CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Andie walks into cell block A the next morning and she finds Carter sitting on the singular cot in his cell. He turns to see who's coming in and offers her a small smile before sitting forward again, resting his elbows on his knees.

"I didn't think you'd be up already." The brunette says as she leans against the cement wall.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm up." He nods.

"Sorry I didn't make it back last night like I said I would." Andie says as she looks down. "My conversation with Rick took an unexpected turn, and I wouldn't have been the best company. I figured you could use the rest anyway."

"Theo told me that you were having a rough night, so I went out to find you, see how you're holding up with everything that's gone on around here lately..." Carter starts, refusing to look up at her. "I found you holding hands with Daryl in the moonlight. Looked like a romantic moment, didn't want to interrupt."

"It wasn't." She hesitantly walks over and sits down beside him.

"I'm not stupid, Andie."

"I never said you were." She takes a deep breath. "Daryl and I...have a complicated history. We used to be pretty close, and now we're not."

"Close."

"He was my best friend, and then things got..." Andie rubs her palms over her dark jeans, not liking the level of nerves she feels trying to have this conversation. "Before we brought you guys back here from Woodbury, a lot happened because of the Governor, and I wasn't really myself for a while. Things changed eventually, and I was trying to fix it. Didn't work, but..."

"You're saying you never had feelings for him?" Carter asks, and she doesn't answer. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"If I'm being entirely honest here, I don't know what I feel...or what I felt." She tells him. "Letting people in has never really been my strong suit. I've had friends, but I've never dated. The idea of letting anyone get that close... It's never really felt worth it."

"Is that why you won't say yes to a date with me?" He asks. "Or is it because of Daryl?"

"Having connections in this new world — it terrifies me, Carter." She admits. "Family, friends... I can barely stomach the thought of losing anyone else. And the losses never seem to stop. The idea of dating, falling in love... I see Glenn and Maggie, and I think it's amazing that they've been able to find something so beautiful when we're constantly surrounded by so much death and chaos and absolutely gruesome..." She shakes her head, clearing her thoughts. "But I can't stop the thought that it'll destroy them if one of them doesn't make it, or if we get separated...again."

"Death happened to couples before the world fell."

"I told you I didn't date then either, remember?"

"So, it's not entirely about Daryl." Carter nods, turning his head to look at her. "Can you even admit it to yourself that it's partly about him?"

"I..." She takes a deep breath.

"You can't live in fear forever." He tells her. "And whether you can admit your feelings for him or not, it doesn't change what's there. It'll hurt all the same if you lose him anyway."

"What I do or don't feel doesn't really matter." She says as she looks at him. "I asked him if we could go back to being friends the way we used to be, and he didn't say anything at all. Makes his feelings perfectly clear, don't you think?"

"I'm sorry." Carter says, and she forces a small smile.

"Maybe it's the kick in the ass I need to get on with my life, move in a different direction." She shrugs. "Either way, I'll survive. I somehow always seem to."

"You're definitely a survivor."

"Hey, so are you." She bumps her shoulder against his, and he can tell when her smile becomes less forced. "You got that flu, but you're still here. Still kicking."

"For now." He nods. "Sometimes...with everyone that I keep losing... I kinda wonder how much of me really survives."

"You're still here, Carter." She leans against him, her fingers curling around his bicep. "Changing is inevitable, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. You just have to keep fighting."

"I haven't stopped yet. Don't plan to in the foreseeable future." He tells her, and she smiles as she rests her chin on his shoulder. "One day at a time." He says, and she nods in agreement.

"I don't know if I've said it yet, but I'm really glad that you're okay." Andie says. "It scared the hell out of me when I found you in that corridor, when I saw that you were sick. I don't know what I would've done if you'd died before we got back with the meds."

"You'd keep fighting. That's what survivors do."

"I heard all about your heroics when our people started turning in here. You're a fighter too."

Carter smiles as he looks at her. "Only because I met you."

The brunette squeezes his arm as she looks at him, but before she can say anything else, there's what sounds like an explosion outside. The walls around them shake, and the two both look up as they start to question what just happened.

"What the hell was that?" Merle asks, carefully making his way out of his cell as the younger two leave Carter's.

"Only one way to find out." Andie runs out of A block with Merle, Carter, Maggie, Carl, and Beth not too far behind.

"Get back!" Rick yells as he, Daryl, and Tyreese exit C block.

