[Bas] Boxing Day

You could not just put three dozen people on a bus and drive them across walker-infested territory to a place not ready to receive them. The others had to learn what was going on and what Rick intended and someone had to assure the Woodburyians that where they were going was safe. That meant Rick and Milton got to have a road trip together. Martinez argued that he should be the one to go but Milton successfully argued that with Rick's 'band of muscle' here, the people needed him here for reassurance. I did not qualify as 'muscle' but the rest of the group had a distinctly piratical look to them. And besides; Milton had never been to the prison. He needed to see it for himself.

Rick formally left Andrea in charge. It made me think about how the group dynamics had shifted since Merle had joined us; in the past he would have put Daryl in charge. But Daryl had trouble keeping his big brother in line, while Andrea had no problem with it; especially with Michonne glowering at her side. Sasha and I looked very meek compared to those four scowlers.

I would have loved to have seen Rick and Milton in the car together after what I had seen the last time they had interacted. Meanwhile, I got to witness Martinez trying to organise an evacuation and really struggling to control his temper as people asked him daft questions and did stupid things like packing up every last one of their possessions. Andrea ended up stepping in before Martinez lost all patience. She could be diplomatic when she needed to be, and having Michonne glaring beside her made people realise that they did not need to pack their hair dryer…

They dealt with this on the inside along with the withdrawal into Woodbury's heart, and the rest of us dealt with the outside. Even though the horde had been drawn off, there were still plenty of stragglers who were drawn to the noise and light in town and they had to be dealt with. Arriving in small numbers as they did meant that they could be picked off hand to hand. If they were ignored and allowed to congregate at the walls, they would have been far more difficult to deal with. It meant after Rick and Milton left; we had to defend the area outside the gates for hours. Us and Woodbury's fighters; a semi-circle of nearly two dozen people brawling in the dark and the muck amongst the lightly falling snow. It went on for hours. And for at least another two hours after Andrea and Martinez joined us. The meal we had eaten earlier made it all possible.

But when the dead finally stopped coming, it was two dozen, tired and cold people who shambled in through the gates and headed for bed. Martinez paused for a moment before offering to find us somewhere to sleep that was not another hard floor.

"How about I show you where I sleep?" Haley asked me, and it sounded so innocuous but despite my lack of experience, even I understood there was a deeper meaning there. And I hesitated. I hesitated for just a moment and that was long enough for Andrea to get annoyed.

"Go! You idiot!"

I meekly followed Haley and did my best to pretend that I did not see the knowing grins on Merle and Sasha. Andrea, Martinez and Michonne were disapproving. Daryl… Daryl was Daryl.

Haley lived in a small room above what had been a hardware store on main street. I did not know how Woodbury assigned space but I guessed her age was the reason she had a small room. But then, Merle's room had not been impressive. It was a bedroom, not an apartment. It was nicer than the apartment I had lived in. And better than my cell.

"Are you freaking out?" She asked with some of her former cockiness. "First time in a girl's bedroom?" She grinned, and then faltered. "Oh God, are you okay?"

It had hit me hard, but not for the reason she suspected. "I used to rob homes." I said. "I've been in a lot of girls' bedrooms. Some nice jewellery in girls' bedrooms…" It was a dark thing to say to her but she had to know a few details about my past. "I knew one guy who taught me to pick locks, and he turned into an addict… But I thought I still needed an accomplice, so I tried out… Some guy… And I found him in a girl's bedroom…" I shifted uncomfortably. "He was… Well, being a creep."

Haley took a step closer to me. "Creepy enough for you to look like you were seeing a ghost?"

"He was sniffing dirty underwear." I said and she closed her eyes and pulled the appropriately disgusted expression. "I didn't work with him again. …I didn't go into a girl's bedroom for several months… I don't know why I'm telling you this."

She took another step, closing the space between us and put her hands on my hips. "Because when I asked you here, you started panicking about what I meant. So, you decided to sabotage yourself."

"Is it that obvious?"

Haley smiled. "You're new to this, so you don't know how normal your little freak-outs are." She clapped her hands on my hips, hard, and then turned away to sit on her bed. "We've kissed once. Do you really think I would bring you up here for sex?"

"I don't know what to think." I admitted in a less than manly tone. Borderline hysterical might have been the best way to describe it. "But, yesterday…"

She patted the space beside her and this simple invitation I could deal with. "Yesterday we were just sleeping." She said as I sat down.

"Just sleeping."

"Day before that you kissed my hair."

"Hair."

"Stop that."

"Sorry."

"We skipped a whole lot." She said. "I kissed you. We didn't see each other for months… Then suddenly you were… Taking care of me… We barely know each other but we're acting like we've dated for years." She pulled a face. "There's a lot of that now."

It made me think of Glenn and Maggie. They had known each other a matter of weeks when we had been driven off Hershel's farm and the two of them had been thrust into a, literally, much closer relationship. It had not been much of an intimate relationship given how the group had been forced to share close quarters all the time, or at least, not sexually intimate. They had spent almost all downtime in each other's arms and I knew now how pleasant that was.

"Do you want to know why you're here?" She asked. "Because I am shit-scared of sleeping alone again."

"Did you really sleep last night? Or the night before?"

"Yes." She declared flatly and I was startled. She gave me a sheepish look and shrugged before looking away and Beth had an identical act whenever Carl's crush on her had been mentioned.

"I didn't." I admitted. "I wish I could say it was the thousands of walking corpses wandering around outside and moaning all night long… Or then sleeping around a bunch of strangers… And some of them might have shot at me…"

"But it was just being with little me." She leaned on my shoulder, twisting so she could look at me in the most deliberately cutesy manner possible. She smiled and then sat up. "That helps."

"…Good."

"Why are you so nervous now?"

"Listen."

Haley listened and her eyes flicked back and forth almost comically. "…What?"

"Exactly. There's nothing to hear. No horde of walkers. No distractions. Just you and me. …And you locked the door."

"Just you and me." She repeated, grinning slyly. "And do you know what I want to do now?" She bit her lip and I relaxed because even I could tell she was playing. "I want to go to bed; I'm wiped out!" She dramatically flumped back. "Take your pants off."

I could not help but snort at this. "Yes, ma'am." It was necessary though considering how filthy they were. We could not get into an actual bed in our clothes. After wearing coats covered in gore, getting down to just t-shirts was soothing.

Now that I had a read on her, I relaxed even as I got into bed with her and she turned the light off. But not quite enough. "Are you freaking out again?" She asked.

"No. I just… I haven't slept in a proper bed for a long time." I admitted. "Last time I was here, I slept on the floor."

She twisted to look at me even though it was too dark to see each other. "Seriously?"

"Bed was too comfortable."

"How about now?"

"I was more comfortable squeezed on that couch with you and a couple of space blankets."

She giggled in disbelief and it was a pleasant thing to feel. "What's it like sleeping on the streets?" She asked and it took me a moment to remember that unlike my group, the majority of Woodbury had never had to rough it.

"If you're sleeping on the street; it's the very worst. If you're in a vacant; it's not so bad. The camps are… Were… They were bad. Especially when you're a kid. The older I got, the more I preferred to be alone. Alone, hidden… Somewhere no one could steal my shoes."

"People stole your shoes?"

"Homeless people are always stealing each other's shoes. You wear bad shoes…" All the horrors in the world today and I did not have to deal with living people with rotten feet anymore. "I survived."

She pressed against me, her bare leg brushing mine, and it was not amorous. "I thought it was bad sharing a bedroom with two other people because we were all terrified to be alone for one minute. Then they were gone and I was in a bedroom alone and I pulled the mattress onto the floor thinking maybe I could put it under the bed to hide and then I realised how dumb that was because how could I get the mattress under the bed so I gave up and locked myself in the bathroom. I hid in the tub."

Haley babbled all this in a rush but I heard it all. She had been light on the details before, but I had understood. "I put Sophia in the bath when it was just us. Locked us in the bathroom so she'd feel safe." Haley had heard the story before when we first met but I told it again. "It just meant she couldn't see me and she panicked when she fell asleep and then woke up and thought she was alone. …Weird thing sleeping with a kid on a bathroom floor. Then when I lost my fingers, we just barricaded ourselves in a bedroom at night. Least we were upstairs."

"I wasn't." And that was why she had been in such an appalling condition when she had finally found the prison. She had been too scared to sleep. She was scared now. "Maybe I need a nightlight now or something…"

"I barely slept while I was here. Creeping around at night scoping out the town, worried the Governor would figure out who I was or one of his guys might recognise me."

"And me?"

"You confused me." I confessed and even though I could not see her, I could sense that this pleased her. "You made things… Complicated." I remembered how Andrea and Rick had both latched onto the small details regarding her amongst everything else I had reported about Woodbury. It made sense in retrospect; the cop and the lawyer focusing on the small details. "Interesting." I added.

"I always wanted to be interesting." Haley said. "You're interesting. And disgusting… I bet that underwear-sniffer ain't even the worst person you've ever met."

"Not even in the top ten." I said far too seriously and she laughed outright. "You want to know about the top ten?"

"God, no! I want to sleep tonight!"

[][][][][][]

[Sophia] Christmas Day

I liked snow. I had never seen much snow in my life but I had always found it beautiful. And a White Christmas… That was magical. Even if it was a White Christmas we spent worrying. They had warned they were unlikely to return but that did not stop us worrying.

Christmas. I did not know who had let it slip, but there was a sudden flurry of activity to try and make things festive in some way. They built up the wood burner so we had something close to a roaring fire, and they tried to think of a way to outdo the wedding food.

Glenn hung a few chains made of handcuffs strung together. Silver chains that caught the light and it seemed that everyone wordlessly agreed that it was the thought that counted and so they did not question his sanity. Except his wife. She asked "Seriously?" and seemed to consider the ''til death do us part' aspect of their wedding vows. Then she decided she found him adorable and kissed him. Mika cooed and Carl and Lizzie said 'Bleh'. These days I was not sure how I felt about that stuff.

We had not had Christmas last year. This year I guessed it had been the plan again and the wedding was the only celebration we would have had this year. Not that this could be called Christmas; not when everyone was too busy worrying about the people who were not here. Carl and his mom had gotten pretty good at acting like they were not worried about Mr Grimes. Tyreese hid nothing about his sister.

I was angry about Bas, but I did not know whether I was angry with him or Mr Grimes. Bas never lied to me or kept me in the dark about anything, so why had he not told me what they were planning to do? It could only be because Mr Grimes had told him to stay quiet about it so that no one thought he was being reckless with their lives.

Mom however had an alternative explanation.

"It's that girl." She said. "She's got him confused."

"What do you mean?"

"People do stupid things when they're attracted to other people." Mom shrugged. "You know that." She said and I was not sure if she was referring to me kissing Bas. "And young men especially lose a big chunk of their IQ. And they don't have much to lose when they're teens anyway."

"He didn't seem that way with her." I replied and then thought about it. "He said he didn't want to think about it, what they were going to do, he said he didn't want to think about it."

"And he didn't want us to think about it which I think is fair. There's some dangerous things people have to do now that… That they have to do and we have to accept it. But what they did was on a whole other level. Remember Hannahs Mill? Luring a herd away is one thing, and walking into one is something else entirely."

"I didn't like him doing that either."

"If he hadn't, we wouldn't have all our supplies. We wouldn't have Ryan, Lizzie and Mika. Or Russian Sasha."

I noticed she left out Austin and his parents. "Do you think they're okay?"

"I think Bas is very resourceful, and I think Rick and the others can handle pretty much anything."

"What about us?"

"Oh, I think we can take care of ourselves now." Mom looked me up and down. "Look at you. You're almost as tall as me now."

I held up my arms and it was obvious how my shirt did not fit. "I feel… Stretched…" To my eyes, my arms and legs looked like chewing gum or cheese on pizza. I had these long legs and arms but there was no flesh on them.

"You've had a big growth spurt this year. It happens. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
I had complained to Bas that I hated being small but being taller now did not feel like much of an improvement when I was thin as a whippet. But, so was mom. And she made it work. "Carl doesn't like it." I said.

"He'll get this turn. Girls usually shoot up before boys do." She smiled at me. "You're growing up. I never thought you'd get the chance." She started to look tearful but then forced it away. "It's been a long year for all of us."

