Stepping outside the Whitesun Hotel, the first thing that hit me was just how much the place had changed, or maybe I’d just been away long enough to notice it properly.

If you could call three days a long day.

I guess I was so lost and at edge with Mei, Penny, Lucy and Gaspar these last days that I didn’t even properly look where I was walking and things had changed.

Margaret’s people were out and moving. Wandering, talking, going about things. It had only been a couple of days since I’d last been here, which made it stranger somehow. You don’t expect a place to feel meaningfully different after two days. But it did.

The whole secured perimeter around the hotel looked cleaner. Like hands had been laid on it, straightening, clearing, arranging and the result was something that almost didn’t look like the end of the world if you squinted right. The kind of place where, if you didn’t think too hard about what was lurking past the barriers, you could almost convince yourself things were normal.

It reminded me of the Boardwalk in that way. Marlon had built something similar over there, just on a larger scale, a pocket of order carved out of everything that had gone wrong. Here, Margaret had done the same thing with less, which in some ways made it more impressive.

A few kids were running around near the far end of the cleared area. There weren’t many, five, maybe six at most in the whole community, but they were laughing, chasing each other, moving wihtout having to be scared of Infected.

I watched them for a moment longer than I meant to.

That was what it was all about, wasn’t it. Not the resources or the strategy or the politics of who trusted who. It was that, kids being able to play outside with a real smile on their face. That was the whole point.

And the job of everyone older, myself included, even if I was still technically a year shy of what most people would call a real adult, though I’d long since stopped thinking of myself as anything but, was simply to make sure that stayed. To hold the line around it. Keep the peace intact so those kids didn’t have to know what was sitting just outside it.

Brad’s voice crawled back into my head once again.

He’d said it to cut, to get a reaction, but that didn’t make him wrong. Gaspar might be exactly the kind of person who’d walk into a place like this, not because he wanted what was here, but just to make a point. Just to pull me out. A slaughter as bait was possible, it was well within what I believed him capable of. Maybe more than capable. Maybe something he’d enjoy.

No risks. That was the answer.

None.

I needed to sit down with Sydney and the others the moment they got back to hold a proper conversation, all of us together, no loose ends.

I was still running that through my head when I noticed Rachel beside me had drifted naturally into the flow of people around us. She was smiling, stopping to exchange words, laughing at something an older woman said to her, completely at ease in a way that I envied sometimes. She had a gift for it. People opened up around her like she was someone they’d known for years, and the older women in Margaret’s community especially seemed to gravitate toward her like she was their own.

She was comfortably the best at this out of all of us. Sydney had her moments, she could work a room when she needed to but she also had a talent for accidentally embarrassing and annoying people that sort of cancelled it out. Rachel was ahead by a comfortable margin.

And watching her move through the crowd like that, completely in her element, a thought came in quietly.

She’d be better off staying here.

I didn’t want to leave her. That wasn’t even a question, the idea of walking away from Rachel sat wrong in every part of me. But I knew what was coming. I knew I was going to Europe, one way or another, after Callighan was done. And Rachel would follow me because that was who she was. Because she wouldn’t leave Elena and Alisha behind any more than she’d leave me. So she’d come, and she’d carry the risk of it, and some part of me would be glad she was there every single day, which was exactly the selfish part I wasn’t proud of.

I was still sitting inside that thought when a familiar voice cut through the ambient noise and stopped me cold.

"If you can’t even walk a straight line without losing your breath, you have no business volunteering yourself for a scavenging run. Don’t be stupid."

That plate and dismissive tone. Still carrying a texture of someone who cared deeply and had decided the best way to express it was to never, under any circumstances, let it show warmly.

Wanda.

I turned toward the sound. Sure enough, there she was, standing over her grandfather Joel with her arms loosely crossed, delivering what was clearly not the first scolding of the day and probably not the last. Joel stood in front of her nodding small.

He was a good man, Joel. Really.

He still wanted to pull his weight, still showed up, still looked for ways to be useful to the community even when his body was making compelling arguments against it. Put him next to Brad and his two permanent shadows and the contrast was almost embarrassing, Brad, younger and healthier, finding every excuse to do less, while Joel was out here trying to sign up for scavenging runs.

Though I did remember the first time I’d seen him, completely winded, heart seemingly one loud noise away from giving out entirely, as an Infected dog had chased him down the street. So Wanda wasn’t entirely without grounds.

She loved him, he was her only family after all. Cold words, hard edges, but every single one of them pointed at keeping him alive and in one piece. It was just how she was built.

Joel was still nodding dutifully when his eyes moved past Wanda’s shoulder and found me. His whole face changed, lit up like a switch had been flipped.

"Ryan! Boy!" He raised a hand and waved with a grin that was too cheerful for someone who’d just been lectured.

