In the frantic haze of her head, Riley could hear an echo beat rhythmically, growing louder each time the sound came again. It was the reverberation of her heart speeding up to try and grasp a hold on the flow everything was moving so quickly with. Although it was only minutes since she'd just visited Sawyer, it felt like hours had dragged by while she turned her head for a simple minute. 

Her feet clicked against the soiled floors of the administration building until she came to a stop in a small room of many. She'd be calling the room her new home for the next few days until she was allowed to break the walls of isolation she was kept prisoner in, but until then she was rooming with Beth and Judith in the confined area. Despite those specific companions sleeping in the same room as her, they weren't there at the current moment, the reason was completely unknown to Riley, but if she had to take an affirmative guess she'd assume they were with the other adolescents somewhere around the building. 

In a rush to waste no time, Riley grabbed a thin jacket she had from a hook on the wall and threw it around her shoulders, moving to a desk and opening it in search of a flashlight. Just moments before, Rick had came into the safe zone looking for his son and the girl. The defensive fences tasked with keeping the walkers from stampeding into their community and transforming each living individual into a braindead, cannibalistic, monster was heading to an imminent fail. As a last resort, Rick had asked the two to offer a hand in helping him try and restore the strength keeping those fences in place, and time was being knocked off the clock rapidly.

As her hands fumbled with different drawers and her eyes scanned the room for the item she was looking for, a new presence in the doorway alerted her silently.

"What are you doing?" Lucas asked from his placement just outside the room, not quite sure if he was invited in.

"What?" Riley replied mindlessly, running from place to place as she cursed under her breath at there absence of the object. "I'm just looking for a flashlight. Mine literally just disappeared on me, I don't know where the hell it went."

"Oh, I got one." Lucas said, pulling the article from the pocket of his sweatshirt. "Here, you can take it."

Riley turned and looked to his hand, which indeed held a flashlight. "Thank you."

In a few large and brisk steps, she approached the boy and grabbed the item, making a move to leave the room and get back to Rick and Carl, who were probably already growing extremely impatient.

"Hey- um, where are you going?" Lucas asked, catching her by the arm before she'd disappeared too far.

"Outside, fences are getting weak." Riley said, slowing down as she walked backwards a few steps to come face to face with the boy.

"Is that safe? Do you need me to come out with you?" Lucas's eyebrows ran downwards instantly. His tone was quieter, his body now rigid.

Riley shook her head with a small hum accompanied by a faint smile. "It's okay."

"Alright," The older boy nodded slowly. "Just..."

Riley awaited his answer, examining the way his eyes drifted down the hall as a breath escaped his lips. "You have this look on your face like you're going to tell me to be careful."

"You should be." Lucas said, laughing quietly at her tease. "Just a piece of advice."

"Don't panic," Riley said in a lowered tone, turning on the flashlight and bringing it underneath her chin to alight her features as if she were about to tell a scary story. She dropped it down, shrugging her shoulders with a grin. "I'll be fine. See you right after, 'kay?"

"Yeah," Lucas said, smiling to himself as she turned and ran off, disappearing behind a corner.

"You ready?" Rick asked the girl once she'd arrived back at the location he'd found her and Carl in originally.

Riley nodded, following the man as he began a departure from the considered sanctuary of the four walls, Carl right beside her. In only took minutes for them to reach the pathway leading to the fence lines, although seeing their surroundings proved to be a difficult task as the sun had settled so low in the sky not even its reflective rays shone bright enough to illuminate the curve of the earth. Darkness held the atmosphere in a suffocating grasp, and although time was thrown into an abyss of waste, Riley was thankful she'd spent those few minutes looking for a flashlight. 

Now, she balanced with one knee on the ground as she hammered a long, wooden, beam into the ground as support for the fence poles. She held the lighting in her opposite hand as she worked, trying to ignore the snarls of the walkers less than a foot away from her face. On the occasional basis, one or two fingers would sneak their way through the holes of the fences and grab her attention, which she'd immediately come to regret as her gut twisted the second she made unwanted eye contact with the creatures.

