It had been two weeks since the herd came to Alexandria, and the group had mainly focused on rebuilding the walls the Wolves broke. That's where Ace spent most of her time, with only one run thrown into the mix.

Carl was back on his feet, in a lot of pain, but alive. Ace spent the rest of her time keeping him company, bringing him things he needed and making sure he was steady on his feet and able to walk the stairs with only one eye. It was hard, and he had a few stumbles where he missed some details, but the house had all been working together to ensure everything was easier since that day.

Ace struggled to act like everything was okay, but she tried to keep her hopelessness confined to times when she wasn't hanging out with Carl. She didn't want it to seem like she was affected by this, but she just felt so guilty about the pain he was in every time she looked at him.

She had slept in one morning, left there by Rick. She would have joined the group at the wall sooner when she ran into Isaac in her kitchen with textbooks open in front of him on the island as he worked on something.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, wrapping her arms around him from behind and leaning her head on his shoulder.

"Everyone here went down to the wall," Isaac said. "It was quieter than my place."

"If I'd known you were here, I'd have come out," Ace took the seat beside him. "I need to go and help with the wall, move all that rubble from outside."

"It's fine, Rick said you were sleeping in," he brushed her off.

"I didn't mean to," she mumbled.

"You probably need it," Isaac said. "I can't imagine you've slept a lot after everything."

Ace clenched her teeth but nodded. "I'm just worried I'm going to hear him falling down the stairs or something."

"You don't have to worry about him so much, he's taking it easy since it happened. Slow," Isaac said about Carl, who despite the short time, had made leaps of progress. He wasn't entirely sure what they were doing to help him learn to measure distances properly,

"I know, I just . . . I wasn't even sure he was going to live," Ace muttered. "Now he is and it's going to be so hard for him."

"He's going to be fine," Isaac assured, wrapping an arm around her, pulling her closer to him and kissing her temple. "How about we do something later, just hang out or play a game? Just have a day in, just the two of us."

"That sounds good," she mumbled. "You can stay here until I get back if you want, use my room if you need more quiet."

"I think the quiet here is just fine," he grinned.

"Okay," she stood up to leave. "I'll see you in a few."

"Bye."

Ace left Isaac alone in the kitchen as she headed down to help the others who had already been working on the panel where the truck hit and the wall fell on top of it. They had been clearing the area for days, fixing the parts of the wall around that area so that when they put the new panels in it would be as good as new.

After a while, he started hearing noises inside the house. There were quiet thuds every so often, like something hitting the wall but never something else. It was too quiet and too often for it to be someone hitting the wall out of frustration, but eventually the sound was all he could think about. It was never even, always interrupting him at irregular intervals which he tried to find a pattern to, but one didn't exist. It had occupied his mind so much he was counting it with the clock.

When he thought it was over, they started up again. He stood up from where he was on the sofa and moved to the stairs. What was it? Who was even still in the house at this time? As far as he knew, everyone was out working on the new walls or looking for supplies to replace what they lost to the Wolves. Only one of the doors was open upstairs, and that's exactly where the noise was coming from. Isaac only worked out what it was when he saw it happening.

Carl was playing darts in his bedroom, using a board that Ace found in a house. He jumped a mile when he collected the darts that had landed in the wall because he didn't see Isaac until he turned to walk back to his spot. He tried to play it off like he hadn't been scared, but Isaac saw how the impaired peripheral vision had become.

"Ace isn't here," came his monotone voice.

"I know," Isaac replied neutrally. "She said I could wait here for her to come back?"

"So what are you doing up here?" Carl asked, visibly annoyed.

Isaac shrugged. "I was going to come to tell you to knock it the hell off, but that might be mean in this scenario."

Carl clenched his jaw. "You think?"

He shrugged in response, but Isaac shrugged, before remembering he couldn't see it if he was facing the board. "I could go with pick a beat and stick to it."

"I'm practising," he said matter-of-factly.

"I can tell," Isaac said, noticing the holes in the wall.

"I am," Carl insisted.

"I wasn't being sarcastic," Isaac said. "It's good, trying to re-train yourself so soon. I wouldn't have been doing this if I were in your shoes."

"I'm trying to beat Ace."

Sure, that was the reason. Isaac didn't say it aloud, because it was a little insensitive. Maybe he didn't want it pointed out that he needed to work on his vision, learning to live with it the way it was now. There were bound to be some drastic changes since he lost an eye.

