The next morning Ace had to get out early to see what needed to be done around the community, which left Isaac with nothing to do. Well, not nothing—he could have studied the textbooks he'd taken from the Monroes' study or worked on the plans for once the walls had been expanded, but with the walkers outside the walls, he became distracted.

He got even more distracted when he tried listening to the walkman he and Ace had been using the night before, and his mind became restless. He sat there picturing the finale of their date for God knows how long before he decided it was time to take a walk and clear his head.

He began by trying to find Maggie in her room, wanting to check on her. He knew how much she loved Glenn, and he couldn't imagine how hard it must have been for him to be out there, especially with what she had confided in him the day before.

Isaac checked up on the watchtowers until he found her—he should have known she'd be on the tower that faced the town where Glenn was last seen. She stood quietly on the platform, staring out into the distance ahead.

Covering his hands with his sleeves, Isaac climbed the ladder and stood beside Maggie before he asked, "What do you think the signal will be?"

Maggie didn't look back, she probably heard him climbing the ladder. "I don't know, he might try to set a fire again. I'm not sure what else it could be."

He sat on the ledge at the top of the fence, turning to the side to keep an eye out on the horizon. If Glenn were out there he wouldn't be stupid enough to try and get inside, he'd probably try to find a way to lure the walkers away—he and the other group were the only ones who could anymore.

"I can keep an eye out if you want some rest," he offered.

"No," she denied. "No, I want to be here for this."

Isaac nodded but made no move to leave. He didn't want to leave Maggie alone to deal with all this alone, especially not after what she'd confided in him the day before. When she didn't attempt to send him away, he shifted to get more comfortable.

"I'm sure he's just finding a way to lure the walkers out," Isaac assured. "He wouldn't set off a signal that could alert the walkers if he didn't have an escape ready."

"I tried getting out last night," she admitted. "I tried taking the sewers to find him. They wrote his and Nicholas' names on the wall, and I just wanted to know if—" she cut herself off. "He is alive, I know he is."

Isaac, despite his uncertainty, agreed. "He is."

Glenn had always been tough and had survived more than Isaac ever believed he could. The flu had almost killed him and he came back from the brink of drowning in his blood—no thanks to him, he got them out of Terminus and had faced whatever happened in the woods the other day with Nicholas. The more Isaac thought about it, the easier it became to believe that he was probably alive out there. That wasn't to say that God was making it easy for him.

All he knew was that it would kill him to see her lose Glenn because Maggie had been through so much in so little time. Hershel, Beth—those were barely a month before, and he had never seen Maggie as bad as she had been after losing her sister.

"Do you still believe?" Isaac clarified after a moment, "In the bible, God."

Maggie was quiet for a second, before nodding. "It was rough for a while, but now . . . yeah, I do. And you?"

"I have my moments," he said. "I struggle with it sometimes."

"It's normal to feel that way," she said. "I think sometimes it's more about bringing people together and helping each other over believing in all of the stories. If you do, you do, but it's not the most important part."

He nodded, understanding her words. His family had never been overly big on religion, he went to church on holidays with his mother, because he knew it made her happy. He guessed she felt the same way as Maggie, that she believed to the extent that following the rules made her a better person. She didn't need a church for that—she was the kindest person he knew. A lot of families were the same way in his town, but every time he thought deeper into the religion, his mind hit a block on how wild the stories were.

"Isaac?" Maggie asked after a moment of silence.

He looked her way, "Yeah."

"What I told you," she began almost nervously, his gaze reaching the ground before she finally settled on looking at him. "I don't want anyone else to know yet."

Isaac wanted to nod, but then he realised, "But me and Ace—"

"Glenn wanted to tell her when the time was right," she cut him off.

That made sense, though, he had made such a fuss about Ace keeping secrets—it would be rude of him if he just did the same thing he'd gotten so angry over. But did it count if it was something like this? Parents didn't announce pregnancies early in case something happened with the baby, perhaps Maggie and Glenn wanted to do the same thing.

