⌜ chapter fourteen ⌟

"Holy shit." Glenn mutters as he looks at the dead body a few feet away from him.

"Are you alright?" MJ asks as she looks over at him, trying to maintain her own composure in the situation.

"Yeah." He nods after a second.

"Hershel?" Rick looks at him.

He hesitates for a few seconds and then nods. "Let's head back." Hershel says.

Rick then picks up Tony's gun before getting more shells out of his pocket. Glenn walks over and picks up Dave's gun from the floor. As Rick stands up straight, he sees MJ staring down at Tony's body with an unreadable expression on her face, and he walks over to her.

The blonde looks up when he blocks her line of sight, and that's when Glenn and Hershel notice their leaders. Neither of them have ever seen MJ like this before, but she's clearly pretty shaken by what just happened, despite trying not to appear that way. Rick raises his hand, resting his hand on the side of her face as he brushes her hair back, and she takes a deep breath.

"Are you good?" He asks, and she takes a beat before nodding.

"Let's get back to the others." MJ says, and he nods.

They then see headlights outside and immediately duck. "Car. Car." Rick whispers as they continue toward the front door. "Get down."

They all quickly move to the floor in front of the entrance, and Glenn looks like he's about to freak out. They hear men talking outside, and they say Dave and Tony's names — it's part of their group. The men end up outside the bar, but they don't come in.

MJ hears a woman's voice that she swears sounds familiar, but she can't place it. The other group walks away, and the ones inside the bar stay quiet. Rick, MJ, and Glenn have their guns, but Hershel's unarmed. Some time passes, and then Rick slowly​ stands up and looks outside. He doesn't see anyone, so he crouches down and moves toward the others.

"Why won't they leave?" Glenn whispers.

"Would you?" Hershel asks him.

"We can't stay here any longer." Rick says, and they nod in agreement. "Let's head out the back and make a run to the car."

They all start to stand, but then they hear gunfire outside. The four of them all move back to the ground and press themselves up against the wall. It's the group outside, they killed more walkers that were wandering the street.

One of them then implies that the others are stupid because they didn't check the bar for Dave and Tony. Apparently those two drink — drank — often. The door starts to open, and then Glenn throws himself against it.

"What happened?" There's that woman again. MJ's trying so hard to figured out how she knows that voice, but her mind just can't put a face to it.

"Someone pushed it shut." One of the men tells her.

"Yo, is someone in there?" Another guy asks. "Yo, if someone's in there, we don't want no trouble. We're just looking for our friends."

"What do we do?"

"Bum rush the door?"

"No, we don't know how many are there. Just relax." He tells them. "We don't want any trouble. We're just looking for our friends." He says louder. "If something happened, tell us. This place is crawling with corpses. If you can help us not get killed, I'd appreciate it."

Rick looks at MJ, and she shakes her head, telling him to keep quiet. Glenn and Hershel look at their leaders, both a little uneasy. Neither of them know what to expect next.

The group outside keeps talking amongst each other, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually it sounds like the majority of them are starting to walk away, but they told one of their people to guard the door and wait.

"They drew on us!" Rick calls, and MJ sighs as she looks down.

The rest of the group comes back. "Dave and Tony in there?" The man asks. "They alive?"

He hesitates. "No."

"They killed Dave and Tony."

"Come on, man, let's go."

"No, I'm not leaving, I'm not telling Jane." He argues with this group. "I'm not gonna go back and tell them that Dave and Tony got shot by some assholes in a bar."

"Your friends drew on us!" Rick yells. "They gave us no choice! I'm sure we've all lost enough people, done things we wish we didn't have to, but it's like that now. You know that! So, let's just chalk this up to what it was — wrong place, wrong—"

One of them shoots and the window shatters. Glenn ducks to cover his head, and Rick gets to his feet. He starts shooting out the window.

"Get out of here!" Rick yells. "Go!"

They keep firing as the other three run for cover. Glenn loses his rifle, but Hershel pushes it toward him and it slides across the floor.

"Damn it!" MJ hisses. "Rick!" She looks at him, and he sighs as he pulls out more rounds for his gun.

"Hey!" He calls to the people outside. "We all know this is not gonna end well! There's nothing in it for any of us! You guys just— Just back off, no one else gets hurt!"

They hear something rattle in the back and all four of them look that way. MJ starts to move in that direction, and Rick motions for Glenn to go with her — cover her. The two of them head to the back of the bar and they hesitate when the stairs creek, but then they keep moving.

They hear the doorknob start to rattle and both look in that direction. They see a silhouette of a man, and MJ pulls Glenn back. She shoots, and the man outside jumps back.

"MJ! Glenn!" Rick yells.

"We— We're alright!" Glenn calls. "We're alright!" He goes to hide, and MJ looks at him. He's on the verge of freaking out, and it's pretty clear to see.

