New Beginnings

"It doesn't make any sense," Tom hissed in a harsh whisper, "Why can't you at least ask?!" The group sat in a circle in their small section of the cell block, not making use of the tables as they argued back and forth. The community's people were all outside eating their dinner, save for the sweet blonde girl Eve knew Cherry had met earlier in the day, and the baby she was watching. The group was desperately trying to stay quiet enough so as not to wake the baby, but tensions were rising as Evelyn struggled to make her group understand.

"I know it seems backwards, but you have to understand; these people don't know us. They aren't going to trust us," she spoke under her breath, her hand on her hip as she stared across the circle at Todd's frustrated expression. "If I were Rick, I'd want us to leave, too."

"But you aren't. He might be better than you." Amanda's words were biting. Everyone turned to look at the woman who'd rarely spoken in two weeks, her eyes still glued to the floor below her.

Evelyn forced herself not to sink. "He may be. I will mention it if the time is right; but we're being given supplies we haven't had in a long time. We will be okay. Terminus is just up those tracks, a few miles max. I've gotten you this far, don't you trust me?" She hid the desperation that wanted to reveal itself in her tone, instead coming across as demanding, which she knew wasn't much better.

"Yes. Yes, okay? We do. But... This has been so hard," Alicia mumbled. Tears brimmed in her eyes as she looked around the group. "We've had to do... awful things. I'm so tired of living like this, Eve. I want to have a home."

No one spoke. Eve sat in her place, her hands carefully playing with a small bone left over from Dean's dinner ration. She stared at it. The bone was tiny; a squirrel's. It was fragile. Like they had all become, this bone could break at any moment. She wasn't ready for that. She couldn't handle that. She glanced up at the group. Beatrice sat quietly, resting against Todd with her arms around Dean. Alicia and Amanda sat beside one another, their mouths closed and bags hanging beneath their eyes. Finally, she came to rest on Cherry, who's hands tightly held her ice pick as if it was the last thing she trusted. Cherry met Eve's eyes and managed a sad, but encouraging smile. Eve knew she meant to say that they were right.

"I'll see what I can do. But please... hang onto whatever faith you've got left. I can get us there. We're going to be okay. If they don't let us stay, my plan will work... Terminus will save us."

Beatrice smiled softly. "Faith's all we have these days, Eve. We have nothing else left to hang onto."

Eve's stomach turned at the words, and they all, once again, sat in silence. The door to the cell block opened, and Eve turned to see a young woman standing in its open space. Behind her was a man of similar age, and the two carefully stepped down the stairs.

"Hi," the woman spoke. Her voice was incredibly kind, and Eve could tell right away that she was good. Genuinely good. As she reached the group where they sat, she knelt down beside Eve, glancing around at all of them. "I'm Maggie. Back there, that's Glenn, my husband." She grinned as she looked back at him, and he sheepishly nodded at the group. He offered a wave, and Eve returned it. "I hear you're all leaving tomorrow."

"We weren't exactly given a choice," Amanda blurted, an edge to her voice that shook everyone immediately. Eve sighed in frustration.

"I'm sorry, no, we're - yes. You heard right, the plan is that we leave tomorrow." Evelyn tried not to meet Amanda's eyes.

"I see." Maggie made a point to look at Amanda, trying to get her to raise her gaze. "I'm sorry if we've come off that way. Rick has certain rules... But you seem like a capable group. You look like you've done okay out there."

"We have." Cherry agreed, proudly clinging to her weapon. "It hasn't been a peach, but we've made it this far."

"What would it take to convince Rick?" Alicia said, trying not to interrupt Cherry's words. Maggie's eyes were apologetic.

"To be honest, I'm not sure. But I'm rooting for you. Glenn and I met under similar terms - his group came to my dad's farm, and my dad said they were leaving right away... Somehow, we all ended up sticking together. I don't know what you could do to change Rick's mind, but I think you should give it a try."

"Maggie-" Glenn started, coming a bit closer from the steps.

"No, I'm serious." She met Eve's eyes. "He may be stubborn and strongheaded, but that's what's kept us alive all this time - you just have to figure out how to get past that. He's a reasonable man."

"Thank you, Maggie. I'll take that into consideration." Eve offered a grateful smile, unsure of how to go about what they were all asking of her. Maggie nodded in acknowledgement, then clasped her hands together in an official sort of way.

