I leaned my head against the window that sent vibrations through my skull. Trees raced past in repeating patterns as the music quietly droned on in the background.

Isaac moved to sit beside me not long after we were on the road. He absently tapped his fingers against his leg to the beat of the song, his shoulder brushing against mine when the bus went over a bump. It was so nice to have him there. I had to remind myself that I was mad at him.

But I couldn't be mad at him. Isaac wanted a cure—or at least the walkers gone—more than he cared about anyone else. I should have guessed when we were talking about it that going with them was on his mind. I just wanted him to hold out. I couldn't stop thinking about something bad happening with us gone; Carl, Michonne, Judith, Rick . . .

No matter how angry I was with Rick for what he did, I understood the motives and they were all good. If what he said about thinking of me like his own daughter were true, then it killed him to make me leave with Glenn. He lost me, just as I lost him, and I couldn't even look at him before I left. I felt awful.

When my eyes started to hurt from being so close to the glass, I leaned forward and pinched the bridge of my nose as hard as I could, pushing my fingers upward as a way of more evenly distributing the pain. My fake science eased the pain for maybe a few seconds, so instead I leaned my head against the window and kept my gaze on the back of the seat in front.

"It's getting a little messy for you," Rosita said, running her fingers through Abraham's hair. I leaned my head back against the window and watched the trees race past.

"Gettin' ready for retirement." Abraham leaned his head back, keeping his eyes on the road as he spoke. "Relaxin' the grooming standards. Thinkin' about becomin' a plumber, a sheepherder, or something."

"You ain't herding sheep now, Abraham. Eyes on the prize."

"Damn right. That's my girl," Abraham said. "Maybe I'll let you shave me down all over, dolphin-smooth."

Rosita laughed. "I'll cut it for you tonight."

"Yes, ma'am."

Part of me forgot they were together, or maybe I just didn't realise it before. It never crossed my mind when Rosita was telling me about him the other night, but now seeing them together and happy, it probably should have.

"Hey, maybe Rosita can give you a trim while she's at it," Tara said, looking over at Eugene. "Party's getting a little long in the back." When Eugene said nothing, she asked, "Or is it your source of power?"

"I ain't slayin' a lion anytime soon," Eugene said. "I wouldn't be placing any wagers on seein' me dispatch a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass."

"What the hell are you saying?" Martinez asked, but his question was ignored by Eugene when Tara asked,

"Oh, so you'll just settle on saving the world, right?"

"Yeah," Eugene grumbled.

"What's up? Last night?" Tara sat forward on the seat.

"Nope." There was a pause before he changed his mind. "Yes, that and tomorrow. And I'm thinking about that preacher, what he did," Eugene finally looked at Tara, who breathed out with a nod.

"Coward," Martinez said, resting his foot on the seat in front of him. "Not much to think about, he sacrificed a whole group of people to save his own ass."

"He was scared," Tara said.

"Lots of people get scared, it's what you do about it that matters," Martinez said.

"You'd know all about that wouldn't you?" Tara said.

Martinez blew out a whistle. "Touché."

"Sorry, that came out better in my head," she said with a small smile. "I just mean that you ran to save your own ass, right? From Brian?"

"I never said I wasn't a coward, either," Martinez agreed. "What's that saying? Takes one to know one? There's a lot of people that would do whatever it takes to save their own ass."

"I guess so," Tara agreed.

Martinez was always responsible for his actions. He never tried to make it seem like he wasn't involved in the things that he'd done, because there was no point. Too many of us knew him, where he was from for him to make up stories. He knew better. I appreciated him for that, because if he was able to hold himself accountable for the things he'd done, then he'd most definitely tell if someone else was wrong.

I could tell Isaac wanted to ask something, his eyes on the two of them for a second as his mouth opened. Then he turned to me, hoping I'd have the answer, but the question never escaped his mouth. I glanced his way, waiting, my eyes going back to the window when he shook his head and looked forward.

"Maybe they're just behind us," Maggie turned to Glenn. "Maybe Daryl and Carol came back. Maybe they took the map, found some cars, and they're just down the road."

"They'll catch up," Glenn promised. "We're clearing the way for 'em."