It ended up being an awkward "Christmas" dinner. All the adults were trying too hard to act nonchalant about everything while among us kids, Lizzie pouted that we had Christmas but no presents while Beth was singularly unimpressed with Austin. Mika was the happy one; she thought the streamers made from handcuffs were awesome.

[][][][][][] Boxing Day

The long grass in the Field looked like it had dandruff. The snow had melted in the Yard but there was still some in the Field and I wore gloves and a hat as I kept Carl company as he waited for his dad to return. We had done this so many times.

"I hate being stuck here." He declared after a couple of silent hours. I had not known what to say and I thought that he was very good at matching his father's brooding expression. He even tilted his head.

"You think you should be out there with him?"

He gave me a look like he thought I was mocking him, and then he was honest. "I'm bored." He said. "Everyone else gets to do interesting things and all we get is schoolwork and chores."

"They want us to be safe."

"I know, but… I want spring to get here! Then we can get back to work."

"You really want to work in a field all day?"

"I want to…To…" He looked for the right word and I remembered what mom had said about boys not having much intellect to work with.

"Contribute?" I offered.

"Yeah! Not just… Do this." He looked at me and his eyes flicked from the submachinegun slung around my neck, to the pink woolly hat I wore. I did not look properly tough and combative the way he wished.

"You wanted to be out here."

"Do you want to go indoors and study?"

"It's Christmas. No school at Christmas."

"Does it feel like Christmas to you?"

Something nasty almost made it out of my mouth. Almost. Instead, I was diplomatic. "I've had worse Christmases." I said, and he got awkward. "You know your dad's going to be fine, right?"

"You'd think. He's done this enough times." Carl glared off into the treeline. "Mom hates it. But she won't say anything. She doesn't think she can." He shrugged and this was as close as he would come to talking about his parents' issues. I could never tell if he found the topic difficult, or just boring. Considering the way he had said before how his parents had always fought; I thought he found the topic boring. If anything, he was uncomfortable when they were getting along too well. I knew the feeling. "What do you think about Woodbury?" He asked.

Now it was my turn to shrug because I really could not organise my thoughts about Woodbury. My memories of the town were vague, and the Governor was dead. But I also knew that the other people involved in snatching me were still out there. They were the people who they had gone to help. The people who had killed Axel to grab me. The people who had killed Dale and T-Dog. And injured a dozen of us. But then there was Haley. The girl who had said sorry. I still did not know what to do with that. It was easy for me to think of Woodbury as a place full of armed thugs and to forget that it was a town with families. The same way this prison was not full of brutal convicts but families. I had seen how weird that was for Haley to accept; to see me and Beth and Carl.

"You've got to think something." Carl pressed.

"They're in trouble with the real enemy." I said evasively, and it was fortunate there were walkers down at the fences to make my point for me. There were not many, and I wondered if that was because they were all over at Woodbury, and then remembered there were enough of them out there to wipe Woodbury and us off the map at the same time. That was why walkers were the real enemy in the first place.

"I don't know how my dad can trust them." Carl declared. "The people in charge… They were the Governor's men, so they went along with everything he did. How are they any different?"

"They didn't lock me in a room in the dark." I pointed out, and this time Carl became awkward enough to kill the conversation.

Despite how cold it became; we remained on watch until after dark and this was when Mr Grimes returned. Only Mr Grimes. I felt so many emotions before I realised that he was not alone and then I felt confusion. The man who stepped out of the vehicle wore an odd jacket with duct tape on the sleeves. He wore glasses. It was the glasses that rang a bell of familiarity to me but I could not place it.

"Rick, who is this?" Glenn asked as the man looked around nervously at the prison; from the razor wire on the fences to the bullet holes in the walls.

"This is Milton." He said. "He's one of Woodbury's leaders, and he's come here to talk."

Perhaps I was not meant to be there but there was no way that anyone could have dragged me away. My glimmer of recognition had finally become a proper memory and I found myself glaring at him and despite everyone else's hostile stares; I was the one who got his attention.

He swallowed. "You've grown." He said to me.

"That's what everyone says." I replied and I realised he was looking at me to avoid looking at mom. Her expression made me think of a vulture.

Mr Grimes did not help with his discomfort. "Ty, Sasha's fine." He assured Tyreese. "She wants you to come join her for what we've got planned next."

"And what's that?" Mom asked him and he seemed surprised the question came from her.

Rick looked at Milton who looked back and seemed astonished that he was expected to talk. He was still trying to take in the common area that was half-prison, half-coffee house. Glenn's handcuff chain Christmas decorations were especially difficult for him to absorb. He looked around, trying to find someone to address who did not intimidate him and he finally settled on Carl. Specifically, Carl's hat. "We've come to a, uh, an arrangement." Milton told the hat. "Your…" He paused as he tried to decide what Mr Grime's title was and he appeared to decide that titles were a bad idea. "We're very grateful for the assistance provided by Rick, and the rest of your people, and he had the, the idea, that… That, uh…" He swallowed again and Mr Grimes offered him no assistance as he sweated. "That your people would help us rebuild our defences, and in the meantime, that our most vulnerable people, they would… They would, come here."
Maybe it was his stammering speech but there was a pause before people reacted to what he had said. Then there was an uproar. Mr Grimes let it go on for a few seconds before bringing silence by bringing his fist down on the table. "It was my idea." He confirmed. "We went to Woodbury, north of it anyway. And we drew off the herd. A big herd. Bigger than any we've ever seen. If you want to know how big, you can ask Bas when he comes back." He looked at me, and mom. "He's fine." He said and then addressed everyone again. "Woodbury needs some repairs, so we're gonna help out. That's why Sasha wants you to join her." He said to Tyreese. "She says you were pretty handy with that hammer besides cracking skulls."

"I put up a few shelves." Tyreese shrugged, and like everyone he was baffled by what he was hearing.

"We're going to help out Woodbury." Mr Grimes declared. "And in return, they're gonna help us. We're gonna help them rebuild their defences, make it so they ain't gonna be in this situation again. And they'll help us set up our solar panels so we can have ourselves a working power grid." He pointed around the room. "Electric lights. Heat. Hot showers. Things we need."

"What happened in Woodbury?" Maggie pressed and even I could tell that Mr Grimes was trying to push forward and ignore whatever had happened over there.

"They were overrun." He said. "By walkers. They tried to divert a herd, and instead it rolled right over them. And their other leader wanted our help. He sent six people, and only one of them made it here. That girl; Haley. And I said, we got rid of the horde. Mostly. Now the others are over there helping clear the stragglers and defend the walls. But that herd could come back and if that happens, they don't have a lot of options if they have a whole bunch of people that need protecting. So, we're gonna protect them. They're gonna come here, tomorrow, and stay for a week. Two at most." Before people could offer protests again, he ploughed on in a louder voice. "This is in everyone's best interests! Between us and Woodbury we ain't even got a hundred people! Not even a hundred! And there were thousands of walkers in Woodbury. Thousands more of all over the countryside. How many hundreds attack the fences here every week? Now we've had our problems with these people and we ain't asking anyone to forget that. I ain't forgetting it. Milton ain't forgetting. Their other leader, Caesar Martinez, he ain't forgetting either. But we might have problems with them, but we're all living people. We might not like it, but we need each other."

It was a good speech but I had realised the reason he had pressed on with describing his plan for Woodbury because he did not want to talk about what they had done to get Bas and Haley into Woodbury. The implication was that they had been in the greatest danger and he did not want to admit that to us. Or himself.

"We're just… Bringing them all here?" Glenn asked.

"Think of it like the Titanic." Mr Grimes answered. "Women and children first. We ain't letting in the people who attacked us; we're letting in their families. You think some old folks and kids can take this place over?" The remark made Milton swallow again. He seemed both alarmed and reassured by the people he could see. Some of us looked harmless but that had not stopped them from defeating Woodbury's attack. Bas had been dismissive of Woodbury's people. Too comfortable he had said. And that was why there were coming here.

"We're running a hotel now?" Mom asked.

"Take a look around, Carol. There's twenty-six of us." Mr Grimes said. "All this year you've all been telling me we can't do this alone; well now you've got me convinced. We need to work together. As I said, we may not like it, but we have to do it. And maybe if we actually know each other we can get along." This time Mr Grimes brought his fist slamming into his palm. "I'm staying here, with Milton. Andrea's in charge of the others, with Martinez. We're all keeping an eye on each other. We're all nice and paranoid." He said mockingly and I could see how it made Milton nervous. It made a lot of people nervous but I recognised Mr Grimes' impatience. Whenever he had plans and there was an obstacle, he got a curious kind of annoyance about it. It explained a lot about Carl's stubbornness, but with his father, it was like the world was frustrating him by not doing what he wished it to. Like it was not following his script.

And right now, his script was that people from Woodbury would help to make the prison better, and we would all accept the price of that help. Were we paying a price for help, or were they paying us? Looking around at my people and then at Milton; it seemed no one was sure. Maybe that was a good thing.

[][][][][][]

[Bas] December 27th

I woke up with the strangest feeling. It was something I had not felt in a long time and I was not particularly familiar with it. It was the feeling of being well-rested. I woke up, and I did not feel more exhausted than before I had gone to sleep. It was an alarming feeling.

It was not alarming to wake up with Haley again. It was the third time in three days I had woken tangled up with her and the fourth day that I had slept in the same room as her. She had looked pissed off while sleeping in the prison's infirmary. Now, she was lying with her mouth agape and her hair greasily wrapped over her face in the least flattering manner possible. Idly, I pulled the strands from her mouth and she smacked her lips and her hand flapped while she mumbled a charming "Flenen… Fleh flam."

I had seen a lot of strange and peculiar things since the dead had started walking. Lying in a warm bed and looking at this beautiful girl was one of the highlights.

Haley rolled her eyes when she woke up and saw me looking at her. She was right about it being creepy to watch someone sleep but the appeal was too strong for me not to. At least she found it amusing. She found this amusing while I found her morning routine a bit odd.

"Why are you hoarding toothbrushes?" The collection was more than a little crazy.

"I think I can live without toothpaste and just brush with water, but if I can't brush…" She gave a dramatic little shudder.

Many at the prison did not agree and felt that civilisation would truly end when we ran out of toothpaste. As someone who had made an effort to take care of their teeth even on the street, I could not help but agree with Haley. Even without the toothpaste, a good brush made a big difference. Haley had enough brushes to use a new one every year for another sixty years. And she was kind enough to let me have one when we left the bedroom to stand in a cold bathroom in our underwear.

"What are you smiling at?" She asked as she brushed.

"This feels… Intimate."

"Intimate?" She pulled a face, letting her toothbrush hang from her lips.

"Yeah." I did not know how to explain it to her. I had done this before with a whole group of people and not just the group at the prison. Just the two of us… It was different. It was… Intimate.

"You're not watching me pee." She said.

"If you wanted me to see that, I'd say it was time for us to see other people." I replied, and she giggled. "You look good."

"I look awful." She declared and she looked at my reflection. "What's with you?"

I shrugged. "I'm happy." It was an unfamiliar feeling, especially in this context. "How weird would it be if I kissed you now?"

Her response was to push a froth of blue-green foam between her lips. I took it as an invitation which made her giggle incredulously and my second kiss was a minty affair before she pushed me back, spat in the faucet, and then we shared a proper third kiss. It was a good way to start the day.

[][][][][][]

Rick and Milton returned early enough with Tyreese. I was torn between watching Milton who clearly had not enjoyed his night at the prison and Sasha and Tyreese's reunion. First, they hugged and then Tyreese tried to remonstrate with her for having come out here in the first place and then for bringing him out here. Despite being twice her size, Tyreese was not good at telling off Sasha and he ended up on the receiving end instead.

Tyreese was awed by Woodbury's walls but even more so by the people. After so long with our small group, the sixty-odd citizens of Woodbury gave him pause. The last time he had seen so many people; they had been attacking the prison.

Rick had a conference with Andrea and she looked at me several times while Rick smirked and glanced at me once. It did not take a genius to figure out what that was about.

"It's like being back at school." Haley remarked. She was feeling the cold today and had bundled up.

"I wouldn't know." I said unthinkingly and she was right to roll her eyes. "When did you finish school?"

"A hundred years ago." She replied and it was my turn to roll my eyes. It was overly dramatic but at the same time, that was how it felt to remember our old lives.

"I'm nineteen in April." I mused.

"Hmmm. I'm twenty. In May."