But Isaac could notice something else in his tone—not the coldness he'd grown accustomed to from Carl, but a frustrated sadness when he said he was trying to beat Ace at darts. Which meant they had been doing this together a lot, just playing darts. Isaac wasn't sure if constantly losing at a game was going to help him. Sure, darts would mean he learns how to aim with his peripheral vision and depth perception altered, but it wouldn't help with his mental health.

"I always found that most of the group doesn't know how to help me, you know, with my OCD," Isaac leaned against the doorframe. "They try, you know. But they can't understand what the problem is because they don't have to deal with it themselves. That's what specialists were before."

Carl was quiet as he explained, glancing to the right when he realised that he couldn't see Isaac even if his left eye moved to the corner of his eye. It was better that way, he didn't want Isaac to know that he was taking in what he said.

Isaac, upon getting more response, shrugged. "I guess that's just me, nothing new. Alright, I'll leave you alone."

As he began to leave, Carl finally spoke up.

"They try," Carl admitted. "But . . . I guess things have just gone back to normal for them. I mean, I've tipped three glasses of water today, and I can't do this to save my life," he gestured to the dart board. "And on top of that . . . I don't feel right . . . I don't know. I'm just worried that if I go out there again then I'm going to get someone killed."

Isaac also felt that way, it was one of the reasons he opted out of helping with the herd. He'd psyched himself out and knew that if he'd been there when they started breaking through then he could have easily lost himself.

"Ace or dad have been trying to play darts with me, I guess she thinks if we keep playing it then I'll get better at aiming, but . . . she's just playing a game. It doesn't feel like she's trying to help me, which is stupid, because I know she is," he tried to explain in as awkward a way as mental health could be explained. "But I can see that Ace knows I'll get someone killed too, and that's why she's doing it, but she won't say anything. Michonne and Dad try other things, but it's all the same."

"You want something more direct?" Isaac asked

Carl shrugged. "I guess it's just hard to face it if no one else will . . . Never mind, that's stupid."

"No, it isn't," he shook his head. "I get it. Sometimes you've gotta hit it head on, actually, talk about this stuff for it to get better."

Isaac thought for a second as Carl walked forward to retrieve the darts again, throwing the three of them and having two sink into the wall while one hit the black border around the dart board. It was even frustrating to him that he was struggling to hit anything, so he couldn't imagine what Carl might have been feeling.

"I can help, with your aim or whatever," Isaac suggested.

"How?"

"I am very akin to therapy, I doubt physiotherapy is much further away from that?"

Carl squinted. "Physiotherapy?"

"Just learning to live with something that is never going to go back to the way it was, helps you relearn what distances look like since you lost your eye," Isaac said. "I did a bit of reading when everyone went through Pete's things to look for stuff to help you.£

Carl didn't seem to understand, and he thought about it for a little while, h

"Okay . . ." he didn't seem convinced.

Isaac leaned over to grab a football, before nodding his head to the door. "Come on. Wait, where's Judith?"

"With Carol, next door," Carl said.

"Okay, come on then."

Carl waited until they were outside before wondering what Isaac even planned to help him. How could he be helped? They couldn't get his eye back, and Carl didn't see a future where he'd be able to shoot again. But, for once, Isaac seemed confident that this could work, so he followed him into space in the back garden.

"What are we doing?"

"We're going to play catch," Isaac said, lifting a football (as Ace would call it.) "And we'll take a step back when you catch it. If one of us drops the ball then we'll come back to the middle and try again."

"This is just a game," Carl squinted at him.

In all fairness, it is exactly what he said he didn't want, that he wanted a direct method that was going to help.

"It's not," Isaac said. "It might seem that way, but we can't get your depth perception back to the way it was before—it's impossible. You need physiotherapy to reteach you to see distances in a way that only you can. It's not like having mental health problems where you keep a journal or talk about your feelings or something. If you need something like that for afterwards then I'm also kind of an expert on that, but you said your main issue was being worried that you'll get someone killed outside the walls, and the best way to stop you worrying about that is to make sure you don't. It'll build confidence that you know your limits with one eye."

He was hesitant, but eventually, he nodded. "Alright."

