It could have been easily one or two hours until Daryl finally calmed down. I had stopped hearing his sobs for a while and his body wasn't shaking anymore. It had stopped maybe fifteen or twenty minutes ago but I was unable to just let go of him until making sure he wouldn't break down again.

I slowly loosened my grip around him, testing how he would react. I looked down at him and my heart broke even more. I used my shirt to dry his face from all the tears, he didn't complain or refuse, he just allowed me to do so. I cupped his face then and quickly pecked his lip.

"I don't wanna go back yet," Daryl told me in a raspy voice.

I nodded at him, knowing he knew very well how he looked and the others would be able to tell he had cried.

"We don't have to go back yet," I assured him. "But we should get going through the woods before they leave us too way behind."

Daryl nodded at me, he took a deep breath as I stood up. I grabbed both his hands and pulled him up to his feet. Once up, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and rested them there. I instinctively wrapped my own arms around his torso. He didn't say any words but I knew he wanted to thank me.

I offered him a small smile as I nodded at him to let him know I knew. I moved my hands to his face and caressed his cheeks, looking into his bloodshot eyes the entire time. No more tears came out of them, but they still looked watery.

We eventually broke away from each other but I made sure to hold his left hand which was the one he hadn't burnt with the cigarette, and intertwined our fingers and I didn't let go at all on our way back to the others.

We walked in the woods for maybe thirty or forty minutes until we decided to go out onto the road. Twenty or twenty-five minutes later, still holding hands, we saw the group had stopped and they had made some sort of circle around something. Rick approached us and showed us a piece of paper, which Daryl took into his hand. It read "FROM A FRIEND".

Then we saw what was in the middle of the circle. It was bottles of water of different sizes, ten small bottles and four big containers with about one gallon of water each. Daryl got all uneasy then, he let go of my hand and took off his crossbow belt, instead he held it in his hand and paced, looking to the woods.

"What else are we gonna do?" Tara asked.

"Not this," Rick said. "We don't know who left it."

"If that's a trap, we already happen to be in it," Eugene said. "But I, for one, would like to think it is indeed from a friend."

"What if it isn't? They put something in it?" Carol commented.

"Why would someone do that, though?" I found myself asking as I looked from my family to the water.

There was one time I walked into a bakery in New York, I was meeting someone there, I stared at the desserts that were behind a glass. My mouth melted and I wanted one so badly but I didn't have enough money to buy one. So, all I did was stare. This situation felt so familiar to that, except this time money wasn't what was stopping me. It seemed whatever was stopping me, wasn't stopping Eugene, who leaped forward and took one of the small bottles.

"What are you doing, dude?" Tara asked.

"Quality assurance."

Eugene brought it to his lips but Abraham slapped it out of his hand before he could take a sip, but he was so close that his face and part of his chest were all wet. Eugene certainly wanted to attack Abraham.

"We can't," Rick exclaimed sternly and Eugene just glared at Rick. It was probably the first time I had seen Eugene upset.

But only seconds later we heard something so sweet to our ears that we forgot the issue at hand, we heard thundering. We looked up at the cloudy sky, probably silently praying for rain. And maybe another four or six seconds later I felt the first drop on my face. And then I felt a second and a third one. And then it just started to rain heavily. I couldn't even describe how that first drop felt, not only physical but also emotionally. It gave me back some hope.

I stood there dumbfounded, trying to process it had actually started raining. The others took a moment too, neither of us could believe it. After days of waiting for a miracle, it finally happened. I smiled as I looked up, feeling how refreshing it was.

I turned to look at Daryl, he wasn't smiling but he looked so relieved and like some weight had been taken off of him. I got closer to him and shockingly he went and kissed me as he cupped my face and we kissed under the rain, it was the first time we did that. When we broke the kiss, we smiled and then turned to look to the sky with our mouths opened to try to drink some water,

People were laughing, some were cheering. Gabriel knelt down and asked God for forgiveness for doubting him. Rosita and Tara lay down on the ground, laughing. However, two people still seemed quite unimpressed. It was Sasha and Maggie, who weren't even attempting to drink some water. And Judith started to cry, Carl used his sheriff hat to cover her from the rain.

"Everybody get the bags! Anything you can find!" Rick exclaimed. "Come on!"

We opened the plastic bags, and we set our almost empty bottles of water on the ground, hoping they would fill up a bit more. We stayed there for a couple of minutes and then we looked behind us, and we saw a very dark grey cloud, it was darker than the one above us and ahead of us. And we realised this wasn't just rain, this was a big storm and it would be raining for quite a while.

