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The World We Live In

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

“Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?”
— Henry David Thoreau



Unlike funerals in the past, in the old world and in the new world, before Alexandria and after coming to Alexandria, there had always been at least a few kind words said over the fresh graves of their fallen. Sometimes the words were taken straight from the bible, or somewhat spiritual in theme, and sometimes they were short and sweet to the tune of “I’m sorry”, “I love you,” and “goodbye.”

As the sun rose a little higher into the sky as the new day began, so did the digging of a single grave for Carl. Michonne had slipped into the house beside the cemetery and found a bed sheet which was used to wrap the teen up after his body had been carried out of the church; a task that Rick, alone, took on. Neither Georgie nor Michonne offered to help; knowing it was something Rick had to do, and knowing he wouldn’t accept any help anyway. Despite his grief and his natural stubbornness, Rick couldn’t turn either woman away when they helped him dig Carl’s grave. With the three doing it, the grave was dug faster than if only two had done it and especially if Rick had done it alone.

Not one of them spoke the entire time. No words were shared after the fatal shot had rung out, or when the first wave of true grief washed over them. Every little thing they did following Carl’s death was done in silence. They knew what needed doing and they did it without question or hesitation. As much as they wanted to just sit around and wallow in their emotional pain, they couldn’t.

Once the grave was dug, Rick again carried his son’s wrapped body down into the hole; setting him gently into it as tears poured down his face.

He never thought he’d be in this position.

He should’ve never been in this position.

He had held Carl the day he was born, swaddled in a blanket, with his entire life still ahead of him. Rick had had such high hopes for his son’s future. He had dreamt of all the things he’d someday do and see and become. He had wanted Carl to grow up; to graduate high school, then college, meet a nice girl, have a family of his own, have his own house and, most importantly, live. He never planned on holding his dead son’s body, swaddled in a bed sheet, while placing him into a three foot deep grave, with only memories and the anger he felt over a life cut short to keep him moving.

Carl was supposed to be the one who lived.

He was supposed to be the one who survived him.

Carl was supposed to be the one who was standing over his grave, not the other way around.

When the grave was filled in, and a makeshift cross had been placed at the head, the three adults stood there in further silence; standing there together, but separate.

Rick was numb. His mind was a weird mix of blank and void of any recognizable thought; along with feeling as if there were twenty different radios stations playing at the same time in his head. He couldn’t focus on anything, aside from the heavy feeling of grief in his chest.

Michonne had been down this road once before. She had buried her own son at the beginning, and it was nothing she ever thought she’d have to do again. But she had also never thought she’d come to love a boy as if he were her own flesh and blood, who was not just her friend but her family.

Georgie was staring between Carl’s fresh grave and the settled grave beside it that belonged to Tristan. She wasn’t sure if it had been coincidence or on purpose that Rick had decided to dig his son’s grave there, and she wasn’t sure if it made it sweet to have her boys together or if it made it sadder. Well, sadder, of course, because they were both children; her son and her stepson. She thought about the days following Tristan’s death and how she had spent a night sleeping atop his grave, and that she had walked through her life, for weeks, as if she were one of the walking dead. She could safely assume Michonne had gone through life the same way after losing her child and it saddened her knowing Rick couldn’t afford that luxury right now.

They were in the middle of a war.

Plenty of their people had died already and were still going to die.

There wasn’t enough time to grieve.

Not yet, anyway.

They had to continue to fight this fight; to see it to its end, and hopefully sooner rather than later. Only then could they sit back and contemplate all they had gained and, more importantly, all they had lost.

Maybe they wouldn’t have to grieve at all.

Maybe they wouldn’t survive this war.

Maybe their people would be burying them next and mourning them after, instead.

Rick had been holding onto Carl’s Beretta; crouched down in front of the cross grave marker made from two small tree branches. After a few more moments, he stood up and walked over to the cross where he hung the gun on it. Nearing the cemetery were a few walkers that had since begun trickling into Alexandria, so Michonne stepped away to take care of them. Georgie turned around, reaching for her knife and was prepared to help, but the aggression Michonne was putting into each swing of her blade gave Georgie the distinct impression that Michonne using this as an outlet for her grief. Georgie didn’t know what to do. She felt awkward just standing there, halfway between Rick, who was now crouching at the cross, and Michonne channeling her grief through physical means.