"I guess I like older women then."

"Hey!" She thumped me with her gloved fist.

Woodbury had an assortment of vehicles and they had collected many of them to use as fortifications. It meant they had plenty of choice to evacuate. They elected for a school bus. Picking a vehicle was the closest they came to being well-organised as despite Martinez's insistence, people were reluctant to take just a few things with them and he had to gather a band of muscle to bully them into common sense.

None of ours objected to it, although Michonne glowered. Andrea and Rick were both impatient while Merle happily joined Martinez like he had never left. Milton looked resigned to it all. There was a general feeling of exhaustion everywhere which did not bode well, I felt. It made sense though; abandoning Woodbury even for the short term felt like a huge defeat. And how could these people be happy about being separated from their families?

Rick talked to everyone in turn but had only one thing to say to me. "You good?"

"He's fine." Haley answered for me. She could not care less what people were saying about us.

When the bus departed with Rick and Milton, Haley became the youngest remaining Woodburyian while I was the youngest overall. It all felt very strange.

Martinez knew what he was doing. The Governor had made plans, Milton had figured out how to make those plans reality and then Martinez had gotten it done. The new wall would mimic the main entrance; flatbeds and junk put together to form a solid barrier but the first priority was repairing and reinforcing the existing walls. I knew most of Woodbury by sight and they likewise knew me as well. There was a discomfort there for them but not for me. I had other things to be concerned with. Like my immediate task.

Sasha and Tyreese were helping with the building work while Andrea led myself, Daryl, Merle and Michonne against the dead that had been drawn by the comings and goings of the vehicles. Haley was with me. Six of us to sweep the old town while everyone else, all of Woodbury's able-bodied, they worked on securing the old walls and prepping for the new Woodbury was not used to fighting walkers hand-to-hand but us… Apparently, we were warriors.

Or as Haley put it, "You're all crazy."

I thought this was unfair to me and Andrea. To Daryl who kept using his short knife on walkers, Merle with his bladed arm and Michonne leaving walkers in pieces; it was a fair assessment. Haley had her bow which was why Daryl was not bothering with his crossbow. I guessed it made him feel foolish to use it when in the time that he took to reload, Haley could drop several walkers. Haley and Michonne together were a brutal team and between the arrows and the sword I had long since stopped counting the bodies.

There was no point counting them. Saying we had dropped fifty, a hundred, two hundred walkers… It meant nothing if ten thousand could arrive tomorrow. It was good to eliminate them. To take the fight to them. But counting them was meaningless. If you knew your enemy had ten thousand men then there was a point to it but this… The books I had been reading about the Civil War were not relevant at all to what we were fighting. Walkers did not have bases, supply lines or leaders. They did not desert. And they also did not attack; not deliberately. They were not out there planning offensives. They were not an enemy; they were a force of nature.

Six of us against dozens of them, but they were spread out. If there was a tight group; Haley could drop a couple to thin them out. The dead caused us less discomfort than the cold and the slush. It kept snowing fitfully and just enough to leave the streets filled with a crunchy sludge. Woodbury had been full of leaves and trash and the horde had trampled both into slurry. There had been a sharp contrast between the old abandoned town and Woodbury's main street before but now it seemed unlikely the outside would ever be clean again.

Was cold sludge better than actual snow? It had to be. I had no experience with snow but I knew the cold well enough. Rick had opened the prison's cell doors to Woodbury and they would doubtless find them very cold compared to their town. Although, I had only had a warm night because I had not been sleeping alone.

We patrolled and then we had lunch. There was something very… Orderly about it. Clearing the fences at the prison was a chore but this morning felt like a job. A career. Rick had us here for security so that was what we were providing by going out and fighting walkers. A year ago, a fight with walkers was a fight for survival. Now it was a job like any other. A profession.

It meant I became engrossed listening in on Sasha and Tyreese's conversation and his description of spending a 'boring' morning nailing planks in place to reinforce defences.

Haley put her elbow into my ribs to get my attention. "Where are you?"

"I don't know." I admitted. "You were always a guard, weren't you?"

"Pretty much. Why?"

"I was a babysitter. I was a thief, then I was a babysitter, now I'm a soldier."

She gave me a look. "Eat your food, and stop thinking."

"Yes, ma'am."

She elbowed me again.

[][][][][][]

[Sophia]

How did you arrive at prison on a bus without feeling like a newly arriving inmate? Especially when you had to pass by an overturned actual prison bus. Glenn and Maggie were wearing the riot armour too though not the helmets. If they had been wearing those, I doubted anyone would have willingly climbed out of the bus.

Since Dale had been killed, Hershel had become the only elderly member of our group and I thought that everyone had gotten used to thinking of him as the Old Man. Not just the Old Man. THE Old Man. Like Mr Greene was the last one in the world. That was not the case now. Woodbury had sent us their grandparents. Grandparents, mothers, teens and children. I was not sure which of the latter two I qualified as right now.

Mika however shot forward immediately to make greetings and considering how grim the prison looked on a summer's day, let alone a cold grey winter's day like this, it was the warmest welcome they would get. Lizzie was scowling but I knew it was her idea of a joke; to look mean and scary to the people who had come here.

Glenn and Maggie had a brief conversation with Mr Grimes and then they went down to the Outer Gate to deal with the walkers drawn by the arrival of the vehicles. Mr Grimes and Milton meanwhile chivvied everyone inside. Mom gave me a sidelong look before we followed.

The common area was not what they had expected though some looked toward the cells anxiously. When Tyreese and his group had arrived here, Carl had always kept his hand near his gun and Bas had been menacing with a shotgun, but now there were thirty or more people crowded into the space and holstered sidearms were the only weapons present. Our 'armoury' was securely locked up in Andrea's cell and so far as I could tell, only Milton and one of his men had come here armed. The man was black, bearded, not quite as big as Tyreese and did not have his warmth. He looked tired. Withdrawn.

Carl's dad took them to D Block, giving them the tour as it were, and mom and I chose to sit in the cell block in front of the wood burner. It would become a popular spot, I guessed.

"Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?" I asked mom.

"What do you think?"

I had given it a lot of thought during the night and I had reached a conclusion that I did not like. "I want to help people, but I didn't want to help those people." I admitted. "But now they're here… They look pathetic." As we had when we had first arrived here, so had Tyreese's group, and Lizzie and Mika's. "Is that normal?" I asked.

"If you weren't suspicious of people after being shot; I'd worry about you even more." Mom confessed. "And they do look pathetic. Helpless. Maybe they thought the same about us." She pulled a face and she was right. She was a skinny woman with a skinny daughter; we were no danger.

"No one seemed to recognise me, or you."

"Maybe they're good at hiding it."

"You think?"

"Maybe they don't want to admit it. To remember it." She glared at the fire and then distracted herself by feeding it. Whenever she remembered me being shot, she got a look that gave me the shivers. "Do you know why Rick's here?" She asked and I shook my head. "Because he scares them at Woodbury. So, he's here with their kids so no one at Woodbury holding a grudge does anything stupid with our people."

I was shocked. Not by Mr Grimes action, but that mom believed it. "So, they are our hostages?" I had heard it said several times the day before and this morning.

"Guests." Mom said with a dark smile.

The guests made their way back to our cell block, drawn by the fact this block was warm and comfortable compared to the stark new space we had only begun to make habitable. I listened to Mr Grimes talking to Milton about how the inner part of this cell block had no windows, only a filthy skylight that let almost no light in and so leaving the inner and far side of the cell block in perpetual darkness. But with solar panels, we could have some electric lights and a huge area that was otherwise unuseable would be opened up. That was the 'business' conversation they had. Planning for the future. It was a good thing and yet, I found it made me uncomfortable. There were still a few bullet holes in the walls that we had not covered up. To go from that to making 'trade deals' was beyond jarring.

Mika was making fast friends while Lizzie was still trying to scowl. She could not keep it up though, especially with Mika teasing her about it. Listening in, it seemed the only complaint that the Woodbury kids had was that it was cold. I did not think it was cold so I must have been used to the chill of the cell block. I thought it was cosy. But listening to kids made me uncomfortable so I slipped out of my chair and went into the common area, feeling mom's eyes on me as I went. I realised that calling people only a few years younger than me 'kids' was ridiculous but that was how it felt.

Carl's mom was talking to a woman from Woodbury who had a baby of her own; Jack. I listened to the two mothers talk and fumble past the awkward fact that their babies had been born during our little war; right at the start. There was more awkwardness as the Woodbury woman learned that Carl's mom was Mr Grimes' wife. She explained it though; there was still a part of them that believed what the Governor had told them. That Mr Grimes was a ruthless murderer leading a band of escaped convicts. The fact he looked the ruthless part in his grizzled state and she had heard him give two grim speeches made it very hard to accept he had a wife and baby daughter.

"A son too." Carl's mom put in. "The boy in the hat."

"A deputy's hat."

"Rick was a cop."

"A cop…" I could hear the disbelief in her voice that the 'bad guy' they had been told to fear had been a police officer. Some people feared and hated cops but this woman was clearly not one of them.

"Where's Jack's father?"

The woman was silent, hugging her sleeping son close to her body. I knew what she was going to say. "He died. Here."

"Here?"

"Before… Before they all came her to attack… He died the night before." She rocked her son back and forth and I could see she had had plenty of time to grieve, and think. "No one would tell me the truth at first. I knew he went out at night and didn't come back and no one would talk to me. Then after everything… Everything that happened… I figured it out. He came here with the Governor to snatch that little girl, and he didn't come back. Martinez admitted it when I confronted him. He said it was meant to be a surprise attack, 'taking advantage of the storm'… He said he didn't know anything about kidnapping some kid. That was just what happened… And my husband died for it."

"There." I said, startling both women. "He died there." I pointed at the floor. I had overheard the others talking about it. How in the tight space where they had been shooting at each other, several of our side had been wounded but none of them from Woodbury. Only one man who Bas had fought with his bare hands in the dark. "He hit his head on the floor. …He died."
The woman and Carl's mom both stared at me. And I saw the woman realise who I was and to distract herself from that thought, she looked at the spot I had indicated. "He hit his head…"

"It wasn't intentional." I had had no reason to tell this woman any of this, except that it was creepy for her to be here so close to where the father of her child had died without knowing it. She needed to know. "No one meant to kill him." I felt mom's hands close on my shoulders.

"He didn't know why he was coming here?" Mom asked.

The woman was staring at the floor. "No." She answered after a while. "I was proud of him defending the walls. Keeping us all safe." She turned her gaze from the floor to me. "Then before I had even started grieving, I saw you get shot. Not your leader." She looked at Lori. "Not your husband." She looked back at me. "You." She gazed steadily at me and mom's hands squeezed tight on my shoulders. "…Why?"

"He lost his daughter." Mom said and her grip was hurting me now. "He wanted me to lose mine."

"And that's what my husband died for. …Who he died for." She sounded really calm about it but I realised she had had months to think about it. She blamed the Governor. "Who killed him?"

"Does it matter?" Mom asked fast, before anyone could say a thing.

The woman smiled bitterly. "I don't want my daughter held by the person who killed her daddy."

I could not see my mom, but Carl's mother seemed to think this was reasonable. "He's not here." She said.

I could see the woman figure it out. It was like there was an audible click as her mind reached the conclusion. I did not know who gave it away but I hoped it was not me. "The spy." She said. "Him." She did not need confirmation. "I guess it really was accident." I understood now; she knew we were telling the truth, that I was telling the truth, because of how unlikely the story was. An accident in the dark by the least threatening individual now at Woodbury. And I had told the story. If someone any else had said he was just randomly shot; she would not have believed it. But I… I had no reason not to tell her the absolute truth. I felt the moment she locked eyes with mom. She had lost her husband and then seen it look like mom had lost me. "All because of one mad asshole."

Mom let go of me and there was a long silence as they thought about the Governor. I could have painted a very grim picture of his insanity for them but I had said enough. Too much.

[][][][][][]

It was an awkward morning followed by a painfully long afternoon as our leader and Woodbury's dealt with people fussing about how they were expected to live. Milton looked like he would have had trouble confronting a paperboy but he also seemed to be very tired and snapped a few times before launching into a long, wordy spiel that boiled down to 'this is temporary; get over it!' Carl's dad stressed that too and I thought he looked very grateful to have far fewer people and responsibilities than Milton did.

