Chapter Text
They all have work to do, but Glenn wraps Edie in a hug before she can even get started. Maggie is next. Edie has never been more happy to be trapped in a boxcar - knowing Glenn and Maggie are alive helps balance out the immense fear she feels at their current situation. She holds onto Maggie extra tightly, trying to send a million condolences and thoughts and feelings into her friend in one short instant.
The couple in front of her study her bruised face with concern; she tries to wave them off, her mouth suddenly dry.
"I'm okay," she says, and she tries to say it as sincerely as possible.
"Haven't seen you since Death Row," says Sasha. Edie smiles and the two women hug each other. Sasha hugs fiercely and holds firmly - the way she hugs completely matches the kind of person she is. Once they let go, Edie examines her face. Sasha does the same.
"You look much better," Edie says.
"You look like shit," returns Sasha. Edie chuckles.
"I know." She looks behind Sasha's shoulder and sees Bob, timidly keeping his distance. The two of them didn't interact much at the prison, but he always was kind to Edie. "Hi, Bob," Edie offers. Bob nods back, smiling.
"Bee?" Sasha asks.
Edie shakes her head, suddenly somber, a pit opening in her stomach. "Tyreese?"
Sasha returns the same gesture, looking similarly stoic.
There's a strange relief in knowing that Bee isn't with any of her friends, and therefore not in any danger with these assholes in Terminus. However, this relief is also mixed with a confusing sense of longing - sure, she's not in this train car with them, but that means not a single one of these people have seen her. The thought of her being lost seems even more likely. Edie almost can't bear it.
"I'm glad they're not here," Edie says, but her already crackling voice is broken up more by the hot tears pricking in the back of her eyes. She bites her lip and looks to Sasha. "I wish she was here," she says candidly.
Sasha nods. She puts a comforting hand on Edie's shoulder.
"Well, let's get out of here," Sasha says, "and we'll go find 'em."
The group breaks into action. Edie focuses on severing a large, sharp piece of wood from the boxcar to use as a weapon. She looks over at the strangers lumped in with the others - she's heard some chatter about the man with the mullet knowing something about a cure - she's not sure how much she believes that, but she may as well. The man with the mustache is obviously mullet man's protection, as well as the woman with the pigtails and the hoop earrings. Those two seem intense and have a no-bullshit tolerance, Edie has already gathered. The other dark-haired girl, more mousy and nervous - Edie can't tell where she fits into things, but as long as she helped save Glenn, Maggie, Sasha and Bob, it doesn't really matter.
Edie is able to break off a sizable chunk of wood and begins taking off the pieces that could stab her rather than any walkers or residents of Terminus that get in her way. She tries to shove down the unease she feels at potentially having to hurt or kill anyone else and instead focuses on what matters - all of them, especially Carl, getting out of here safely. The little boy is working intently on his own makeshift weapon next to her, with the focus of a hundred soldiers. Edie desperately wants to say something to him, whether it be something silly to make him laugh or something reassuring to help him feel better, but she keeps coming up empty.
Carl speaks before she gets the chance to. "That guy at the car last night," he says. Edie's heartbeat quickens, knowing he's talking about Jamie. "He did that stuff to you all the time?"
Edie bites her lip, suddenly unable to look at him. She breaks off a splinter of wood with a little more force than necessary. She feels Michonne's eyes look to her, wondering what she'll say. Edie is wondering that herself. "Not at first," she settles on. "But yeah. He did."
Carl is silent for a moment, still working fixedly. "I'm glad he's dead," he says finally.
"I'm glad they all are," Edie says pointedly, finally looking to the little boy. He looks up to her, his eyes dark - but they're still Carl's eyes. She can still find him in there. "And I'm glad you're okay."
He nods. "You, too."
They go back to working in silence after that, listening to snippets of other conversations, but Edie smiles now as she soldiers on.
After a while, she hears chattering from outside the train car - everyone does, as they look up and make worried eye contact with one another.
"Alright," Daryl says, peeking out from a gap in the door. "Got four of them pricks comin' our way."
Edie's stomach lurches, but she tries to hold it down. All that matters now is they get out of here. Whatever happens while they accomplish that, she can bargain with God about after they're all safe and sound outside these walls.