Rubbing his forehead, Rick lowered his hand to wipe at his eye and then rub his upper lip in thought; contemplating what he was going to do next. Focusing his gaze upon the gun, he began to acknowledge his anger and push his grief aside. Standing up, he removed the gun from the cross and began to walk away. Tucking the gun into the back of his pants he sidled up beside Georgie. Reaching a hand out to him, she didn’t reach for his but merely brushed it down his arm from elbow to wrist in a sort of comforting gesture. With his eyes and not with his head, he nodded, as if saying thank you; either for just being there or still for having remained at Carl’s side at the end.

Together, they walked away from the cemetery, finding Michonne had wandered away to put down a buildup of walkers at one of the opened gates. They walked in silence up the road toward the townhouses, with Rick coming to stop beside the body of a Savior lying on the ground. Crouching down, he picked up a walkie-talkie and just held it in his hands; staring at the ground beside the body and caught up in a bit of a daydream. Georgie knew the look all too well. It was the look she wore in the aftermath of losing both her children. It was that blank-eyed, numbing void stare. Synapses in the brain weren’t firing as they should, the last images of the one you lost playing on a loop; trying to think on anything else, but failing. Constantly thinking on it making you sad, and then angry at being so sad, and then sad at how angry it made you. It was a terrible cycle that felt like it would never end.

Slowly, Rick stood back up and, as he turned toward Georgie, saw that Michonne was approaching. He didn’t look directly at either woman and proceeded in walking off away from both of them. They watched as he walked away and turned toward each other instead.

“We need to gather up some supplies,” Michonne spoke. “To take with us.”

Georgie nodded. “I’ll get a truck and bring it ‘round.”

“I’ll head home.”

As both women started to part ways, Georgie stopped and grabbed for Michonne’s hand. “Grab the pictures.” Off Michonne’s slight moment of confusion, she added, “Rick’s dresser and the fridge.”

With a nod of her own, Michonne understood and turned away; she heading up the road to their home while Georgie headed down toward the main gate.

As she reached a truck and opened the driver’s side door, Rick was already coming ‘round the townhouses, driving the van from their excursion to find guns. Slowing down, he came to a stop and nodded to her but said nothing. Georgie walked around the front and climbed up into the passenger seat. She hadn’t even shut the door behind her yet as Rick began to roll away, turning the vehicle up toward the intersection where he brought it to a stop once more. Still not saying anything, Rick hopped out, leaving the keys in the ignition but in the off position. Georgie followed after him and headed toward the back of the van to open up the doors.

“I’ll head home and get some things,” he finally spoke.

“Michonne already headed that way,” she informed. “I’ll head into the infirmary and grab some meds and first aid supplies we might need at Hilltop.”

“I’ll check the house next door first, then; grab some bags to fill up, check on Michonne. We’ll meet up here at the van in a few minutes. Say, fifteen.”

Georgie held his gaze for a moment; looking through the grief still so painfully visible in his eyes to the strength beyond it. “Okay,” she replied. “Don’t take too long. The streets are starting to fill up.”

Both of them looked around at the walkers still trickling in and then back at each other.

“Fifteen minutes,” Rick reiterated, and then walked away.

Hesitating to move, Georgie watched him go for a few moments and then turned around to look at the main gate which had been left open. Several walkers were dragging their shambling corpses up the road in her direction, but she had life and speed on her side. Taking off in a bit of a sprint, with her knife at the ready, she turned right at the intersection and reached the infirmary in mere seconds, since it was shy of two hundred feet away.

She wasn’t surprised to find the door unlocked, since no one in Alexandria ever locked their doors, and she also wasn’t surprised to find the door ajar, given everything that had gone down overnight. She was surprised that there wasn’t any dead inside the place. Georgie had steeled herself in preparation to fight off at least one walker that might’ve wandered in or might’ve been an Alexandrian or Savior that had possibly been killed and then turned inside the infirmary since the night before. But, there was no one but her. The medicine cabinet was untouched, but she could tell things had been taken. She just wasn’t sure if that was due to the survivors from Alexandria stashing medical supplies before they fled to the sewers or if it had been the Saviors in a quick attempt to steal from Alexandria amidst the bombing.

Either way, it didn’t much matter now where those supplies were or who had them. Georgie had only a few minutes to gather up anything that was left that she deemed important, that Hilltop might not have or have enough of, until the fight with the Saviors was ended and they could all return home to rebuild; not just their community, but society. Ducking around the kitchen island, she crouched down and opened up the counters, looking for a bag of some sort. She wasn’t overly familiar with where everything is like Rosita and Tara would’ve been, but knowing Tara lived at the infirmary full time and that her bedroom was upstairs, Georgie figured that maybe that was one place she could find, perhaps, a duffel bag or backpack.