The evening was not so bad. It took a while to prepare enough food for everyone but there was something satisfying about seeing the common area full of people. Happy people. They might have had objections to D Block but this part of the prison was warm and welcoming by comparison. The wood burner flickering away in the cell block added a festive touch while my art and Glenn's festive decorations made the common area a pleasant place to be. Although, there was some more awkwardness as they learned I was the artist. No one would talk to me, but they all knew who I was now. Who mom was. It was the way they conspicuously did not stare at me that bothered me.

At least there was Carl. Carl had had a trying day and it had everything to do with being the sole boy in our group. He had spent all day with the Woodbury girls, aged ten to fourteen, giggling at him. Giggling.

Beth was merciless. "That means they like you."

"They're laughing at me!" Carl protested.

"Because they like you."

"…So, they're laughing at me?" He looked to me for help but I was hardly an expert on what was normal for girls my age. I shrugged which made Beth giggle which made Carl annoyed. "Why?!"

This I could explain. "They think you're cute."

"Cute?!"

"You are cute." Beth said and it made him turn purple.

[][][][][][]

Breakfast was weird. Not because there were so many people around but because it was not what I had expected. I thought that the people from Woodbury would struggle with sleeping in the prison and that we would all have a disturbed night. Instead, it had been peaceful. I had slept well here those first few nights for the same reason that the Woodbury kids had slept well; the cell doors. Behind those doors, you felt completely safe from walkers. Obviously, I no longer felt that safety… But the Woodbury kids had found the cell doors comforting. The adults meanwhile had had the opposite problem; Bas' problem. They had felt trapped.

It was a bad combination when the adults were tired and cranky but the kids were energetic, and bored. Mom swooped in and what had been the breakfast cafeteria became a classroom. I listened to Mr Grimes and Milton talking about trying to reestablish education when there was such a mix of ages and no one was an actual qualified teacher. But it was important; they both agreed on that. I could not say that Carl's dad liked Milton all that much, but they seemed able to get along which was comforting. The issue Mr Grimes had with Milton seemed to be that the man was perpetually nervous, although that was understandable. Milton only had one man with him while Mr Grimes had several. Milton could not meet mom's eye, and he definitely avoided me.

Aleksandra proved to be challenging for the older Woodbury boys. I tried to understand why the Russian woman had tied her hair in twin tails but I could not think of a reason besides that it amused her to look much younger than she was with her hair that way. It seemed to me that amusing herself gave her a way of passing the time; whether it was Amanda and John or a bunch of teenage boys who were not sure how to approach her. Not yet anyway.

"Do we tell them she's Russian?" I asked Beth at lunchtime.

"They'll find out." Beth shrugged.

"Who was that tall boy talking to you?"

"Just someone." She said vaguely.

"Someone." I replied, while Carl pulled a face.

"Everyone's being real nice." Beth tried but could not quite make it sound innocent. She knew it too because she turned pink.

"They're being nice to you and they keep giggling at me." Carl glowered and I thought he had pulled his hat ridiculously low. He seemed to be trying to hide his face. "Anyone talked to you?"

"No." And I had not tried to talk to anyone. There was a feeling, a belief that I should have tried to be social, but I did not know what to say. It did not help that I had seen people look at me and heard them talk about me. I did not know how to begin to be friendly toward people who referred to me as 'the girl who got shot'.

"Lucky you." Carl grumbled.

"You should stick with us. Where's it safe." I teased him. I did not know why I did.

"Mika's made friends with everyone." Beth remarked.

"Lizzie hasn't." Carl said and he was right. Lizzie stuck close to her little sister but looked like a bodyguard. I knew mom approved of that, although I thought Lizzie came across as territorial. Like Carl had been when Tyreese's group had come here.

While some of us might have been wary, it was not true for all of us. Amanda blended in seamlessly with the Woodbury mothers and as a group they looked like they had gathered to complain about something in the neighbourhood they disapproved of. Dr S and Hershel meanwhile had plenty of people with medical issues to talk to. Mr Greene had a face that set people at ease and the doctor's professional manner likewise comforted them. Glenn and Maggie might have been frightening at first sight when they had been in prison armour but now people saw they were just a young couple. That was the commonality connection that everyone made; we were all just people.

And that was because the more frightening members of our group were over at Woodbury. Michonne was not here with her sword on her back glowering at anyone. While they knew Merle, he and Daryl together were a frightening pair. And Tyreese; I knew he was a big softie but if you did not know that then he was just a big, brooding man. Bas would have bothered them too. I heard people talk about him and it was not encouraging. Although, most of what they had to say was about him being at Woodbury still. With Haley.

[][][][][][]

[Bas] December 30th

I did not think of myself as a fighter. I had always avoided them whenever possible because I was simply not built to win a physical fight; not without fighting dirty as hell. I would fight when necessary and only when necessary. And now it was necessary because Rick had volunteered me as 'muscle', meaning my sole purpose at Woodbury was to fight walkers. Compared to the others, I was noticeably lacking. I was lacking compared to Haley whose bow was limited only by the number of arrows she could carry. I definitely appreciated the prison's fences more after brawling in the streets of Woodbury.

They had built their wall across the upper part of the main street of Woodbury but not the gates. Gates were not as easy as throwing up a barricade. The walkers slowed the work all the time because even with the horde we had sent north, the area was still crawling with them. Us from the prison and a Woodbury contingent led by Martinez were kept busy all day long until the streets were pretty much jammed with frozen corpses.

I was content to ignore the others at meals because the jokes had gotten boring very quickly. Merle's crude remarks were easy to ignore but Sasha's knowing smile and Andrea's mild disgust were difficult. All Haley and I did was sit together at meals and maybe share a few pecks during the day but the way everyone treated us, you would have thought we kept dashing off and coming back with our hair messed up and our clothes on backwards.

Although at least, I was not the only one on the receiving end of this treatment. Tyreese had struck up a friendship with a Woodbury woman and it had bothered me how long it had taken me to remember her. Karen had spoken up against the Governor at the meeting where… So much had happened… And then she had been sent as a messenger to the prison. The other citizens of Woodbury had been wary of Tyreese but Karen had readily put the big man to work and though they were merely talking; the sparks were there.

There were different kinds of sparks between Andrea and Martinez. Their settlement was built in the old town and that meant they were surrounded by derelict buildings. Some were secure, but others were open or walkers had broken in and that meant a constant threat in the streets. Every building had the potential to spill walkers on our flanks or rear as we passed by and Andrea's argument was simply that Woodbury should have secured them. They should have boarded up windows and barricaded doors and so made it impossible for walkers to infest the many, many buildings that lay empty in Woodbury. Martinez pointed out that they had had other things to do and the two quarrelled about priorities in a way that was all too familiar to those our group had had. Ultimately, it came down to the simple fact that there were so many things that needed to be done and not enough people to get it done. That was why we were here after all.

Tyreese solved the weakness of Woodbury's front gate having a space a walker could reach its arm through by simply nailing a metal grill in place. When the gates closed, the grill overlapped the space and nothing could reach through. Just like the mesh they had at the bottom to prevent anything crawling under. Simple.

"Everything's simple." Haley remarked that night. "But everyone makes it seem complicated. We should have built ourselves a proper fortress from the start, instead of spreading out. It's obvious. But people wanted to pretend this was a real town and keep the walls out of sight. And everything else out of sight."

"Out of sight, out of mind." I thought aloud. I had suffered most of my life because of the general population's powerful desire to pretend certain things did not exist. "Do you think people will accept the new roommate situation?" I asked.

I sensed her grin. "Doubt it." She was luckier than most. She would not have to share her little bedroom. Others however were going to have make their kids share rooms, with couples sharing apartments and houses with other families. People had had a ludicrous amount of space before. Now they were going to learn what it was like to live in close quarters. Although, after a week or so at the prison in those cells; the houses here would seem huge and luxurious. "We'll build up the… Outer walls… And they'll get their homes back soon enough." She sighed. "They don't know how good they've got it."

"They did. And now they don't." They had gotten over their ordeal with the horde far too quickly. Despite Martinez repeatedly hammering home the fortress concept, the average person of Woodbury still expected more. They were unwilling to compromise their living standards for safety and I had the uncharitable thought that it might have been better if walkers had broken into one of their refuges and slaughtered a good chunk of their population. If that had happened in the town, there would have been no opposition to the radical changes that Woodbury required. Instead, their casualties had been out of sight. Enough to convince many of them that there were no issues with Woodbury and the horde had been an aberration.

"What are you thinking?" Haley asked.

"When we were living at the farm, we had it good. Good food, lots of space, some people were still living in their actual home. And it wasn't safe. And we needed to lose two people ripped apart by walkers to realise it." For a moment my mind lingered on the way that Beth had screamed as Patricia had been torn apart in front of her and held her with a death grip. "That's why the prison's so welcoming to us. It's not comfortable, but it's safe. When those cell block doors lock, they can't get in. Your people haven't had the same… Shock."

"They need a good kick in the ass." Haley replied and then rolled over, peering at me in the dark. "Do you think I've had a 'shock'?"

"You tell me."

"Mmm, lets see. The guy I liked turned out to be a spy, and then one of his people tried to cut my fucking head off." She drummed her fingers on my chest and then jabbed me in the nipple. "And now I sleep with him every night because I ended up lost and alone out there and the thought of being alone again creeps me out." She jabbed my other nipple and then lay on her back again. "So yeah, I had a 'shock'."

"Do you feel better?" I asked, doing my best not to react to the two jabs.

"Nope." She said and then sighed. "I wish I had someone else to talk to, but they're all over at your prison. So, it's just you… But what would they say? They wouldn't have a clue what I've been through."

"They've lost people too."

"They weren't alone. I was." This time she took her frustration out on the mattress, thumping it several times. The reason I ignored her hurting me was because I understood that frustration. Haley very much wanted to assert herself as a strong, independent woman. A badass. But she was scared of being alone. Scared of sleeping alone. Scared of the dark like a child she had said. She could not just get over it and while I could tell her plenty of stories about my traumatic experiences, especially my complete breakdown when the walkers had first appeared; none of it helped. I could empathise, sympathise, but I could not help her get past it. There was no combination of words or gesture that would just magically cure her fears. Just as there had been nothing that would just cure Sophia of the trauma of shooting Andrew.

Only time. And time was a miserable cure.

Haley rolled over again. She could at least take her mind off it. I had no idea if it was healthy for her to make herself feel better about her issues by climbing on top of me and kissing me but I knew I had no objections. It did after all do a wonderful of making me forget about my past negative experiences. I was just in the moment. You could lose yourself completely in the act of touching and kissing.

But not sex. They were all convinced we were going at it all night long but we were not. No one would have believed us though. Least of all Andrea and Merle. I had difficulty accepting I was just doing this. It had all the quality of a dream.

[][][][][][]

There was a saying that how you spent New Year's Day was the way you would spend the rest of the year. I spent New Year's Eve fighting the walking dead while other people had the task of loading the many bodies into the back of Woodbury's military trucks. The corpses could not be properly disposed of at the moment so they made do by dumping them outside town by the road. Burning them was a problem for another month. Trying to clear the streets immediately around their settlement of the many festering corpses was a task that made building fortifications look easy.

Merle was able to mingle with the Woodbury population with a frightening ease. At first, they had been wary of him. Then embarrassed by him. Now, it was as if he had never left and that earned the ire of both Andrea and Martinez. She seemed to think there should have been boundaries between our two groups while Martinez did not like the way that Merle was still thought of as an authority figure. Woodbury people deferred to him, like he had not fought on the other side of a 'war' to them. That he had not abandoned them in the night. The night their leader had lost an eye…

So, Merle was able to mingle easily at the Woodbury New Year's party, while Daryl looked awkward and drank heavily to match his brother. The only time I could remember Daryl drinking had been at the CDC and then not again until Merle had reappeared in his life. Considering his various addictions, Merle deciding only to get drunk was a step up at least. Daryl kept to one side. As did Michonne who did not touch a thing and instead stared with disapproval at the revelry. It had taken a great deal to make her enjoy Glenn and Maggie's wedding and that had been with people she liked. Andrea and Sasha did make the effort to mingle and Karen made that easier. Tyreese was a perfectly functional human being until he looked at Karen, and then he got a dopey look on his face that made Sasha shake her head. It was not that Tyreese was in love, it was that he was enjoying himself. He was happy. And he had forgotten happiness so he was not able to temper it.