"Why did you tell me?"

"Because I want us to be able to talk about things," she said. "Ace doesn't speak to me about the important things. She speaks to Glenn or Rick, and that's if she says anything at all. But she has people to talk to and she knows I'm always here for her."

He raised a brow, turning from the horizon to look at her. "So you want to find out about her?"

"Glenn wanted to be the one to tell Ace, and I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know that I am available to talk to you about whatever it is you need to talk about. Whenever. That's why I told you—though, I'd hoped it would have been under better circumstances," she smiled.

Isaac never really had trouble speaking with Maggie, that he recalled. The only issue he recalled was when he first met her and they were trying to make him wait the night before leaving to find his mother, and Glenn had put him in his place soon enough.

"Why?" He finally asked, curious about her intentions.

"Because you don't have as many people as she does," she said. "I don't want you to feel alone."

He nodded, accepting her answer. It was true that he had fewer people to talk to than Ace, but it never really bothered him, because he had Ace. But there were things he did want to get off of his chest that Ace might not get.

"Maggie?"

"Yeah," she glanced over at him.

"I'd . . . I'd like someone else to talk to about things, sometimes," he admitted.

She smiled, "I'm here, always."

"Good," he breathed out and nodded.

There was a sweet moment of silence between them. Well, he wished it had been a sweet moment, but the walkers below had a hold on his mind and he couldn't get the sound of them out of his head, knowing that just below was the host of so many deadly diseases that were covered in grime and blood.

Maggie seemed to notice his discomfort, and nudged him with her elbow as she began to tease him, "How about we start with what I saw after the party? Seeing as you ran out on me when I was asking about it. If not, we can talk about you holding hands at the meeting."

"Yeah, yeah," he waved her off. "Ace wanted it to be just between us for a while."

Maggie grinned. "At least tell me when it all started, because I know this has been building up for a while."

"After the party was when it really started, I guess," he said.

"You guess?" She cocked a brow.

"We kissed before Aaron found us . . . when Aaron found us," he corrected. "Ace got a little defensive and upset and I felt a little rejected so we didn't speak for a while after that."

"Yeah, I noticed you two were distant. I couldn't work out what happened."

Isaac nodded and realised something. "How did you know this had been building up?"

"Let's just say, Ace isn't so secretive," Maggie grinned. "Though, you were pretty obvious too, always looking after her and watching her and drawing her."

"I have no secrets with how I feel about Ace," he agreed.

Maggie said a quick I know with a smile on her face. Isaac also couldn't stop the smile from forming on his face, because his relationship with Ace had been something that he had to make decisions on by himself, and sometimes he questioned what he was doing. But seeing someone else as happy as he was that this was happening made him sure that he was doing the right thing.

"I think this is good," Maggie said, "for the both of you."

He nodded in agreement, "I do too."

Ace crossed her hands as she leaned back on the wall as they brought Morgan into the room, her eyes following his trail to the chair they set up for him across the table. She didn't understand what this talk was supposed to accomplish. Were they going to kick Morgan out?

Carol said he had been letting some of the people go the day before, that he didn't want to kill them and was trying to take prisoners rather than kill their enemies. They had to be their enemies, the W people had set fire to their own on top of the fences and gutted them in the street.

Morgan's eyes darted around the room. "What's going on?"

"When we were coming back, we tried to cut off the herd with the RV," Rick explained, waving a hand back to gesture to Ace, "lead the walkers away. But five of those people with the W's in their foreheads, stopped us, tried to kill us, shot up the RV. Now Carol says she saw you, that you wouldn't kill those people." He stopped, and took a second just to look Morgan in the eye before asking, "Did you let any of them go?"

"Yes, I did." Morgan did not attempt to lie. Ace held in her sarcastic comments as she once again questioned if they had any reprimands in place for his actions. "I didn't want to kill five people I didn't have to kill."