"Let's keep moving!" Rick said.

"There's a barn!" Daryl exclaimed.

"Where?" Rick asked.

So, we got our bottles of water, closed them quickly and got all our stuff and quickly followed Daryl to where we had been only one hour and a half ago or so. I hadn't paid attention to the barn as if my mind chose to ignore it. We reached the barn forty minutes later as we rushed to it. We didn't run but we half walked fast and half jogged.

Rick was the first to walk inside, with a flashlight and his gun up. Followed by Carol, Abraham, Glenn and Maggie. The rest of us stayed outside under the heavy rain while they checked the place. There was a single walker inside, which Maggie killed, but everything else was clear.

The rest of us walked in and since the storm seemed like it wasn't going to end soon, we looked for a place in the barn and got comfortable.

We managed to build a fire with a couple of sticks that weren't wet but it was quite small. Glenn, Carol, Michonne, Rick, Daryl and I were sitting around it, while the others were just sitting quite far and some others were sleeping. Like Carl, who had fallen asleep in between Rick and I, he had Judith in his arms, who was also sleeping.

"He's gonna be okay," Carol mentioned as she noticed Rick was staring at him. "He bounces back more than any of us do."

"I used to feel sorry for kids that have to grow up now. In this," Rick muttered as he went from looking at the fire to me and then Daryl. I looked away, feeling uncomfortable. Out of us, only Michonne and Glenn didn't know what I had gone through. Daryl looked down at the ground, he wasn't uncomfortable like me, but it seemed like his sadness came back. "But I think I got it wrong. Growing up is getting used to the world. This is easier for them."

I wasn't sure why he was saying that, if it was supposed to be for me and Daryl. Or he said it to convince himself Carl was going to be alright. My mother and Rick knew I believed this wasn't a reality where children could live. Lizzie couldn't even grasp the reality, maybe it was easier for Judith and for everyone who wasn't old enough to remember the world before, but only if they were protected and could manage to grow up. Judith was still only a baby.

"This isn't the world," Michonne said and for some reason I was sure she meant this specific moment, barely surviving and going on fumes, not how the world changed. "This isn't it."

"It might be. It might," Glenn repeated, probably to convince himself.

"That's giving up," Michonne told him.

"It's reality," Glenn said.

"Until we see otherwise, this is what we have to live with," Rick said.

Then Rick started to tell a story when he was a kid, that his grandfather went to war and he asked him things, it was something concerning Germans.

"And then after a few years of pretending he was dead... he made it out alive," Rick told us. "That's the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do and then we get to live. But no matter what we find in DC, I know we'll be okay. Because this is how we survive. We tell ourselves... that we are the walking dead."

"We ain't them," Daryl muttered. It was the first thing he had said all evening. I turned to look at him and I could see how his eyes shined a bit with fresh tears, but at least I could see some hope back.

"We're not them. Hey!" Rick told him, assuring him. Knowing that what he had said had touched a nerve. Daryl looked at him. "We're not."

"We ain't them," Daryl repeated as he stood up. He grabbed his crossbow and walked away from us, this time I didn't follow him.

"He's just very sensible right now," I commented in a low voice to Rick.

"All good?" Rick asked me and I only looked down at the fire.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I hope so."

No one really said anything else for a long time. I stood up and went to Daryl who was guarding the doors of the barn, which we had chained together because the wind kept opening them up and in case any walker or human tried to get in as well.

"Want to go to sleep?" I asked him. He turned to look at me and shook his head at me.

"I'm going to keep guard," he told me.

"Do you want me to stay with you?"

"Nah, you need to rest," Daryl said as he shook his head at me. "Cecilia?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about calling you stupid. I was just pissed… not at you but at everything," Daryl muttered. "I know you were extremely weak before and I didn't want you fainting or just dropping dead. I need you strong, Ces."

"Are you less pissed now?"

"Yeah, a little bit," he admitted. "Thanks for that, by the way."

"Hey, there's nothing to thank me for. You are here for me and I'm here for you, no matter what," I told him. "And I was weak before because I basically bled out for like two weeks straight, maybe more. And I was in pain every single day for that amount of time. Dealing with pain can be exhausting. Whoa, hey, hey, don't cry!" I exclaimed as I approached him quickly and put my hands over his forearms. "Hey, what's up? I didn't say it to hurt you, just to assure you there was a reason to be weak before, I'm okay now. I won't pass out or anything. I recovered."

"I wasn't even there to help you."