I had to fight not to have a similarly daft look on my face. Haley had no desire to dance after our long, trying day and so we sat in our own corner, enjoying the food and the drink, and she ran a commentary on the people of Woodbury. She really hammered home the fact that people here were just… Normal. Even those you were now 'soldiers' were boring people as far as she was concerned. The majority of the people who had survived in Woodbury had had the most innocuous jobs. Being a Senior Accountant was as exciting as it got for most of them. A doctor, a nurse, a security guard…

"Remember you live with these people." I said gently.

"I was a college student. A cliché." She declared. "No different to any of them."

"Andrea was a lawyer. I think Michonne was too."

"A lawyer with a sword. Nice." Haley remarked coldly. "Did she moonlight as an executioner?"

"Ask her." I said. "I dare you."

She stuck her tongue out at me. "What about those two?" She nodded toward Sasha and Tyreese.

"She was a firefighter. And he was NFL. Once anyway…"

"Which job is crazier? Running into fires to help people or running into people to entertain other people?"

"I think running into fires is nuts." I admitted. "But I've seen more fires than sports."

"You're going to tell me you were an arsonist now?"

I told her about George and my joy-riding days, and his growing fondness for fire that had landed him in prison. Our prison. She found the coincidence incredible.

"You just happened to end up at the same prison where your old friend was locked up, and dead?"

"Sick odds." I said. "But it happened. I put him down. We burned him."

"A car thief and arsonist." Haley mused. "Makes you seem boring."

"I am boring. You can do better."

"Oh, I know. Trust me I know. As soon as something better comes along…" She declared and then grinned at me. Regardless of all the people there to witness it and disapprove, she kissed me. Not that anyone would have noticed; they were enjoying themselves.

Given the way that we lived, few people were motivated to stay up until midnight. Most preferred to rest rather than lose precious shut-eye just for the sake of saying 'Happy New Year' at the right moment. Others did not want to do what Haley and I did after we retired to bed. Merle had yelled at us as we left to 'Go git sum!' and instead we were lying in bed staring at the ceiling.

"We were in… Some house…" They blurred together in my mind. "And I was awake because we hadn't moved in days and I was restless. So, I heard Dale tell Rick it was midnight. It was New Year's Day. Dale and that watch of his… At least they thought it was New Year's, we weren't always clear on the days. Dale said it meant something that we had lasted that long. It had to mean something. Rick… He said it meant nothing. He was still looking for his Promised Land. He didn't find it for months…"

"I was right here. By myself. They had the walls up, they had plenty of guards, like me, and people were saying the worst was behind us." Her tone was bitterly ugly. "I was the only survivor of my family. Most of the people here still had their families… There were only a few like me. Like me… Did you ever ask 'Why me?' Why did I survive when everyone else is dead?"

"All the time." I said. "I didn't have a family. I didn't have anything. And I'm still here…" I thought back to that night outside Atlanta. "I almost died when a walker came into my tent. I was this close… So close… But I survived. There were over thirty people in that camp and half of them were killed. And I wasn't one of them. Andrea lost her little sister… …She was almost as young as us. She died, and I lived. I didn't know what to do with that, and with everything else… Do you believe in God?"

"Who's that?" Haley replied dryly.

"Hershel's a real Bible thumper. And pretty much everyone in the group is religious in some way. They all talk about things happening for a reason, so the only reason I can think of that I survived was so that when those walkers appeared on the highway, and Sophia ran away, someone was able to go after her. Take care of her. Keep her alive…" I held up my hand. "I survived to keep a little girl alive and the price was two fingers."

"Do you really believe that? You survived for a purpose?"

"I don't believe… But I always wonder what would have happened if I had died that night in camp." I kept staring at my hand. "Maybe… It wouldn't have made any difference. Someone else would have gone after her and they would have gotten her back in a few minutes instead of being lost for days. Daryl would have. Rick too. Me… Well, I messed up."

"You're alive. She's alive. And it's only your left hand."

"That's the other thing I ask; was I lucky? I mean, I only lost two fingers. Could've been the whole hand."

"Could have been your life." She said.

"Exactly." I had been thinking that from the moment it had happened. "So, why are you here?"

"Am I supposed to say that it was so someone would reach your prison and bring help here?"

"You were the only one who made it."

"That ain't fate. That's just luck."

"Same thing."

"No."

"Yeah."

"Shut up." She said.

"A year ago I was sleeping on the floor of a cold house with a dozen miserable people. Now I'm here with you." Put that way, it sounded utterly surreal. "Everything I've done this year… I don't even know where to begin."

I sensed her pull a face and I gazed at her giving the ceiling a look of disgust. "Nothing interesting happened to me until you showed up. I woke up, breakfast, watched my bit of wall… Rest of the day to myself. Chores. Gossip. Bed."

"Gossip?"

"Just people talking shit about each other." She explained. "People wondering who was going to hook up with who. People talking about who had tried to hook up. And then there was everything with the Governor… Everything I ignored."

"Ignored?"

"When I think about it now, there were all these warning signs." She shook her head. "What do you think happens this year?"

"I already know my future. There's nothing but farming in my future. Or, I'll be out there. Creeping about scouting for supplies."

"'Scouting for supplies'." She mimicked me and I hoped it was a bad impression because I did not want to sound like that. "Farming wouldn't be so bad." Haley pulled a different face. "Better than just sitting on a wall, shooting arrows at walkers all day."

"Tired of being a badass?"

"I'm tired of having too much time to think." She said. "That's why I liked you. When the Governor partnered us up… I didn't think about my dad. My mom. My brother…" She had told me about them and I waited, but she chose not to talk about them in detail. I did not press it. "You were a nice distraction."

"Well… Ditto." I said awkwardly, unable to think of a better way to say it. "Is that what we're doing? Distracting each other?"

"Unless you want to 'Git sum'?" She asked and her impression of Merle was good. Too good.

"I wouldn't know where to start." I admitted, feeling those stirrings of anxiety and anticipation that felt like a cold weight in the pit of my stomach.

"Just what every girl wants to hear." Haley grinned at the ceiling and I had no idea if she was testing me or teasing me. "Seriously, you've got no ideas?"

I did not have to speak; the way my face flamed said it all.

She rolled her eyes. "Happy New Year, Bas. Now turn the light off, and let's go to sleep." It was a relief to hear her say this.

[][][][][][] New Year's Day 2012

[Sophia]

The world was a very strange place. It had been strange before. It was stranger now. Jack and Judith were two babies born into a world where corpses got up to attack people if their brains were not scrambled. They were growing up in a world where their mothers accepted their fathers shooting at each other. Shooting at each other over… Ultimately, nothing. It was very strange to me that Jack's mother could be so accepting that her husband had died for nothing. Stranger even that she could become friends with the group that had killed him.

But there they were. Carl's mom with Judith and Jack's mom; Lori and Stephanie. That was what they called each other. Her husband had died here and she was on first name terms with the wife of the 'enemy' leader. But that was not how she saw it. Almost none of these people had been involved in the events of the summer. And of our people, Dr S, Austin and his parents, Lizzie, Mika and their father, Aleksandra; they had not been here when it had happened.

I realised what Carl's dad had done by bringing these people here. If there was any leftover resentment back at Woodbury, it would be hard to turn it into hate when their parents, wives and children had lived here among us and seen how normal and… Boring we were. And it was boring for all of us. There was not much to do at the prison at this time of year that did not involve lots of hard work. The way things were, they had enough to do taking care of the walkers at the fences.

I did not even realise it when I started talking to people. It just happened. It was like a reflex; someone asked me a question in our 'classroom' and I answered, and from there… When I understood what I was doing, it struck me like a dream. It had been so long since I had been in that situation. Sitting in class with other kids, learning, sharing answers… I had gotten used to being in scary places and terrifying situations, but this was neither. It was mundane. And that was far more frightening than anything else. I had to leave and the only place for me to go was outside. The only place to go outside was the Yard as the Field with its long grass was a no-go in the wet and so the only place to go was a few steps to the bleachers. Mr Grimes, Glenn, Maggie, Oscar, Milton and his man; they were all down at the Outer Gate dealing with the walkers. I was alone up here.

But only for a minute. Mom sat next to me without any kind of urgency, and then after a few seconds she began to mess with my hair. "You need a haircut." She said in her best 'everything's okay' voice. "Getting too long." She fussed. It was the tone of voice she had always used when dad had done something that had bothered or frightened other people and she would pretend, or maybe even believed, that everything was fine and… Normal. I did not think she was doing that now. She was distracting herself, and me.

"It's not that long." I said.

"Still too much to grab." She replied and in the corner of my eye I saw her touch her own closely cropped hair. "You can never be too careful."

"Are you gonna tell Daryl to cut his hair?"

"I don't need to. Merle keeps telling him."

"Merle has fluffy hair." I said and mom snorted. "He does!"

"What's left of it." She agreed. "A big, mean scary man with fluffy hair like a toddler." She was still playing with mine. "What was that in there?"

From this spot I could not quite see what they were doing at the fence. I could see heads and hear noises but not see the actual action. It was enough though for the disconnect to still be there.

"Hmm?" Mom pressed, letting go of my hair.

I did not look at her. I looked at the rusted mess of a weight bench instead. "I thought I was in school." I said. "We're all sat there with our papers, teachers walking around… It was school." I put my hand on my midriff. "They kidnapped me like ten feet away… I killed someone just over there!" I looked around past mom up into the central courtyard. "But that didn't matter… Then it felt like school and school was a safe place and it wasn't a safe place because it was this place and it all got caught up, it caught up-"

Mom stopped me babbling by putting her arms around me. It was enough to quell the rising panic I had felt. I rested for maybe a minute before talking again.

"School was safe. …You know…" I could not say it but she gave me a squeeze to tell me she knew I meant dad. "School was always safe. It's a happy memory. …But now the good and the bad are getting mixed up…"

"I know, sweetie. I know." Mom said and it was not a platitude. "Look where we are. Nine months ago, we were watching from the other side of that fence as the others cut a path through the convict walkers infesting this place. A few months after that, we were being shot at here." The bullet strikes were on the walls and on the ground. "And right here is where you kissed Bas." She said it sweetly but I still cringed and she gave me another reassuring squeeze. "And whatever might be said about that, that's still a good memory for you. The good and the bad; right here. The infirmary? That's where Judith was born, and that's where Axel died. The cell block? That's where we sleep safely at night, and where we were attacked in our beds."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Yes, it does. There's nowhere on this Earth that's untouched by bad. This is a prison. It's full of all kinds of misery, and so was our house." This time I squeezed her hands and she took a moment before she continued. "We made the best of it, you and me. We've made the best of it here."

From my current vantage point, the only sign of what we had done to the prison was the low wall of logs they had constructed behind the Yard fence overlooking the Field. That did not say 'the best' to me.

"Sometimes when I'm preparing dinner here, I stop. I look at a pot of boiling water…" This time I did not squeeze her hands but her wrists. Mom did not continue but even though I had been just five years old, I had known that my father had forced her hand into boiling water. I had known it was not an accident. She had acted like it was an accident, but I had known. Mom knew exactly what it was like to be doing something utterly mundane and to be reminded of unspeakable pain.

We sat there until they came up from the fences, Glenn and Maggie standing by the Inner Gate and then we joined Mr Grimes, Milton, Oscar and the Woodbury man without a word.

[][][][][][]

I was never sure about God but God-fearing sounded right to me, all things considered. God had a funny sense of humour that on the same day I was freaking out about what was and was not a safe place that I would hear a gunshot on the inside. It was loud because the interior of the cell block echoed foully but it was also quiet, and I knew it was a pistol. But not 'just' a pistol, because it was still a shot being fired.

I was second to arrive on scene with my own weapon. Second after Aleksandra and you did not need to speak Russian to know that what she was saying was 'Everybody sit down and shut up!' and when someone protested that it became 'and shut the fuck up!' The only thing she pointed was a finger and between that finger and her terrifying language, they all sat down. I stood back against the wall and Carl looked at me beseechingly before his father skidded in.

He took it all in slowly with more people arriving every moment. He looked at the kids sat on the floor, some of them with their hands instinctively placed on their heads and then he looked at the Russian woman standing over them like a hostage taker, except who took hostages with their hair set in twin tails? Then Mr Grimes looked at me, before taking in the fresh bullet scar in the wall and the pistol lying on the floor. Carl's pistol.