I wanted to tell them to stop talking about it; the bus wasn't very private and every mention of back home just made me want to race back there. I didn't want to be here. I could tell from how hopeful Maggie was that they were coming meant that she or Glenn didn't want to be here either, but we didn't have to. There was no reason for us to leave the church.

Maggie looked back over the seat behind her to talk to Eugene. "How long will it be? After you get on that terminal and do what you have to do?"

"Depends on a number of factors including density of the infected around target sites worldwide," was Eugene's vague answer.

"Wait, target sites?" Glenn asked. "Are you talking about missiles?"

There was a pause, before, "That's classified."

Of course it is. Isaac glanced at me when he answered that way, maybe seeing if I'd react to blatant lies. But I didn't. I didn't have it in me to point it out anymore, because it didn't matter—I was stuck here with them, and this journey was already miserable enough without me pointing out everything wrong with it.

"I thought we were over that," Glenn said, his eyes also flicking back to look at me.

"What if we all live?"

"The secrets will matter then?" Glenn asked.

"They might," Eugene said, staying quiet for a moment. "Anyway, the speed with which things normalise depends on a number of factors including worldwide weather patterns, which were modelled without the assumption that cars, planes, boats, and trains wouldn't be pouring hydrocarbons into the atmosphere this long. Changed the game quite a bit when it comes to air-transmissible pathogens."

There was silence amongst the bus as they all tried to work out whatever he'd said, and Glenn finally asked. "Why the hair?"

"Because I like it," Eugene answered. "And no one is takin' scissor or clipper to it anytime soon. Do you hear me, Miss Espinosa?"

"Yes, loud and clear."

Everyone chuckled.

"Y'all can laugh all you want," Eugene said.

"No one was makin' fun," Maggie assured.

"The smartest man I ever met happened to love my hair. My old boss, T. Brooks Ellis, the director of the Human Genome Project." That was a story I wanted to hear more about, that Eugene knew someone from the Human Genome Project. They sampled DNA to reconstruct the Human Genome. I found it interesting that he knew the director, but I had to decide whether I believed it was true or not, and the topic quickly lost my interest. "He said my hair made me look like, and I quote—a fun guy—which I am. I just ain't Samson."

BANG!

Smoke rolled up over the windscreen as the bus swerved and Abraham started turning the wheel to dodge the cars that were parked in the road. Isaac gripped the back of the seat and I grabbed his arm out of instinct, pushing myself up a little to see out the front. The brakes screeched as we swerved.

"Bitchnuts!" Abraham yelled from the front.

As he went to the left, the bus rolled up onto a car and flew into the air, flipping over to the side as it landed back down. I was in the air and smashed against the ground onto my wrist, and my head dropped onto the ground.

Everything was blurry as I opened my eyes. I slammed them closed and turned my head to the ground, groaning as I felt a stinging in my head. My ears were ringing for a second and it was a few minutes before I heard anything—Abraham calling out for Eugene.

"Eugene, are you okay?" Rosita yelled.

I barely heard when Eugene mumbled something incoherently, and Abraham called back. "You hold on, okay?"

There were grunts as the others pulled themself up.

I didn't become brave enough to move for a long time, the thrumming in my head blocking any pain I might have felt when I hit the ground. Someone shifted in front of me, legs pulled out from under mine as I felt a warm breath on my face. Isaac was there pressed between me and the back of the now upright seat.

He struggled to prop himself up on his elbow and when he realised I was awake, he placed his other hand on my arm. "Are you okay?"

Was I okay? I felt stiff—it was only as I stretched out when I felt the familiar pain in my hip. The crash must've brought back whatever I had been recovering from before Terminus. Pushing myself up, I hissed and retracted my hand when my wrist screamed out in agony.

"Everyone else, you all right?" Abraham called.

I couldn't tell who answered. "Yeah."

"Yes."

"Ace, can you move?" Isaac asked, bringing me back to myself. When I nodded, Isaac grabbed my shoulder, lifting me so I was painfully knelt in the gap between the chairs. "You're bleeding."

