyone. Yeah, Barbara is all knowing and always there throughout the show aha. She even supposedly had some kids that died when Negan bombed Alexandria... but she was never sad about it or anything so I just kinda skipped over all that. Poor Bob... always sad to imagine him after Natalie got killed by the wolves :( I'll see if I can find somewhere to mention him at some point if I haven't already.

YuriFreaks — Man, a review all the way back on chapter 3? You won't see this message for a hundred years! Thanks for pointing out some mistakes I made back in the day.

Bucket Hat — I was indeed planning on killing them all :O but realised I wouldn't have enjoyed everything that came after so much without them. I think Teo was also planned to be killed off during the battle of Hilltop, maybe. Negan and Rhys' relationship has always been really fun to write... and we'll just have to see with good ol' Rick!

One Year and Two Months Later.

-Rhys-

The storm sweeping over Hilltop hammers down a hail of heavy rain against the glass panes of my bedroom balcony doors. I try my best to sleep, but the groans of the windmill down by the pigpens won't give up as it's battered by the weather.

I sit on the end of my bed, grabbing the same jeans from yesterday off the floor and pulling them on over my pyjama bottoms, drowsily tugging a t-shirt over my head after. I slip on my boots and slog from my room and down the grand staircase to the ground floor of Barrington house. The old building creaks and shakes with each step, the floorboard bending and the walls rattling from the gentle rumble in their bones. The wind is so strong that I have to wrestle the front door closed on my way out; holding myself as I slip over thick mud coating loose gravel paths on my way to the infirmary. A light flicks on inside after I knock for a good persistent minute. Enid opens the door with her hair in a messy bun as she rubs her eyes and looks me up and down. She sighs, holding the door open wide enough for me to slip inside.

She makes tea while I shiver under a thick woollen blanket that she gives to me. My teeth are chattering loud enough that she asks me to keep it down. I bite my fist.

"You could have worn a raincoat," Enid mumbles, trying to find her way out of her drowsiness as she hands me a steaming mug of tea that's far too milky. I don't say anything because it would upset her.

"Hoped maybe the rain would have stopped by the time I got downstairs," I say, sipping on the tea.

"It's disgusting, isn't it?" Enid sighs, sounding disappointed.

"No," I answer honestly. "I just prefer it stronger."

She chuckles to herself in this distracted kind of way and mutters under her breath, "You'd think that after more than a year of making tea for you whenever you get worked up would make me good at it by now."

"I'm not worked up," I grumble.

"Sure," she says.

I lean back in the comfy sick bed I'm perched on, pressing my back to the trailer wall, feeling the cold from the rain rolling down its far side.

Enid rolls her eyes.

"Listen, I'm tired and really want to go back to sleep. I stayed up until midnight studying baby health books because of Hershel's cough, which means I've slept a grand total of," she checks her watch, "three hours. Tell me what's bothering you so I can sleep."

"Do you think we're going to call off the run into the city today because of the rain?" I ask.

Enid crinkles her nose, sitting at the other end of the bed, our feet crossing in the middle. I apologise for my damp socks.

"No way," Enid says. "With the corn fuel running dry out of Sanctuary, we need this run. We need to find the proper tools to plough the fields. Otherwise, Hilltop won't turn over any crops."

"You're right," I say, nodding over and over, finishing my tea before setting the mug down beside the bed. "I know you're right."

"Do you want it to get called off?"

I frown at her, feeling rumbled.

"Rhys," Enid sighs, taking a blanket that she's sitting on and throwing it over our legs. "It's going to be good. Everyone's going to be there. Mikey and Carl are coming with Michonne and Rick. Carol and The King... Jenny, Rosita, Tara, Daryl— so many people getting back together."

I nod. I keep nodding until she believes me. Then I smile at her. "It'll be good to see Carl."

She snorts at me.

I frown.

"What?"

"You see Carl like every week," she laughs. "And when he can't come all the way here, you're offering to work the Hilltop relay so you two can spend all day talking and hogging the line."

I roll my eyes at her, pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging them tight.

Enid scoots off the bed, takes my cup, and puts it in her dinky little sink. She climbs into her warm bed, pausing to look at me.

"Wanna sleep here tonight?" she asks me.

I don't say a considerable amount, so she just lifts the sheets up, and I crawl in with her to try and catch however long is left until the sunrise tells us we need to get up.

Enid kicks me out of her trailer early morning so that she can go down to the gardens to get her herb satchel ready for her rounds. She's still learning, but Siddiq feels happy enough with what she knows that he's no longer living between here and Alexandria, instead staying there full time and leaving her as the official doctor of Hilltop.

I trail my way over towards the gates, stopping outside the Sutton blacksmith shack with my hands buried in my pockets. Despite how early it is, most people are awake by now, having breakfast and starting their morning chores in the petrichor of last night's storm. Ken is already at work in the cozy shack, hammering a searing clump of steel over an anvil until it bends and folds to the shape of a spearhead, he quickly dips it into a bucket of water where it hisses and sizzles to a cool, black metal. Alden is sitting on a stool a few feet away with his back to a post, eating an apple with a knife. We nod to each other.