"They burnt people alive," Carol snapped.

Ace took a second to step in. "If they didn't get to us, the RV would still be working and we would have led the herd away. We wouldn't be stuck here."

"Yeah." Morgan went quiet for a moment, seemingly contemplating her words, because she was right. Not only were they put in danger because of it, but their only chance of stopping the herd from getting to Alexandria. He turned to Rick, "Why didn't you kill me back in King's County? Pulled a knife on you, I stabbed you. So why didn't you kill me? Was it 'cause I tried to save you after the hospital?"

"Cause I knew who you were," Rick gestured between them,

"Back there I would have killed you as soon as look at you," Morgan argued. "And I tried, but you, you let me live. And I was there to help Aaron and Daryl. See, if I—if I wasn't there—if they died—maybe those Wolves wouldn't have been able to come back here."

Wolves?

She remembered that Morgan had spoken to them before he found Alexandria, and they had called themselves the Wolves? There had been no chance to give them a name themselves, and they had all stuck to the longer 'people with the W on their foreheads'. Her throat dried as she considered how feral, how animalistic they had been—it made sense.

"I don't know what's right anymore, 'cause I did wanna kill those men. I seen what they did, what they would've keep doing," he sighed. "I knew I could end it. But I also know that people can change. Cause everyone sitting here has. All life is precious, and that idea changed me. It brought me back, and it keeps me living."

"I just don't think it can be that easy," Michonne said.

"It's not easy," his response was instant.

"I wasn't saying—"

"I—I know," he cut her off. "And I've thought about letting that idea go, but I don't want to."

"You may have to," she said. "Things aren't as simple as four words. I don't think they ever were."

There was a silence that settled among them before Morgan asked, "Do you think I don't belong here?"

"Making it now, do you really think you can do that without getting blood on your hands?" Rick asked.

Morgan shook his head. "I don't know."

Ace sighed and stepped outside. There was no point discussing it anymore, Morgan had let the wolves go and they found her and Rick in the RV. Unless they were going to reprimand him for it, which they weren't, there was nothing else to be said.

She went to join Martinez where she'd last seen him, fixing the wall just below the watch tower, keeping it up with the thousands of walkers that threatened to push it down. When she arrived, there were working items there, stands to saw the planks of wood to size and tools, but no Martinez.

Her eyes remained fixed on the wall. Names were painted in black on the rises of the metal—the people who had died. There was the faintest outline of a name she recognised, that must've been both added and washed away the night before.

Glenn.

Just underneath his name was Nicholas, both cleared away. Maggie must have done it, she assumed, because it would have been her if she'd known they added his name to the memorial.

"They'll be back," Rick said, breaking her from her thoughts. "Hell, they'll be the ones to get us out of here."

"Yeah."

"We should keep fortifying the wall," Rick said. "Even if it's just for show, to make them feel better. I don't think it's going to come down.

"Martinez was here I think," she shrugged. "I don't know where he's gone."

But he had done a lot of work, they noticed. Rick and Ace worked together to continue fortifying the wall where they could, keeping the fence as stable as they waited out their time inside the walls. They were trapped until they could get help. At least that left no room for any further Wolves attacking.

Ace kicked Rick off of the saw when he complained about it getting stuck in the wood before finding out he was using the wrong one, so after going to fetch the correct saw, Rick had been moved to planting screws in the wood so they could be attached to the walls.

She looked up from her sawing as Martinez approached with more planks in his arms. "Taking over my job?"

"I thought you were here," she said, before leaning down to go back to her work.

"God, how are you sawing so fast?" Martinez blew out an impressed whistle. "Mine kept getting stuck."

"Wrong saw." She stepped aside to give him a chance to see the difference, and Martinez immediately noticed how easier and neater it was to cut the plank. "The teeth on the one you picked were too small, so it didn't cut."

Rick, from his position leaning over a plank, said, "I got yelled at for the same thing just now."