"Either way, if you go tomorrow, it isn't all bad. I went on a scout a while back... There's a hospital up north; it's probably a few hours' drive in a car, could take a number of days on foot." She had Eve's full attention. "It was a small place, not too substantial, but it had at least four floors, and most of them were clear. There are probably still a number of the dead around the lower floor... But I remember thinking that if the prison didn't work out, that's where we would go. There's a great, open roof space, you could grow crops up there, start a few small gardens. There's of course tons of rooms, and medicine," her eyes grazed over Beatrice at that, "And, not to mention, a huge, fenced off parking lot. The fences would need some major fortification, but... It's a start. So all hope is not lost if you have to leave... Give it some thought. It could be a great place to live, I think. If the right people were in charge of it."

Eve nodded slowly. "Thank you... We really appreciate that."

"I thought we were going to Terminus?" Dean's words left his mouth before he'd really thought it through.

"Dean!" Eve didn't mean to come off so harshly, but the instinct to keep their destination secret forced her to. Dean's face was instantly horrified, and he burrowed into Beatrice's side. Maggie looked to the ground. "I'm sorry," Eve sighed, "It's not that we don't trust you two. We just... don't know anyone else here."

Maggie nodded as Glenn approached the small circle. "Makes sense," he said from behind her. Maggie carefully stood.

"Don't worry," she assured them, "We aren't bad; none of us here. These are good people. Just think of what I told you." Eve's acknowledgement was all that Maggie waited for, before taking Glenn's hand tightly in hers and leading him toward the cells. As she unlocked the other cell block door and went in, the sound of its metal closing felt worse to Eve than it had in hours previous.

"Real nice, Eve," Todd muttered, shifting away from Beatrice and standing to walk himself out of the cell block.



Brisk, cold air raised the hairs on Eve's arms and neck, her eyes already wide awake before the sun had risen. Laying there on the prison floor, a thin blanket separating her from the cement, she wondered how many hours she had left before the rest of her group would be awake with her. Cherry had finished her night post and gone to sleep hours before, and even Todd was asleep despite the fact that the dawn hours were normally his to be on watch. Eve sat up, brushing her hair from her eyes. She looked at the six of them, feeling a biting in her chest. It ached. She wasn't the leader she wanted to be, and it terrified her to know that if she was making the wrong call on leaving today, it could be the end for any one of them. She grimaced at the thought and stood, picking up her blanket and walking it to where Dean slept carefully tucked into Alicia's arms. She laid the blanket over both of them and turned, stepping silently up the steps to go outside.

Eve stood in the cold morning, her eyes gazing out over the fog that sat low over the prison's lush field. Her arms wrapped around her middle and she walked further, watching out toward the brush.

Was this the wrong choice? Eve's mind was racing. Two cars sat waiting by the front gates, the backs of each of them packed with the small boxes of rations and ammo that Rick's community had offered them. It was a generous helping, more than she could have asked for, much less that she'd asked at all. Rick's group owed them nothing, stood to gain nothing from them, and yet they were helping the group to stay alive.

Alicia and Todd were right. This place had something good going. Eve knew that. But was it enough to risk Rick changing his mind about the provisions? Was it enough to risk that Rick would feel they were asking for too much? And besides that; could she even trust the rest of Rick's community? She'd hardly met more than ten of them, and she guessed that there had to be at least thirty or forty.

As she went over it again and again, she decided to walk the perimeter, her hands pulling the gates apart and locking them back together behind her. Her feet carried her around the fences. Her eyes and ears were keen, watching and listening for walkers outside the boundaries of the prison. Just as it had the day before, the air was fogging out in front of her with every breath. Her fingertips played with the body of her gun as she walked.

The trees outside seemed like friends rather than enemies, despite how much they could be hiding. She stared at them in thought, her feet still moving.

She heard him approaching before she saw him, and didn't change her pace, slowly making her way around.

They stayed quiet as he reached her. His eyes met hers, and she thought about how long it had been since he'd seen her and looked at her that way. The rest of the prison, and it seemed the rest of the world, were completely silent, still asleep as dawn broke and the sun spilled auburn light into the sky. But the two of them were loud where they stood without speaking, waiting for the other to break it, to cut the thick air between them.