Bleeding. I moved my right hand to my temple, and the red liquid coated my fingertips. The stinging was mild compared to the hammer that was pounding against my wrist every second, or the saw that wanted to separate my leg from my body.

A noise from the back door got my attention, when I realised the bus was surrounded. "Walkers."

"Don't worry about them," he scolded and inspected my head from a safe distance. "Worry about yourself."

"The engine's on fire," Rosita scrambled to her feet. "We gotta get out of here."

"Okay," Isaac pulled back and gave a goofy smile. "Maybe worry about them a little."

"Grab a weapon, we gotta move!" Martinez called.

I whipped around until I saw it, and I reached back for my axe that had landed by the sideways chairs. Pushing myself up, I took one step to follow Martinez when my leg buckled out from under me, and my breath caught in my throat to catch the pain.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Isaac made sure I was balanced with hands under my own.

I nodded—I had to be. Smoke was pouring in through the front window and walkers crowded the back. Isaac frowned, concerned, but there was nothing he could do. He held my hand for a few more seconds before turning around to grab my yellow bag.

Maggie placed a hand on my shoulder to pass, and then she waited by the ceiling at the back door where the walkers were crowding. At the front of the bus, Glenn looked back for Abraham who was using the front seat to balance himself.

"All right, you and I go first," Glenn told him. "Knock 'em back, clear the way for the others to get out and help, then we all start hitting them, okay?"

Abraham nodded. "Yeah, alright. We'll do it live." He had a hand against the ceiling and pushed himself forward with every seat until he passed me and Isaac at the back. "Tara?"

"Yeah?"

"You cover Eugene, come out when it's clear," Abraham ordered. "On my go! Go!"

He grabbed the seat that hung down from the ceiling, lifted his legs and pushed against the door two, three, four, five times when it finally swung down and pushed the nearest walkers backwards so he could swing straight out into the open. Glenn, Rosita and Maggie followed close behind.

Martinez looked back at me and Isaac. "Come on!"

Isaac nodded for me to climb through first, and I heard the metallic thud as he stepped on the frame behind me.

Abraham pushed two walkers back with his hands, barely getting a chance to reach for his knife before another one was on top of him. He stabbed it with a loud grunt and again pushed the other one back. He had the most around him, so I decided to help.

You're injured, I reminded myself. Be smart.

Flipping the axe in my hand, I waited for the corpse to get closer to me before stepping past the body and following the spike up behind me. I flicked my hand back to retrieve the axe and swung my shoulder over to take out the next one, kicking the walker away when it was dead.

For a second, Abraham seemed impressed. But the glint in his eyes faded and he turned away to look for a new fight. I frowned. Suit yourself. Tara and Eugene had left the bus now, and Tara made her move to stab the ones that came around from the front. Eugene was standing there with a knife in his hand as he looked around with a scared look. There were no walkers on him, so I turned away.

Martinez went to the front and spun his bat around until he reached the next walker ahead of me. He took two swings, the strike getting closer as the effort to take it out plummeted. He only realised last second when one was coming up beside him.

"I got it!"

Isaac was behind it, stabbing through the back of the neck and following the walker down to keep a hold of his knife and held it downward when he realised he didn't have any gloves on. Isaac was so focused on the blood, that when looked up at me, a look of terror crossed his eyes.

I should have realised what it meant, but at that point, it was too late. The arms grabbed at my shoulder and the weight of the walker pushing me onto my bad leg made me trip over. I dropped the axe so I could push the body away from me when it was knocked away from me. Martinez stepped over my legs, pulled the bat over his head and swung down. He reached for a hand to pull me up, which I accepted.

I panted, placing my hand on my thigh as I leaned over.

"Ah!" Abraham yelled, taking out the last walker. He took a few steps away to catch his breath before turning back and waving an arm as a weak gesture. "Someone check Eugene."

"I'm fine," Eugene said. "Just cuts and dings is all—"

"Check him!"

No one made a move, looking at each other for a few seconds of silence. When Tara gave in, standing up with a confused head tilt, Rosita stopped her and walked over to check Eugene for any injuries.

Abraham huffed, shaking his head. "I knew I should have fixed the damn thing myself."