"Think they're okay?" Carl asked, and although he did so to no one in particular, Riley knew he'd be set off if she were the one to answer, so she kept her mouth shut. His words made the girl overthink the same worries that'd been circling her mind on an awful repeat ever since the gunshot sounded. It was painfully clear where the noise had sounded from, and the image of her brother stuck in that enclosed area secluded with active firearms and no doubt deadly humans past the point of return made her stomach churn.

"If things were going bad, we would've heard more shots." Rick replied with a grunt, readjusting a pole. "Maggie would've gotten us. We have to do this."

"Let's do it." Carl said, the attitude he'd taken on shining throughout his skin and Riley could practically see the grin on his face without even looking up. When it came to the boy, the only thing that truly made him feel good about himself was being taken seriously, getting to do the 'dangerous stuff' and not be held at a lower station just because he was younger. In a sense, he'd been that way all the time Riley had known him for.

"I got it." Rick noted to his son as he began to lift one of the heavier beams in attempts to place it against a fence pole that was beginning to sag noticeably.

"Let me help." Carl lifted the bottom side of the support wood, to which he earned an expression of pride from his father as they set the beam in place successfully.

Riley watched, her own movements halting for a moment. She felt a little hollow in her stomach as the interaction took place, the scene in front of her reminding her of the obvious absence of her own father. He would've loved the prison, a community where people could live without needing to be drowned in fear every moment they were awake, where they had food and friends and shelter and happiness. She just wished he didn't have to go so soon, that he didn't have to receive his own bite trying to get her and the rest of her family to safety at the Greene's farm. She really was thankful that Rick had stepped up to try his hardest and fulfill that fatherly role for her, it just humbled her heavily when she had to take a step back from her own contentment and face the fact that he would never really be her dad, and she would never be his daughter.

"You alright there, Riley?" Rick called out to her from his place a few yards away, probably noticing the ongoing stare.

"Yeah," Riley said, clearing her throat and nodding. "I think this one's good."

"Alright, why don't you come over here and nail this one down for me?" He asked, giving the beam a pat as he moved away from it.

Riley began to stand up, when the wooden structure to her right snapped in half, the pieces of bark flying as it tumbled to the ground. With a gasp, Riley tripped backwards, hammer and flashlight flying out of hand. She regained her footing once the shock passed through her body and tried to push the fence back from caving in as Rick ran over in assistance. But, their added weight came to no avail as another beam cracked beside the first one, the whole line of fencing coming down in a single blow.

"Run!" Rick yelled, grabbing Riley's wrist and pushing her in front of him as he moved her along forcefully.

Legs moving tirelessly forward, Riley sprinted up the pathway, Carl by her side and Rick right behind them. The growls of the walkers soon turned into roars behind her, beams snapping and rocks scratching against each other all unifying in one mortifyingly loud harmony. Adrenaline began to break the fear in her lungs to a softened dust, body moving on autopilot and no other thought except for escape running through her mind until the shrieks of the walkers grew just slightly fainter. It was at that moment that she turned her head around to see Rick pushing walkers off of him in attempts to save himself that the feeling of alarm began to seep into her blood.

"Keep going!" The man shouted, voice cracking from the stimulation as he tried to run forward and fight off the walkers at the same time.

Riley felt a hand grab her upper arm and drag her along faster than she was forcing herself to move, and she faced forward again with a snap back to reality, although the hand didn't leave her body. 

"Dad, come on! Come on!" Carl yelled over the deafening noise, opening the door to a watchtower and holding it open until Rick had caught up. Once they were all inside, the older Grimes shut the door tightly and locked it, panting from exhaustion. 

Riley's own lungs worked furiously, although the faint tingle of epinephrine still kept her euphoric. She looked down at her arm to see Carl still holding onto it- although she was positive it was now for his own grasp on stability rather than her own. Noticing her gaze as well as his appendages wrapped around her arm, Carl dropped his hand and took a step back, chest heaving with fatigue. The darkness in the room shielded his face from the girl's eyes, so she couldn't quite make out the look all across it, but she wouldn't have been able to anyway because he turned his head away from her.

The pounds on the door grew louder by each passing second, and the snarls began to trickle in through the cracks in the walls. Rick ushered Riley and Carl to the other side of the room and out of a second door, leading them into the prison yards. 

"Dad, what do we do?" Carl asked breathless, glancing at the walkers whose attention turned from the door to the fence separating the two groups.