"There wasn't anything you could have done," I assured him. "I just needed to wait for that to be over. Having you there wouldn't have made it less painful or made it faster."

"I'm sorry," he said to me. I looked up from his hands to his eyes and I saw fresh tears. I shook my head at him, trying to be strong.

"You didn't do anything wrong," I said as I brought his hands to my lips and kissed his knuckles softly.

"Well, I got you pregnant. I was careless," Daryl exclaimed. I didn't care if the others could hear as Daryl's voice wasn't loud enough and the storm was way too strong, making a lot of noise, even I had a hard time hearing Daryl.

"We," I told him. "We were careless. Is that why you are so… so like this? Is this what made you do that to your hand? And what happened earlier?"

"Partly," he admitted. "It's just crap that accumulated, I guess. It doesn't matter anyway. You said we were going to turn the page after that last conversation so that's what we did. So it's alright."

"What?" I asked perplexed. "No! I didn't mean it like that. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not now," Daryl told me as he looked around the room. Truth was that no one would hear us but it would feel weird.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I said that because I wanted to get out everything I needed to tell you and I didn't want to dwell on it and repeat it because… Because it's really hurtful for me to talk about it and I assumed that we could leave that in the past. I wanted to leave it in the past because I don't want to reopen that wound over and over again but if there are unsaid things, if you want to talk about it, we can. I didn't mean to make it seem like we could never open that chapter again, as if it was a forbidden topic," I told him. "Especially if there is something you need to tell me, something that is hurting you. I'm so sorry, Daryl. I was only thinking about me. About my own pain, assuming you had dealt with yours already."

"I thought I had," Daryl admitted. "Turns out I really didn't. I just hid it so we could deal with your pain."

I looked down at the ground as I felt the first tear rolling down my face. I shook my head as I felt like the worst human being ever. I even heard the words Beth said to me, 'You don't deserve him.'

"This isn't your fault," he told me as if he could read my mind. "You sank. You couldn't even admit it happened, how would you look after me being like that? I can't even imagine what you went through. You said you were in pain for two weeks straight. Agonising pain. And on top of that you were terrified. You couldn't even tell them at first and you said you were worried because Rick was unconscious and it wasn't like you could have relied on Carl."

"That's not an excuse to neglect you," I said as I just refused to look at him.

"Stop. This is my own fault. I just kept pushing it aside. I thought I had really dealt with it. I told RIck, I told your mum. I thought sharing with them would help me cope with it. And it helped back then. I thought I was moving on. I think Tyreese's death just sort of triggered something. Made it all worse. I can't even look at Judith now."

"Why?" I asked him. I remembered when I couldn't look at her. I would get sad knowing what I lost and also would get very upset because it just wasn't fair. It had gotten better but it was still hard to be close to her, especially when I heard her giggle or when I saw Rick giving her a kiss.

"This sounds so stupid," Daryl said as he jerked his hands away from mine and turned around so now his back was facing me. "But when I look at her, I get angry. I get jealous…of Rick."

"Why?"

"I hate this feeling. I look at him, holding her and… I want that," he admitted it and I heard him sob once again. "I want my own baby. I was actually thinking the other day that if nothing had happened, you'd be showing right now. I'm not sure how far along you were but it's been three maybe four weeks since Atlanta. And we were separated after the prison for at least a month and then the whole Terminus thing. I would guess you'd be at least three months pregnant right now and thinking of how you'd be looking right now, well, that didn't really help. It just broke me more."

"Do you want a baby?" I found myself asking. I heard him take a deep breath but he said nothing. "Like try for another one?"

"A part of me obviously wants the one we lost. I want her here. I want to hold her, to see her face. But I guess the answer is yes, I would like that," Daryl said, shocking me completely. "I didn't even know I wanted that until I just started thinking about that nonsense. Imaging you… pregnant. How silly does that sound? It doesn't matter what I want. We can't."

"Why not?" I asked and Daryl turned around, I could see new tears on his face.

"Isn't it obvious? Besides the fact that nothing good ever happens to me."

"Don't say that!" I said angrily. "Stop cursing yourself."

"Well, look where we are. We are slowly dying out here and with you… like that. It would have been even worse. You didn't even want to eat! We finally found food and you rejected it," he told me and I felt as if my parents were scolding me. I just looked down at the ground. "Your life would be in even more danger. And I would certainly die without you."

"Yeah it would be worse and I won't deny that. But Lori made it work, didn't she?" I told him. "And you were like this, you guys didn't have a place to stay and it was winter."