I winced, now reminded of the bus that was on its side in the middle of the road.

"Back off, man!" Martinez snapped. "You probably just hit something."

"That road was clean as a damn whistle. The engine failed before I crashed. Whatever happened was because there was something wrong with the bus."

Seconds passed before I realised everyone was staring at me, waiting for answers that I didn't have. I racked my mind for anything I could have done wrong, something I could have missed that would make the engine seize and smoke, but there was nothing.

I shook my head, my mouth opening and closing as I tried to find the words. "I-I don't know what happened."

"Of course you don't," he scoffed.

"Dude, chill," Tara agreed. "She's a kid."

A kid that caused a car accident. He didn't say anything but I could tell by the look that crossed his face that it was exactly what he was thinking. His jar set and he glared at me for a second before turning away.

"Is that your blood?" Eugene questioned Abraham.

He glanced down at the back of his hand. "Damn thing opened up again. I swear the cuts are finer than hair, they're just big bleeders."

"First aid kits' in the bus," Maggie said as she finally stood up. "I'll see what we have."

I reached out to stop her. "Maggie, no—!"

Before I could even get the words out, the bus caught alight and flames burst out of every opening. She gasped and took a step back as the intertwining back and orange flew up into the air. Everyone started at the bus, except for Abraham, because his eyes were locked onto the side of my head.

How could this have happened? You did that—no, I couldn't have. I wanted to believe that I'd done everything right, but if I had, then the bus wouldn't have blown up. Maybe I made a mistake, but it felt like I was being gaslighted, whether he meant it or not.

Abraham leant down to grab the duffel bag. "We're not stopping, we're rollin' on. We'll find another vehicle down the road, so long as Red Coat here doesn't get her hands on it, we should be a-okay."

I clenched my teeth feeling my throat squeezing a lump down. The rage mixed in with the sadness of knowing that I was the only one who could've done this, and I was starting to believe that maybe he was right.

Eugene stepped toward Abraham. "Devil's advocate, nothing more. We smashed to a stop hard. We spent a lot of time rolling things out of the road," he pointed back to where we came from. "Church is just 15 miles that way."

"No," Abraham snapped. "We don't stop, we don't go back. We're at war, and retreat means we lose. The road fights back, the plan gets jacked. You all know that. Now, we will get through this because we have to. Every direction is a question, and that is hard enough without kids trying to sabotage the mission!"

"Hey!" Isaac yelled.

"Hey, what?" Abraham turned around. "I was assured that the girl there could fix a damn vehicle, so I let her do it. Now, I don't know whether this was some kind of accident or whether she planned it this way because she didn't wanna leave her daddy, but I do know that this would not have happened with the bus in my hands."

"I didn't do anything wrong!" I cried.

"Take a look at that!" Abraham swung his arm around, pointing at the fire, and the smoke. "That shit is you doing your job right?"

"I do hate to admit it because everyone seems so confident in your abilities," Eugene started, "but you were the person who was last near the bus before we departed. The fault doesn't seem like it can be in anyone else's hands."

Fuck this.

"That's enough!" Glenn snapped.

It was too late; my mind was made up and I was going back. I turned around and started walking away. I considered asking Isaac for my bag but decided to leave it when my mind played images of him talking me out of it when he found out what I wanted my bag for.

Of course Abraham's comment came first. "And where the hell are you going?"

"Ace?" Isaac asked tentatively.

I ignored him, focusing on the maths to work out the time it would take me to get back to the prison. If the church was fifteen miles away then I would be back there in five hours (using speed-equals-distance-over-time, S=D/T for short). But while my limp wasn't too bad at the moment, I knew from experience that it would get worse. That meant it would take a little longer to get back.

"Ace!" Glenn called.

"Just leave her!" Abraham finally scoffed.

No part of me wanted to leave them, knowing how selfish and stupid it was, but that sealed it for me. If I broke the bus—a large if that reduced in size when I realised it couldn't have been anyone else's fault—then me leaving now was leaving the group to deal with a problem that I caused. I was running.