"Oh, shit." Theo turns to look at Andie as Bob kneels down in front of the gate in the courtyard.

"Rick!" They hear a familiar voice yell out as they all look at the row of cars lined up outside their fences. At the center of them is a tank, and the Governor's standing on top of it. "Come down here. We need to talk."

"It's not up to me!" Rick calls out after a moment. "There's a council now. They run this place."

"Is Hershel on the council?" He asks, and then one of the women there pulls Hershel out of the car next to her. "What about Michonne? She on the council too?"

"I don't make decisions anymore."

"What do we do?" Theo whispers as they make Hershel and Michonne kneel.

"I-I don't know." Andie shakes her head.

"You're making the decisions today, Rick." The Governor says. "Come down here, let's— Let's have that talk."

Rick then looks to Daryl, who nods. He says something to Carl before heading out into the field, and Daryl shuts the gate behind him.

Andie looks up at Merle, expecting him to say something about how she should've just killed him when she had the chance. If she had killed the Governor the day she saved Merle, then none of this would've happened. She, Daryl, and Michonne wouldn't have spent so much time risking their lives to chase dead ends, and these people wouldn't be on their doorstep now. But Merle doesn't say anything as he meets her gaze.

"We can't take 'em all on." Daryl says as he walks up beside Andie and his brother. "We'll go through the admin building, through the woods like we planned. We ain't got the numbers no more."

"Yeah, or the munitions." The brunette says as she turns her gaze to him. "We were running low before we hit the Big Spot, we're even lower now."

"We'll manage." He says as his blue eyes meet her brown ones. "Things go south, everyone heads for that bus. Let everybody know."

"What if everybody isn't on it when things go bad?" Tyreese asks. "How long do we wait?"

"As long as we can."

Andie listens to what's going on in the field below, the conversation between the Governor and their former leader, and she doesn't know what to do. He's telling Rick that they have until sundown to get out of the prison, and he's not listening to anything that Rick has to say.

"I know your instinct is to ask yourself what Scott would do," Theo starts, and Andie looks up at him. "But maybe it's time to ask what Peter would do."

"You think that hasn't occurred to me?" The brunette questions. "We can take out the Governor and the prick in the tank, but that doesn't stop the others. We'd be putting Hershel, Michonne, and Rick in the crossfire. They're as good as dead if we shoot now."

"And, uh... How would your pack handle this?" Merle whispers, and she shakes her head.

"Stiles was the brains of the operation, Scott our alpha. I didn't handle strategy, I just followed the plan."

"Time to graduate, señorita. We need more than a foot soldier now." He says, and they look at his brother when Daryl walks over to hand them each a gun.

"Then listen to Rick." Andie looks at him before walking over to the gate to see what's going on now.

"We can all..." Rick starts. "We can all live together. There's enough room for all of us."

"More than enough." The Governor agrees. "But I don't think my family would sleep well knowing that you were under the same roof."

"We'd live in different cell blocks. We'd never have to see each other."

"I'll kill the sumbitch." Daryl mutters, and Merle looks over at his younger brother. "He ain't livin' in the same space as us."

"Us?" The older Dixon asks, and he turns his head. "Or her?"

Daryl looks at Andie, but the brunette's attention is focused on what's going on in front of their group. She's watching the whole thing through the scope on her rifle.

"Not after Woodbury. Not after Andrea." The Governor's saying as she locks her sights on him.

"Look, I'm not saying it's gonna be easy." Rick continues. "Fact is, it's gonna be a hell of a lot harder than standing here, shootin' at each other. But I don't think we have a choice."

Andie slings her rifle over her shoulder and turns away from them, heading back toward the cell block she's called home for the better part of a year now. She collects her things, throwing everything she has for protection into her shoulder bag before fastening it across her chest.

As soon as she has everything she's looking for, she heads up to the catwalk for a higher vantage point. She sees that the Governor's now standing beside Hershel, holding Michonne's sword near his throat.

"We let go of all of it, and nobody dies." Rick's speaking to the Governor's people as Andie kneels down and positions her rifle. "Everyone who's alive right now. Everyone who's made it this far. We've all done the worst kinds of things just to stay alive. But we can still come back. We're not too far gone. We get to come back. I know we all can change." 

What he's saying seems to be resonating with the Governor, and Andie can see the smile on her friend's face as she moves to look at Hershel through her scope. For a moment, there seems to be some hope, but then she hears a single word fall from the Governor's lips.

"Liar."

