Glenn stared up at her with half closed eyes and uttered a small sigh.
"I could use a vacation."
Aubrey laughed, her face brightening with her smile.
"Get away. Just for a weekend."
"Yeah."
"You know, our anniversary is coming up."
"It is?"
"One of these days," Glenn replied, squeezing the hand he held gently.
"You ever been to Amicalola Falls?" Aubrey asked. "Tallest waterfall in Georgia."
Glenn shook his head against his pillows.
"My dad took me there when I was little. When we were up there, all the way at the top looking down, I felt like I was flying."
"I'll go load up the station wagon," Glenn teased in a soft voice.
Aubrey leaned down to hug him, pressing a light kiss against his sweater-clad shoulder. "I'm gonna go get you some water."
"I can get it."
"I know. But I'm doing it," Aubrey replied simply, getting to her feet.
"I'll be right back."
As soon as she started to leave his cell, an explosion shook the building.
"Don't get up," Aubrey snapped, panic in her voice and her wide eyes, before she darted from the cell and flew down the stairs.
"What the hell was that?" she demanded, following Carl out to the courtyard. Beth ran behind them, as Daryl, Rick, and Tyreese sprinted from C block.
"Get back!" Rick ordered them.
Aubrey's stomach turned to lead as soon as they came to a stop at the gate and saw what waited for them outside the fences.
The Governor.
"Rick! Come down here!" the wretched man called, standing upon his tank with his hands at his hips.
"We need to talk."
"It's not up to me!" Rick shouted back.
"There's a council now. They run this place."
"Is Hershel on the council?"
He motioned to a woman standing by his tank, and she lowered her weapon, disappeared behind an open car door, and reappeared with a bound Hershel. Aubrey heard Beth choke up behind her.
"What about Michonne? She on the council, too?" the Governor asked pointedly.
They watched another one of the Governor's men walk Michonne to where Hershel stood on his knees in front of the tank.
"I don't make decisions anymore!"
"You're making the decisions today, Rick," the Governor replied. "Come down here. Let's have that talk."
Rick looked to Daryl, who gave him a small nod, and placed his hand against the nape of Carl's neck.
"We can do this, alright?" he said to them faintly, exchanging nods with them.
He gave Carl's shoulder a pat, and gently brushed his palm to Aubrey's cheek. She was too focused on glaring at the Governor to bristle at his touch, before he was pulling back the gate that was still broken from the last attack and striding down the gravel path.
"We can't take 'em all on," Daryl whispered, gathering the adults into a circle, all their eyes on Rick's back. "We'll go through the admin building, through the woods like we planned. We ain't got the numbers no more."
"When's the last time someone checked the stash on the bus?" Aubrey asked.
"Day before we hit the Big Spot," Sasha replied. "We were running low on rations then. We're lower now."
"Yeah, we'll manage. Things go south, everyone heads for the bus. Let everybody know," Daryl instructed.
"What if everybody doesn't know when things go bad? How long do we wait?" Aubrey asked
"As long as we can," Daryl answered, walking away.
"Let 'em go right now," Rick said, coming to a stop in front of the fences.
"I'll stay down here. Talk as long as you want, but you let 'em go. You got a tank, you don't need hostages."
"I do," the Governor said. "This is just to show you I'm serious, not to blast a hole in our new home. You and your people, you have until sundown to get out of here or they die."
"Doesn't have to go down this way."
"I got more people, more firepower. We need this prison. There it is," the Governor said, giving Rick the same arm gesture that forced Aubrey to remove her clothing, unbeknownst to Rick. "It's not about the past. It's about right now."
"There are children here. Some of them are sick, they won't survive."
"I have a tank, and I'm letting you walk away from here. What else is there to talk about?" the Governor asked, shrugging his shoulders.
Daryl wheeled the laundry basket full of guns away from the fence and started distributing them.
"You good?" he asked, before he nudged her in the back with an automatic rifle, his discreet way of arming them without the villains noticing.