But Abraham had no right to blame me for this when it could have been an accident, a mistake that anyone would've missed because clearly, I did. If he'd done this he wouldn't be apologising, he'd be brushing it off and dragging everyone forward. It's because it was me that this had blown out of proportion; I was the one who fixed the bus, so it was my fault.

Not only that but Abraham accused me of sabotage, that I tried to kill nine people on purpose. The issue was I fixed the bus before he decided to hijack my family, so he thought I sabotaged it because I didn't believe in Eugene—that I was so selfish that I would try and kill the one man who supposedly knew the cure. Even if I made a mistake—which I didn't—I didn't deserve this.

"Ace," Maggie gently gripped the top of my arm. "Ace, stop." Then she got in front of me and placed both her hands on my shoulders, halting my movements. I didn't look her in the eyes, feeling stupid and embarrassed, but at the same time, justified. "Think about what you're trying to do."

"I didn't do anything wrong," I told her adamantly, my voice wavering.

"I know," she said. "You don't work on buses, you could've just missed something."

She didn't understand. "I didn't miss anything."

Maggie looked at me silently, and I could tell that she wanted to believe me, but she couldn't—I didn't blame her, I wouldn't have believed me either. She didn't try to argue with me, though, and just nodded. "Okay."

"He's blaming me for trying to kill everyone," I got out, and added quickly, "on purpose."

"Glenn's talking to him. He shouldn't be speaking to you like that," she said, brushing some of my hair back, her thumb grazing just under the cut on my temple. "But you can't go. You're hurt, you can't travel alone."

When her thumb slid under the cut again, I realised that she was inspecting it. It also told me that she didn't know about my wrist or hip hurting or she would've been checking me to see how bad they were. I didn't bring them up, there was nothing she'd be able to do about it. She also gazed at the stitches in my cheek for a moment.

"I can't do this, Maggie. I can't, I can't—" I choked off, swallowing the thorns that pricked at the inside of my throat.

"I know," she shushed me.

I didn't realise I was crying until she ran the palms of her hands along my cheeks, the tears coming off into my hair. "I want to go back, please."

"We didn't want it to happen like this, either," she assured me, her eyes flicking back to Glenn for a second. "And I know you're hurting, but all we can do now is wait for the others to catch up. Okay? They're coming, I promise."

It wasn't okay, because there were so many factors that meant I might never see them for weeks on end, maybe even forever. I didn't want to be away from them any longer; I wanted to be there to make sure they were all safe. I wanted everyone here to be safe as well, but Abraham was making it impossible for me to hold it together.

"I didn't do anything wrong," I repeated desperately, hoping that someone would believe me.

"I know." But she didn't, she didn't know.

Her eyes flicked up towards the group again, and I looked back to see Abraham started walking away with some of the others. Glenn and the others from my group waited, but I didn't move. It seemed that they were just waiting to see if I was okay, which I wasn't.

"Take a second, breathe," she said. "And come with us."

Maggie started heading back to the others, stopping by Glenn to tell him that she'd convinced me to stay. Glenn looked over and met my eyes for a second, which was when I looked away. My cheeks turned red and I felt so stupid to be crying over this. Maggie looked at the others, flagging her hands so they would start following Abraham, leaving me to stand on the road while I looked back to the church.

I considered it, just walking away while the others were leaving. Maybe they wouldn't notice. I was in so much pain, and that I knew the second I started walking there was a good chance I'd faint. It happened when Martinez found me, but at that point, I had been bleeding out for nearly an hour.

When I looked back at the group, Isaac was the last one still standing there. He didn't nod his head for me to follow or try to convince me to go, but he waited. There was something understanding in his look. After a few moments of looking at each other, he turned and started walking after the others.

With pain built up in my arm, leg and heart, I unwillingly followed.

We stopped outside of a bookstore when we found the next town, and the sun was already setting behind the buildings so Abraham took Glenn, Maggie and Martinez inside to clear the building so we could sleep for the night.

Rosita stopped in front of me.

"He was a dick, I know," she smiled, probably hoping that I would do the same. "Just, maybe you should let the big kids handle the next thing. Don't bite off more than you can chew."

"I didn't do anything wrong," I muttered, already fed up with having to explain myself. Part of me wanted to agree with them and remember the big obvious error that I made when working on the engine, just so this would be over with.