She took to the staircase and let herself into the bedroom, finding nothing special about the room. It was simple, with a queen bed; one of the few with a mattress. The narrow staircase had probably put a damper on any attempt to steal it along with the other mattresses. It wouldn’t have been worth the hassle. Especially since they had only ended up burning them all after the fact anyway. Heading toward the closet, Georgie pulled open the door. On the hangers off to the side were the shirts she remembered Denise used to wear and below were a few shoes. On the shelf above were several stacks of books, of multiple genres, as well as a few composition notebooks with what looked to be post-it notes sticking out the tops. Georgie deduced all this to have belonged to Denise and things Tara hadn’t wanted to part with. Amidst the items she could tell were either Tara’s or Denise’s, Georgie did find a blue duffel bag and a tan one.

Georgie took both duffel bags downstairs with her, stopping at the doorway that led into the room where Carl had convalesced after losing his eye. She thought about how frail he’d looked then and how Rick had remained at his side all through that night. She remembered sitting on the floor with her back to the wall in such a blank state, raw from crying; mentally, emotionally and physically tired. She remembered there was that tiny, tiny ounce of jealousy she had felt that Rick still had both his children, even after everything they’d been through, while she no longer had any. That thought had been incredibly fleeting, but it made her feel guilty, especially so now that Carl was gone.

Moving into the kitchen area again, she stepped around the island, where she set down one duffel bag and took the second to the medicine cabinet and began filling it. While doing so, her mind drifted to the aftermath of losing Tristan and how she’d been afforded the luxury of mourning him in her own way, at her own leisure. She had been able to lock herself away and not do anything if she wanted to and people understood and didn’t force her to contribute to rebuilding the walls and cleaning up the community. She had chosen to do those things to take her mind off her grief and keep herself busy and focusing on something productive. But she still could step away from if it she wanted.

Rick didn’t have that luxury. They were in the midst of a war and he was Alexandria’s leader. Their community looked up to him for what had to be done next; when, how, and where.

They had all known they would lose people, but they never dreamed it would be one of their children.

Not Carl.

Not now.

It was supposed to be one of them, not him.

Once Georgie had one bag filled with medicine and first aid supplies, and the other bag filled with food items from the kitchen, she hurried back out of the infirmary and up the road toward the intersection. She had to set the bags down briefly to stab a few walkers in the head that were in her way or just getting too close for comfort. When she had a moment of reprieve, she picked the bags back up and stacked them, one on top of the other, inside the van with supplies that had already been packed in advance by whomever the day before.

Stepping away from the back of the van, she looked further up the road toward her house and saw that Michonne and Rick were coming down the front steps with bags either in their hands or on their backs. Their pace was hurried; aware of the threat of the increased amount of walkers filtering into the community.

Noticing Michonne was just standing there, staring at something in the distance, Georgie touched her hand to the other woman’s elbow. “Hey,” she muttered, looking around the back van door Michonne was holding onto in order to see where Michonne was looking and saw it was the gazebo and that it was on fire.

Michonne turned to look at Georgie, but then at Rick. “He used to sit on the roof,” she replied sadly.

Rick exhaled a quick sigh. “We have to go.”

In response, Michonne grabbed a fire extinguisher from the back of the van and took off running for the gazebo. Rick, unable to let her go off alone like that, grabbed the only other extinguisher in the van and ran after her. Georgie frowned and shut the van doors and then she too ran after the others; the only difference being she was the only one without a fire extinguisher, but she could help do away with any walkers that would interfere with them putting out the fire.

“Michonne!” Rick shouted, noticing a walker getting too close to her.

She whipped around and struck the walker in the head with the base of the extinguisher and then continued with what she was doing.

“I got it,” Georgie insisted, first grabbing the walker getting close to Rick by the shoulder and stabbing it through its eye socket. She then hurried around to the other side of the gazebo where Michonne was to keep her protected since more walkers were coming up from behind her anyway. She took out a couple, and watched as Rick turned around to smash one in the face with his extinguisher, but it was difficult to ignore the small herd that was starting to converge on them from all sides.

“Michonne,” Rick muttered sternly; his tone denoting the gazebo was a lost cause. When she didn’t seem to be giving up with the fire and with Georgie forced to watch her back, Rick shouted as he repeated himself, “Michonne!”