"Sometimes I think winter is better than this horrible weather," Daryl said. "Weren't you the one that told me that Lori didn't make it? That I was being naive for believing we could make it work like Rick does with Judith and Carl? Why are you suddenly so positive about it? Can't you see we are perishing?"

"I just don't see it, I feel it too," I admitted and then shrugged at him as I looked him in the eye. "Call me crazy, I don't know, but ever since Gabriel prayed for me all the worry, all the pain, or most of it, is gone. The weight I've been carrying ever since Sean was lifted from me. I'm not saying I think everything is perfect but I feel so much better. The nightmares stopped and all the negative thoughts I had, well, some are still there, but the positive ones are stronger than them. And I think you gave me time to grieve, I dealt with stuff, not in the best way but I did and I still do. But you haven't. You were worried about me so now it's your time to grieve."

"It hurt before, when you told me, it hurt after," Daryl told me. "But now, it just hurts way too much. I think you are right. The moment you said you were better, I let my guard down and I crashed. Everything came to me at the same time."

"I'm sorry for letting you carry all that weight for the two of us," I said as I shook my head. "I should have gotten my shit together way way earlier."

"If you had done that, you would have broken down at some point later. I'm sorry for pushing you away, I just don't know how to deal with this and whenever I saw you… I remembered. I imagined stuff and I didn't want that."

"I understand we need some time alone sometimes, but don't push me away," I begged him as I walked to him. "We are in this together, right?"

"Right," he mumbled and then pulled me into a hug.

"We can discuss that thing later if you really want it," I told him sincerely.

"I thought you never ever wanted to have kids," Daryl whispered as he broke the embrace a bit to look down at me and I shrugged at him.

"Going through what I went through softened me a bit, I guess," I admitted. "Made me feel things I thought I would never feel and it's not just about me, is it? If you really, really, really want it, we can consider it. I'm not one hundred percent against the idea, you know?"

"Alright," Daryl said and he actually smiled. "Let's find a place first and I would love to marry you before taking that sort of decision."

"I would love that too," I said and got on my tip toes and pecked his lips.

"Let's rest," Daryl said.

We sat against a wooden wall, we were facing the door. I eventually lay down and rested my head on Daryl's lap and as he played with my hair and rubbed my arm, I fell asleep.

Daryl's POV

I watched as Cecilia peacefully slept. I hadn't stopped playing with her curly long hair. I felt better but not like myself yet. She didn't even know all the reasons why I just broke down earlier. She knew part of it but I didn't want to share with everybody closeby and I didn't want to break down again.

I didn't even know if it would be fair on me to ask Cecilia for such a sacrifice. I still believed she was too young for her life to be changed in that way and it would be her the one going through a pregnancy, not me. Of course, I would be there for her a hundred and ten percent but I still considered it a bit selfish to even consider such a thing from her. Even in a normal world, I wouldn't be comfortable asking that of her knowing how she felt about it, even if she claims her mind has slightly changed.

My thoughts were interrupted by the doors swinging a bit open, if it wasn't for the chains they would be fully open by now. I laid Cecilia's head carefully on the ground and I stood up to check. As I pushed the doors closed, I saw a big herd of walkers, I stood in front of the doors, trying to keep them closed with my body but I was struggling only with the force of the wind.

Thankfully, Maggie saw me struggling and she rushed to help, she was trying to keep a door closed while I handled the other. By then, the walkers had reached the barn. Next, Sasha and Cecilia approached us. Sasha helped me with one door and Cecilia helped Maggie with the other.

Within seconds everyone woke up and rushed to the doors but the mud wasn't helping. We were slipping as we tried to use all our strength to keep those doors closed. As we struggled, I turned to look at Cecilia, she felt me staring at her so she turned to look at me. She was telling me with her eyes to keep going, that this wasn't it. I nodded at her.

I wasn't sure how long we had been there, one hour, maybe two, maybe not even twenty minutes, I really didn't know but it felt eternal. I felt like giving up but I couldn't do that. At some point there was no resistance on the other side of the doors. We stood there, just in case, not believing they had just gone but they really were.

Some time passed and tiredness got the best of us, one by one, we walked away from the door and just passed out. Cecilia and I lay down close to the door and at first I was cuddling her but then she turned around and she was the one who had me in her arms and that's how I fell asleep, little did I know that she stayed awake most of the night, watching over me and all of us.