Carl did not need to convince me he was responsible. After all, why on Earth would Carl put a bullet in a wall when his parents had made such a big deal about him being responsible with the weapon? And not just recently with Amanda and John but over a year ago. Right at the beginning. He likewise had no need to convince his father. You did not need to be a police officer to recognise the guilty party here.

He ordered everyone away and I waited. It was half an hour before Carl appeared and he looked like had spent four hours chewing through his own arm to escape. He sat down and then glowered at me. I realised I was smiling at him and I was not sure why.

"So, one of your fan club wanted to look at your gun." I said. "You tried to stop them, the safety came off in the struggle and then someone nearly lost an eye. You still have your pistol so you're not in trouble with your dad but people think you shouldn't have it and your dad had to argue with them. Now he's going around with that tired squint of his."

Carl's face went through a whole bunch of emotions as I spoke and at the end of it, he seemed to think I was some kind of witch. "How do you know that?"

"The look on your face." I said. "You didn't look ashamed so I knew it wasn't your fault. You looked annoyed, and embarrassed. Like you thought you were going to lose your gun and it wouldn't be fair."

Carl seemed to prefer the theory I could read his mind rather than that I could work all this out based on how well I knew his expressions. "Do you still think it's funny they were laughing at me?"

"Yes." I said, to see him scowl at me. "I don't think it's funny they wanted to play with your gun though."

"It was Molly." Perhaps he intended to come off brooding but his voice was not deep enough for that.

"Which one's Molly?"

He blushed which answered that question. I had spent the past year growing taller while that girl had grown in ways that I was grateful I had not. "She thought it was cool I was allowed to carry a gun and she wanted to have a look at it. I said no, and she just grabbed it out of the holster."

"She sounds… Smart." It might have been a mean thing to say if the topic had not been gun-safety.

"She is. She cried." Carl sounded more aggravated by her manipulating the adults than anything else. "She said how stupid she was, and how sorry she was. …Over and over. So, she's not in trouble…"

"But you are, and so am I."

"Your mom said anyone who wants to take your gun has to take hers first. And John was saying how he had said that kids shouldn't be allowed to carry guns and what your mom said kind of spooked him. My dad said I wasn't the one being unsafe and that Milton guy tried to argue that maybe for now they should be 'confiscated'." Carl made Milton sound like teacher who wanted to take kids cell phones off them. "My dad wouldn't accept that. He told Milton 'keep your kids in line and I'll keep an eye on mine'. Then he told me to go away and I heard him tell mom he missed when it was just you and me, and Judith." He said and then he sighed. "My ears hurt."

This I could appreciate. I doubted anyone who had been inside the prison while guns were firing would ever forget about the perils of an enclosed space. That was why everyone had run so fast when they had heard the shot. Remembering… And my first instinct had been to run towards the gunshot. "Are you enjoying having other people around?"

I was definitely getting too much enjoyment out of his facial expressions but it was the best entertainment I had, especially without Bas. "Is this normal?" Carl asked.

"Normal?"

"Them. Are they normal and we're the weird ones?"

"Depends who you ask."

"Well… I'm asking you."

"I'm the wrong person to ask about what's normal." I said.

I could not help Carl and he set me thinking so I asked mom the same question.

"We haven't had the chance to have a normal." She replied.

I thought about it. I thought about the past year. I could not disagree that there had been no period where things had been settled enough for us to have a 'normal'. Unless, constant terror was our normal. There had been no period lasting more than a few weeks where things had been peaceful and routine for us. Between killing Andrew and Woodbury attacking, being abducted, being shot… There had not been a normal. I had tried to find one but winter was not the best time for that. And now here we were running a hotel…

[][][][][][]

Mika got on the best with the younger Woodbury children. Austin could have been one of the older Woodbury teens with the way he had merged with them. It was in the middle where things were awkward with me, Carl and Lizzie. I was not comfortable with other kids; not yet. Carl's shooting accident had put a dampener on his relations with the giggling girls. And then there was Lizzie. She was utterly disinterested in people. She was polite enough; friendly in a programmed kind of way. But she was not interested in making friends. The more I watched her, the more I saw myself in her. She would stare into space. She had coping mechanisms like looking at pretty things; a way to distract herself from the ugliness. Sometimes she seemed perfectly normal; the way I had felt and seemed normal in my safe spaces.

I knew why I was the way that I was. I did not want to speculate what had made Lizzie the way that she was. It intrigued me that Mika seemed to be fine, although perhaps because she was a little younger, whatever they might have seen had not struck her the same way as it had with Lizzie. But that was speculating… I did not know. I could not ask. When Lizzie stared into space though, I could at least take an odd comfort in the fact that her father did the same thing. The same things presumably affected them both. Although, Mika had said that Lizzie had never had a problem with blood or anything else that was gruesome. That it was just the way that she was.

The adults all seemed to accept each other. The initial wariness was gone and now they shared the same gripes. The prison was cold and drafty, the food was basic, sanitation was basic… And we learned that Woodbury had similar issues. Water shortages, food was becoming an issue and while they had power, it was limited in the winter as the generators were reserved for emergencies only. I heard an old man reflect that Woodbury would soon be like this place if things did not turn around. And then he became cheerful and said that was the whole point of what they were doing back at the town. Milton agreed enthusiastically, and Mr Grimes… He brooded.

They said they were communicating with our people using the radios but I never saw it happen. They said everything was going well at the town and soon it would be time to end this little experiment. Everyone would go back where they belonged, but we would continue to help each other. Ninety people across two communities, helping each other.

Like Mr Grimes, I brooded about it. Every time things seemed to be looking up; something awful happened.

[][][][][][] January 7th

[Bas]

Woodbury looked strange now. When you had walked through the front gates in the summer, it had been like stepping through a portal into the old world. The world the way it had been. Now when you walked through the front gates, you could see another wall and more gates at the other end of the street. Main Street as they referred to it and the buildings either side of it was now the core of Woodbury. Doors and windows on the outside had been blocked with sheet metal secured in place with nailguns. The two walls were solid and they had two pickups ready to be backed into the gates to reinforce them if necessary. Taking out biters from the wall was easy enough for archers but not simple with hand weapons. So, they had piles of bricks. A well-thrown brick could cave in a biter skull easy enough especially when they were so close that it was almost impossible to miss. It was brutal and messy but as simple and effective as the way we would stab walkers through the prison's fences.

Martinez even went so far as to prove it by letting a whole of biters crowd against the front wall and gates and then he had his people, not the guards, take care of them. People who had not had to fight biters since the beginning had to hurl bricks at the snarling crowd beneath them. They had to defend their settlement. And it worked. I watched people I had seen last year acting like life was continuing as normal turn biter skulls into pulp. I noted the way that Andrea approved of making everyone take part, even if she found the business unpleasant. When every last biter was downed, the corpses could be picked up and dumped outside town simply enough. But the mess of shattered skulls and brains splattered over the asphalt had to be scraped up with shovels into buckets.

Not a single bullet or arrow expended. Just a few broken bricks. Most of the bricks could be retrieved and stacked back on the wall for another time. It was the way cavemen must have fought by chucking rocks at each other but walkers were dumber than rocks. Why waste an arrow when a brick was just as effective? Obviously, they could not defeat a horde like the one that had marched on the town just with thrown bricks. It would have taken a year of throwing and tens of thousands of bricks… But smaller numbers could be dealt with.

Woodbury was jammed with corpses. It would take weeks to clear them all out from the open streets but that was a job for Woodbury, not us. Our time was done. Our contribution had been putting those corpses down and leaving the people of Woodbury free to clear buildings outside their fortifications of anything useful, and then to board them up. All around the inhabited town was now a ring of inaccessible structures. People and walkers could no longer get inside. It would take a whole lot more effort to do the same to the rest of town and again, that was a task for them for the future. Just as Milton's apparent scheme to build bridges out of the stronghold to the rest of town, allowing them to roof-hop, would have to wait before it came off the drawing board and became reality. Lots of plans. Lots of ideas. All of them achievable, but only in good time.

And we were out of time.

Andrea and Michonne were glad to be going. Daryl too. Merle had in a very strange way charmed his way back into the townspeople's good graces. Despite his foul mouth and temper and his apparent desertion; they accepted that he had left for his family. For blood. And they also did not forget his part in saving Sophia's life after the Governor had shot her. They accepted Daryl as Merle's brother, but Daryl was as uncomfortable with them as he had once been with us. He wanted to go home.

Sasha was relentlessly trolling her brother. Tyreese insisted that he and Karen were 'just friends' but that was a lie. I did not know how things had progressed between them though I suspected not as fast as things had between Glenn and Maggie, but Karen would be sad to see him go. And Tyreese would be sad to leave. He could not just stay for her though; it was too impulsive. Too sappy. But they would see each other again.

That was how it was with me and Haley. I could not stay in Woodbury and she could not come back to the prison. After all, what if she left and then we grew sick of each other? She could hardly come back with her tail between her legs. It was too embarrassing to even contemplate. And there were other reasons too. Good reasons.

"I need to take care of myself for a while." She said. She had already said so last night but she felt the need to repeat herself as we made our preparations to leave. "I can't be the girl who need a big strong man to take care of her."
I pointedly looked behind me to look for this 'big strong man' she was referring to and she stepped on my foot. "I told you, I get it." I said.

"I don't want you to think I'm giving you mixed signals."

"What's mixed? I get it. And it makes sense."

"Yeah. But…" She bit her lip and did something subtle with the way she was standing. Something that made me blush to the core. "I don't want you to think… I don't have any regrets."

"Trust me, There's a part of me that wants more. Lots more." I admitted, and then naturally felt guilty for it. "A small part."

"Very small." Haley put in with a grin.

I allowed it. "I refuse to think with it though. I won't be that guy."

"You're not that guy. Trust me. If you were, I'd have been fighting you off for the past couple of days. And I ain't had to." She pulled a face. "Kinda judging you for that."

"Do you want me to take Merle's advice, and grab your 'sweet ass'?"

"No. But I want to know you're thinking about it while you're gone."

"You want to imagine me back at the prison dreaming about you?"

Haley grinned. "A girl wants to know she's wanted."

"That's pretty strong motivation to stay alive and come back again."

"Ain't it though?"

There was nothing else to say. Nothing to do but kiss until Andrea angrily yelled at us to 'Knock it off!' We obeyed, for all of twenty seconds. It was the best way to spend the time until the bus came from the prison.

There was something about seeing a bus that was just so incongruous. A bus crammed full of people that arrived and made its stop like it was on a regular route. Like it was normal. The Woodbury reunions were typical except for Martinez and Milton who exchanged a nod before stepping aside to become engrossed in a deep conversation, reporting rapidly to each other. Milton looked like a fussy house cat, and while Martinez was not the same breed as Daryl and Merle; he was still a working dog. I did not think of Rick as a dog, even if tilted his head like one. Andrea was a cat though; the angry 'don't touch me!' kind that left dead animals around the house as proof they were fierce hunters. I watched Martinez, Milton, Andrea and Rick talk and it all looked amicable. I realised how little attention I had given this week to… Everything… If I was honest, I had no real idea how the wind was blowing between our leaders.

And I lost focus enough that a woman carrying a baby could approach me unseen and startle me by putting her hand on my boot. I did not have the first clue who she was.

"I understand." She said, looking me straight in the eye. She patted my foot and then turned and walked away.

I turned to Haley and she was confused as I was. Maybe a little bit more even. "Who was that?" I asked.

"That was Stephanie."

"What does she understand?"

"Why you came here to spy on us… Maybe?" She shrugged, staring after her. "I guess I'll find out."

I supposed that I would too, one way or another. There had been something familiar in her eyes. Something… Something I knew from the past. But that was a lot of doors of memory to open to pin it down.

"They look a little rough." Haley remarked of her people and I guessed to distract me.

"Prison's cold." I knew I would feel chill when I returned.

"It didn't seem so bad when I was there."

"You were in the infirmary."

"True."

"Do you think they'll be happy with their new living arrangements?"

"Not my problem." She said. "I'll be in my room or standing watch."

"Fun." I looked over the crowd. "Anyone you want to say hello to?"

"Not just now." She drummed her fingers on the platform. "What are 'friends' these days?"