Aubrey tore her eyes away from the scene below them. "I thought we were done with this shit," she replied. "Being pushed around by a man who calls himself the Governor like he's playing make believe."
"We'll be okay," was all Daryl replied with, before he continued carefully passing out guns.
"I could shoot you all," they heard the Governor say. "You'd all shoot back. I know that. But I'll win and you'll be dead. All of you. Doesn't have to be like that. Like I said, It's your choice."
Both Rick and the Governor looked over at the sound of snarling walkers. The latter pulled out his hand gun and effortlessly shot them both dead.
"Noise will only draw more of them over," the Governor stated, holstering his gun. "The longer you wait, the harder it will be for you to get out of here."
"We got to do something," Carl said, the muzzle of his shotgun resting in the chainlink.
"Your dad's got it," Daryl said from Aubrey's other side.
"They're talking. We could kill the Governor right now."
"From fifty yards?" Aubrey scoffed.
"I'm a good shot," Carl defended. "I could end this right now."
"Yeah, and I'm a better one, but the risk is too high," Aubrey hissed. "You could end up starting something else."
"You got to trust him," Daryl said.
"You got maybe about an hour of sunlight left," the Governor said, briefly turning his good eye to the sky.
"I suggest you start packing. The longer you wait, the harder it's gonna be for you to get out of here," he reminded him.
Rick looked to Hershel, getting the tiniest of nods from the man. "We can all - we can all live together," he declared, forcing himself to spit out the words.
Aubrey furrowed her brows, her dark eyes narrowing to slits. Huh?
"There's enough room for all of us."
"More than enough," the Governor agreed. "But I don't think my family would sleep well knowing that you were under the same roof."
"We'd live in different cellblocks. We'd never have to see each other till we're all ready."
"It could work," Hershel chimed in, looking over his shoulder at the man, "You know it could," he pressed.
"It could've. But it can't. Not after the Woodbury. Not after Andrea."
"Look, I'm not saying It's gonna be easy. Fact is, It's gonna be a hell of a lot harder than standing here shooting at each other, but I don't think we have a choice."
"We don't. You do."
"We're not leaving."
The Governor grit his teeth.
"You try and force us, we'll fight back. Like you said, the gunshots will just bring more of them out. They'll take down the fences. Without the fences, this place is worthless. Now, we can all live in the prison or none of us can."
At this, the Governor jumped down from his tank and yanked Michonne's katana from the sheath when it was offered to him.
"We'll fix the damn fences," he muttered, striding up to Hershel and placing the blade against his neck.
Beth stumbled up to the fence with a sob, gritting her teeth to keep quiet.
"You. You in the ponytails," Rick called, pointing his hand at a woman standing in the background. "Is this what you want? Is this what any of you want?"
"What we want, is what you've got," the man - the man who beat Aubrey till she was black and blue and bloodied - manning the tank replied. "Time for you to leave, asshole."
"Look, I fought him before, and after, we took in his old friends. They've become leaders in what we have here. Now you put down your weapons, walk through those gates... you're one of us. We let go of all of it, and nobody dies," Rick declared desperately. "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."
Rick wasn't looking at him, but they could all see the small smile on Hershel's wrinkled face. It looked like the Governor was really considering Rick's words, as the blade moved away from Hershel's neck.
"Liar."
Aubrey's jaw dropped open as the Governor swung Michonne's katana into Hershel's neck. Blood leaked into his shirt, and his suspenders, staining his snow white beard crimson.
"No!" Rick roared, firing wildly with his Python as Hershel fell to his side in the grass.
Aubrey curled her finger around the trigger, a smirk tugging her lips when she saw the Governor immediately grab his shoulder.
"Daddy!" Beth screamed, clutching at the fence, too stunned to remember the gun hanging from her shoulder.