When I woke up, Cecilia was up too. She smiled at me. I sat up and looked right into her eyes. Her pupils were dilated which made her eyes look only a bit darker but just as pretty. She pecked my lips before she told me to go with her outside. She stood up and offered me her hand, which I took.

We walked outside trying not to wake anybody else, and two things caught my attention. One, the beautiful sunrise that was just starting. Two, all the fallen trees and several walkers all around the place, either under trees or stabbed by branches so they couldn't move or they were just destroyed one way or another. There were parts and extremities all over the place and we actually saw one walker on a branch of a very tall tree that hadn't fallen, it was all the way up there.

We saw way too many walkers, it was a big herd and they would have easily killed us all but somehow we made it. It was crazy to think that a tornado happened and it was actually good, nothing happened, well, at least to the barn, because out here was a mess.

"We didn't die," Cecilia told me with a smile as she looked around the place. "Don't you think God is good? The tornado could have easily gone right to the barn but it didn't."

I wasn't sure what had gotten into her with God and praying but I hadn't seen so much life in those eyes for months. She hadn't been fully herself since the Sean incident even though she tried to make it seem like she was fine but now it seemed like the broken pieces had been fixed and I was all in for that.

I wasn't ready to tell Gabriel all about my life or read the bible or any of that but if she was this changed in a matter of a couple of days, then there must be something there.

"We get to start over," she told me as she looked down at a walker trapped under a tree and then at me. "We aren't dead."

"That could have been us," I whispered as I looked around me, at all those walkers.

"But it wasn't," she whispered back. "We got to wake up and see another sunrise. We are breathing and we will be alright."

The way she said it made me actually believe we were going to be just fine. I nodded at her and pulled her into my arms as we stared at the sunrise together. She wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her head against my chest and I felt right at home with her there. Something I hadn't felt in so long because of all the issues we had had. The invisible wall that was in between us had somehow fallen down.

"I love you," she whispered.

After a while we turned around and as we were walking back inside, we saw Maggie and Sasha walking out. They were just as shocked as us to see the destruction around us and finding out absolutely nothing happened to us.

When we went back inside, I grabbed my crossbow and started to check if everything was alright with it, once I finished I got Cecilia's to do the same to it. Other people were cleaning and checking their weapons too, many had woken up by then.

"Hey. Everyone…" Maggie exclaimed as she was opening the door of the barn. Maybe twenty to thirty minutes had passed since we saw her walking out of the barn. I didn't even look up at her. "This is Aaron."

As soon as I heard that, I stood up quickly. I had Cecilia's crossbow in my hands already so I just loaded that one as I walked to the entrance. Many others also got their guns ready, I could hear the clicks. I rushed to the entrance to check outside if there were other people around and then checked this dude if he had any weapon on him.

"We met him outside. He's by himself. We took his weapons and we took his gear," Maggie told us. Tara closed the doors behind me and chained them. The others kept pointing their guns at him.

"Hi." Judith started crying, probably feeling how tense the atmosphere was. Rick handed her to Carl, who took her away and tried to calm her down. "It's nice to meet you." He tried to shake Rick's hand but no one let him.

"There's something you need?" Rick asked.

"He has a camp, nearby," Sasha said. "He wants us to audition for membership."

"What's that even supposed to mean?" Cecilia asked.

"I wish there was another word. Audition makes it sound like we're some kind of a dance troupe. That's only on Friday nights." He tried to joke but not one laughed so he only shook his head. "Um, and it's not a camp. It's a community. I think you all would make valuable additions. But it's not my call. My job is to convince you all to follow me back home." We only turned to quickly look at each other. "I know. If I were you, I wouldn't go either. Not until I knew exactly what I was getting into. Sasha, can you hand Rick my pack?"

Sasha grabbed the backpack and she took it to Rick. The atmosphere was so tense. Everyone kept looking from the backpack to this stranger and back to the backpack.

"Front pocket, there's an envelope. There's no way I could convince you to come with me just by talking about our community. That's why I brought those," this dude said as Rick got an envelope out. "I apologise in advance for the picture quality. We just found an old camera store last…"

"Nobody gives a shit," I muttered.

"You're absolutely one hundred percent right," he said as he turned to face me. Rick was taking the pictures out of the envelope by then. "That's the first picture I wanted to show you because nothing I say about our community will matter unless you know you'll be safe. If you join us, you will be." The guy went on rambling about stuff about their community. "In fact, there's only one resource more critical to our community's survival. The people. Together we're strong. You can make us even stronger."