Recognizing there really wasn’t much else she could do, Michonne caved and dropped the extinguisher and reached behind her for her katana. Unsheathing it, she began to slice into the heads of the walkers getting too close.

“We have to go,” Georgie echoed Rick’s earlier statement. She didn’t wait for Michonne to follow but knew Michonne would. Hearing Michonne’s footfalls a few paces behind her confirmed it.

As the trio reached the van, with only a handful of walkers in their way to put down, Rick yanked open the driver’s side door and climbed inside behind the wheel. Georgie was inside before Michonne, but since there was only the one passenger seat, she shift to sit on the edge and share with Michonne. As soon as Michonne was in and slammed the door shut behind her, Rick started the van up and off they went with tires screeching.

On their way out, they passed the charred gazebo that was still alight with flames, though not as many as before, as well as passing plenty of staggering walkers, abandoned cars and just the general scene of destruction the Saviors had caused. Rick wove the van around a couple of the abandoned cars just inside the front gate and as they passed through the threshold, Georgie could hear Michonne let out a deep sigh beside her.

“What do you think he meant?” came Rick’s question after a few minutes on the road. His eyes were straight ahead and filled with tears he was preemptively wiping away. “Did he want us to stop fighting the Saviors? Just…surrender to Negan?” With Georgie between him and Michonne, Georgie was the one he settled his gaze upon when he took his eyes off the road for a moment.

“I…I don’t know,” she replied.

“We could pull over,” Michonne offered as a suggestion, leaning down to pull Carl’s letters out from a bag at her and Georgie’s feet. “We could read what he wrote.”

“No. Not yet.” Rick shook his head. “Not me.”

Frowning sadly on his behalf, Georgie shifted more toward the edge of her and Michonne’s seat so that she could inch just a little closer to Rick. Doing so allowed her to more easily reach her hand out and place it upon the back of his shoulder, and give it a firm squeeze.

“Rick,” Michonne muttered, shuffling through the letters. “He—Carl…he…wrote a letter to Negan.”

Georgie turned and looked, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”

Michonne nodded at her. “Really.”

As both women glance down at the letter in question, with Negan’s name written in Carl’s handwriting, Rick kept his focus on the road ahead. “I need to talk to Jadis,” he remarked, changing the subject.

“What?”

“They have weapons…people. We can’t just give that up.”

“They betrayed us,” Georgie countered. “Twice.”

“I know.”

“They locked us in shipping containers overnight,” she continued. “If they hadn’t done that, if Jadis hadn’t done that, we could’ve been home. Things could’ve been different.”

“Or they could’ve been the same.”

“Why now?” Michonne wondered.

“They went with us to the Sanctuary,” Rick recounted, referring to Georgie and him. “The Saviors saw us there. They’re gonna be a target, too.”

Georgie wasn’t convinced it was worth it. Michonne didn’t seem it either, but Georgie had more of a reason to not care as much about those garbage pickers. Michonne hadn’t been stripped naked or virtually naked, had herself sketched and locked in a storage container that was a hot box during the day and then felt like the tundra overnight.

“We still need them,” Rick continued, seeing the doubt on both women’s faces. “They’re ours, not theirs.”

All three of them fell into silence. Michonne set the letters down upon the dashboard and leaned more into the door, to give Georgie more room against the seat, and watched the scenery pass them by. Rick kept his focus on the road, only turning to look at Georgie a few times, who still had her hand on his shoulder and which was a gesture he greatly appreciated and wasn’t sure he was expressing so with his eyes; especially considering her eyes were mostly on the road before them as well.

The drive to the Junkyard seemed to go by rather quickly, or at least it felt like a shorter trip than past experiences. Perhaps it was because Rick was just more familiar with the route now, or because their minds were so distracted with other thoughts that time felt like it went by faster than normal. Rick parked the van just outside the entrance into the Junkyard and he was the first to hop out, followed by Michonne, and then Georgie.

All three of them approached the outer doors, which were wide open, and withdrew their weapons of choice. At the other end of the shipping container, one of the doors was also open, but only slightly. They looked among each other and then returned their gazes upon the doors before them. Michonne was the first to reach the end and peered through the opening briefly before stepping aside for Rick who had his Colt raised. When he pushed the door open, he led the way out and each of them could sense there was something off about the place.

