They didn't need the unconscious man.

The idiots had lit a fire.

"Definitely ain't a professional." Daryl grumbled when he brought it to Amy's attention, she had been too focused on how to wake up the man without him screaming again. "They prolly heard the gunshot and tried ta smother it wit' dirt and leaves."

"Well, no use for it now." Amy sighed, not feeling at all comforted that her sister had been taken by morons who didn't know that green leaves made more smoke.

She lashed out, smacking the man she shot in the face before covering his mouth with her hand. They had only tied some blanket strips on his thigh to lessen the bleeding. The dirty man had been rolling all over the forest floor, sobbing and screaming hysterically before Michonne knocked him out with a blow to the head. Wide brown eyes watched her like a cornered animal while he screamed against her hand.

"Pansy." Merle scoffed under his breath, standing up through her sunroof with the large browning aimed towards the trees.

"Shut the fuck up before I chop off your fucking leg and leave you to the dead." Amy whispered harshly, squeezing his jaw to make sure she had his attention. "Nod, if you understand that I will make sure your death is slow if you don't stop screaming."

"Please…please…please…please…please." The man cried hysterically against her hand, nodding and his whole body shook with the force of his sobs.

"Good, how many of you are there?" Amy asked once she slowly let go of his cheeks, grinding her teeth in impatience.

"Please, I didn't-" She covered his mouth again before he could finish, using her free hand to apply pressure to his bullet wound. The blonde let up after a couple seconds and didn't remove hand until he stopped screaming into her hand. Daryl nudged her and she glanced down to his hand that was holding a ball of scrap material.

"How many of your friends are out in the woods right now?" Amy demanded once he dissolved into mewling cries.

"They're not my friends!" He hiccuped, jerking away when she raised her hand to shove the scrap material in his mouth. "No..no…wait! They want the school!"

"Good. Go on."

"A boy…a boy…they killed the boy." He said quickly but Amy and Daryl just continued looking at him. "He came from…Nemoy! I told them I would show them where it was if they let me live. I didn't want to take her, please. I never laid a-"

"No Nemoy here." Daryl grunted, lashing out to smack the rambling man in the face. "How many of ya are there?"

"Five! Five!" He cried out, pressing his back against the truck in a futile attempt to put more space between them. "But there's more! The main group went West. They didn't believe me…please, they didn't believe me. They said..they said..you're the butcher or…you're the..c-c-cattle."

"What did you say?" Amy gripped his jaw tightly, bringing him closer since she could not have heard him correctly. Briefly, she forgot that her sister was out in the woods, vulnerable. Cannibals could not have discovered their home.

"They…they said you're the butcher or the cattle." He said wearily, looking between her and Daryl with wide, terrified eyes. "Please, please. I told you everything. Please, help me."

"If there are more than five people with my sister, I'll tie you to a tree with goddamn windchimes hanging above your head." Amy snapped before stuffing the scrap ball into his mouth and pushing him back into the bed of the truck and slamming the hard shell top closed.

"You gonna call it in?" Daryl asked, his blue eyes serious and imploring and then she felt like she was once again grounded. Her pregnant sister was missing and they would need to kill people.

"There's only five of 'em." Merle chipped in, sounding eager to create some violence. Amy, however, was more worried about the group at the school. They weren't very far away and if the group was large enough, would they take advantage of them being gone? There was no guarantee the man wasn't lying.

She made a mistake.

Andrea should have waited for her sister to cave and went with a group but she needed Negan. There was no way she could raise the baby on her own and she had seen the looks from the rest of the group. They were looking at her like she was a single teen mother whose baby daddy transferred schools to avoid her. She was a grown woman!

"Not so talkative now, huh?" The leader of the dirty group of men smiled, his breath wafting over her face and making her gag. "It's a good thing your sister is the leader, I'm sure she'll invite us right in for tea when they see we got ya home safe and sound."

She shuddered, rolling her shoulders forward in an attempt to make herself smaller. When she had first stopped, she assumed that they needed help. Why else would a group be out on the roads at night? One of them was even on the ground like he was injured. They never said their names but it was one man who did most of the talking. Though, none of them were shy about what they wanted to do to her.

"Can't we have some fun first?" The driver spoke up, his eyes meeting hers in the rearview mirror, making her have to swallow back the bile in her throat.