Everyone seemed to be tempted by what this guy was saying, even without seeing the pictures. Rick, stood up from his kneeling position and just turned to look at Michonne quickly, silently asking her her opinion, which I found rather odd but whatever.

"Our community was first construc…" Rick had walked towards the guy as he kept talking and just punched him right in the face. Maggie and Glenn rushed to him and on Rick's orders they tied his hands behind his back.

"So we're clear, that look wasn't a "let's attack that man" look. It was a "he seems like an okay guy to me" look," Michonne exclaimed.

Rick just got super paranoid after that. I don't blame him. He ordered us to keep watch on different spots, started giving us orders and basically told us his group was coming for us. Tara, Rosita, Cecilia, Carl, Abraham and Joshua stood on different spots around the barn to look outside.

"Me and Sasha, we didn't see him. If he had wanted to hurt us, he could've," Maggie told Rick. She and Michonne seemed to be okay about this guy. Even Sasha was.

None of the people on watch had spotted anything weird, Carl started looking inside his bag. The guy woke up and Rick made Michonne and Maggie sit him up. He wasn't even angry about the punch, he didn't seem scared about being tied up. He actually said he understood. I would be scared if a group of about twenty people had me tied up.

"How many of your people are out there? You have a flare gun. You have it to signal your people. How many of them are there?" Rick asked and the guy just sighed.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes, it does."

"I mean, of course, it matters how many people are actually out there, but does it matter how many people I tell you are out there? Because I'm pretty sure no matter what number I say... eight, thirty-two, four hundred forty-four, zero... No matter what I say, you're not going to trust me."

"Well, it's hard to trust anyone who smiles after getting punched in the face."

"How about a guy who leaves bottles of water for you on the road?" Rick and I just just glanced at each other and then at the two bottles of water we had on a wooden table.

"How long you people been following us?" I asked.

"Long enough to see that you practically ignore a pack of roamers on your trail. Long enough to see that despite a lack of food and water, you never turned on each other. You're survivors and you're people. Like I said, and I hope you won't punch me for saying it again, that is the most important resource in the world."

"How many others are out there?"

"One." Rick just shook his head without looking away from him. "I knew you wouldn't believe me. If it's not words, if it's not pictures, what would it take to convince you that this is for real? What if I drove you to the community? All of you? We leave now, we'll get there by lunch."

Then he told us he had two cars, his friend drove the other vehicle and we all could fit. Told us where the cars were, which was a bit far, he told us it was because of the storm.

"I'll check out the cars," Michonned exclaimed.

"There aren't any cars," Rick said, not to convince Michonne but to convince himself.

"There's only one way to find out. You know what you know and you're sure of it, but I'm not," Michonne said.

"Me neither," Maggie said.

"Your way is dangerous, mine isn't." Rick didn't seem happy at all. He actually looked quite hurt we were trusting this guy.

"Passing up someplace where we can live? Where Judith can live? That's pretty dangerous."

Michonne, Maggie and Glenn wanted to check. Rick ordered Abraham and Rosita to go with them. Told them they got sixty minutes or we would go for them. Then once those five were out, he ordered the rest of us to go out and be on watch on pairs on different spots. We all nodded and headed out, of course that Cecilia was with me.

"What do you think about this?" I asked her, she only shrugged at me. "Do you feel like we should trust this dude?"

"I mean, I've got bad experiences with 'communities', you know?" she muttered as she did air quotes. "Like, Woodbury seemed all fine and normal but you could feel there was something not right. And then Terminus, who seemed all welcoming and helpful, they just wanted to eat us, which is so creepy, even now it still gives me chills. So, I don't know."

"What?"

"People are hard to trust, even before. Besides, if it's for real, wouldn't it be weird though? Like being the new kid at another school. It has been only us for so long and it was us who took people in, the ones who helped people. Not the ones who needed help, who needed a place to live."

"I really don't think that we will even go, even if it exists," I told her. "Rick doesn't like it."

"What other options do we have, though? We were dying the day before. We aren't even close to Washington and I have no clue why we are even going there. I don't know. It just feels weird."

"Just because we need some help right now, as you said, doesn't mean we are weak. It doesn't mean you are weak," I told her, knowing how she was feeling.

"I feel so helpless," she admitted. "It's so hard to have everything, to be basically at the top. The prison wasn't perfect but we really had a good thing and we lost it and now we are here, every time closer to dying. Either out of thirst, weakness, the heat, hunger."

"We'll bounce back," I told her as I held her hand and gave it a squeeze. "You'll see. All of this will be over soon."

"I hope so…" she whispered.