"Find a breach?" he asked, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, nodding to the fences.

"Not one." She stayed level with him.

His thumbs hooked atop his belt at each hip, his elbows hanging outward as he let his head drop. Then it came back up. "Smart to post someone on watch, even inside the prison."

She offered a small shrug, "Can't risk it. Always have to be ready." He slowly nodded.

"That how you've stayed alive out there all this time?" The gravel in his voice reminded her of when they first spoke, years before. It almost inspired a smile.

"I suppose it is," she murmured.

Rick looked to the fences. "How long?"

"For me? For me... It's been since two weeks after the outbreak." She paused, looking back over his shoulder at the cell block. "For them... We haven't been settled in eight months. They've been living place to place, every day, for eight months." That time, when she looked up into his eyes, shaded a soft, sea-green, hardened by loss and fear and grief and a deep, unfathomable anger, he was hit with a feeling that they'd been through more than she could let on in such a short amount of time. There were layers, there was a struggle, and he didn't know how to tell her that he'd been through it, too.

Eve turned, making her way down to the cars. He followed in quiet, watching her as she walked. At the first car, Eve pulled open the driver's side door, popping the hood and going around to open it up. She stared down at the engine. She checked the oil. Checked the battery. Rick's quiet laugh surprised her as she checked the washer fluid.

"What?" she asked, avoiding the crooked smile that threatened to appear across her lips. "Bird might shit on the windshield, you never know."

"No; please," he said, gesturing to the car.

They were quiet still more as she checked other things; the radiator fluid, the belts, anything to bide her time as she gained the courage to say what was on her mind. Besides; she'd checked all of this the night before.

"Gonna check the gas?" Rick suggested, his eyes going back to the prison, where some of the community's members had begun to rouse. Carol and Maggie were on the walkway, chatting; Daryl, Michonne, and Beth stood by the rain barrels, cooing over a waking Judith, as Carl was looking over the bins of ammo and guns, checking inventory as he did most mornings. Rebecca, Josh, and two others were setting up for breakfast, cooking eggs over the fire, and laughing over what Rick would've safely guessed to be a terribly unfunny joke.

"I was getting to that," she laughed softly, shaking her head. Evelyn looked up at all of the community's people as they started to wake. She recognized a couple of them and stood there, thinking deeply to herself as her hand held the rim of the open hood. "Rick. There's something I have to ask."

He turned to her. "Yes?" crash. Two of the car's windows shattered as a bullet missed them by a foot, and Eve's eyes were wide as she and Rick scrambled to the ground.

"Carl!" Rick screamed across the field, watching as his son immediately took cover and started grabbing weapons from the bins. Chaos unfolded quickly as Eve pulled her own weapon, listening to guns firing nonstop from outside the prison's fences. A stray bullet hit a rain barrel, flooding the cement yard with drinking water; a guttural scream sounded from behind cover as one of Rick's people, Maggie, if Eve remembered right, was hit by a shot, taking her down just feet from cover. Eve's eyes frantically scanned over the wooded cover of the Georgia trees, unable to find a single person in the mess. She shot blindly over cover from behind the car, as Rick did the same on the car's other side.

Suddenly, several men came running from the trees, jumping up onto the fences and climbing erratically to the top. A gas can caught on fire as another bullet hit it, the fire quickly spreading towards what the men had been building just a day before.

"Rick! Rick!" Eve screamed over the noise, "We have to take them down before they get in here!"

"How many bullets you got?!" His eyes were wild as he looked back at her.

"Down to six!" she replied loudly, cocking her hammer back.

"I've got four!"

They stared at each other. They looked to the others, scrambling still for cover from the nonstop firing, barely able to get any shots back. The fire was growing, yet somehow nowhere near the water that was pouring out of their rain barrels, and Maggie was still on the ground, not moving as blood pooled at her waist. Two others were down on the ground, and Eve couldn't tell if they were moving. She looked at Rick. They were cornered.

He nodded at her and turned over his shoulder, his gun going over the trunk of the car. The uncountable bandits climbing the fences were nearing the top. Eve watched in horror as one of them used a machete to chop away the barbed wire. "Go!!" she screamed, before the two of them began to fire at the men, clinging to the hope that they could stop the wave before it crashed into them.

"Faith's all we have these days, Eve. We have nothing else left to hang onto."