Hershel walks up behind him not long after, and he jumps, aiming the gun at him. The older man pushes the barrel away from him, and Glenn sighs. MJ shakes her head as she looks between them.

"Rick wants Glenn to try for the car." He tells them, and MJ nods.

"Try?" He questions.

"You'll try and succeed. We'll cover you."

"That's a great plan."

"It's all we got." MJ whispers. "I'm still a little banged up, remember? You're the fastest."

Glenn nods, and then the three of them start for the door with the broken window. Glenn pushes it open and then carefully starts into the alley as MJ and Hershel watch his surroundings. A guy shoots at Glenn, and MJ immediately spins around. She shoots him in the chest, and he goes down.

Two more people run forward then, and MJ freezes when she sees them, her body going completely rigid. "Don't shoot." She quickly tells Hershel when he raises his gun.

The blonde woman aims her gun at them, but the man at her side quickly pushes it away so that she won't. "No, Mom, don't." He tells her.

MJ clears her throat. "Is Glenn okay?" She asks Hershel as the two newcomers move down the alley.

"He's not moving." Hershel tells her. "Who are they?" He asks.

"What happened?" Rick asks as he runs up behind Hershel.

"He fired." He motions to the guy groaning in pain on the ground behind the building.

"M-MJ?" Dean looks at his little sister. She just looks past him at the man who shot at Glenn.

"MJ, what the hell's going on?" Rick asks as he looks at her.

"We gotta get to Glenn." She tells him. "He's behind the dumpster, it doesn't look like he's moving."

"MJ?"

"Go." She hisses, and he looks at the two in the alley before heading for Glenn.

Rick makes it to him, and as soon as MJ gets the sense that he's fine, she looks at her brother and their mother. "Your people are trying to kill mine." She says angrily.

"I wouldn't exactly call them our people." He tells her. "We just met them a couple hours ago."

Rick and Glenn try to run for the car, but they get shot at and quickly run back. They hear yelling and tires squealing. A guy jumps off one roof to another and then starts​ screaming when he tries to jump down into the alley below.

"Dean! Mary!" MJ hears a familiar voice as the last car speeds away.

MJ runs over to Rick and Glenn to make sure that they're both okay. Dean and Mary start shooting at the walkers that are moving toward them. The dead go over to the guy that MJ shot, and they start eating him. She tries to ignore his pain-filled screams.

"Dean! Mary!"

"Over here!" Dean calls as Rick and MJ run for the kid who's screaming.

"Oh, that's disgusting." MJ mutters when she sees that the guy has a bar from the fence through his leg.

The others run over to them then, and Hershel tells them that they have to go. The crying guy sits up straight. "No, no. Don't leave me, please." He begs.

"We have to go." Hershel repeats.

"We can't." Rick says.

"He was just shooting at us!" Glenn yells.

"He's a kid."

"Please help me." He begs.

"Rick, they were just trying to kill us." MJ says, and he points behind her.

"So were they." He says.

"Yeah, well, family's complicated." She says, and he just looks at her, taken aback.

"This place is crawling with walkers!" Glenn tries to get their attention.

"We can't leave him!" Rick tells him.

"The fence went straight through." Hershel says, gaining their attention. "There's no way we can get the leg off in one piece."

"Shut up or I will shoot you." He says when the kid starts screaming.

"That may be the answer." He pulls the leaders aside. "We're not gonna get the leg off without tearing the muscle to shreds. He certainly can't run. He may bleed out. Maybe we should put him down."

Rick doesn't like that suggestion.

"I don't want to see any more killing, but this is cruel." Hershel says.

"Rick, we need to get back to the kids." MJ says, and he looks down at her. "Okay, you know what—" She walks over, grabs the kid's foot, and quickly forces his leg up until it's off the fence.

He starts screaming, and she takes a deep breath as she looks at Rick.

"Rick, Dean, get him into the truck. Glenn, get the car open." She says, and Rick tosses him the keys. "Hershel, get something to blindfold him so he doesn't see the way back to the farm. Let's get the hell out of here!"

—

Rick's driving the truck, and John's following him in the Impala. Mary's next to him in the front seat, and their kids are riding in the back.

"Before we get there, there's something that you guys should probably know." MJ says, her head's leaning back and she's looking at the ceiling. "Jess — Sam's girlfriend — she's alive."

"What?" Dean looks at her. "How?"

"Chuck." She lets out a humorless chuckle. "He brought back our family. Mom, Jess, Ellen, Jo, Bobby... Sam and Adam."

"Sam's alive? Where is he?"

"I don't know. I just know he's out there and he's with Adam and...someone else. Ellen and Jo are with Addy and Dana, but I don't know where they are either." She tells them.

"How do you know all this?" John asks as he glances at her in the rearview mirror.

"I talked to Gabriel. I'll explain it all better later." She shakes her head and then looks over at her brother. "Dean, do you remember that bitch — Bela?"