"I did not yell at you," she said but grinned at the statement.

He smiled, straightening up as he lifted the plank, taking it over to the wall. Ace grabbed some screws to start preparing the plank Martinez was sawing so it could be added to support the beams as well. When she leant down, she heard footsteps approaching.

"Incoming," he muttered beside her.

Ace looked back over her shoulder just as Tobin decided to walk over to Rick, helping him lift the plank against the wall. "You look like you could use some help."

Martinez and Ace met eyes, and she held her tongue when she realised that Tobin was stepping up to help. He'd been getting more involved, convincing Ace that he hadn't been fraternising with Carter when he tried to overthrow Rick—not that it made her like him anymore.

"You know, I think we could build up a brace on this thing," Tobin suggested as Rick walked away to get some more screws.

Ace helped Martinez get planks ready that would lay diagonally across, cutting the wood at an angle so the top would sit flat against the metal beams, pushing against the ground if something threatened to tip it over. A temporary fix, she realised, if they could ever get back to the construction site and replace the panel that had been hit.

Tobin stopped when he saw a bullet hole in the fence, with blood seeping through, likely from the walkers outside. Ace had noticed it a little earlier but knew that if anything were going to ruin the structural integrity of the wall, it was not going to be a tiny gunshot.

"It don't mean anything as long as we keep this up," Rick said.

Tobin nodded silently, looking at Rick as he hammered down the planks. "You know, you scared the hell out of people when we first saw you."

"I know," he answered.

"You scared the hell out of me—with that beard, the way you looked around like you were seeing things we weren't . . . hiding around corners," he explained. "Turns out you were. Things moved slow here, and then things just started moving fast—too fast. But don't give up on us."

Rick ignored his request and looked back at the tools they had to fix the wall. "We need some more stuff: bigger planks to prop up against the beams."

"Yeah, I can only carry so much," Martinez said. "I'll keep cutting the stuff we got here, you guys bring over what we need."

Ace nodded, stretching up before following Rick and Tobin away from the tower so they could bring over some more materials to build with. She glanced at Tobin, his plea still rolling around in her mind, not to leave the Alexandrians behind and give up on them.

They wanted to try.

"What the hell?" Tobin exclaimed.

Ace had been so focused she missed what he was talking about, but the moment it came out of his mouth she saw it.

Spencer was dangling from one of the Wolve's grapples that extended from one of the lookouts at the top of the fence to the church on the other side of the wall where they were going to be making their expansion. He was trying to get outside the walls, over the herd of walkers that would surely be waiting for him on the other side, which is why Ace deemed the idea so utterly stupid without anyone else's help.

"Spencer," Rick called, climbing the ladder onto the lookout tower to reach him. "Hey, Spencer! Get back here!"

The rope dipped downward under his weight, and Ace couldn't imagine it would hold as she watched from beside Rick on the tower. She could see the hook that was latched on one of the buildings was shifting.

"Spencer, get back here," he tried again. "Now!"

"Spencer! Spencer, move!" Tara called from a separate tower beside Eugene.

As the hook jerked, his feet slipped from the rope and he cried out, getting the attention of the walkers that reached up to his legs.

Rick slammed his hands on the fence in frustration and yelled, "Go! Keep moving! Hurry!"

But Spencer couldn't move, and when the hook snapped from the rope he came crashing down into the wall against two walkers, before hitting the ground with a thud. It left a clearing in the walkers that Ace considered using for a second.

"Spencer, come on!" Rick yelled.

He pushed himself to his feet amongst all the walkers, when gunshots rang off to their right. Ace saw Tara dangling over the fence, shooting the walkers around him to give him a chance to climb back up over the fence.

Spencer pushed down the walkers around him before he turned to the rope that now hung down the side of the wall. Rick grabbed the other end, struggling to pull him up with Ace at his side. They heaved, but the walkers grabbed at his shoes. Tobin and Morgan climbed the ladder to help them pull him up.