Isaac came to stand in front of him, throwing the football in his direction, and Carl caught it shakily against his chest.

"This is stupid," he said.

"It's therapy," Isaac said, before sadly adding. "It always feels stupid." There was a moment of silence before he shook it off and said, "Throw it back."

He did, and Isaac took a step back as he caught the ball. They threw it back and forth one more time before Carl threw the ball meaning to be towards Isaac which went far out to the side and he wasn't able to catch it in time.

"Sorry," Carl murmured. "That was my fault."

"Don't worry about it," Isaac said, stepping back into the middle. "That's what this is for, so you relearn this stuff."

He hummed, and caught the ball at a short distance again, still shaky. To take his mind off of it, "What did the people do with you to help?"

Isaac stopped as he caught the ball and he smirked. "The people?"

Carl thought for a second, before just admitting, "I don't really know what they're called?"

"Therapists? Psychiatrists?"

"What's the difference?"

"Psychiatrists are therapists that can give you medicine," Isaac explained. "Therapists aren't doctors."

"Which ones did you see?"

"All of the above."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"So they gave you medicine?"

"Yeah."

Carl went quiet for a second. "I don't really understand how it'd work."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you said your problems are in your mind. How do meds fix something that isn't . . ." He trailed off. "I don't know, I guess I'm taking meds to stop the pain."

The pain, not just to stop pain. The pain he was currently feeling.

Isaac nodded, seeing what he meant. Carl was only young when the world ended and he doubted psychology was a part of a child's curriculum. "There are these things your brain makes called neurochemicals which control the way we feel, and if someone has problems like mine then the brain is either making too much of one chemical or too little of another. The meds fix the balance so I feel better."

Carl nodded, starting to understand a little more. "Did they help?"

"A little, I was taking them when everything went to hell and then we couldn't get anymore and everything got a lot worse for a while, and I felt sick and agitated. Once that got better, mom and I worked on re-trying the things I did in therapy but without the meds," Isaac said.

"Sounds rough," Carl admitted.

"Yeah, well," he shrugged. "Learning to live with our kinds of problems takes time. I always think that if I get dirty fighting something then I'll freeze up and get someone killed . . . I guess we're kind of similar in that way."

The younger boy shrugged. "Guess we are."

"I also worry about getting myself killed," Isaac said. "I mean, if I get bit, I'm ending it. No goodbyes or anything, I'll be too busy hyperventilating about whatever it is in my blood. And it saves anyone else from doing it . . . Sorry, that was a little dark."

"No, I mean . . . I don't think I'd want anyone else to do it," Carl said. "But I'd probably stick around for a little while to say my goodbyes."

"Yeah, well, Isaac rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, "You're a braver man than me."

Carl laughed and quickly stopped himself. He agreed, of course, that he was braver than Isaac, but it was rude to laugh at him when Isaac was trying to help him get better at all the things he used to be able to do. They went back to quietly throwing the ball.

They were six steps away before Carl next dropped it. "Almost, you're getting better."

"I know I said I wanted the help to be a little more direct, but . . . We can talk about other stuff," Carl said after a while.

"Didn't think you liked me enough for that," he joked, and Carl made a face. "Kidding, kinda. I know what you mean, it can get a little boring after a while." He paused to think of another topic of conversation. "Where do you go with Enid all the time?"

Carl's jaw set, and he missed catching the ball both due to his impairment and the surprise. "How do you know about that?"

"You aren't exactly subtle," Isaac shrugged. "I just notice things."

"You and Ace aren't subtle either," Carl shot back using Isaac's reasoning and he knelt to grab the ball.

"Yeah, but everyone knows about me and Ace," Isaac said, "even if you don't like me."

"So what? You told her? You told Ace," Carl snapped. "That means my dad knows, right?"

"I haven't told anyone," Isaac said. "What do I get out of that?"

He didn't seem convinced. "Why wouldn't you say anything?"

"All that does is worry Ace, which you don't care enough about because if you didn't want to worry her, then you wouldn't do it. It won't make you stop. And yeah, Ace would tell your dad, but he can't be here 24/7 to stop you and then the next big thing will come around and distract them from you so you get free rein again," Isaac shrugged out of boredom. "Nothing would change." There was a pause as he took a step back, "Besides, I've known for so long now that it kind of breaks a deal I made with Ace where we promised to keep each other in the loop."