"Sure you want first dibs on this one?" The one in the passenger seat laughed freely. "I'm thank with a group that big, you might find one that's not fat."

She was pregnant but the words died in her throat. That was what got her into this mess. Not thinking before she opened her mouth. Andrea had taken one of the motorcycles and hurt Jimmy in her attempt to leave so she could find Jo-Negan. Not even twenty minutes away from the school, a group of six men had taken her hostage and she raved that her sister had fifty armed men who would hunt them down.

"They're all cattle." The leader spoke up, pressing a dirty finger to her tear stained cheek and slowly trailing it down her face. "We'll be the bulls!"

"I thought we were butchers." The fat man next to her had not stopped staring at her chest the entire ride and even groped her breast a few times. He only stopped when the leader grew annoyed with her crying out in pain.

"You really are a dumb little shit, Tiny." Driver laughed along with the rest of them and Andrea shuddered, they were all monsters. "Can't bruise up this beauty before her sister opens up their little school for us. Then we show them the butchers."

They had hastily thrown her in the car as soon as they saw the headlights and she had been shoved down so her face was pressed harshly against the leader's crotch. Andrea had wailed, believing that she was going to be raped and killed in the car with her sister left behind. She was bringing evil to their home. It was because of her that her sister and those children were going to die. As they drew closer to the school, she started to hyperventilate. How many people had joined her sister to come after her? How many were left to defend their home? Would they even care that she was the hostage? She could see Merle shooting her just to kill the men holding her captive. What did she matter to them?

"Those are some real nice walls." The driver whistled once they passed the visitors parking and empty guard shack. "What's that? Seven feet? Ten?"

"N-." She couldn't force words through her numb lips, even with the smelly man beside her roughly pushing her to. No, she wouldn't speak anymore, she had caused enough trouble and she wasn't sure if she would live to see the next day.

"Welcome home, boys." The leader shook the passenger's seat in glee. "Told you that this would be better than Terminus! Who the hell advertises the place they eat an' shit? Prolly a trap but this…damn, lets hope there's plenty of cooze to go around."

"Speak." Edwin's voice boomed from the speaker outside of the gates when they pulled up, the entire campus was dark. Andrea squinted but could see nothing through the darkness.

"Now, that ain't how ya make friends there, stranger." The leader shouted before he stepped out, dragging Andrea along with him to use as a shield. "Not, when I brought the pretty blonde sister home to you fine folks."

"What do you want?" Edwin's tone did not change much, only sounding more annoyed when the other exited the car without a care in the world. What had these men done to not fear death?

"I want you ta open them gates." The leader laughed but it lacked any kind of warmth and she let out a whimper when he roughly shook the fist that was holding her up by her hair. "That is, if you don't want to watch the pretty blonde's insides come out for a visit."

"I should care about this woman….why?" Edwin asked with a cold edge to his voice and no matter how hard she tried, Andrea could not see anything beyond where the high beams were focused on the fountain just beyond the gate.

"Just shoot the motherfucker!" The fat one shouted, raising his own gun towards the gates.

"We don't want to resort to violence but we will!" The leader shot his friend a look to shut the hell up.

"Release her and you may live."

BANG

The fat one went down.

BANG

The man holding her cursed when he collapsed with her hair still in her hands but he wasn't dead.

BANG BANG

"You filthy bitch!" The leader was shouting, still clutching her hair like a lifeline while his other hand tried to stem the blood that was spurting through the wound on his leg. Before she could even attempt to escape, the flood lights were turned on and she was blinded.

"Where's the other one?" Tony demanded, stepping out of the shadows wearing an all black tactical suite with a rifle in hand.

"Did you-"

"Bitch!" The leader's voice was slurred when he sloppily tried to slap her with a bloody hand. "I'll ki-"

"Shut up." Tony ordered before he kicked the man in the temple, knocking him out. Andrea barely turned on her back to catch her breath before Edwin was standing before her with a menacing glare.

"Where is the other man?" The doctor demanded and the blonde looked beyond them to the other group members who were directing the lights down the road and moving the bodies. No one bothered to help the leader even though he was bleeding out.

"It's a good thing they were able to warn us." Greg muttered, stepping forward to roughly kick the man over so he could search his pockets.

"Hold on." Edwin finally looked away from her to the man who had pulled out a fistful of her hair, barely concealed disgust in his eyes. Whether it was for her or her captor, she wasn't sure and she didn't want to think on it. Tears streaked down her face and her sobs were stuck in her throat. "We can't let him die if we don't know where his whole group is."