Ken's older than me by a couple of years. He's about my height, with neatly cut, short brown hair that always seems to sit scruffy on his head: damp right now from gathered rainwater that's leaking through the tin roof over his head. His face is narrow and pale, with a slight heat tan from the forge.

"You're not working here today," Ken tells me, pulling the spearhead from the water and walking it over to a weathered grindstone.

"I know," I grunt, nodding. "I haven't got chores in the stables for another hour, though."

Ken smirks at me. I smirk back because he's one of those people that has an annoyingly contagious smile despite being fairly serious most of the time.

"You know," Ken starts, "my dad would let you work with him and Alden on the forge full-time if you asked."

I shrug my shoulders at him, hands still filling my pockets as I sway on the spot. "That's kind of Earl, but I like variety."

Alden seems to find that funny.

I laugh along nervously. "What?"

Ken answers for him. "Just... you work the forge, the stables, you take guard shifts on the walls— and not to mention you always offer to man the relay between here and Alexandria."

"Double not to mention you've been helpin' out Eduardo in the gardens more this last month," Alden adds over a mouthful of apple.

"Okay..." I say, all long and drawn out as I try and think up a comeback to all this. "Well, Ken, you can hardly talk... you're a stable hand, and here you are in the forge at six in the morning, working on a spear. And Alden, you're just sitting on your ass doing piss all."

"I'm eating my breakfast, thank you," Alden says, munching away and winking at me.

It took me a while to warm up to Alden. It was hard not to see him as a Savior, and at first, his helpful hands and kind smiles spreading around Hilltop would annoy me. God knows it annoyed the shit out of Maggie. But it's different now. Everyone loves Alden. I guess I kinda do, too.

"And I'll have you know I'm not working," Ken corrects me, finishing up sharpening the spearhead before carefully and skilfully affixing it to a long and spiralling wooden shaft, setting the finished weapon against one of the log beams holding up the roof. "This was a special request for today, and I'm making it as a favour."

"Okay," I say, my hands held up by my head, his point taken.

"Sorry, I wasn't judging," Ken says, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing. "I just don't get it. Maggie's your guardian, so why don't you work with her and help run this place. Hell, with how many jobs you work, how many people you help out... you could probably run against her next election and get pretty far. Everyone thinks you're great."

I snort at him.

"Nah," Alden says softly, nodding, "Kenny's right. I mean, the election's a landslide every time because Gregory's— well, he's Gregory. But apart from Jesus, I can't see anyone else doing it."

"Thanks, guys," I laugh it off, feeling uncomfortable with the compliment that I'm convinced they don't really mean. "But I like what I do here."

Ken waves a hand over his head dismissively before walking off towards the stables. He throws a thumb over his shoulder to the spear he just finished as he leaves. "That's for you, by the way."

"What?" I frown. "Wait, who from?"

"Who do you think?"

Ken's gone before I can say anything else. Then Marco gets here, asking Alden and me whether we think Earl would let him apprentice as a blacksmith.

Alden brushes his hands against his jeans once he finally finishes his apple, twisting his head to one side and pulling a clueless face before shrugging his shoulders.

"I'd ask Ken," he tells him.

Marco sighs. "I will when we get out on the road."

I go to head for the stables as well, but Marco stops me, his cheeks flushed under his long black hair.

"So, erm, Rhys..."

"Yeah?"

"Is Mikey going to be on the run today?"

I try not to smile. "Yeah... why?"

"Oh... oh, no reason!"

By half seven, I'm in Maggie's office, holding Hershel in one arm and attacking his tiny feet with my free hand to get little squeals of laughter out of him. Maggie packs a few boxes of ammunition into a backpack from her desk.

"Ken and I got the horses set up by the main gate. Everyone's ready to leave when you are," I tell her, stopping my tickling rampage against Hershel when I'm worried he might pee himself.

"You riding on the wagon with Enid and me?" Maggie asks.

"Do you mind if I ride Downy-B?" I ask. "He hasn't been out in a while, and I want to make sure he's still okay around walkers."

"Of course," she says, nodding her head as she finishes packing and checks her pistol has enough bullets.

Just as I'm about to put Hershel in his crib, I spot Maggie grinning at us both, and then she's strolling across the office and holding both of us tightly.

"You smell like horse," she says into my long — and wavier than usual — hair.

"Sorry," I mumble into her shoulder, smirking. "That's what stables smell like, you know."

"I know," she twangs at me in her strong southern drawl, breathing in against my head and squeezing me tighter. "I like that smell. Reminds me of home."

"Are you okay?" I ask when she doesn't let go.

She nods. "I'm allowed to hold my boys for a minute before we go."