"Maybe I could back the bus up against the fence." Rick strategized out loud, looking around as if praying solutions would appear in midair.

"Would that hold?" Riley asked, looking at the man to try and read any sense of confidence and assurance on his face- to which none appeared.

The man looked down at the two in front of him, eyes hopping from either one as if doing a math equation in his head using both kids as numbers in the problem. He looked back at the fence one last time before turning around. "Come on."

Making a beeline for a stationary filled to the brim with every different kind of gun, Rick began to pick different pieces up and hand them to Carl and Riley.

"Pockets," He said, no other context accompanying his words. "Got it?"

"Yep," Carl muttered, beginning to maneuver the gun in his hands like an expert whilst Riley held hers as if she were afraid it would explode upon her touch.

"Alright, listen to me." Rick said, walking forward near the fences, urging the kids to follow. "Magazine goes in here, release is here- make sure it latches. Pull back the operating rod and rounds feed up. Keep squeezing the trigger for rapid fire, okay?"

Upon the instructions and chunks of information, Carl nodded, fingers dancing around the weapon skillfully. Riley's heart began to pound so hard she could feel a bruise forming in her chest, her breaths beginning to come in short spurts of air as the sweat from her fingers made the smooth wood of the device in her owns hands slip around. Her throat felt tingly and her eyes underwent the painful feeling of holding tears back despite the fact no tears were present at all. All that Rick had said felt like a different language to her ears, and all adrenaline that kept her moving from before was knocked out of her body like a thousand pound weight had smashed into her.

"You shoot or you run." Rick said, voice lowering as he glanced between the two in front of him, his tone so serious that Riley would feel even more afraid had she not been on the verge of a panic attack already. "Don't let 'em get close, okay?"

Carl nodded, and Riley had to force her own head to move as Rick turned around and began to advance. Her own legs had trouble moving, and a sound of frustration drowned in the sweetness of fear escaped her throat. She looked down at the firearm in her hands, and felt an overwhelming sensation of lostness beginning to hammer at her body. If she thought there was a way she could figure out what to do and where, that thought was diminished in a second. She was completely and utterly lost.

"Riley?" Carl asked from in front of her, turning around. "What the hell are you doing? We're running out of time."

Riley glanced up at him, her face fumbled in panic. "Carl, I-"

Her voice broke off with a crack and the disability to speak began to tear itself through her body until she was a complete nervous wreck.

"What?" Carl snapped, walking closer and seeing the gun lay useless in her hands. "They're about to break in, what are you doing?"

"Carl, I've never used a gun before." Riley said, scanning his face for any sort of written explanation she could put to use. You would think that she had, being in a group with people like Rick and Maggie and all of those people skilled in the weaponry, but her fingers had never touched one in her life. She'd always relied on her bow and arrow, considering she'd been trained with it as a hobby of sorts since she was little- or at least a knife, because she wasn't allowed to wander off at any point during the apocalypse without an adult who carried a gun themselves. It was because of that that she'd never learned to use one.

It might've looked like an easy thing to put together, but as the screams of the walkers tore the skin of her eardrum and the sight of the fence caving stampeded her eyes, the nerves in her body began to light on fire and her brain shut down completely.

"Are you kidding me?" Carl muttered under his breath as he glanced back at the fence. He hesitated for a moment, about to tell the girl just to run back into the prison and wait until it was over before he stopped himself. "Look, right here."

He walked up next to Riley, his own body shattering the boundaries of personal space as he picked up her hands with his own and readjusted them on the gun until she was holding it correctly.

"This is the magazine." He said, quietly but very, very, quickly. He picked up a rectangular looking object and shoved it into a part of the gun Riley couldn't even see in the darkness. "It goes right there, okay?"

Riley nodded, trying to force herself to pay attention to his overview of the gun rather than the loudening sounds of the walkers.

He adjusted a few things and then hit the bottom of the gun, looking up at her face again, so close that the girl could feel the heat of his breath along her skin. "This is the operating rod, you pull this back."

As he did so for her, the gun made a double clicking noise, just like Rick and his own had moments before. 

"You already know what the trigger is, just hold down on that to keep firing and don't let go. Try and aim for their heads but as long as you hit them, you'll be fine. If they start to get too close back up, alright?" Carl said, his sentence squished together in one breath as he explained the basics the best he could. 