"Isn't Amy and them bringin' back 'nother one?" Wade asked from his place near the gate where he had one of the little teenage boys impatiently trying to coach him on using one of his new inventions.

"He was just the guide." Edwin answered absently, forcefully tightening the rope around the man's thigh above his wound. "They were a part of a larger group that was looking for other settlements to…well, we aren't really sure what they wanted but whatever it was had Amy panicked. She'll be here soon."

"You hurt?" Tony asked Andrea, finally turning away from the dead bodies, his eyes lacked their usual warmth. He was looking at her the way he had the men who came here to…God, she led them here.

"Answer him, Ms. Harrison." Edwin ordered coldly, stepping away from the injured man when Duke and Gale came with a stretcher. "Are you injured and where is the other man? Amy warned us that five men might be coming our way."

"He-" The words wouldn't come, just like the hysterical sobs that wracked her chest, they were trapped inside her. It felt like she couldn't breath, let alone explain that she never meant for any of this to happen. She just wanted to feel less alone.

Andrea had been searching for Amy for hours, no one would tell her where her sister was. All of them claimed that she was taking a day off. Well, if she was taking time away from being the leader, shouldn't she be informed as her only sister? When she cornered Michonne, the woman mocked her, explaining that her sister was spending the day with her family.

"No!" Amy's voice was close and Andrea had not even realized how far she had walked before she found herself near the lakeside.

Running forward, she found something that made her feel as if she were trapped in some kind of nightmare. Her sister was thrown over the hunter's shoulders, her clothes still pristine even though he looked like he had just jumped in a mud puddle. The children were all just as dirty chanting something she couldn't understand with gardening tools in their hands.

"One of us!" Little Emma cried out clearly when Andrea took a couple steps closer, leaning heavily on a tree just out of sight.

"No, I swear to God Daryl if you-" Amy's threats were cut off when the man tossed her into a muddy pit, much to all the children's delight.

"C'mon, Mom!" Jamie laughed, attempting to help the blonde stand when she was pushed in by Billy. Then Braden crawled closer, looking as if he spent the afternoon eating literal mud pies. "Billy!"

"Don' be pushin' your sista, Bubs." Daryl rumbled in a threatening tone that only elicited a high pitched squeal from the boy followed by laughter. The hunter swept the baby up with one arm before jogging after Billy and grasping him around the middle with his free arm.

"No!" Billy laughed, struggling the closer they got back to the mud pit. Just as Daryl looked like he was going to heave the nine year old in with her sister and Jamie, Emma ran at them with a wild yell.

"Boys drool!" Emma laughed wildly, using the momentum to push the hunter down. However, he tripped more out of his surprise than her attack. The man had the sense to make sure he took the brunt of the impact, cradling both boys to his chest. "I win!"

Andrea looked on at the sweet moment that they all slipped and slid around in their rush to pull the little girl in with them. Not that she fought that hard, taking her rightful place on Daryl's lap once Braden had reached for her sister. Amy had created an entire family and it obviously didn't include her. Her heart cracked in two when her sister leaned over the children's head to kiss the hunter's muddy face, not caring at all how dirty they were.

"We're supposed to be planting cabbages." Amy sighed, her voice fond and filled with laughter.

"Sam got that whole ass-" He barely grunted when her sister smacked his arm, just rolling his eyes. "-whole greenhouse."

"Yeah!" Billy threw a muddy, triumphant fist in the air. "This is the Dixon mud hole! There will be no evil cabbages here!"

"Eww! Cabbage!" Emma instantly agreed even though she threw a mud patty at Billy's smiling face, laughing when he tipped back with a thud.

"How come it's the Dixon plot?" Jamie demanded once she wobbly got to her feet, turning to Daryl with an accusing glare. "Why don't you take Mom's name? It can be the Harrison plot."

"What are you talking about?" Amy asked incredulously and Andrea huffed, not believing that her sister was really that obtuse. Ever since Billy spoke about his stepmother, they had not been subtle in their hints that Amy and Daryl were practically married since they were their parents now.

"I heard…Dad and Uncle Merle talkin' about their dad." Jamie rushed to explain, her face reddening beneath a thick layer of mud. "Why wouldn't he take your name instead of us becoming Dixons?"