It wasn’t that it was eerily quiet, but there was just a strange feeling in the air.

As the door was opened all the way, a booby trap of sorts from up above was set off. A large mound of junk began to tumble down, sending Rick, Georgie and Michonne darting out of the way as not to get crushed. Despite dodging injury, their only way out of the Junkyard was no blocked.

Rick stepped backward a bit as they each looked around at the place and wound up stepping in some spilled blue paint on the ground. Soon, the undeniable sound of walkers grew nearer. Not knowing how many were coming, Rick holstered his gun and hurried for the blockage, with Michonne and Georgie right behind them; the three of them trying to move garbage out of their way.

Turning around, Rick realized the walkers were already upon them and, what was more, the walkers were the heapsters; seemingly all of them dead and turned. “Dammit,” Rick grumbled.

Georgie turned around next and stopped what she was doing. “Holy shit. What happened here?”

Michonne, the last to turn around, quickly raised her katana and hacked into the head of a walker getting too close for comfort. Rick, having since reloaded his Colt with the extra bullets he had forgotten Georgie had shoved into his shirt pocket, fired some head shots into a few other walkers. Georgie, with only her knife, began shoving a few walkers away when she couldn’t manage to stab them in the head. As she began to move forward to get away from the walkers, Rick came up behind her, and then Michonne, and the three of them tried to head for another path away from the entrance area of this trash heap of a labyrinth, but those other paths were also blocked by oncoming trash walkers.

The only way to go was up.

“C’mon!” Georgie announced, finding a climbable path up the heap to their left.

As she led the way, with Rick and Michonne in hot pursuit, the walkers were unable to follow, and it also gave them a chance to get a better view of where they could go next and perhaps a different way out, though neither of them seemed to be seeing one. The only view they could manage at the moment was just the herd of heapsters turned walkers congregating below.

“Rick.”

The three of them turned around and looked to the top of the heap.

There they saw Jadis; seated and wearing nothing more than a white nightgown with some blood splatter upon it and her skin.

“What happened here?” Michonne asked.

“The Saviors,” Jadis replied dejectedly.

“Well, how do we get out?” Georgie demanded.

“Get out…how you got in.”

They turned around, their shoulders slumping a little, while Rick used this so-called downtime to reload his gun. Georgie had, after all, put plenty of bullets in his pocket and he was ever so thankful that she did. As they turned to look back at Jadis, with the sun in their eyes, the Junkyard leader caught them off guard as she began to speak again, and it wasn’t because she was speaking. It was how.

“These weren’t heaps before.” She was speaking normal. “It was just…trash, laid out, as far as the eye could see. I used to come here to find things to paint on. Metal sh-sheets. Fabrics. And then after…everything changed…I realized this whole place was a canvas.” Her voice was breaking and everything about her—her posture, the look on her face, and the way she her hands shook—made it very clear she was just as broken as her voice. “That we were the paint. That we could create something new. That we could become something new.” Her chin quivered, and tears fell down her face. “We did. This was our world. Apart from everyone else. In every way.”

Rick looked back at the herd, and then gestured up at Jadis. “You did this. This is because of you,” he taunted. Leaning forward, he lifted up a door from a car or truck of some sort. Wrapping a piece of cloth around his hand, he proceeded in bending strips of metal on the outer panel upward.

“What are you doing?” Michonne asked.

“We’re gonna run for it.”

Walking over to another spot, he pulled a blanket aside and uncovered a door from an oven and handed it to Michonne. For Georgie, he picked up a rusty, folded up lawn chair and passed it to her. She gripped onto the bar along the back and it would be a decent enough shield against the walkers that would be in their way.

“Let me come with you. Just until they’re gone,” Jadis pleaded.

Georgie turned to look first at her; seeing how she was standing atop her heap, holding a blue, metal lawn chair in a style that was popular in the 1960s and that Georgie remembered her grandparents having, but in red. She actually felt bad for Jadis, who was clearly alone because all her people were clearly dead. She was about to reply and say yes, Jadis could come with them, but Rick beat her to the punch.

“Nah,” he muttered his refusal. “I’m done with her games. She can’t help us anyway.” Looking between Georgie and Michonne, both of whom didn’t quite agree with his decision, he lifted up his car door-turned-shield. “C’mon.”

