XXX. we'll never be those kids again

Amelia thought she knew right from wrong. Her dad always ensured to teach his children how to do things the right way and that it was okay if they did it the wrong way time to time. But Mia always wanted to do things right. It was one of the things that made her and Lucas different. He was okay with being wrong sometimes. He was just a kid. But she carried the weight on her shoulders if she was wrong. She felt like a failure. Being right about things didn't get you hurt. That's what she told herself, anyway.

Rosita looked behind her and saw her sitting at the back of the bus, staring out the dirt clouded window. She hadn't said a word since they left the church. She stood from her seat behind Abraham, who was driving, and she made her way down the path.

Mia felt her quickly sit beside her. It was quiet for a couple seconds, both of them waiting for the other to speak.

Rosita went first. "It's okay to be upset, Mia."

"I'm not upset." She refused, still staring out the window.

"You haven't said a word since we left," she pointed out, knowing better. "You think I can't see how much you're regretting coming with us?"

Mia finally looked at her, her brown eyes hard. "You don't get what I'm feeling, okay? I'm not upset. I'm not regretting anything. I'm just. . . I don't want to feel anything right now."

Rosita's expression softened subtly. She looked ahead of her, catching Maggie's eye, seeing her look over her shoulder at them. She looked back at the teenager. She denied the regret but it was written all over her face. Rosita did understand. "You love him." Mia quickly looked her way. "The Grimes boy. You love him. You're regretting coming with us because you don't want to leave him. I get it, Mia. Believe me, I do."

Mia's hands squeezed into fists. "He's my best friend." She said under her breath while still looking her in the eyes.

Rosita half smiled. "Two things can be true at once." She looked ahead of her again, looking at the back of Abraham's head.

For so long, Mia was alone. She spent so long dwelling on the fact that her family was gone. She lived in a broken world that her father tried to save them from. Her brother died trying to keep her safe. He made her promise to continue living for him. The necklace around her neck burned her skin to remember him.

She didn't want to leave her people. She didn't want to leave Carl. But she thought of her family. She thought of the life she could have if Eugene was right about a cure. Rosita was waiting for her to say something. "I'm the only living person in my family. The walkers took them from me. Before you guys came along, I thought this was the end. That I'll never be able to get justice for them. But now I have chance to. This cure means they didn't die for nothing." There was a moment of silence. Mia and Rosita stared at each other. "I don't regret anything."

She looked out the window again, not saying anything more. Rosita stared at the side of her face in silence, taking in what she said. Slowly, she got up from the seat and went back to the front of the bus, her heart now heavy.

"Everything okay?" Abraham asked her, keeping his eyes on the road.

"Yeah," she answered with a slightly huff. She glanced at Maggie. "Y'know moody teenagers."

He slipped out a loud chortle. "Yeah. I remember those times. I was a pain in my own ass."

Mia felt her throat begin to tighten and she inhaled a shaky breath. She brought her thumb nail to her lips and chewed on it nervously, trying to get the negative thoughts at the back of her head. She tried to remain positive. She was doing the right thing. They all were. The group would rejoin soon. She knew that. She had to know that.

"How long will it be?" Maggie asked Eugene, turning in her seat to face him. "After you get in that terminal and do what you have to do?"

"Depends on the number of factors including density of the infected around target sites worldwide." He answered flatly.

"Wait, target sites? Are you talking about missiles?" Glenn questioned.

Eugene stared at him, silently. "That's classified." He dismissed.

"I thought we were over that."

"What if we all live?"

"The secrets will matter then?" Glenn dug deeper.

Again, Eugene gave him a blank stare. "It might."

Mia sat up in her seat and scooted to the end. She looked between them as they talked.

"Anyway, the speed witch which things normalize depend on a number of factors including worldwide weather patterns, which were modeled without the assumption that cars, planes, boats, and trains wouldn't be pouring hydrocarbons into the atmosphere this long. Changed the game quite a bit when it comes to air-transmissible pathogens."

Mia wished she was able to stay in school longer than what she did, because she didn't understand a word he said.

Glenn was silent as he talked. "Why the hair?"

"Because I like it. And no one is takin' scissor or clipper to it anytime soon. Do you hear me, Miss Espinoza?" He said to Rosita.

"Yes, loud and clear." She responded and it made them laugh.

Mia's lips curled into an amused smile.

"Oh, there's that smile." Rosita said with a smirk, making all of them laugh again.

She looked out the window and tried to hide the grin on her face.

"Y'all can laugh all you want."

"No one was makin' fun." Said Maggie.

"We kind of are." Mia chimed in.