"Whoever's left." That was the way it was now and why there were so many unlikely friendships between such disparate people. After all, she was the former college student sitting next to the former petty thief.

"Bleak." She said, nodding several times, and then nudged me. I nudged her back. It was ridiculous how dark we were being just to cover up the fact we were both happy. And we were. We might have been going our separate ways but we had definitely made each other happy. It was something to hold onto. With that thought, I took her hand and I did not let go until Rick yelled at me to get my ass in the car.

"Are you going to push me down again?" I asked.

"Not this time."

"So, we're still even?"

"No. I need to save your life."

"I look forward to it."

We did not need to annoy anyone with a protracted kiss; we had gotten that out of our system waiting for the bus to arrive. This goodbye kiss was very… Perfunctory. This and the fact neither of us had a clue what to say and we shrugged and patted mindlessly at each other was actually, to my mind, a good thing. We did not know how to express ourselves. But we knew what we were feeling.

And that was that. Twelve days at Woodbury came to an end and considering how I had spent Christmas Eve getting to Woodbury, I could say that I had definitely earned the happiness I had felt in the days since.

"Do I need to ask why he has that look on his face?" Rick asked Andrea.

"No." She answered tersely.

"Same look Glenn used to get." Rick declared. "Made you want to slap him."

"I know the feeling." I sensed Andrea glare at me via the mirror but I did not care. I did not care that they were talking about me like I was not there. I was happy.

I was happy to see the prison again. After so long in Woodbury and especially the derelict part of the town, the prison looked lonely and forgotten. But, also formidable. The low wooden fence we had constructed to reinforce the wire did not look like much but I knew how deep the posts were in the ground. I knew how thick those posts were. I knew that the walkers would pulp each other against the fence before the wood burst and the wire crumpled. Were the Woodburyians better off hurling bricks or did we have the better set up spearing them through the mesh? I was sure I would find out within a day.

I was not expecting the hug. I did however expect the punch to the gut. Sophia did not have much experience hitting people so it was not much of a blow. "I think I deserve that."

"You walked into a herd covered in blood and guts. You earned that." She tried to hit me again but this one I caught. "And you didn't tell me!"

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. It was…" I remembered how I had broken the news to Haley; bashing myself in the head. "I didn't want to think about it. I didn't know how to tell you… I'm sorry."

"You never kept anything back from me before." She pouted at me and guessed she was not aware she was doing it. It was an awkward expression at her age. The pout turned to a frown. "You look different."

"I had a nice vacation." I said and her fourteen-year-old eyebrows rose up and despite the fact I had gotten far worse these past two weeks from adults, she was the one to make me blush. "I did…"

Sophia nodded sagely, and then rolled her eyes. It made me feel even more embarrassed.

At least I was not alone on that front. Sasha was telling everyone that her brother was in love and the big man was wringing his hat in-between telling her to shut up. Andrea and Michonne were bored by it all and went inside quick. Carol intrigued me by fussing over Merle rather than Daryl and then as Merle fled from her mothering, I saw the ruse. She had gotten rid of Merle so she could have a proper reunion with Daryl. Ever since his brother had come back into his life, he had not been nearly as close to Carol as he had been before. You would never have guessed it from the way they looked at each other.

"Sometimes it scares me when I see her happy." Sophia confessed and she had looked away from them.

"A lot of that going around." I said and frowned at the sight of Aleksandra with her hair tied in two high pigtails. "Make any new friends?"

"No." She spoke so decisively I was startled and stared at her. "I wasn't ready." She said, meeting my gaze. There was a challenge there.

"Next time then."

"Next time?"

"Rick wants us to have power so Woodbury's going to send an electrician. Woodbury wants someone to teach them how to grow things, so Hershel's going to have to visit. Maybe you can go along. See the place differently." It was not the most delicate way to tell her that a traumatic place in her life was likely going to feature prominently in it but it was necessary for her to know.

"Maybe." She said.

Beth gave me a hug, and a suspicious look. Carol also gave me both. Aleksandra said hello, in English, so I said privyet. Lizzie did not say hello, she said "So we can do archery again?" Carl gave me a nod and I thought he looked exhausted and very grateful that things were back to normal. Lori meanwhile gave me a contemplative look that was very similar to the one I had gotten from Stephanie back in Woodbury and the fact both women were holding babies while giving me the look gave me a chill.

After spending nearly two weeks with the daily task of fighting walkers in the Woodbury's streets, I had nothing to do. I found some keys and opened my cell and I struggled to remember the last time I had been in here. I might not have missed the bunkbed but I had missed Sophia's artwork. I might have been sharing a bed with Haley but it had been her space. This was mine.

I really needed to make an effort to make that so.

[][][][][][]

My satisfaction at having the chance to rest turned to volunteering for the evening watch. Calling it a watch was farcical when it was utterly dark at night and barely any light escaped the cell block windows. You had your night vision and maybe some moonlight on these long winter nights.

The woolly hat that Beth wore was a grubby white and that made her hair and skin look even brighter. That was good because it meant when I heard her footsteps I did not have to deal with even a momentary fear it was a walker. Walkers were not pale any more. I knew they were out there but they were formless shapes in the dark; filthy clothes and dark flesh made them little more than shadows.

"They stopped filling Woodbury with fires." I said as a greeting. "They used to do that before. They had all the streets lit up with fires and torches. It was good for stopping people being scared of the dark but it meant every walker out there could see the glow. You can't see anything here." There was not even a hint of light down by the Outer Gate where Caleb and Oscar sheltered in the guardpost. There was no point in them being outside. Not like up here where I patrolled the Yard.

"Having fun?"

"Keeping busy." I could have been lying in bed and instead I was out here.

"They're saying we're friends with Woodbury now."

"Friends is pushing it." I said, thinking of how Andrea and Martinez had spent most of the time yapping at each other like squabbling dogs.

"Tyreese made a friend." She smiled and then her grin shone in the darkness.

"What are they saying about me?" I asked wearily.

Beth hummed and clearly, she had anticipated great joy from this conversation. "That you've spent the past two weeks doing nothing but carrying on with that girl." I noticed that 'carrying on' had become the go-to euphemism ever since Amanda had used the term. "And maybe… You were enjoying yourself just a little too much…" Her grin was very, very bright in the dark.

"Who says that?"

"Mostly Andrea. And Merle. But Sasha said you seemed pretty 'loved up'. Like her brother."

"Merle's just a shit-stirring… gremlin. And Andrea's just envious."

"Envious?"

"There's not many dating opportunities now."

"Is that what you were doing?" Beth asked. "Dating?"

"What do you think I was doing?"

"You look different." She said. "You could see it when you arrived this morning. You look… Frisky." Her grin vanished and was replaced with a mock severe expression. "Remember our last conversation about relationships?"

"Just ask the question." I sighed.

"Did you sleep with her?"

"I slept in her bed every night." I said and for the second time that day a girl punched me. Beth went for the arm though, but it was surprising that she hit me at all. "We actually joked every night about the fact that we weren't having sex even though everyone thought we were. One night she said she felt she was letting everyone down by not just doing it."

"So, you didn't?"

The noise I made was somewhere between an 'um', an 'er' and a 'hoo'. "In the eyes of God and the law, I did not have sex with that woman. I mean, come on! I knew her for a week I spent lying to her and then just the past few days and she had other issues to deal with."

"Issues?" Beth asked. "You mean, being the only one to survive coming here?"

"Exactly. They all think she invited me to her room for sex?" I nodded at the cell block. "She didn't want to sleep alone. So, we slept. …It was nice." I nodded to myself and felt a wave of feeling that I tried to shake off because it made me feel peculiarly weak. "I was a comfort."

"But you did something." Beth accused.

"I think I've made up for the past six years in a couple of weeks." I agreed. "The one thing our side and Woodbury could agree on was that it was disgusting to always turn around and find us making out. That was good. That was very good." I was nodding again.

"But in the eyes of God and the law?" Beth was grinning again.

I had known I would have to talk to someone about this. In fact, I wanted to talk to someone about it. And while Beth may have looked angelic and pure, she was still human and of all the potential people to talk to; she was the best. We could talk to each other about this stuff. We had talked about this stuff. "We had a shower." I confessed.

"A shower?"

"A shower." I confirmed. "You're only supposed to spend ten minutes showering at Woodbury. We had twenty minutes. Together…"

Beth stared at me and I blushed. Hard. It had to be visible in the darkness because Beth giggled and then hit me again but in a jocular fashion this time. "That's it?" She asked. "I mean, they all think… And that's all?"

"I'm kind of flattered they think I'm some some of stud… But we… Haley and me… We were just enjoying being together. The shower thing just happened… Otherwise, we'd be Disney innocent, except for sharing a bed. I don't know why everyone's so invested in the idea we were having sex."

"You came back though." Beth said tellingly.

"She has to sleep alone sometime."

"She said that?"

"Yes."

"Good for her." Beth said. "And you. You don't want to be her distraction from her problems."

"I said something like that. I was happy to be a distraction, but I want her to be healthy."

"Sounds like you love her."

This made me feel something else entirely. "Don't say that."

"Bas." Beth said my name in a sanctimonious tone reminiscent of her father. "You spent this whole time in her bed. You look like an anvil's been taken off your back. Are you really going to say you don't love her?"

"I barely know her."

"You spent all that time with her and you didn't get to know her?" Beth became impish. "Shame on you!"

"You know what I mean!"

"I know you're being a guy right now." She said and it was annoying because it was true. "You like her. I'm guessing it's mutual. So, what's the problem?"

"She's there, I'm here and I won't be that guy... Pining."

"That's… Kind of sad."

"Sad?"

"It's okay to miss her."

"I know it's okay. …What?"

"Be happy." Beth said. "Don't pretend."

"Did you get a chance to be happy?" I urgently tried to push the conversation away from my romantic feelings.

"Too many chances." Beth pulled a face that made her eyes big. "Those Woodbury boys…"

"Kind of aggressive? That's one of the first things Haley ever talked to me about."

"I missed having you around." She said. "Austin was happy with the Woodbury girls."

"How is he now?"

"Pouting." She said. "I wish just one of those boys had been… Just nice."

"'Nice'?" I asked.

"Slow. I wish they had talked to me because they wanted to talk to me. Instead, it was just something they had to do… To get more…"

"Were the younger ones like that?"

"None of them bothered Sophia." She assured me. "They wanted to, but Carol kind of scared them."

"I bet she did." I wondered if Sophia had been aware of this. She had said she had not been ready to make any new friends but I had to wonder if she was aware that other kids would have been interested in being more than friends.

"Carl got the worst of it. If you want to see him get angry, ask him how he feels about all the girls thinking he's cute." Beth grinned again.

"You're showing your wicked side again, Greene."

"I take joy wherever I find it." She admittedly breezily.

"How is Sophia?"

"You mean, is she jealous?" It was hard to tell if Beth was still mocking me. "I think she's amused that the adults have time to talk about your love life rather than what really matters."

"We thought that at Woodbury. It's a distraction. Entertainment." I glared into the darkness. "I hate that she'll have to deal with it alone now."

"Because you love her." Beth prompted.

"Shut up."

"You do look happy." She said. "You look like you might just suddenly start singing."

"I'm not you."

"I've never heard you sing."

"And you won't." I said. I knew I was happy and I knew it was visible but it would be alarming if people started commenting on me acting happy. Bursting into song just for the sake of it? Whistling or humming even… Alarming. "You know what the best part of it all was? It was… Genuine. I was playing a character back in the summer but ever since she came here… She likes me for me. I don't know why; only God knows why she likes me." I laughed suddenly. Humourlessly. Self-consciously. "I'm clueless as hell and she's patient with that. She understands. She gets it. And the only way I could… I could reciprocate… She doesn't feel very attractive at the moment. She was all bullshit back in the summer; all confidence and arrogance. She didn't have that after coming here. Or walking through a horde of walkers. Or, getting into a shower with me." Beth was not smiling but listening intently. "When I met her she was showing off her legs. Little shorts and silky-smooth legs. I thought it was ridiculous but that's what Woodbury was like. People wasting time grooming like that instead of worrying about the things that really mattered. And she was really self-conscious about being naked." I smiled now. "She said she was pale, hairy and disgusting. She said that to me, and I look like this. Maybe I'm not pale but the marks on me? Well… You know." Haley after all was not the first woman to see me naked and Beth smiled, remembering when she had teased me about having been my nurse. "It's a weird thing to assure someone they're… That they're sexy. Even weirder when they find you sexy…"

"I'm a girl, Bas." She reminded me. "Boys… And men… They were never subtle about it."