Leading the way back down the heap, Georgie and Michonne both looked up toward Jadis who looked a bit hopeful as well as anxious. Rick had been speaking too low for her to hear that he was denying her. Both women looked regretfully up at Jadis, who was already turning to make her way down with that blue chair. At the bottom of the heap, Rick continued leading; shoving the door-shield forward to impale the bent metal pieces into a few undead faces where he could so that he didn’t have to use his gun and waste any bullets. Georgie and Michonne flanked either side of him and turned so all three of them had their backs to one another and formed a sort of triangle of shielded protection from the walkers as they made their way to the junk-covered exit. The closer they got, the sparser the walkers thankfully became, but there were still a few that were proving to be troublesome. Those that were slipping around the makeshift shields, Rick fired a couple of shots into the heads of, while Georgie and Michonne had to use their respective blades.

Eventually, Rick gave up and dropped the door and fired a couple more shots into the walkers directly blocking their way. Rick holstered the Colt and immediately ran up the mound blocking the shipping container doors. Georgie and Michonne tossed their makeshift shields aside and followed after him without missing a beat.

As he began tossing things aside to unblock their exit, Jadis came running up, barefoot; using the blue chair to shove her undead friends aside. “Wait! Please! Just—just let me get out!”

Rick had already helped Georgie through first when Jadis began to cry out and was starting to assist Michonne. Turning toward Jadis, he aimed his gun at her but then raised his arm and fired his last shot into the air so that the noise would draw more walkers toward the direction of the exit. Michonne was looking at Jadis and then up at Rick with a bit of confusion as to why he felt it necessary to do that.

Watching as Jadis began to flee the growing numbers in fright and panic, Rick finally slipped through the opening in the exit and joined his wife and their friend.

“Rick,” Michonne began.

“No,” he replied, as if knowing what she was going to say.

Having not seen exactly what had happened, Georgie was a bit in the dark as she led the other two out of the shipping container. She didn’t say anything though, despite having a strong feeling that they hadn’t done the right thing with Jadis and a sort of heaviness rested itself upon her shoulders.

Not one of them spoke to each other as they walked back to the van and climbed inside. No words were exchanged as they began to drive away either; at least not immediately.

As they rode along together, Michonne was back to staring out the window to her right, at the scenery passing them by, Georgie staring forward at the road ahead, while sharing the passenger seat with Michonne, and Rick was staring intermittently between the road and both women. He looked beyond Georgie and took note that Michonne seemed to have a frown set upon her face and, when focusing on Georgie, could see she seemed clearly conflicted about how things had been left at the Junkyard.

He knew that’s how she felt, or rather both women seemed to feel, because he was feeling it do, after the fact.

“I shot above her head. I just wanted her gone,” Rick sighed; feeling the need to explain his motives. “Look, I saw her. She made it. She ran into an empty alley just before I left. I didn’t want her dead. I just…wanted her gone.”

Georgie looked at him. She saw his eyes were red and that there were tears there that wanted to fall again. She could see he was bothered by his decision and that maybe he would’ve decided differently if he could have a do-over. She wasn’t shaming him over it, and she doubted Michonne was either. No matter what, they would have his back. And this was a trying time for all of them. They were all just trying to move forward and see this day ended; to get done next what needed doing, and that was just getting to Hilltop and to the rest of their people.

“Feels like what Carl was talking about,” Michonne spoke up. “What we should do when we have a choice.”

Though she was listening to the other woman speaking beside her, Georgie attention was still mainly on Rick. She watched as he glanced briefly downward and seemed to be losing control of that wall he built to give the appearance of being strong and resilient. His fortitude was fading fast and giving way to his sorrow. She hated seeing him so broken. The tears in his eyes brought tears to hers.

Abruptly, Rick made the decision to pull the van over to the side of the road, which meant, Georgie had to brace herself from being tossed from the seat she was barely sitting on.

“Uh…” He sighed, lifting a hand up and not seeming to know what to do with it. “Um…I need a se—I need a second.”

Georgie gripped his arm and smiled sympathetically at him. “It’s fine.” She gestured between herself and Michonne. “We’ll be here.”

With a nod, Rick shifted the gear into park and removed his foot from the brake pedal. Nodding to himself, he turned off the ignition and reached for Carl’s letters and the walkie-talkie on the dashboard. For a moment, he didn’t move. He just looked down at the letters in his hand. Then, opening up his door, he climbed out and walked away.

Georgie shifted and moved to claim the seat Rick had vacated, only while he was gone. She turned in the seat and looked out the door as she watched him walked up the slight incline at the side of the road and disappear among the trees at the top. Once he was out of sight, she sat back against the seat and ran a hand along the bottom of the steering wheel.