Her comment made them all laugh. Tara raised her hand for a high five and the teenager happily gave her one.

"The smartest man I ever met happened to love my hair. My old boss, T. Brooks Ellis, the director of the Human Genome Project." Eugene defended himself. "He said my hair made me look, and I quote, "A fun guy," which I am." I just ain't Samson."

Mia couldn't stop herself from making a comment but before she could, there was a loud bang. She jumped and Abraham jerked the wheel. "Bitchnuts!" The tires squealed on the road. There was nothing for to hold onto. As the bus started to spiral, Mia fell out of the seat and she screamed slightly, grasping onto the seat as much as she could.

Her whole body seemed to lock up. She closed her eyes. Mia suddenly felt like she twelve years old again in her father's car, with Paris screaming and crying and Riley trying to concentrate on the road. Lucas yelling at his sister to stop crying and Mia covering her ears, trying to block everything out.

The scars on her body hurt, pulsing with a burning sensation. She thought she was forgetting about them but scars remain forever. Internal and external. She would never forgive the terror in her seeing her father and sister being torn apart by walkers until they were nothing. Holding the screams in by the force Lucas' hand, forever haunted by the sound of the undead's growls.

"Mia!" Mia laid on the floor of the crashed bus, her body in pain from head to toe. "Mia!" The muffled voice slowly, very slowly, went from a ringing sound to clear, and she realized it was Maggie. "Mia, honey, come on. Are you okay?"

She hummed a groan. When he tried to move, there was a sharp pain in her head. "Shit."

"It's okay, honey. It's okay. Come on." She calmly assured and helped her out from under the seat.

Mia heard multiple different voices at one time. She felt dizzy as she saw everyone bleeding and she felt glass from the broken windows under her hands. She felt a warm substance on her face and she touched her head, seeing blood coat her fingers.

The walkers banged their hands against the bus door. Their growls were clear and haunting. "The engine's on fire. We gotta get out of here." Rosita said in a panic.

"Mia, are you okay?" Glenn asked when she managed to crawl herself away from the emergency exit door. She managed a weak nod, clearly in shock and pain. "Alright right, you and I got first, known em back, clear the way for Maggie, Mia, and Rosita to get out, then we all start hitting them, okay?" He vocalized.

Mia could barely think straight in that moment. She stood on her shaky legs, feeling very weak, and she touched her head again. She watched Abraham kick the back door out and he and Glenn quickly jumped out of the bus.

"Mia, come on!" She snapped out of it when she heard Rosita's voice.

Instantly, she grabbed her knife from inside her shoe and followed behind Maggie. She climbed out of the bus and started killing the walkers around her. Grunting, she stabbed one in the head, its blood splattering all over her and she pushed it to the ground, the knife retracting.

She looked around her, seeing all the walkers, and she couldn't deny that she was scared. She was terrified. But she wasn't a kid anymore. She wasn't that twelve year old girl she once was. She couldn't save her family. But she could save this one.

With a cry, Mia shoved her knife through the head of another walker. More blood painted her face and clothes. She drowned in. She let go of the fear she had for all those years and replaced it with anger. She was so angry. They kept coming at her and she killed them all. Stabbing through the head, slicing at their necks, through their eyes. She couldn't be a kid anymore. This wasn't kid stuff.

She stared at the walker on the side of the road, lying on the grass, growling at her with its leg gone. It clawed at her, wanting to tear her apart. Mia glared at it as she stood over it. Her father and sister once lied in its position, the will to live gone as they were being torn apart. She stabbed it through the head with heavy force, digging through its skull until she was satisfied. She wasn't a kid anymore. She took her knife back and wiped the blood on her pant leg.

"Check Eugene, see if he's hurt." Abraham demanded.

"I'm fine. Just cuts and dings is all." Eugene told him.

"Check him!"

Mia felt gentle hands on her back. "Are you okay?" It was Tara. She tore her eyes away from the walker at her feet and looked at her. "I'm okay." She muttered.

The bus caught on fire. Mia looked at it and released a breath, her shoulders going up and down. Her adrenaline was so high that she forgot how much pain she was in.

"We're not stopping. We're rolling on." Abraham urged and grabbed his bag from the ground. "We'll find another vehicle down the road. The mission hadn't changed." He started walking.

"Devil's advocate, nothing more—we smashed to a stop hard." Said Eugene. "We spent a lot of time rolling things out of the road. The church is just 15 miles back that way—"

"No. We don't stop. We don't go back. We're at war, and retreat means we lose." Abraham snapped in his face. "The road fights back, the plan gets jacked. You all know that!" He yelled at them. "Now, we will get through this because we have to. Every direction is a question. We don't go back!"