Riley nodded, taking a deep breath before readjusting the gun to a more comfortable position and holding it up. 

"Good job, come on." He said, running back to Rick with the girl following in his foot steps. As soon as they realigned with the man, the fence came crashing down, the horde of walkers beginning to stumble onto the pavement.

All sound began to fade, and a ringing in her head made Riley feel dizzy, like the world was turning without her and she was left to stay balanced by herself. She could hear the faint sounds of Rick and Carl firing their own weapons beside her, but her body stayed paralyzed. Closing her eyes, Riley took a deep breath, trying to focus on feeling the fresh air hit the bottom of her lungs and rejuvenate her senses. Her fingers became very aware of the gun in her hands, and without using her eyes to navigate it, her appendages moved to the trigger and clasped the cold surface of the weapon tighter. 

Pulling back on the trigger, her body shook from the impact, and the deafeningly loud noise erupted in her ears, pulling her mind back to the present moment. Opening her eyes, Riley saw a walker tumble backwards, a hole steaming in its right shoulder from what was no doubt the bullet she had just shot through it. 

Feeling the fear fade from her body ever so slowly, Riley squinted one eye and stepped back with one foot, a proper stance moving her body naturally as she began to hold down on the trigger and progress in the fire. She modified her aim so that it drifted upwards, the impact of her gun on the walkers becoming increasingly effective as more and more came down with bullets tearing through their heads, chests, and stomachs.

"Back off!" Rick yelled over the gunfire, leading the small group to retreat from the gang of walkers advancing.

As both Grimes' reloaded their guns, Riley kept hers up, the corner of her eyes catching the way multiple bodies toppled over with satisfaction, her own ammo still remaining strong as she hadn't shot as many rounds yet. The front line of walkers undergoing the first hand brunt of the ruthless attack fell or were pushed backwards, knocking the ones behind it down and causing a traffic jam in their path. The ones who managed to to escape through the clusters tripping over the fallen bodies.

The cataclysmic event echoed for minutes on end, and as Riley's ears grew used to the banging noise, her body grew used to the feel of a firing gun in her control. As if it came natural, the girl aimed each shot at a group of walkers and watched them get demolished in a state of never ending attack, a good handful laying still forever as the sharp pierce of a bullet spliced their brains down the middle.

The rapid fire of the guns echoed for what felt like never ending time, but eventually the number of walks stumbling through the hole in the fence dwindled, and with them the reddening light of the gunshots and ear splitting booms from the weapon each time a trigger was pulled. Soon enough, the only sound was the low grumble of walkers that hadn't reached their final ending of peace, instead experiencing the fate of being pinned underneath the weight of its companions. The guns were lowered, put back into their respective bins and replaced with crowbars handy for upclose contact. 

Walking throughout the field of corpses, Riley plunged the sharpened metal into the head of a walker right next to her shoe, staining the sneaker with a dirty red. She repeated the action alongside Rick and Carl, who tasked themselves with the same job. She watched the way the walkers had gone from a squirming, groaning, creature to a lifeless, inanimate, carcass within a split second at her own hand, and swallowed at the sight. She'd put walkers down many times before, but usually they were in cases of desperation or survival. Seeing the way they fought tirelessly and helplessly beneath her foot as she finished them off made her feel like some bad guy in a movie, the kind where the villain enjoyed the suffering of those beneath him, simply killing those who couldn't protect themselves. Riley knew the situations were incomparable, but it didn't mean she enjoyed the feeling of murdering those struggling beneath her. When she stared for too long, she could still see a human in those lifeless eyes.

There was a reason she never offered to go on fence duty.

She raised the crowbar above her shoulder level and struck it through the head of another walker. Her body felt tingly after the past few minutes, she could still feel the way her smaller frame jerked under the harsh jolts of the gun each time she fired, the way the loud sound echoed in her ears. She could play the scene of the walkers falling in her mind over and over again, and she did. When she imagined her first time shooting a gun, she didn't imagine it would be under a pressuring time crunch  where she'd fired multiple rounds in attempts to defend the prison from a wave of intruding walkers, it was more on the line of having someone like Glenn teaching her to hold it properly with a target somewhere in front of her. She couldn't tell if she liked it or not, she couldn't tell if she would want to do it again. She knew, of course, she would have to at some point, just not if she'd want to. Ultimately, the fear of the scenario was worse than the scenario itself, and she felt an underlining layer of pride begin to well up inside of her.