"I'm throwing you a bone here, kid. People make mistakes," she said, "and just because you haven't made one in a while doesn't mean that you're any different."

No, but the fact that I am a trained mechanic probably does. "Whatever."

"You're just as stubborn as he is, you know that?" I guessed that she was referring to Abraham. The fact that we both strongly believed our things was making us butt heads a lot. "I just think this trip would be easier—"

"I just got dragged away from my family, potentially fractured my hip again and I'm being gaslighted into believing I made a mistake that I didn't make," I interrupted her. "This trip is not going to get any easier. Do not think for a second that I will act any better than this because, quite frankly, me still being here is more than I am comfortable with."

Rosita breathed out and shook her head. "Jesus Christ, it's like talking to him."

Maggie approached me after coming out of the building with the others. "What was that about?"

"Friendly banter," I muttered walking past her and inside when I heard Glenn mention the place being clear.

I had one thing in mind. I needed to find some kind of first aid or something to wrap up my hand with to stop the swelling. Most public buildings have first aid as a requirement, so unless it had been taken already, this would be the best chance at finding one.

After having no luck finding anything around the main rooms of the bookstore, I started looking for employee areas like storage rooms or offices that might have something for me to use. For a while, I had no luck, until I found an office behind the counter. There was a desk and a few drawers for me to look through, but I checked the shelves on the side of the wall first. I heard someone enter the room behind me.

"What are you doing in here?" Glenn asked.

I didn't give a reply as I moved away from the shelves to sit behind the desk, pulling out the drawers and shuffling things around to loot. I continued moving up through the drawers, finally seeing the green box I had been looking for in the top drawer.

"Come on," Glenn said. "Martinez found some food next door, we're all sitting down to eat."

"I'm not hungry," I said, flicking the latches open to look inside the first aid kit. "I'll have something later."

"You haven't eaten since yesterday," Glenn said, turning to the side in the doorway and waving a hand for me to follow. "Come on."

Again, I gave no response. The pain was so overbearing that I couldn't feel anything else, let alone hunger. That along with the fact that I didn't want to be in the same room as Abraham made me want to stay on my own. And I was kind of a dick to Rosita, so she would probably be happier if I stayed in here too.

I reached for the small plastic bags inside the first aid kit, reading the words Instant Ice Pack. Flipping it over, I held the bag between my legs to twist it as in the instructions, before shaking it with my one good hand. As the bag started getting cold in my hand, I had a split moment where I couldn't decide which needed it more, my hip or my wrist. I placed it against my wrist, wincing as I tried to make a fist.

"You're hurt?" Glenn asked as he stepped back into the room.

"Jammed my hand on the bus," something I didn't want to talk about because I couldn't get my brain to stop when I started thinking about why the engine failed. "Rehurt something in my hip from the war."

"You should've told someone about this," he scolded me, making sure to keep his tone calm as he took a seat at the other side of the desk.

"Didn't matter, no one would've been able to do anything," I said.

I could tell Glenn wanted to ask more, say something else, because of the concerned look on his face. There wasn't anything he could say, and he couldn't be mad or try to lecture me because nothing had gone right for me.

"Come on out, get something to eat," he asked gently, nodding his head for me to follow. "Maggie can take a look at you."

"I'm fine," I said.

Glenn opened his mouth to say something but closed it again. I understood his frustration, I was feeling it with myself, but I couldn't make myself go out there with the amount of pain and anger I was feeling. Being alone was better than being in a screaming match with Abraham or ending up in tears.

"Do you want me to bring you anything in here?"

I shook my head.

"Just . . ." Glenn trailed off, and I wondered if he was upset with me for being like this again. "Just let me know if you need anything."

What I wanted was to ask him to stay with me, like I did back in the Winter. Glenn would stay in a heartbeat, but it wasn't fair for him. I could see that he wanted to stay with the others, to spend his time with Maggie. He wanted me there too, but I couldn't be around Abraham after today.

I just nodded, allowing him to leave while I tried to stop the swelling of my wrist. Glenn waited there, staring at me while I avoided his eye contact. Eventually, he sighed, nodded, and stood up to leave. He closed the door most of the way before going to join the others.