Tara was still hung over the wall shooting at the walkers beneath him, and Ace saw that they managed to get a shoe off of his foot as the three of them lifted him higher and higher. Ace bared her teeth as she pulled, her arms aching.

When the gunshots ended, Ace saw that Tara was still dangling, holstering her gun as Michonne reached a hand down to help her back up. That filled her with a little relief, giving her a chance to pull Spencer up with Morgan at her side. She put her foot up on the fence and yanked backwards.

Ace could finally reach Spencer, and she lowered a hand down to grab his shoulder as they pulled him higher, keeping him steady as they finally got him over the top of the wall and dropped him on the lookout platform.

Rick straightened up and looked across to Tara and Michonne on the other tower. "Tara! You almost died once for these people!"

"What?!" Ace noted her baffled expression.

"What the hell were you doing?!"

Tara only raised her hand, flipping him off.

Rick's jaw set, and his eyes turned down to Spencer who was still recovering from the panic. He sat up against the wall, and muttered, "Lost a damn shoe. Crap."

"What was that?" Not even Ace would've stood up to him if she heard his tone.

"I was trying to help. I wanted to get to a car, draw them away," Spencer explained.

"You ever make a climb like that before?" Rick waved an arm to the gap he tried to climb across. "You want to help? Don't make us come running to save you. You got an idea, you come to me."

"Would you have listened to me?" Spencer asked.

"Don't be a fucking child," Ace snapped. "I'm lighter than you, so I could have tried getting across and the rope might not have broken. And I've been practising climbing shit like that. And we could've had people with the guns making an opening, but if you had gotten to the other end we never could have gotten the walkers' attention from you and you would've been stuck there."

She made a plan on the spot to show him how much better it could have been if he'd come to Rick. "You didn't fucking think, or talk to anyone, so you wasted the only chance we had of getting out of here, and it could have been a good fucking chance if you'd put any thought into it." She sarcastically gave him fake praise with a thumbs up, "Good job."

And it could have been a good shot, she knew, if it had been anyone else aside from the people who hadn't been learning how to survive in any situation. It took her ten seconds to come up with a better idea than what Spencer just demonstrated.

Spencer finally pulled himself up, facing Ace for a second before turning away—Ace knew it was because of the look Rick gave him over her shoulder. Morgan and Tobin followed him down, and Ace looked down at the walkers that had congregated again.

"I could've jumped down and gone myself," Rick muttered.

"I thought about it too," Ace agreed. "Fucking dickhead."

They returned to work, getting the legs into place and nailing more planks across those supports that they'd already nailed down. Rick left them to talk to Tara, presumably about yelling at her once she saved Tobin, and Ace stayed to continue working with Glenn and Martinez.

She noticed that everyone outside had gone silent, and glanced up to see them all staring in the same direction. Martinez grabbed her shoulder, and pointed up into the sky, showing her what everyone else had noticed.

Green balloons floated in the sky.

Footsteps thudded near and Ace looked over her shoulder to see Maggie and Isaac who had run over to their corner of the wall to see the directions that the balloons had come from. He smiled over at her, pointing up at the green dots in the sky.

Maggie turned to Rick, "That's Glenn. That's Glenn."

Rick seemed to nod in agreement, and Ace's head snapped back to the balloons in the sky, the smile on her face unmistakable as she blocked the sun from her eyes. It was him, Glenn was back and he was sending them a signal. He was alive.

And then something cracked above her head, and she turned to the tower above her instead, which had begun swaying like a tree in the wind. She stared up at it almost in disbelief, looking back over her shoulder to Isaac.

"MOVE!"

Martinez pushed her backwards, out of reach of the building and he dove in the other direction. As the tower came crashing down through the panel they'd been trying so desperately to keep up, it blocked them off from each other.

And walkers piled in through the gap.

This half of the season is almost over, thank God. Sorry it's been a while, hope you all enjoyed and lmk what you thought :)