"Language." Mary looks at her, and she sighs.

"Do you remember Bela?"

"Yeah." Dean nods. "Why?"

"There's a woman on the farm, she looks..."

"Like her?" He asks, and she nods.

"That's an understatement." MJ sighs. "But it's not her. Believe me, after this long, I'd know if it was."

"Alright." He nods, and MJ turns in her seat and punches her brother in the arm. "Ow!"

"That's for giving Ellie a gun." She says, and he opens his mouth to protest, but then nods as he looks away from her.

It's after sunrise the next morning when they pull up on the farm, and Carl runs over to Rick, hugging him immediately. Rick takes him over to Lori and hugs them both.

"Who are they?" Andrea asks as the car full of Winchesters parks.

"Grandpa!" Ellie runs from the house as soon as she sees John, and he scoops her up no problem.

"Hey there, pumpkin." He smiles as he hugs her.

"Matt, Patricia, prepare the shed for surgery." Hershel says after his daughter brushes right by him to run to Glenn.

"M!" Jack runs over and he slams into her, not even seeing the people around her. "I was so scared. What happened? Where have you been? Why do you have blood on you?"

"Jacky, I'm fine." She says as she hugs him back. "I told you I'd be back. I always come back, don't I?" She smiles as she looks at him.

"Who the hell is that?" T-Dog questions, pointing into the truck.

"That's Randall." Glenn tells them.

"MJ..." Jack backs up as he finally takes notice of John and Dean.

"Yeah, hun, I know." She sighs as she glances over her shoulder. "Go back over with Jess." She tells him, and he walks over to the house.

Mary walks over to her daughter then, and MJ looks at her with tears in her dark eyes. They didn't really have time for much of a family reunion before. "Look at you." The older woman says. "You're so beautiful. And you dyed your hair." She moves a blonde lock.

"I dyed it once." MJ nods.

"What happened to you? These bruises aren't from last night." She says as she touches the scab on MJ's lip.

"It's nothing." She moves her head back and grabs her mom's hand. Her eyes land on Daryl, who's watching the interaction.

"Pack up yours, Ellie's, and Jr.'s stuff." John says, and MJ looks at him. "After Matt's finished in there, we're leaving."

"John—"

"Like hell we are." MJ cuts off her mother.

"Language." Mary looks at her daughter.

"No. God, I am twenty-nine years old. I'll say whatever the hell I want." She backs away from them. "And I'm not going anywhere."

"Our family's out there somewhere, you said so yourself." John argues. "We need to go."

"I have family here too."

"Who? Jack?"

"For starters." She nods. "Look, you wanna stay, you're more than welcome." She tells them, and she hears a scoff behind her. "No one asked for your opinion, Shane."

"We don't have room for more people. And we don't know them." He says, and his best friend looks at him.

"They're her family." Rick says. "They're welcome here as long as Hershel says so."

"You want to stay, stay." MJ tells them. "You don't, you know where the car's parked."

"Dad, come on." Dean looks at him.

"John, knock it off." Mary tells him.

"Have you eaten, mama?" MJ asks her daughter. "Why don't you go with Carl and Sophia, get some food, huh?"

"Okay." Ellie says, and John sets his granddaughter on her feet. She then runs over to Carl and they go inside with Sophia trailing right behind them.

"She's got friends here. It's safe here, safer than out there." MJ says as she looks at her parents and her older brother. "I'm not taking her out there if I don't absolutely have to."

"Where's Jr.?" Dean asks as he looks around, expecting his nephew to come and greet him. He turns back to his sister when she doesn't say anything. "No." He mutters, when he realizes what her silence means.

"He's gone." Is all she says on that and then she looks at her dad. "If you can handle being here and not calling the shots, follow the rules, then I hope you'll stay. But there are some things that are non-negotiable, and if that's not okay with you, then I suggest you leave now." The dyed-blonde tells him. "You hungry, big brother?" She asks as she starts for the house.

"I can always eat." Dean says, walking away from their father.

"That's one of the few things I know about you." Jessica says, and he looks over to see her standing with Jack; the younger boy's hiding behind her.

"Damn..." He smiles as he looks at the girl that his brother was in love with. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"

"Feels like a lifetime since the last time I saw you."

"You have no idea." He mutters as she walks over and hugs him.

Having his arms around her reminds her of Sam, and she squeezes just a little tighter. There aren't many who can match Sam's size, the way she would practically disappear into his embrace when he'd hug her. Even Dean isn't quite there, but he's close enough until she can get her boyfriend back.

John looks away from the blonde and his son, finding Jack as he moves behind a man that's unfamiliar to him. The boy who appears to be in his teens looks at Daryl as he adjusts the crossbow over his shoulder. John doesn't miss the protective stance the stranger takes in front of Jack when he sees him looking their way.