Walking over to Rick and Carl, Riley let her own crowbar drag through the blood and filth on the floor, no more walkers left to put down. Weariness and numbness seemed to buzz on the older man's face, his hand raising to wipe the sweat from his forehead as a car erupted in the distance.

"Dad," Carl said, grabbing the man's attention. "Everything's gonna be okay."

The boy ran off to the gates, beginning to work on opening them for the car to come through and leaving his father and the girl alone to follow him at a slower pace.

"You did good back there." Rick vocalized, cutting through the chirps of crickets in the night. "I saw you, handled it real well."

Riley glanced up at him, corners of her mouth raising for a second. "I make an effort."

Rick laughed, although it was dry and hollow. "Yeah, you do, don't you?"

Riley smiled, walking over to the car that just pulled through the gates. Before the vehicle even stopped, the back door flew open, a frantic Tyreese emerging from the inside.

"Sasha," He said breathlessly. "How's Sasha?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry." Rick replied to the distressed man, whose face contorted into a look of panic at the response he received.

"Get in there, we got this." Daryl called from the other side of the car.

Tyreese left without a second thought, his body moving in a mad dash toward the prison. Daryl came around to face Rick and Riley, a nod in his head, which the girl assumed was a positive gesture of his to say their run went efficiently. She'd read into the fact the man preferred to use physical indication compared to words most of the time, although she never really knew why. Riley never asked, a strong reason being that she was always a little afraid of setting him off or having him dislike her, but she'd always assumed it was just a personal thing, so she left it alone.

"How you doin', little lady?" Daryl asked the girl once returning from the trunk with a bag slung over his shoulder.

"Good enough," Riley replied with a curt nod of her head and a deep inhale. "How was the run?"

"Good enough." Daryl muttered with a grunt. He ruffled her hair as he walked past her and over to Rick, where the two began their own- probably much more serious- conversation.

Riley turned her head to watch them for a second before rubbing her eyes and beginning to walk   back up to the administration building. Her legs were already sore and her body ached tiredly, the thought of trying to reach the sanctuary making her groan out loud. Despite the enervation, she ended up entering the building much quicker than anticipated. She walked through the doors of the building, silence overcoming her again. No one was in sight, probably all getting ready to go to sleep. The feeling of being alone suddenly became very present to her, as she'd noticed she hadn't seen Carl since they finished putting down the rest of the walkers.

With a heaving sigh, Riley began to walk towards the room she'd be sleeping in for the night. Her feet felt heavy against the floor, eyes tingling with a sensation of tiredness. Once arriving in the room, she walked over to the desk and picked up a hair tie, pulling the loose and bloodied strands into a messy ponytail, the burn of weariness in her arms failing her to wrap the band around her hair a third time.

"Are you okay?" An airy, feminine, voice asked from the doorway. Riley looked up, seeing Beth, clean in a pair of soft pajamas and holding a sleeping Judith in her arms.

"Yeah." Riley nodded. "I'm okay, I'm just seriously craving a shower right now."

"I can tell." Beth said, a grin residing on her face to which the younger girl merely rolled her eyes at. "Do you have time for a visitor before you go?"

"Um, that depends." Riley said, turning around fully to face the blonde. "Who's the visitor?"

Beth stepped to the side, allowing Lucas to come into full view. "I can come back later, if you want."

"No, no, it's okay." Riley shook her head. "Come in."

Beth raised her eyebrows with a supportive beam before turning around and leaving, the gesture leaving the Endicott with a reddened face.

"How'd it go?" Lucas asked, stepping inside. "I'm gonna guess it was more violent than you made it out to be."

"Are you suggesting that I look dirty?" Riley teased with a squint of her eyes.

"Maybe just a little." The boy said, stepping closer. "You have blood on your face."

"I do?" Riley asked, dusting off her cheek in attempts to rid it of the crimson fluid, although her hand came back clean.