Wanda turned at the same time.

And there it was.

That look.

The narrowing stare she reserved for me that somehow managed to communicate about six different flavors of displeasure simultaneously without her face technically doing anything dramatic. You’d think, looking at it from the outside, that I’d done something genuinely unforgivable.

All I’d done was pull her out of a situation that would’ve destroyed her life or at worse killed her.

I gave Rachel a small nod across the crowd that she caught it without missing a beat in her conversation, and made my way over to Joel and Wanda.

"Joel." I smiled as I reached them. "How are you holding up? I see some things never change, Wanda’s still keeping you in line."

Joel let out a warm, wheezing laugh. "Haha, my granddaughter is completely unforgivable, I tell you."

"She really is," I agreed.

I’d barely finished the sentence before Wanda turned and walked away without a word, like she’d been waiting for the first available exit from the conversation. I watched her go for a moment.

I needed to talk to her.

It had been too many days now. Ever since Jackson Township fell, and then Mei’s kidnapping on top of it, we hadn’t had a single real conversation.

"She’s right about one thing though, Joel," I said, turning back and resting a hand on his shoulder. "You should be taking it easier. Nobody here expects the elders to be pulling their weight the same as everyone else. You’re allowed to just, exist here, you know?"

Joel sighed, his smile softening into something more tired. "I’m fine, Ryan. Truly. I just need to know my granddaughter is going to be alright. That’s all an old man really needs."

I looked at him for a moment. "I’ll talk to her."

He nodded gratefully, and I turned and followed after Wanda.

She moved fast for someone who always looked completely unhurried. By the time I spotted her she was already heading somewhere quieter, away from the noise and the movement of the community, seeking out a corner of the world where no one would follow her. Same as always.

"Wanda."

I jogged to close the gap and called out before she could disappear entirely. She stopped but didn’t turn all the way around, just glanced back over her shoulder with the flattest expression she could manage.

"What do you want?" She asked.

"To talk to you," I said simply.

"There’s nothing to talk about."

"It wasn’t your fault," I said. "Jackson Township. Gaspar. Mei. None of it."

Hearing that, her expression twisted immediately in anger.

"How dare you say something like that to me." Her red eyes cut into mine. "Jackson Township was attacked because of me. Gaspar attacked us and killed that man because he sensed my Starakian blood. Every single consequence that followed, every one traces back to my presence there. I am the reason behind all of it."

"Maybe you’re the reason he came," I said. "But you weren’t the one who attacked. You weren’t the one who made those choices. There’s a difference."

"I am still the reason it happened," she said.

"You’re not," I said, closing some of the distance between us. "It doesn’t work that cleanly and you know it. And for what it’s worth, no one here is blaming you. Not a single person."

"Because they don’t know the truth."

"Margaret knows. Martin knows." I held her gaze. "And neither of them care, Wanda. They consider you family. That’s not a performance, that’s just how they feel about you."

Something moved behind her eyes at that. A flicker, brief and quickly buried. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"That’s just them," she said, quieter.

"It’s not just them. My group doesn’t blame you either. I don’t blame you."

"Jasmine died." She cut me off.

I went still.

"If I had never existed," Wanda continued, "if I had never been there , she would still be alive. That’s not guilt talking. That’s just fact."

"Do you think Jasmine would blame you for it?" I asked quietly.

"She’s not here anymore." A pause. "So we’ll never know."

"I was there," I said. "I was standing right there when it happened. I saw her last moments. I saw her tears." My voice stayed steady but it cost something to keep it that way as I remembered briefly her end. "Do you have any idea how much anger I was carrying after that?"

She didn’t answer.

"But when I looked at you, in that moment, after everything, I didn’t feel anger toward you. Not even close. What I felt was that you didn’t belong on their side. That you belonged here, with us. That’s all I felt." I meant every word of it. "You don’t belong to them, Wanda."

"You don’t know anything," she said, stubborn as stone. "You think what happened in Jackson Township was a defeat for them? They didn’t even try. They didn’t even push. They leveled an entire town without breaking a sweat, that wasn’t a battle, it was a statement. You can’t call it a defeat."

"They didn’t get you," I said. "That makes it a defeat."

Her red eyes flared once more. "Do you even hear yourself?!" Her voice came out harder than she’d probably intended. "Do you have any idea what you’re actually saying?!"

"I do," I said.

She made to push past me.

I paused a moment briefly deciding whether to let things go like that again.

The answer was an obvious no.

I caught her slender pale arm and before she could pull away I drew her in gently but without hesitation, and she collided with my chest like something that weighed almost nothing, and I wrapped my arms around her and held on gently.

She stiffened immediately.

"L... let g—"

"Listen to me," I said quietly, cutting across it.