"So you're hiding things from my sister when you made her agree not to hide things?" Carl tried to act annoyed.

"I make myself feel better because it isn't my secret to share," Isaac said.

There was a moment of silence as the anger in Carl subsided when he realised that Isaac wasn't working against him or trying to get him in trouble. Because Isaac knew that was just it, all that would happen is that Carl would be in trouble for a while, until they got distracted with something else.

But one thing did annoy him, the fact that he thought Carl didn't care about how this would affect Ace. "I don't want to worry her."

"Well if she finds out, it will."

"If I stop, then Enid goes out there on her own and something could happen," Carl tried to justify his decision, unsure why he needed the approval of Isaac—probably because he was the only one that knew.

"You were worried that something could happen if you left," Isaac reminded him. "That's why we're doing this," he gestured between them with the ball in his hand.

"You don't get it."

"You act like me and Ace didn't sneak out of the prison when we met," Isaac feigned being hurt. "Besides, I know what people are willing to do for girls they like."

Carl glared at him. "Shut up."

Isaac smirked. "You're blushing."

"This isn't how you get me to like you," he straightened up. "What happened to doing anything for a girl?"

"You're the younger brother, I don't need your approval," he grinned, something which faded from his face as he said quieter, "It's your dad that's going to be a bitch to win over."

Carl smiled when he realised he was right, and he was going to have fun watching Isaac try to get on Rick's good side. Isaac squinted one eye to see where he was throwing the ball through the sun, and couldn't help but return the knowing smile.

Martinez was taking watch at the broken panels in the wall when she arrived, being the only one there. She glanced around for some of the others, but before she could even ask the question, Martinez gave her a grin that said he was going to try and stir shit up.

"Have a nice sleep?"

She rolled her eyes. "Funny."

"I like to think so," he agreed.

"I never get to sleep in lately, sue me."

Martinez shrugged and said, "No lawyers."

"Represent yourself," she answered simply.

"Against you? No way." He scoffed and turned back to look out for more walkers.

Again, Ace wondered about where everyone else was, and she glanced around to find them, but everyone who had been helping to move the rubble was gone. Most of the remnants of the tower had been moved enough now that they could get the walls up, and she thought the builders were meant to fetch some of the supplies the day before.

"Are we getting the panels up today?" Ace asked finally.

"God I hope so," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm sick of the night shift straight into the day shift."

She knew what he was talking about, someone had to be on watch to kill any walkers that wandered up to the walls and then when morning rolled around, they had to try and clear the rubble from where they needed the wall built. "Yeah, I had that a few days ago."

"Just waiting on Abraham to show up with the stuff we need to get construction on the go," Martinez explained. "They were gonna do it yesterday but everyone was exhausted and Rick told them to wait it out and go today instead. That wasn't long after you left."

"Yeah?" She questioned uselessly.

Of course, that was what happened.

They waited in silence for a while. She would have asked when they left, but it didn't matter—Isaac was working back at the house and she'd just be bothering him before she came back to work when the construction crew showed up.

"How are you?" Martinez asked after a while, in the way people often spoke to her when bad things happened.

"Fine."

He raised a brow. "You sure?"

"Great."

"See, that's a different answer," he tried to joke with her.

"Yes it is," she responded blandly.

Okay, wow, she thought. I'd love to stop being a bitch right about now. She shook her head and turned to face the hole in the fence again. Just lately, any time someone annoyed her or she got a little down it just lasted as long as it could without making her want to end it all. It was probably one of the many reasons Martinez knew she was lying, besides the fact that she hadn't been okay since he met her.

"How's Carl been doing?" He tried again.

Ace shrugged. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" He repeated slowly.

"Really depends on what you're asking," she clarified. "He's been clumsier than he was before, but he doesn't act like anything is all that wrong."

"I know a kid who does that," he said.

"Thanks."

Martinez grinned, "You gonna argue with me?"

"Just . . . thanks."

Still, she knew what he was saying—she did the same thing. But what she meant was that she was worse at it than Carl seemed to be, because unless he was incredibly good at hiding that he was struggling aside from the physical decline since he lost his eye, he wasn't that bad.

"He seems down," she tried explaining again, "but I'm not surprised. He almost fucking died . . . I'm shocked he didn't," Ace shrugged, leaning against the metal pillar that the panels would attach to eventually. "Hell, I'm shocked we didn't die running out into the herd."