"Here, I can-" Lucas reached out with a thumb, rubbing away at her under eye. 

"Thanks." Riley said, her lips widening in an open mouthed smile. "It's not mine."

"Oh." Lucas commented, eyebrows narrowing skeptically.

"I'm sorry, that was- that made it sound creepy. I promise I didn't kill anyone or anything." Riley stuttered, laughing in embarrassment and mentally slamming her face onto the hard surface of the desk at the awkward coverup.

"Not too sure if I trust you on that one." Lucas chuckled as a response, wiping his hands together to clear them of the blood.

Riley's eyes fluttered up to his, her lips upturned as she noticed the way his face didn't turn disgusted or of uneasiness at the simple gesture of removing blood from her skin. She opened her mouth to come up with a new conversation starter, but a knock on her doorframe took away her opportunity.

"Hey," Meg said, leaning her hand against the wall. "What are you guys doing?"

"I just came to see Riley after she got back." Lucas remarked, taking a step back from the girl.

"Back from where?" The young woman asked, eyes narrowing toward her stepdaughter in a suspicious glare. 

"Nowhere. It was nothing, it's fine. I was with Rick." Riley spoke up quickly, too exhausted to put up a defensive argument with her stepmother at the moment.

"I see." Meg nodded slowly. "You two have been spending a lot of time together, haven't you?"

Riley just smiled uncomfortable, annoyance beginning to travel up her body as she turned her head away. 

"Could I speak to you for a minute, Riley?" Meg continued after a few awkward seconds hung in the air. "Alone?"

"Um, can we do it later?" The girl asked, trying to subtly hint toward the boy standing next to her. A skeptical nag told her there was a high possibility the conversation her stepmother wanted to indulge her in was a warning about being careful with Lucas, and not to do anything immature like she probably would.

"Now would be more efficient." Meg said, a strange strain in her voice seemed to balance a weight of being both stern and fair in the situation at hand.

"I can go if you need me to." Lucas said. "I just wanted to catch you before your shower."

"Will you have time after that, then?" Meg's eyes were trained harshly on Riley, as if burning a fiery hole through the girl's body.

"Yeah, probably." The brunette girl nodded.

"Does that mean yes?"

"I don't know." Riley snapped, causing the air to take on an inconveniently uncomfortable drift. The second her voice gave sound to the words she had immediately regretted it. Lucas shrunk back slightly, avoiding eye contact with either women while Meg backed off, pressing her lips into a thin line and taking her hand off of the doorframe before taking her leave.

Riley almost made a move to go after her and apologize, but ultimately she decided against it. The girl sighed, turning her whole body away from the angry darkness of the open door and leaning against the desk with her front side. 

"I'll go, so you can shower now." Lucas said, his voice a little unsteady as if he were unsure staying with Riley was a safe decision or not.

Riley nodded, looking up to meet his gaze which proved to be unsettlingly nervous. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight." He smiled, pushing off of the desk and heading towards the abroad door.

"Oh, I lost your flashlight, by the way. Sorry." Riley called out to the freckled boy before he was out of earshot, a faint flush rising on the skin of her neck.

"You're good. Don't worry about it." Lucas shook his head. He bid her a final, soft, smile before continuing his original speed down the hallway until the soft pitter-patter of his footsteps ceased to be heard by Riley's ear.

With a sigh, the girl walked over to the rickety, old, couch covered with a sleeping bag and an old pillow as a final touch to it and sat down. The makeshift bed wasn't exactly comfortable, to say the least, but she could've had it worse. Shifting her shoulders to shove off her jacket, Riley felt the couch dip by her side and was immediately notified of who she guessed was Beth sitting next to her. 

"You going to shower?" The blonde asked, her soft eyes dancing around Riley's frame gently.

"Mhm." Riley hummed, bending down to untie her shoelaces, which were stained dirtily with mud and blood.

"I don't mean to be pushy, but did you leave off badly with your mother?" Beth asked.

"Stepmother," Riley corrected as she moved to her second foot. "Yeah, kind of. I snapped at her, I didn't mean to, it's just..."

The girl sighed as she came back up, kicking her shoes off frustratedly. "Sometimes she can be a little too much for me to handle."