"You never felt unattractive?"

"All the time. But that's different. Guys finding me attractive… That just happens. That's how it is for us. We can look in the mirror and feel… Gruesome. And you guys look at us and…" She made a groping gesture. "Maggie's talked to me about it. All those times none of us had washed in weeks and she felt disgusting, and somehow Glenn still wanted her? Her words, not mine." She said quickly.

"Haley thought it was weird I liked to look at her first thing in the morning. Hair in her mouth, gunk in her eyes, all sweaty and clammy. I'd kiss her just because she couldn't understand why I'd want to."

"Oh, you are definitely in love."

"Shut up." I repeated, but I flushed as I considered what I had just said. There was definitely more than just 'liking' someone there. "I'll say this though. I'm afraid. I've just had this really, really, really amazing time in my life." I balled my fist and waved it a few times. "And now I feel like something really shitty is going to happen because that's how it is now."

"Glenn and Maggie thought that." Beth said. "They thought because they got married something awful was going to happen, and instead, our enemies are our friends now." She shrugged. "Y'all real cynical."

"Gee, I wonder why."

"Things do get better." She said. "Look at how we are now." She gave me a critical look. "Is your life better or worse now?"

"You don't want me to answer that." After all, more than once I had considered that I was better off now than I had ever been before.

[][][][][][]

It was strange to sleep alone again. And cold. I had forgotten how cold the prison was. Those of us who had been at Woodbury all ended up clustering around the wood burner for breakfast and it reminded me of all the times I had been part of a crowd around the traditional homeless oil drum fire. The others found it amusing and so did I in many ways. A little less than two weeks was all it had taken for us to soften up.

I wandered over to D Block to see what Woodbury had made of it. Aleksandra gave me a nod as she added to her cityscape and the artwork the girls had put on the walls looked a little brighter now that it seemed that the windows and the block had been thoroughly cleaned. There were no rugs on the floor here but it was spotless. Every cell looked ready to accept new people; the beds made and also meticulously clean.

"It was weird seeing it crowded."

"Are you trying to sneak up on me?" I asked.

"Trying." Sophia shrugged. "They didn't like staying here. They always came over the other side. I guess because it was warmer."

"I guess. Did they enjoy it?"

"Being here? Not really. They liked how secure this place is but the beds are too small and the mattresses are evil." She shrugged again. "I think that was fine coming from the old folks but everyone younger just needed to deal with it."

"That's not very nice."

"A bed's better than no bed."

"Yes." No question. "How are you?" I asked the awkward question quickly. A little too quickly because she raised an eyebrow which made her look remarkably like her mother.

"Tired." She said. "It's quiet now."

"You prefer that?"

"It was a lot of people. A whole lot of people. I wasn't ready for that."

"First time I visited Woodbury, I didn't have to pretend it was a shock being around that many again. And I grew up in a city so it's always weird to me being with just a handful of people." I noted that Aleksandra was still painting but she was definitely listening to us.

"We're having lessons again. Schoolwork. They had us all together and it felt just being back in school and I kind of panicked."

"Panicked?"

"It was the same, but different." She said, and then frowned. "You know what I mean?"

"You remembered the way things were, then how they actually are."

"No." She said, but did not elaborate. She kept frowning and she was not looking at me but beyond me. When she did look at me again, her eyes locked onto me hard. "Do I seem different to you?" She asked and then turned pink before going pale. "I mean, when we met… Have I changed?"

"You've grown." I said. "I don't mean." I made a gesture referring to her growth spurt. "When we got here, you had a whole lot of enthusiasm. You looked for the positives. You're… You're careful about getting your hopes up now." I put it as delicately as I could. It was curious that I had had the same conversation with Beth just last night. I was not delicate enough though.

"The world did break me then." She said sadly, and without a hint of adolescent drama.

"You killed a man and you were abducted and shot; all in six months. If you were still upbeat, I'd think you were nuts." I admitted. "That doesn't make you a bad person." I knew this was what she was worried about. "You're just… Cautious."

"Cautious?"

"Sophia, just one of the things you've gone through would make someone else paranoid and defensive. Just one." I remembered my first thoughts about her. "You've taken a whole lot of shit in your life, and you're still a better person than most."

"Like you?"

I was not expecting to hear this and between her eyes being big and her freckles being prominent, I forgot for a moment everything that was bothering her and she was just some innocent who did not know better. She knew bits and pieces, enough to know that I was indeed better than the average person who had lived in my circumstances. "I went after you. …So yeah…" Whenever Sophia gave me that look, I felt all my sins. I had given Haley a few insights into my former life but it had not bothered me. Somehow, Sophia made me feel I should have been better. "Most people decide 'Fuck it' and only care about themselves." I remembered how Rick had treated me at the farm, like going after Sophia had been some great heroic deed and yet, it had just been something I had done. Without thinking. "Let's get some air."
I was not the only one who had had this idea. The adults were all talking, bickering, in the basketball court and so we walked past it to the wooden bulwark behind the Yard fence. There was nothing to see in the Field and just the usual stray walkers at the fence beyond. I listened and Rick was trying to establish what would happen next here and it said a great deal about how things had loosened up that his word was no longer the first and last of it.

"I guess this is a democracy again." I mused.

"Doesn't sound like it."

"Sounds like it to me." What was a democracy without argument? "I liked watching Martinez at Woodbury. You could tell, part of him was happy to be the only leader at the Woodbury and the other part hated it. He hated having everyone coming to him to solve every little problem. What was Milton like?"

"He seemed…" Sophia struggled to be polite. "Overwhelmed."

"He's scared of Rick."

"Why?"

"Because Rick reminds him of the Governor." I said bluntly.

Sophia was not shocked. Instead, she nodded. "I can see that."

"And Rick's not afraid to get his hands dirty. Milton has Martinez for that. And they used to have Merle." I considered what I knew about Milton. "He's a good man. …But he's not a violent man."

"Isn't that a bad thing now?"

"They're over there arguing because we need all kinds of people to make things work. They want us to be independent, and Rick knows that can't work. We need everyone. All kinds. Milton's not a fighter but he is a thinker. Maybe he thinks too much, but at least he's thinking."

"He worries."

"Yeah…"

"It's a new year." Sophia mused. "What does that mean?"

"I want it to mean that in a couple of months we harvest the planters and then we set up the Field like we always planned. Nice, boring stuff like that."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"Nothing else?" She asked, and with a hint of the same smile Beth had given me.

"Just ask the question."

"What question?" She asked innocently.

"Whatever question you have."

"Are you happy?"

This was not any of the questions I had anticipated and so I was taken aback her and smile went from innocent back to sly. I could at least be honest. "I'm happy."

Now she blushed, and squirmed. I saw her try to form the question but it was a step too far.

"Does that bother you?" I asked and felt unclean for saying it.

"Yes." She squirmed again. "The… The the… Not you having a girlfriend. That's good. Good for you. Very good."

"You sure?"

"I can wait." She said and Sophia used the same tone she had before although this time she did not look at me. That made it very hard to tell if she was joking. Or joking about joking. Or something else.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I wish they'd shut up about it."

"They don't even know what they're talking about." I said. "They don't have the first clue about me and Haley."

I proceeded to tell her everything, starting from the beginning with how we had met, that night the Governor had attacked Michonne, the meeting with Milton, Haley coming to the prison, the pair of us having to be part of a herd of walkers and finally how I had spent the past two weeks. I laid it all out though obviously I did not tell her about the shower, and the girl was both reassured and intrigued to learn that I had not spent, as the others had implied, two weeks screwing my brains out. I had in fact had as close to a meaningful relationship as was possible in the circumstances, and with Haley and I avoiding any deeper conversations as she worked through her issues. It felt stupid to talk to a fourteen-year-old about it all but none of the adults had actually asked me about it. Beth and Sophia… I was not sure if I was grateful to be permitted to live my life or annoyed that they made jokes about things that simply were not true.

"You know what the funny thing is?" I asked her. "I know the only reason I'm getting grief about this is the same reason that Tyreese is. People are envious."

"Envious that you're happy?"

"They felt the same way about Glenn and Maggie."

"Because… They made each other happy."

"Exactly." I looked out on the cold wind ruffled grass of the Field. Nearly a year ago I had slept in that grass the first night we had come here.

"So… What now?"

I chuckled and looked back around at where the adults were still having their open-air debate. "Now we see if it was worth it. We see what being friends with Woodbury is really worth."

"What should it be worth?"

"Well, Rick's first priority is power. Getting the lights running."

"That's worth it." Sophia said. "That's worth a lot."

"We want electricity. They want to know how to grow things." I shrugged. "Win-win all around. Unless someone does something stupid."

"Do you think that'll happen?"

"I'm… Cautious." I said, not wanting to depress or frighten her. It was unnecessary. She was nodding.

"Good. Every time things are going well for us, something terrible happens."

I had said the same thing to Beth. Just last night. I looked at Sophia, this gangly not-so-little-anymore girl and I worried she was turning into me.

(22,000)

Author's Notes;

I always seem to start these with an apology. My last update was March 10th and now it's April 26th. Why the long delay? Long story shot; I had to find somewhere new to live and estate agents/agencies are the minions of Satan. Pretty hard to write when you can't sleep because of stress. And I still haven't moved.

This is an odd chapter in many ways. Bas is simply happy for a change and so gets little attention, while the focus is on Haley and especially Sophia's mental health. In the previous chapter, Haley's experienced a traumatic event and I didn't want her to just be over it in short order. Sophia meanwhile has a whole litany of traumas and that's shaping who she is. Haley does not want to talk about her feelings overmuch while Sophia's POV allows for a lot of introspection, and her mom is someone she can talk to.

A few chapters back I said I regretted the lack of conversations between Sophia and Carol. I've eased into them now and it's good to write their bond. As Sophia's developed from a frightened girl into a young teenager trying to come to terms with her experiences, there's a lot to work with regarding Carol's character. This Carol is much like her season 3 counterpart, but not the ruthless figure of season 4. Her energies however are focused on Sophia, not the group as a whole.

It was also fun to write Sophia teasing Carl. While she's ill at ease with everyone from Woodbury, she has a warm and easy friendship with Carl to contrast it. Carl's frustration regarding girls giggling at him, and his confusion that this means they like him; well, that's just me writing about my past and being baffled being told the same thing. Being a young teenage boy is very confusing as you try to understand teenage girls.

I did actually write the interaction between Bas and Haley that led to them showering together. I didn't want the two leaping to sex; too cliché. Also, out of character for Bas, and for Haley too. It was already established she liked that Bas didn't come on strong with her, and I didn't like the idea of her deciding to have sex to distract from her issues. I hate that in fiction whenever a woman has a traumatic experience and immediately decides the cure is sex. Removing that interaction does however leave it ambiguous what happened between them. So for anyone who couldn't read between the lines; they did not have penetrative sex. Or oral sex. For some people that means they did not have sex. But, that's open to interpretation. I removed it though for likely being too graphic, for being more than a little gratuitous, and ultimately, because it was better to have Bas talk about it with Beth. Good Christian Beth may seem a little blasé about sex, but I think it fit her character that she cared more about someone else being happy than anything else.

Why do the other characters take such notice of it? As is said in-story; they're starved for entertainment. Andrea being particularly annoyed by it is my reference to the Subreddit's characterisation of TV-Andrea as sex-crazed for the Governor. You'd think the character did nothing else in three seasons but sleep with Phillip, and Shane. But part of what drew Andrea to Woodbury in season 3 was loneliness. And I have made the point many times about how in TWD; people are scared to be alone. Teenage Comic-Sophia even laments the limited dating pool at the Hilltop.

If you find it eyebrow raising that eighteen-year-old Bas and fourteen-year-old Sophia would discuss his love-life then good; you're supposed to. It's part of the story.

I'll try to return to a chapter a month, but no promises. I still have to move in a week's time and settle to a new routine.

I started writing this in 2023, and posted it on April 25th 2024. I've had 11,000 views on FF and 1500 on A03. A thank you to everyone who's followed this story and been patient with my inability to come up with a title. And a thank you to everyone who has commented; feedback is always wonderful.
Though I dread the spambots on FF.