There isn't time for anyone to react before he pulls the sword back and swings it at Hershel, slicing through the side of his neck. Red stains his shirt as blood pours down his chest, and the screams of his daughters echo through the air.

Andie repositions her rifle, and hers is the first gunshot to ring out. The bullet pierces his chest, and he stumbles back as he looks down at the dark spot pooling on his button-up. The Governor lifts his head, and then the next bullet hits his forehead dead center.

Hershel collapses, and Michonne rolls out of the way as everyone else starts unloading their weapons. Bullets spray across the field, headed both directions as Rick and Michonne both run for cover.

The tank starts forward, tearing down the fences, and then the other cars follow suit. People on foot are trying to cross the field, and a lot of them are shot down before they can make it very far. The prison's taking a lot of damage, shots from the tank included.

The wall of A block takes a shot from the tank, blasting a huge hole through it, and then the cannon turns toward the catwalk. Andie sees it coming, and she runs back as fast as she can before the center is completely taken out.

"Andie!" Daryl's voice is lost in the chaos, and he knows that he can't take the time to go looking for her.

The brunette's ears are ringing, but she pushes past it and runs back to the catwalk, jumping off and landing beside some of the rubble. She's looking for her people — anyone — when she turns around and sees men from the other group running at her with their weapons raised. She tries to shoot at them with the rifle, but she's out of bullets.

Carter shoots the one closest to Andie as she goes for the pistol tucked in the back of her waistband. The second man shoots, hitting him in the chest, and then Andie takes him out before running over to Carter.

"No, no, no, no." She pulls him up and has him lean against a brick wall, placing her hand over the wound in his chest. "You're not dying. You can't die."

"We don't really...have a choice anymore." He says, and she looks into his eyes as tears well up in her own. "At least my death...means you live."

"No. You can't—" She chokes back a sob as her gaze drops to the little black lines traveling up her hand from his chest. She doesn't want him to suffer.

"Duck." Carter tells her, and she leans down as he raises his gun. He fires off two shots, and she looks back to see walkers on the ground a little ways away from them. "It's okay."

"No, it's not." She shakes her head as she looks back at him. "You can't die on me."

"I used to...have a big family." He says, and she's still trying to fight back tears. "Then it was jus— just me and my m-mom... You brought us here. You gave us a home. A new family... I'm okay."

"Carter—" Andie raises her gun and shoots a man who found them.

"Take care of Zoe for me." He asks, and she nods as she looks back at him. "An-And yourself. Try to live. Stop— Stop being afraid of...of living."

"I promise." She says, seeing how fast he's slipping away now. "I promise."

"Tell some— someone about me, huh?" He forces a weak smile. "I died f-fighting."

"Saving me." Andie ignores the tears running down her cheeks as she smiles, holding his head up. "My hero."

She sees a flicker of a smile before his eyes droop, and his head falls into her hand. She squeezes her eyes shut as she lifts her gun; she can't let him become a walker. After the singular gunshot, the brunette forces herself up, not allowing herself to look back at Carter again.

Daryl's using some metal filing cabinets as cover as he fires at men from the other group. He spins around when someone runs his way, and he sees Andie kill a walker that was headed straight for him. She pulls him behind the cabinets, and he sees that she's covered in blood.

The brunette doesn't stop moving, ducking as she fires at the other two walkers headed their way, then she sees the weapons bag at Daryl's feet. She immediately kneels to go through it, finding a grenade. After pulling the pin, she throws it at the men who were firing at Daryl when she found him, and he grabs her to shield her from the blast.

He hears the explosion, then pulls back to look at her. "Are you bit?" He asks, checking for any obvious bite marks.

"No. No!" She clenches her teeth, and he tries to wipe blood from her face, but only manages to smear it. "It's not mine. Let's go!"

He grabs another grenade, and Andie runs ahead of him with the gun he gives her. She's killing walkers, and he throws the grenade down the cannon of the tank. The man inside jumps out just before the explosion, then he turns to find Andie and Daryl both looking at him with their weapons raised. He holds his hands up, palms facing them, and she uses the gun that she took from Carter to shoot him one time in the chest.

"Have you seen Zoe?" Andie asks as she turns to look up at Daryl. "I promised Carter I'd look out for her."

"Melissa grabbed her. I don't know where they ended up." He tells her, and she looks around to find that none of their people are anywhere around. "We gotta go, Andie. We gotta go." He says, and she nods before following him away from the prison.