He was right, Mia thought. They couldn't stop.

Abraham started walking again but Glenn quickly stopped him. "Hey, hey, hey. Are you okay?"

"I am fit as a damn fiddle."

"We are going with you. You are calling this thing. I just need to know you're good." He said with concern.

Abraham nodded while looking at the ground, then he looked Glenn in the eyes. "This is how things stop. I can't afford that right now. The world can't afford it. Listen, I took a pretty hard shot to the sack with that crash. I am stressed and depressed to see that ride die, but if you say we're rolling on, I'm good."

Glenn stared at him in silence before he nodded. "We're rolling on."

"I'm gonna rub some dirt on it and walk it off."

He laughed. "Yeah."

"Dude style." Said Mia from behind them, nodding her bleeding head.

They laughed. "Dude style, little lady." Abraham agreed.

Maggie looked at her and motioned with her head. "C'mon." They started walking and she eyed her head. "You're bleeding, Mia. Are you alright?"

Mia touched her head again, the blood still dripping. "I really don't know yet."

"Here." Tara shrugged off her flannel shirt. She held it out to her. "Till it stops bleeding."

She eyed the shirt for a second and Mia slowly smiled. "Thanks." She took it from her hand and pressed it to her head.

Mia laid on the floor of the library, far in the back, surrounded by pitch black. She stared at a book shelf in front of her and her hands were pressed to her cheek. Rosita stitched her forehead, the cut just above her headline, close to her temple. She was tired. Her eyes screamed at her for slumber but she couldn't. Her mind raced at rapid speed.

She couldn't stop thinking of Carl and if the last hug they shared before she left was indeed their last. If her last words to him were their last. I'll always find you. Would Mia find him in every universe? Would he be waiting for her? Carl Grimes consumed every part of her life. He was a part of her now, and he had been since the prison. Being away from him hurt her more than anything. It made her sick. Like her skin was peeling off her bones.

What did that feeling mean? Was Rosita right? Did she love him? Was it the kind of love she felt for her family, for Maggie and Glenn? The love she had for her new group of family? She didn't know any other kind of love. Love to her was protection. It was keeping herself and the people she cared about safe. It was sacrificing her own life for theirs.

Maggie spotted her in the dark corner. She came and laid on the floor in front of her, pressing her hands to her cheeks. "Hi." She almost whispered.

"Hey," Mia whispered back.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm just thinking."

Maggie readjusted her hands under her head. "About what?" She kept her voice quiet.

She pursed her lips. "Do you miss Beth?"

Mia saw her frown in the dark. She hadn't heard Maggie talk about Beth in a long time. She wondered if it was because she thought her sister was dead. Or she was trying to keep the hope of her being out there alive by not saying anything. Mia missed Beth a whole lot. It didn't feel right with her gone. She was such a light and now she felt stuck in the dark. They both did. "Every day," Maggie answered, her voice sad.

"How do you get through it?"

"I think about how I'll see her again. She's out there somewhere. We'll get this cure and I'll go looking for her." She explained.

Mia blinked. "You believe that?" She whispered again.

"I have to." Maggie replied, her voice slightly breaking. "It's the only thing that keeps me going."

She nodded slightly, the movement almost unseen in the dark.

"Do you miss Carl?"

"Of course I do." She made it sound simpler than what it was.

Maggie hinted a smirk. "You know what I mean."

Mia almost rolled her eyes. "You sound like Rosita."

She chuckled. "Because we know. We are women."

"I miss everyone." She stated dismissively.

"I know." Maggie nodded. She took one of her hands and brushed the hair behind the girl's ear, her touch light as a feather. "Y'know, when I first met Glenn, I tried pretending that I didn't like him."

Mia's eyes went slightly wide. "Really?"

She hummed. "I was scared to fall for him. The world was falling apart. I lost part of my family. I couldn't afford to bring someone new into my life if I was just gonna lose em."

She understood that. "What changed?"

She saw Maggie start to smile. "He was just. . .kind. He did everything for everyone. He was protective. He's just so good, y'know? I knew I would hate myself if something happened to him and I didn't tell him how I felt."

Mia's stomach twisted at her words.

"My point is, Mia, don't be scared. It's rare to find someone who you share a connection with in a world like this. Love with everything you have in you."

She closed her eyes and let Maggie's words sink deep within her. She saw a pair of blue eyes in her head, so blue that she felt like she was drowning. The same blue eyes that hated her in the beginning but now begged her not to leave him. The thought of losing Carl once against made her feel sick. She knew exactly what she was feeling and she didn't want to be scared to feel it anymore.