"I get it. My mama and I used to clash sometimes, but she was still my mom, you know?" Beth pointed out as she turned and began to dig in her pocket for something. "She really does love you, even if she acts a little overbearing from time to time. She cares a lot about you, she only wants to keep you safe. It's hard out here, with these times now. But, she really would do anything for you and Sawyer, I mean... I mean anything."

Riley's posture slouched a little. "Yeah, I know. I just wish she didn't have to push so much all the time."

The older girl offered a sympathetic smile before handing over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "I'm not sure you ate lunch. Or dinner for that matter."

"Thanks." Riley took the sandwich into her hands with a grateful smile, not bothering to comment on how she didn't eat breakfast that morning either- for quite obvious reasons concerning her sick brother. She didn't even realize until that moment how starving she really was.

She raised the edge of the food to her lips, taking a bite and letting the flavors melt onto her tongue gradually. Riley didn't  dwell on how old the ingredients in the simple sandwich probably were, because then she'd be even more prone to putting it down and kicking it away with the tip of her foot. Regardless, the ache in her stomach from avoiding food all day as she sulked in her odd mood of sourness began to prod at her the more she finished.

"I guess you really where hungry then, weren't you?" Beth laughed, her long hair falling and brushing against the younger girl's shoulder.

"You want a bite?" Riley asked, raising her hand to cover her lips. Through her stuffed mouth, the words came out a little muffled, distorting her sentence into an unrecognizable sound.

"Excuse me?" Beth's eyebrows furrowed, her lips splitting in a grin.

Riley shook her head as she rolled her eyes, swallowing completely. "Do you want a bite?" She emphasized in a dramatically slow manner.

"I'm okay, you can keep whatever's left of that to yourself." The Greene said, pointing out the disappearance in the quantity of sandwich left.

Riley shrugged, throwing the rest of it into her mouth and dusting off her hands. "You'll probably be asleep by the time I get back, so, goodnight, Bethy."

"Night, Riley. I'll wake you early tomorrow?" Beth offered as she fluffed up her pillow and set it down on the couch.

"Yeah, thanks." The girl nodded, picking a pair of sleeping clothes from her duffel bag and tucking them under her arm.

She exited the room, the golden glow of the light shining iridescently throughout the darkened hallway for yards on end. As Riley walked through the cold, blackened, corridors, she couldn't help but toss Beth's words around in her brain.

She really would do anything for you and Sawyer, I mean... I mean anything.

Riley wouldn't exactly doubt it, the woman truly did try her hardest to care for the two siblings, but the young girl always thought of the reasoning being mainly on human instinct and good morals. Sure, they were family, but not by blood. Meg never even really showed honest signs of affection towards either kid, the farthest being a hug at most. But even so, she did put all her strength and efforts into providing the children with a chance at life even when the world was dead, beaten to a rotten pulp and strained so hard it could never be placed back together. Riley felt guilty for their constant misunderstandings and arguments, she did every now and then in fact, usually after a specific incident where she knew she could've been more lenient or patient towards her stepmother, but hearing how Beth phrased the woman's care for her made the weight feel even heavier.

Starting now, Riley thought to herself. After that moment, she would at least try to be more flexible when it came to Meg, more of a stepdaughter one could look at with pride and think to themself how proud they really were that they were able to bring up such a person with a relationship that bore no holes or angry riptides within it. One that could actually help string together a family.

Riley was sitting on the darkened asphalt of the prison's black pavement, the heat from the sun radiating in such powerful waves that the girl could practically feel the beat of the rhythm. Beside her, Michonne heaved dead bodies into the back of a truck Riley was perched against, each time a new corpse was launched onto it the whole vehicle shook, and a loud thump was heard from the impact. Riley offered to help the woman, but all she received was a short sentence on how she'd already done enough to help the night before, and just her presence was fine enough. Next to her, Riley's bow gleamed in the sunlight, quiver full of arrows lying next to it as the girl spun single one in her fingers, watching the way the wood reflected the rays of radiance off of its clean surface as a past time.

"Do you ever get tired?" Riley asked, letting her head fall back against the door of the car so she could look up at Michonne. "I mean, you do all this work constantly and you just never seem to need a break or anything."

"Yeah," Michonne grunted as she threw another body onto the already high pile. "But there's no rest until the job is done. That's just how it is."