“Here.”

Georgie turned toward Michonne to see she was pulling pictures from her back pocket. Looking down at what she was being offered, Georgie allowed a small, bittersweet smile to appear on her face. She took in the images of her children; the photo of her daughter Avery, with a head full of red curls like her, smiling at the camera, and the last school photo of her son Tristan, from about two and a half years ago, when he had been much more baby-faced at just before the beginning of the apocalypse.

“Sorry they’re a little creased,” Michonne apologized.

“It’s okay.” Turning away from her children’s face, she looked over at Michonne. “Did you get the other picture?”

Michonne smiled and nodded. Leaning forward, she reached behind her and removed a third photograph from her back pocket and then held it between them both so they could both look at it.

It was a picture taken mere weeks before Jesus came into their lives; before their world became bigger.

It was a picture of Carl holding Judith on his lap. He was smiling, she wasn’t, but that was likely because she hadn’t wanted to sit still and wanted to be playing with her toys. The bandage covering Carl’s face didn’t take anything away from the boy’s smile. That’s what was most important about the picture.

They would all be able to remember him smiling.

More importantly, Rick would.



Just under two hours later, Rick, Georgie and Michonne had arrived to Hilltop. They climbed out of the van; opting to walk the majority of the way up.

“Open the gates! It’s Rick!” Kal shouted from atop his watch post within the community.

The wooden doors creaked as they opened slowly. When the path through was big enough, Rick started forward and Georgie and Michonne followed. The three of them were possibly even more solemn now than before they had gotten on the road to reach Hilltop that morning. However, the situation with Jadis at the Junkyard and whatever Rick had been doing during his alone time away from the van had forced a darker cloud to hang over their heads. The sun shining overhead did absolutely nothing to brighten their moods.

As they entered the community, they were greeted by their people that had escaped the sewers well before the sun had come up. Michonne walked up to Maggie, who hugged her and Rick stopped in his tracks to stare over at the pen encasing the Saviors being kept as POWs. Georgie grabbed his hand, bringing his attention toward Barbara, who was approaching with Judith on her hip, and seeing the little girl smiling at her daddy was a wonderful thing in such a dark day in their lives.

Reaching his hands out for her, Rick accepted his daughter from the other redheaded woman. “Come here, sweetheart,” he muttered. “Yeah.” Holding Judith close, he placed a hand behind her head and smooched her cheek. Walking forward with her a bit, he acknowledged Daryl with a nod of his head and then shifted Judith onto his left hip, where Georgie took the opportunity to plant a kiss on the girl’s cheek as well.

“Hey, peanut,” Georgie greeted her stepdaughter, giving her a warm smile.

“Hi mama,” the girl replied, smiling back.

As the couple and Judith made their way up toward the house, Maggie sidled up beside them, offering her condolences for Carl. Jesus and a few other Hilltoppers who had learned of his son’s fate began to do the same, and Rick just wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t want people to even talk about it or mention Carl’s name. It was still too soon for him and he could allow himself to break in front of everyone.

Turning toward Georgie, he let out a sigh and wordlessly handed Judith to her. “I’ll be back,” he mumbled.

Accepting the girl without hesitation, Georgie held tightly onto her and was more thankful than ever that she was lucky enough to have this girl as her stepdaughter. Judith was the beacon Rick and she both needed now. As she watched Rick slink away around the side of the brick house, she thought about how much worse the two of them would be feeling if there was no Judith to cling to, both physically and figuratively. Considering the two of them had both lost their only biological children, she could just imagine how much darker this world could be and the paths it would’ve taken them down with the remainder of this war and how they would live in the world whenever the war was over, if they survived it.

Rick hadn’t fathered Judith, of that he was one hundred percent certain, and Georgie had not given birth to her, but the Rick and Georgie loved her as if they had and that could be more than enough.

Everything they did from here on out would be for her.

Every battle fought was to assure the better world would be there for her to grow up in someday.

“Hey, Georgie,” Daryl greeted, not long after she had sat down at a picnic bench, alone with Judith.

She looked up at him and nodded her greeting.

“Uh, sorry about before. On the road,” he apologized, his voice as gravelly as usual. “And what I did after. I just wanted—”

“Don’t say this stuff to me,” she cut him off. “I’m not the one that needs to hear it.”