"Y'all know what to do," Rick says as everyone begins to stand up and get into a formation. Edie makes a practice stab with her new weapon - it's not perfect, but it can do some damage. She begins to move towards the door, gingerly on her stupid ankle. Michonne has wrapped some tape around it so it's not just her sock out there in that warzone, and that's helped stabilize it some. "Go for their eyes first. Then their throats."
They all stand together in sweaty, anticipated silence. Edie holds up her stick next to Carl and Michonne, also holding their newly-made weapons in similar poised fashions.
"Put your backs to the walls on either end of the car. Now!" she hears from outside. Rick turns to the group and gives them all a nod. Edie's good leg is bouncing, but she takes in a deep breath and shakes her shoulders a few times. It's now or never.
Then, she sees a light above them. Edie looks up and sees someone has opened a door on the roof of the car. And a small canister gets dropped to the floor.
She barely has time to register the large man yelling, "MOVE," before the can explodes and a suffocating gas fills the boxcar. Edie pulls Carl all the way to the far end where they were just fashioning their artillery, but there's really nowhere to hide from the all-encompassing smoke in an enclosed space like this. It fills her lungs, it gets into her eyes, and she loses consciousness quickly, not even processing what the hell is going on.
It's chaos outside. Several large explosions have been heard and felt, and gunfire, screaming, and growls of copious walkers encompass the boxcar. The only thing left to do for those remaining is to keep fashioning means of protection while they wait. Surely Rick and the others will come for them, Edie keeps telling herself. They have to.
"What's the cure, Eugene?" Sasha asks.
It's silent. Edie can't help but think that she was curious herself about that.
"It's classified," the mullet man, apparently named Eugene, spouts out in a monotonous manner.
"We don't know what's gonna happen," Michonne says. She looks to Edie and Edie shakes her head, backing Michonne up.
"You leave him be," Eugene's protector says.
"We need to keep working," says Maggie, walking past Edie and laying a hand on her shoulder. Edie huffs, almost annoyed at the way all of them are treating her. Just because she's gotten her ass handed to her doesn't mean she's weak. Most of them don't know what the hell happened that night, anyway, and what she had to do - what she's capable of doing. They still see her as the little teacher who was too scared to go out on runs at the prison. That's not who she is anymore.
"Yeah, but we'd love to hear it," she finds herself saying. Her voice is still hoarse, but she tries to speak with firmness. She snaps another stray splinter of wood off her stick, trying to ignore all the eyes she feels on her. "Michonne's right; we don't know what'll happen next. Could die with us."
"What's next is we get out of this," says the dark-haired woman. Edie huffs again, keeping her eyes trained to the stick.
"Even if I told you all, even if I provided step-by-step instructions complete with illustrations and a well-composed FAQ and I went red-ring, the cure would still die with me and only me." The way this man speaks is like an alien come down to earth. Edie shares an unconvinced glance with Michonne.
"And I'm not gonna let that happen," his bodyguard chimes in.
"The best-case scenario, we step out into a hellstorm of bullets, fire, and walkers. I'm not fleet of foot. I sure as hell can't take a dead one down with sharp buttons and hella confidence," Eugene says.
"Yeah, but we can," Michonne says, sharing another nod with Edie. She's the only one that is treating Edie like an equal, and once more Edie is filled with appreciation for this woman, the only one who seems to understand her right now. "And we will."
"You don't owe us anything," Sasha says, standing. "Not yet. But we just want to hear it."
"You don't have to," says the woman in the hat. Edie bites her lip to avoid rolling her eyes. The air hangs in silence for a moment. Then, Eugene stands and faces all of them.
"I was part of a 10-person team at the Human Genome Project to weaponize diseases to fight weaponized diseases. Pathogenic microorganisms with pathogenic microorganisms," he says. "Fire with fire."
Michonne and Edie stand in tandem, listening to his explanation with their own levels of suspicion.
"Interdepartmental drinks were had, relationships made, information shared. I am keenly aware of all the details behind fail-safe delivery systems to kill every living person on this planet. I believe with a little tweaking on the terminals in DC, we can flip the script. Take out every last dead one of them. Fire with fire."