Riley furrowed her eyebrows. "What if you pass out?"

"Well, then there's your break." Michonne shrugged, shutting the trunk door and offering a hand out to the young girl, who took it and pulled herself to her feet. "I'm gonna go out, get rid of these bodies so we can start the next bunch. You wanna come?"

"Please." Riley said, grinning. Although she was supposed to be stuck in quarantine, she'd been frantically searching for any way out. The thought of isolation nagged at her uncomfortably, and although it was for safety precautions she couldn't help but search for ways out, and quite frankly she couldn't help the fact opportunities presented themselves at every corner.

"Come on, then." Michonne smiled back at her, opening the front seat and hopping in.

Riley bent down to retrieve her bow and arrow case and then gently laid them in the backseat, moving onto slide into the seat next to the older woman.

"Y'all heading out?" Someone new asked from a short distance away.

Riley looked over to see Hershel walking towards them, a slight limp in his step as he moved over the grounds.

"You want to come?" Michonne offered the man the same chance she had to Riley.

"Hell, yeah." Hershel vocalized, opening the opposite door and climbing in beside the youngest participant.

Michonne chuckled, starting the engine and moving the car out of the gates. The feeling of being in the vehicle felt simply unreal to Riley, the way the cool winds contrasted perfectly with the hot, blistering, heat made the Endicott feel like she was a little girl doing nothing but enjoying her summer again if she just closed her eyes. The scent of trees and flowers along the road sent a tingle up her spine. Even if the world really had gone to shit and danger was hiding in even the smallest cracks of the most hidden places on the earth, somehow, the planet seemed to thrive in its natural behavior of life.

Despite wishing the therapeutic drive could last another hour at the least, the truck came to a stop at a clearing in the middle of the woods, only a few miles out from the prison. Once Hershel had clambered out of his seat, Riley jumped out behind him, gathering her bow and quiver from the backseats and slinging it around her just incase any threat emerged from the thick trees surrounding them.

"Smells like shit." She said, wrinkling her nose as a fire crackled and the first body was thrown into the middle of it, bones beginning to char and dead skin beginning to melt.

"You got a dirty mouth on you, you know that?" Hershel shook his head, eyeing the girl. It was hard to tell through the white bush of a beard covering the majority of his face, but a thin lipped smile formed itself on his mouth.

"It's not my fault. Sawyer curses like a sailor."

"Where'd you hear that one from?" Michonne asked, cocking her head to the side slightly as a grin toyed with her lips.

"I think Meg said it to him once, or maybe Beth. One of the two, they both act like his mother." Riley shrugged, catching the glance and chuckle exchanged between the two adults. She didn't call them out on it, because she knew she was right. Both girls bossed her older brother around, but he didn't seem to mind all that much. Besides, in all honest truth, it was kind of humorous from time to time. 

Riley stood in a semi circle beside both Hershel and Michonne, a blanket of silence warping their surroundings, the only exception being the snaps and pops of the burning flames and the occasional chirp of a bird. Once all of the carcasses had been dumped into the fire, the trio began to make their way back to the truck which would then transport them to the prison once again.

With Michonne leading the pack, each party member stepped carefully through the brush of the the grass and leafy lushness of nature. Riley remembered what Hershel had said the day previous, about the outside being so peaceful, so safe, so filled with tranquility. Riley believed it to be true, all around her the environment sang with an air of serenity, the sweet aroma of creation sending her spirits to soar higher into the sky than any plane could ever reach. But, just the way the conversation followed the script of accuracy, what Carl had said had also proved to ring true: it couldn't always be that way.

From upfront, a loud crash of impact stole her attention immediately. Michonne's body crumpled to the floor, and standing in her place was stationed a man with a gun, a divine look of emotionless commination flourishing his features from beneath an eyepatch.

Immediately, Riley's heart dropped to her stomach as her eyes set an identity to the man.

The Governor. 

a/n - i didn't really want to make riley a character who could easily pick up a gun without any experience and start killing all the walkers immediately (that would be cool tho), i just wanted to give her character a little more depth on her areas of strengths and weaknesses, and also carl needed a chance to redeem himself after being a jackass <33 anyway, we all know what happens next chapter, i'll see y'all there soon :))