Daryl frowned guiltily and nodded. “Where’d he go?” he inquired, knowing she meant Rick.

“Side of the house. By the graves, I think.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Hesitating a moment, he added. “Still sorry though.”

“Don’t be,” she shrugged. “Shit happens. None of us really ever know what’s gonna happen next because of any of the decisions we make. What you did could’ve worked. It didn’t. But it could’ve.” Pressing her lips upon the back of Judith’s head, she inhaled the comforting scent from the girl’s hair. “Just don’t do it again,” she added, casting a knowingly stern glance up at the archer.

With just a nod and a sniff, he was able to convey to her that he was promising to be on his best behavior from here on out. As he walked away to find Rick, Georgie could help but find some amusement in how she was able to understand what all his sniffs and grunts and grumbles were actually saying.



A short while later, Rick had made his rounds within the community with Maggie at his side; learning more about what was being planned on her end and how they would go forward now. She had also shown him to the room where he’d be staying with Georgie and Judith in the meantime, and that’s where he brought the two of them when he told Georgie what he was going to do next.

“There’s a team of lookouts scattered around Hilltop, keeping an eye out for any Saviors on the road, which might make their way in this direction. They know Alexandria is empty and that the Kingdom fell, so they’ll be headed in this direction soon enough to continue the fight,” he informed, his eyes flitting down toward Judith, who was amusing herself by twisting from side to side and making silly faces up at Georgie. “I gotta do something. I can’t sit around here and wait.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. Stay here.” Then, gesturing to Judith, he added, “Be here with her. She might be real young, but she’s gotta be aware on some level about what happened last night and what we’ve lost. She should have one of her parents with her right now, and it should be you.”

“Or you can stay here with her and I could go,” Georgie offered.

“Nah.” Rick shook his head. “I appreciate that, but…I need to do this.”

“I know.”

“Get something to eat. Take a nap. Neither of us have slept in, like, two days or something. Make the most of this down time while you can.”

“I don’t think I could sleep right now even if I wanted to, and I do want to. I’m exhausted, honestly. But my mind is going a mile a minute. There’s just too much going on,” she replied with a staggering sigh. “There’s gotta be coffee somewhere to help. And I’ll stay here. I’ll be here with Judith.” Walking up to him, Georgie place her hands on his narrow waist and then snaked her arms around to his back as she rested the side of her face upon his chest. “We’ll be here waiting for you to come back.”

Encircling his own arms around her back, Rick pressed a kiss to her temple. When she lifted her head and leaned back a bit, he brushed her hair out of her face and noticed the cut she’d received the day before but hadn’t noticed until now because her hair had been covering it, plus he’d been understandably distracted. “You should get this looked at,” he remarked, gently brushing over the cut.

“I already did. Siddiq looked it over. He cleaned it, offered me a bandage which I refused, and then assured me it was a simple cut and it would heal fine without the worry of infection.”

Rick had grimaced at the mention of Siddiq.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about the man just yet, considering it was he who Carl had been trying to bring back to Alexandria. If Carl hadn’t bothered, he’d never have been bitten and would still be alive. So, in that vein of thinking, Rick wasn’t exactly Siddiq’s biggest fan at the moment.

Letting a deep breath escape his lips, Rick leaned in and pressed a kiss to her healing cut and then down upon her lips. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

After a moment, he stepped out of her arms and moved toward the door, bringing a hand to his cheek and wiping away either debris, a tear, or both. “Thank you for this morning, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For Carl. For staying with him.”

“You’d have done the same for me,” she insisted with a shrug. “You’ve done plenty for me after Tristan. And it wasn’t just me repaying what I viewed as a debt, either. I wanted to be there for him. Not just for you. I loved him, too.”

“I know. Thank you.”

Georgie smiled and in the corner of both her and Rick’s eyes, Judith twirled around and let out a little chuckle when she fell down on her butt.

And, with that, Rick slipped out of the room.

Notes

Comments

Completely understand. Thank you for sharing your talent with us all. Looking forward to your new story updates on Road Not Taken and the sequel to We Can Change.

Grimesgirl63 Grimesgirl63
1/7/19

Thanks for the update today!

Grimesgirl63 Grimesgirl63
8/26/18

Sorry to hear about your aunt.

Grimesgirl63 Grimesgirl63
3/31/18

Thanks for the update today!

Grimesgirl63 Grimesgirl63
7/29/17

Nicely done!!!

Grimesgirl63 Grimesgirl63
1/30/17