They made it to Hilltop's gates by early afternoon the next day. Their socks were frozen stiff in their boots, and it took three people to pry open the fence gate leading up to the wall, but they had made it.
Daryl shattered the head of a walker that stood frozen in the fields with its arms out like a scarecrow. It almost made Rhys laugh. But he didn't have the energy to. Just enough to make it through the gates, Sasha catching him when he stumbled over the threshold.
He went almost completely limp. Like Pumpkin does when he hasn't gotten at least ten hours of sleep that day.
"I've got you," she laughed, holding him up by the shoulders to inspect his blue-burned cheeks. "You're okay?"
Rhys nodded. He couldn't feel it, but he knew he had. "I'm okay."
A fire was roaring and waiting for them in Maggie's old office, and Aaron sat close to keep the flames stoked with the frosted fingers on his metal hand. Everyone else huddled around the high flames the best they could.
Rhys was almost asleep, slouched to one side in Maggie's high-back chair — he had collapsed in it when it was the only free seat upon entering the room. His half-open eyes were watching Carl, who was wrapped in a hundred blankets by Michonne and sitting beside the fire with her. He listened to Jerry explain to his kids that this could be their new Kingdom and that they could call it 'Kingtop'.
That did make him smile briefly.
Rhys looked up when Yumiko found him. She almost fell on top of him when she leaned down to press their foreheads.
"We did it," she chuckled.
"We did," Rhys whispered weakly, his voice hoarse.
Yumiko seemed in good spirits, and when she stumbled away to find a spot by the fire Rhys closed his eyes with a little more peace of mind.
The next time he looked up, Rhys saw Lydia standing on the other side of the desk. She was staring up at the paintings behind him.
"Who were they?" she asked when she realised he wasn't asleep.
Rhys glanced over his shoulder at the paintings that Anne had done years ago before she disappeared. A shrine to all the Greene family.
Rhys was too tired to answer, so he just kept looking.
"You should both get some sleep..." the sound of Daryl's raspy voice turned Rhys' head to where he was standing beside Lydia.
They both nodded at him.
"We're heading back to Alexandria with Michonne and the rest tomorrow," Daryl said, tapping Lydia's elbow. "Can't risk the snow picking up again."
"Me and Sasha are coming, too," Rhys said, sitting forward in an attempt to wake himself up a little.
Michonne, who had been talking with Ezekiel by one of the bookcases, turned at that, walking over to the desk. "I hear that right?"
Rhys nodded across to her. "Yumiko will have her hands full running this place, but..."
Michonne's eyebrow went up. "But?"
"She can do it. And we want to make sure you get home."
"The horses and the gear at Sanctuary?" Daryl asked then.
Rhys nodded, rubbing his eyes with balled fists. "Planned for that, too. If the weather stays calm, we'll head straight from Alexandria in a few days, meet a crew and move it all back here."
Michonne was smiling at him in a far too emotional way.
Rhys frowned.
"You're doing good," she said. "Both of you."
Rhys leaned far back in the chair, hands in his lap. He shrugged. "We're doing what we can."
Michonne glanced over to the fire, where Carl looked dangerously close to falling in as he slept against the brickwork.
"Mind taking him up to bed?" she asked. "You could both use the rest for tomorrow."
Rhys tried to help Carl up the stairs, but in the end, it was a sort of joint effort. Neither of them quite able to make the journey without the other.
In the time since the fair, Rhys had taken Maggie's old bedroom. His old one was too close to Henry's room, and Pumpkin had taken a liking to the bigger bed. The ratty cat was in there now, lifting his head to the noise of Rhys and Carl stumbling through the door like drunken fools searching for their bed. They collapsed on it. Pumpkin didn't flinch, instead standing, spinning on the spot and settling back down into the sheets with his back to the boys.
Rhys steadied himself with a hand on one of the bedposts, grabbing the leg of a perhaps already asleep Carl and lifting it to slip off his boot. Once Rhys had both of them and finished struggling with the clasp of Carl's thigh holster, he stripped the same from himself.
Rhys was reminded of when he had to do this after Carl lost his eye. Lifting his limp body to help bath him or change his clothes. How delicate his body had been back then. He always found there to be something uniquely about it. The way Carl seemed to fight back at every attempt to set him right.
Rhys found more blankets by the fireplace — noticing that it had been lit before they arrived, either by Sasha or someone else worried about him freezing to death. He tossed the blankets over Carl's body that he had already secured under the duvet, crawling under the mass of covers to join him.
It was still freezing.
The room was large, airy and old. The kind of wood Barrington house was built from was the kind that seemed to suck cold into its splinters and hold it there tight. The curtains were drawn on the afternoon's scattered winter light, making the fire glow the only light. Carl's face was a faint orange under it, but Rhys could still see the cold burned into his freckled cheeks.
"It's so cold," Carl groaned weakly, a faint smile on his lips, eye still shut.
"Are you telling me you were awake that whole time?" Rhys chuckled, pulling the blankets over their heads to block out the orange flare, pressing their foreheads together. "You made me take off your boots when you could have done it yourself?"
Carl took a moment to respond. "But you're so good at it."
Rhys teeth were clicking together. "Lazy ass."
Carl's eye stayed shut, like if he pretended to be unbothered for long enough, the cold might just give up and creep away. It didn't, and Rhys kept his eyes on him to make sure he wouldn't get worse. His eyes were open, estranged from blinking or shifting to lose strands on the blanket over them. He felt like a cat watching him. Kind of similar to the one that he could feel pawing its way closer to them above the blankets.
"You got worried for a moment there," Carl said after Rhys thought he might have fallen asleep again.
"Sleep, Grimes."
"You did."
Rhys paused. "Yeah, I did."
"Like really worried?"
"Like really worried."
Carl looked at him then.
"I'm sorry."
Rhys shook his head.
"It wasn't just you. Lydia asked me to kill her."
Then it was Carl watching him to make sure he was okay.
"But you didn't," he whispered. They had been whispering since they got here. "You didn't, and we're all here."
Rhys didn't know how true that was. He wasn't sure they were all here really. How many of them left themselves on a dresser in the Kingdom or under a wagon back at Sanctuary. He couldn't know without time passing. He felt Pumpkin getting braver then. The weight of the cat shifted to their heads, where it settled and would have made them laugh if they had the energy. Then he moved above them onto the pillows. Rhys reached over their heads and lifted the blankets to make a hole wide enough for Pumpkin's skinny frame to slither in and down between them, where he nested in the heat the two were creating between their chests and started to purr. Rhys moved his arm down so it was resting over Pumpkin's vibrating fur, his hand on Carl's waist.
"Carol's coming tomorrow, too."
"With the King?"
Rhys shook his head against Carl's.
Carl's breathing was shallow. "It's all gone wrong."
Rhys rolled his eyes a little before quoting Carl's own wisdom back at him. "We're here."
A faint smile came to Carl's cold sore damaged lips. "Carol told you?"
Rhys frowned, as confused as he thought Carl would be. "She asked me what I thought."
Carl didn't look confused. "It's about Henry."
Rhys tensed up.
"She probably wanted to know if you would hate her," Carl went on. "If you thought Henry would."
"I told her I get it."
"But you don't?"
"Not really," Rhys admitted. "I don't know what it's like to have a kid... let alone lose one."
Carl was quiet for a moment. "You want a kid?"
Rhys was quiet, too, until...
"G'night, Grimes."