The gunfire was heavier than it ever had been. She saw a splash of blood fly from Rick's leg before he fell to the ground behind the overturned bus. From between the vehicles, they saw the Governor catch Hershel where he was attempting to inch away like a caterpillar and finish him. Aubrey flinched when a bullet whizzed too close to her ear, a colorful string of curses falling from her lips as she as she saw the tank begin to shuffle forward. The fences. They were going to take down the fences. Again.
"I'm out of ammo!" Beth yelled over the popping of guns.
"Run for the bus, I'll cover you," Aubrey replied, watching her run across the concrete out of the corner of her eye.
They were getting too close. Panic seized her heart as the tank fired a monstrous round into the wall of the prison.
"Go, Beth, go! Glenn's in there, I have to go get him," Aubrey shouted, ushering her up the steps before she bolted for the damned prison.
"Glenn!" she shouted, seeing him slowly descending the stairs as soon as she ran in.
"What the hell's going on?" he demanded.
"We have to get everybody out of here," she replied, throwing his arm around her shoulders as another tank blast blew a hole in the wall closest to them.
"Come on, come on," Aubrey urged, flinching when a man went down right beside them.
"Carl! Where's Carl?" she demanded to the woman ushering people in as soon as Glenn was on.
"He went to find Judith," she replied.
"Where?"
The woman pointed in a direction outside the doors.
"We'll find him, he'll be okay," Glenn said, descending the bus steps.
"No, no," Aubrey cried, pushing him back in.
"What? No, you're not going by yourself," Glenn argued.
"You can barely keep yourself upright. I'll be right back!"
"Aubrey..." She was already gone.
"Sasha! Sasha! Have you seen Carl?" Aubrey shouted, ducking down behind her and Bob.
"Is he on the bus?"
"No. He's - " she cut herself off, catching sight of something between the buildings.
Ignoring Sasha's shouts, she ducked low, dodging bullets that attempted to pelt her, and darted to the pink and grey object. Her heart sank into her stomach when she saw it was Judith's empty car seat, and it was bloodstained.
Letting out a cry, she beat her fist against the concrete, whipping around at the sound of an engine, in time to see the bus driving away. Looking down to the field, she saw Rick getting his ass kicked, and booked it. She didn't care about her feet crunching the gravel with every step she ran, they wouldn't hear it over the gunfire and snarling walkers anyway.
Rick choked and gasped, groaning at the extra punch the Governor delivered. The right side of his face was numb, and he knew it was swollen. He felt his vision fading when the Governor's hands wrapped around his throat and closed his eyes.
When the pressure let up, he opened his eyes to see the point of Aubrey's knife sticking out of the Governor's neck, right through his Adam's apple. He rolled off of Rick and he curled onto his side, coughing and wheezing from the Governor's throttling.
"Carl...?" Rick gasped. "Where's Carl?"
"I've been looking for him," Aubrey replied, helping the injured man to his feet.
She had the intent of helping him find Carl, when she heard the Governor moaning. She turned slowly to see him writhing on the ground, clutching his throat as his eye bulged from his head like a cartoon. Blood coated his teeth and spewed from his lips at his every attempt to breathe. Aubrey approached him slowly and squatted beside him, her face stoney as she glared a murderous glare in to the Governor's only eye.
"The second you told me to take my shirt off, I vowed I was going to kill you, for myself, and for Glenn. Standing in front of you, completely exposed and humiliated, I had already plotted your death seven times over, and they were all painful. Now, you're going to turn, because you don't deserve the relief of death after all you've done," she whispered maliciously, straightening up.
"No rest for the wicked, Gov," Aubrey said in that same poisonous whisper, turning and walking away with her shoulders back and her chin up.
She didn't know where Rick had gone, she didn't know if Carl made it onto the bus, but she knew Glenn made it out safely, and she knew she had to leave.
Aubrey Walsh had to find her people - her family.
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hhhhh don't kill me but this is kinda the last chapter,,,
- shelby