"Okay…"Amy cleared her throat, turning to Darly who had become a statue. "You guys are going to use the lessons Sam gave you and start planting the cabbages and I'm going to have a conversation with Daryl. There will be no eavesdropping."

"I told you so." Emma huffed with all the indignation in her little body, clambering out of the mud hole before her sheepish siblings.

"How are you doing…with all that?" Amy asked once they were left alone with only Braden who was leaning heavily back on her sister's chest with sleepy eyes. "I know I told you that you could decide what kind of relationship you had with them…but I don't think either of us thought it would…develop this fast."

"You 'right wit' it?" He asked in a thick voice that had Andrea slowly crouching forward to hear.

"I found them but they chose me to be their mom…." Amy sighed and Andrea couldn't help but silently huff at such a statement. Who else were they going to go to? Lori? "Just like they are choosing you…but I don't want you think you have to d-"

"Don' want me to?" Daryl visibly bristled, making Andrea want to throw a manure pie at his stupid head. It was so obvious that her sister had fallen for the redneck and since it was her first love, she was sure her little sister was about to get her heart broken. For a moment, she wanted to rush forward to protect her from the pain but she couldn't.

"Of course, I do. I love you." Amy shook her head with an eye roll, not seeing the immediate recoil the hunter gave at her words. "I want to do everything with you when I'm not running around campus fixing everyone's problems. It's the best part of my day when you show up with one of our kids for a break. Even if it's only a snack or a walk…it makes everything a little-"

"Ya love me?" Daryl cut her off, finally turning to her with a very serious expression, his lips pulled into a deep frown.

"Yes…" Amy answered hesitantly, looking a little fearful and Andrea's heart squeezed.

"Ya can'."

"Yes, I can." The blonde snapped back, looking offended. Better than the dread Andrea was sure she felt at the emanate break up. Andrea knew Daryl was just like his brother, he had already gotten what he wanted from her sister, he wouldn't stick around long. "You can't tell me how I feel."

"I'mma Dixon." Daryl stated it like that simple fact was enough, which Andrea totally agreed with. They were not the type of men who would be around in the long term.

"Yeah and I'm a Harrison. Rich girl from North Carolina who just wanted to take off for the next decade with no responsibility." Amy reached out slowly, careful of the dozing toddler in her lap. "I shouldn't have made it this far but we both have. We don't have to be what we were before…we can do-"

"I'll always be a Dixon….I can't." Andrea knew this was it but the man didn't move away, just closed his eyes as if he were in pain. "I can' let ya be like Ma"

"I'll never be like your mother, remember?" Amy spoke gently as if he were a wounded animal she just wanted to heal and all Andrea wanted was to shout at her to run. He would hurt her, injured animals lashed out, bit the hands that fed them! "I don't make excuses for shitty men and you Daryl Dixon are not a shitty man."

"Ya don' know me." Andrea had to crawl so she could hear him, thankful that someone had cleared all the debris from the tree line. "I was…nothin'. 'Fore all this, I was just…driftin'. Just followin' my junkie brotha wherever tha wind blew. I ain't…I ain't gonna be like Pa, he got trapped ina cage. He…was always fightin' it."

"Some people will make up all kinds of excuses for their choices." Amy leaned forward, pressing their dirty foreheads together. Andrea could see the way Daryl's shoulders shook for just a moment, then his arms were cradling her sister and Braden as if they were the most precious, fragile treasure he had ever laid his eyes on. "I don't think either of us are ready for marriage but what we are now…I'm yours and we can work together to keep our kids safe…"

"Ya really love me?" Andrea had to close her eyes at the reverence in his tone, she did turn away when he kissed her with something akin to worship.

"Answer me!" Andrea shook her head, feeling like the last few hours were only an awful nightmare. Only Edwin's annoyed, grating voice pulled her back to the present.

"Maybe you should bring her back to the infirmary until Amy's group comes back." Tony said gently, looking from her position on the ground up to the doctor.

"Get Gale to look over her and someone to keep watch over her." Edwin snapped harshly but Tony ignored his tone, already lifting a radio to his mouth. "And get Simon back in the surveillance room! We can't leave ourselves open to attack if the last man finds the larger group!"

All Andrea wanted was a fraction of what her sister built for herself. Just someone that was all her own to support her through having a goddamn baby in the apocalypse.