Martinez raised a brow. "Then why run out?"

"Didn't feel like I had much to lose," she shrugged.

"That's not how I deal with things that scare me."

"I thought Rick was running out because he was losing it like he did at the prison," she clamped her mouth shut. "Shit, fuck. Forget I said anything."

"I've seen that man lose it, it's not exactly a secret," Martinez reminded her.

"It's not my place to bring up stuff like that," she waved him off. "I just thought it was happening again and he was running out because he thought Carl was going to die too, and I wanted to make sure nothing happened to him, but he was okay. He seemed like he knew Carl was going to live and he was so hopeful that he just started cutting down a fucking herd."

With the way she was feeling that night, maybe she should have just stayed in the infirmary with Carl rather than actively trying to get herself killed. Then again, that didn't seem like a viable option for her either.

"It was a weird day, man," she finished.

"Yeah, it's lucky that Wolf didn't take Denise outside the walls," Martinez said. "He was trying."

"Preferred not knowing that one," Ace mumbled.

She'd heard snippets that Morgan had kept one of the Wolves inside the walls because he couldn't kill him and then got Denise involved to cure an infection. He'd gotten free when everything went to shit and when Martinez and the others found Morgan and Carol unconscious, the Wolf was leaving with Denise. Carol and Morgan fighting about whether or not to kill someone became the B plot quickly after that.

But if the Wolf had gotten away then Denise never would have been able to save Carl.

Luckily, before Martinez could start up that conversation again, there was the sound of approaching vehicles down the road from them. Instead of waiting for someone to open the gate, Abraham turned down and drove up to them between the houses and the wall that was still intact.

Martinez rolled his eyes.

"Let's get this wall up," Ace said. "Get you to bed."

That cheered him up, "Hell yeah."

Before Ace could walk away to help unload the vehicles, someone called her name from behind her. Glenn was walking over like he was on a mission, a clear goal showing in each of his steps. She straightened up to wait for him,

"I wanted to talk to Ace, privately," he added at the end.

Martinez nodded, waving her off. "No problem."

Ace followed Glenn away from the gap in the wall.

He stopped them further away from the wall where Ace had been talking to Martinez already. She was a little confused, she doubted there was much he could talk about with her that he didn't want Martinez to know unless he was having second thoughts about trusting him.

Ace hoped not, she'd just gotten them to be able to sit together in a room (not that she had anything to do with that achievement.)

"What is it?" She asked, a little worriedly.

"Maggie is pregnant," he said.

Apparently, she had a right to be worried.

Ace froze, her eyes fixed on Glenn. Pregnant? She knew she should have at least some kind of reaction but she didn't know what she thought of it. They lost Lori because she died in childbirth, and they were not much better off with medical supplies now than they were at the prison. "Oh, um, okay."

"Okay?" Glenn raised a brow.

"I just don't know what to say." Ace sighed, realising how bad that sounded in her accent. "It's just a lot, you know?"

"I know, but we thought about it," he argued, sitting down on the curb in the sun.

Of course they had, she realised. Glenn and Maggie had access to condoms, the same as the rest of them. If they were going to do this it was because they had chosen together not to use one, not because they had forgotten or something.

"Yeah, I guessed, I just . . . Sorry, I know this wasn't the reaction you wanted," she said, sitting on the curb beside him. "I should be happier about it, but it's hard not to worry after—" Ace stopped herself before she could say any more stupid things.

"That isn't for you to worry about," he assured her. "I know it's a lot to spring on someone."

It was a lot, especially since they all lost Lori on that day the prisoners attacked. But now, they were low on food, low on medicine. They'd have to start gathering formula again just in case something happened to—

Ace stopped herself from thinking that would happen. Maggie was not going to die. Sure, women died in childbirth before, but not all of them. There was a time before doctors and civilisation when women had given birth or the species would have died. They could prepare, find food, find medicine, and do whatever they needed to make sure Maggie was safe when it happened.

Ace turned her head to look at him. "It's good."

"Yeah?" Glenn smiled.

"Yeah."

Bit of a shorter one, but I do have some good stuff coming up soon. I'm trying to get some of these out because I have a TikTok to post but only once we get to the Jesus part of the story.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed and lmk what you thought :)