I moved to the floor, hoping that just lying down would give me a chance to stop being in so much pain. If my hip was fractured (again) as Martinez had suggested before, it wasn't just a case of relaxing the muscles. I was in this pain until it healed, but all the walking around was keeping that from happening. I was sure it was almost there until the bus crashed, and it probably just broke the weaker parts again.

My wrist should hopefully be good in a week, which was what Hershel said about sprains when we met Isaac. They take a week or two to heal. Isaac was an exception, with a chance that he had broken a bone in his altercation with Daryl, which might've been why it took so long.

The biggest problem was having no pain pills. Any medicine we found I would also prefer it went to Abraham for his hand, partly because he kept cutting it and partly because I was at fault for us all being injured. If it truly was my fault, then I had to live with the consequences.

After maybe an hour or so of laying in the other room, listening to the laughter of the others hiking about the current situation, a step grew nearer outside the door, and it squealed as it was pushed inwards. I leaned my head back to see who it was, seeing Isaac standing there with his hand on the doorknob. I turned my head back to the ceiling.

"Hey," Isaac said from the door.

"Hey," I answered.

"You should see it out there," Isaac said. "Martinez just keeps messing with Eugene. I think he's found a new toy."

"I'm good," I answered simply.

The door squeaked close behind him, and the muffled steps of Isaac coming closer told me that he was still there. "Glenn said you hurt your hip again," Isaac said, now standing over me. "And your wrist. Is it bad?"

"As bad as it was before," I muttered.

"I could look at your wrist," he suggested, sitting beside me. "I became kind of an expert at the prison."

"Oh yeah?" I questioned, deciding to play along, realising that he wasn't going to stop.

"Yep, basically have my PhD already," Isaac pushed himself close and crossed his legs, facing me as I lay on the ground. I hid the wince as I lifted my bad hand from my stomach, holding it out towards him. Isaac gently cupped under my wrist, careful not to hurt me. He hummed as he 'inspected' it. "Mhm, that is definitely a wrist."

I snorted. "Thanks, Doc."

"I guess I played up my expertise a little," he said, lying on the ground beside me. "It's swollen, though. Maybe we can find a brace for it. Hershel said that you can have them on to stop the swelling."

"Yeah," I breathed out, swallowing as I remembered Hershel.

There was a nice moment of silence as we stared through the ceiling, and I spent my time imagining the stars that would have been there if we were outside, like there was a hole in the ceiling that allowed the vortex inside. Even without the stars, it had been too long since I was able to just lie down and have a quiet moment.

"I'm sorry," Isaac said after a while.

His fingers pressed lightly against the back of my hand to get my attention, but I just looked down. For a moment, I couldn't tell whether he was apologising for the events of that day or that he brought Hershel into the conversation.

"If it makes you feel any better," Isaac began. "I think we made a mistake by coming here. And I don't think you did anything wrong with the bus."

I glanced up from our hands, and he met my eyes for a second, understanding my confusion. I didn't know which thing made my chest flutter more because he agreed with the two things that life was trying to beat out of me.

"I don't know how it happened," he clarified. "But I know that you wouldn't do something like that on purpose. Even then, I know you wouldn't offer to fix it if you couldn't do it correctly. Things break sometimes, doesn't mean you did anything."

That was the point I had tried making with myself, but the words never seemed to mean anything. If there was something wrong, I should have seen it. Maybe I was becoming cocky, trying to fix things that I didn't have the experience with. Isaac not being mad at me was probably the best outcome, that he didn't blame me for stopping us from getting to Washington.

"You think we should've waited?" I asked quietly.

Isaac didn't say anything, his hand brushing against mine for a second. I looked down as his hand slipped under my own, his fingers interlocking with mine. He brushed his thumb over the top of my own, holding my gaze for almost a minute before his head rolled back and he was looking up at the ceiling again. We laid there in a nice silence.

I told you you'd hate me, apart from the Isaac scene. I know people love him, and quite frankly, so do I, so I am okay with all the good Isaac scenes.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed so lmk what you think.