The sheer ridiculousness with which Eugene explains this combined with their entire situation causes Edie to let out a small chuckle - she had always been a nervous giggler, and now she's doing just that. Every pair of eyes snap to her, and she turns around, getting her little fit out of her system away from the group.
"Somethin' funny, miss?" Eugene's bodyguard demands.
Edie turns around, attempting to be completely stone-faced. "Not at all," she says. "Fire with fire. I got it."
Eugene looks at her and she raises her eyebrows, trying to feign sincerity to him. He seems to believes her, nodding. "All things being equal ... it does sound pretty badass."
"So let's get back to work," Maggie says.
Suddenly, they hear thudding outside the car, different from the few walker thuds they'd heard earlier. Edie's stomach churns as they all freeze, rearing up with their new weapons. The door slides open and Edie lays frantic eyes on a bloody, but living, Rick. Relief washes over her, but it's replaced with urgent adrenaline as they all begin to make their way out of the boxcar and into the havoc.
"Come on!" Rick bellows. "Fight to the fence!"
There's smoke and gunshots and screaming and most dangerously, hordes of walkers awaiting them, but Edie knows they need to face them if they have a prayer at getting out of here. The group begins to descend down the stairs. Michonne helps Edie down to solid ground.
"Good?" Michonne asks.
Edie answers by skewering a walker's head just behind Michonne's shoulder. Michonne whips around and then back to Edie, halfway surprised, then they share a nod.
"Let's go," Edie says.
They do. Rick calls her name and as Edie turns to face him, he tosses her a large gun similar to what she had been carrying when they entered Terminus. Edie catches it, then fumbles it, then secures it in her arms, and nods to Rick. He nods back.
They begin running towards the fence in their own sort of horde. Every so often, one of them will break off to take down a walker getting too close, save for Eugene, who moves almost slower than Edie with a permanently terrified expression on his face. Edie is pushed to the center of the group with Eugene because of her ankle, but she still moves out every few paces to take a walker down with the gun Rick tossed to her, much more efficient than the stick she had been working on. She worried in the train car that she would be unable to kill anything, even walkers, because of her experience the night before - but once they're out in the thick of it, Edie shows no hesitation. She barely even thinks.
"Up and over," the woman in the hat calls over her shoulder as they reach the fence.
Eugene is hoisted over first, of course. Edie turns and notices that Gareth is standing atop the roof once more. That son of a bitch. She begins to make her way towards him, towards Rick, who is already aiming at him.
"Edie!" Michonne yells. Edie looks over her shoulder to see she has Carl and is safely moving him towards the fence. Satisfied with this, Edie turns back around and aims her gun towards Gareth.
Bullet by bullet cascades out of her and Rick's guns. One of hers catches Gareth in the shoulder - Edie watches him go down. Her and Rick share a frantic, almost impressed glance with each other, and then Rick really realizes who's standing right next to him. His impressed look is replaced with one of haste and concern.
"C'mon," he says, taking her arm and slinging it over his shoulder.
They bring up the rear as the rest of the group climbs. Daryl goes, then Rick wraps his hands around Edie's waist, helping her scale the fence with much more ease than she would by herself. She drops down onto her good leg. Michonne and Carl help her up just as Rick and the burly man with the mustache round the group out. They've all made it.
They start running. Edie takes one look back over her shoulder and sees the once proclaimed sanctuary up in smoke. She feels relief, she feels anger, she feels grief. Edie feels it all.
They make it a safe enough distance away to begin walking instead of running; Edie can finally catch her breath and give her ankle a little break. Michonne's eyes keep flickering over to Edie's hobbling, but she never asks if she's okay or if she needs assistance. She knows that Edie would resist, that it would make her feel useless and inefficient - Edie knows that Michonne knows this, and it makes her respect the woman even more.
Daryl leads them to the place where Rick buried the bag of guns earlier. Rick kneels down and gets to digging.
"The hell we still around here for?" the bodyguard demands.
"Guns," Rick answers, still digging. "Some supplies. Go along the fences, use the rifles. Take out the rest of 'em."
Edie's heart jumps a bit at that command. Bob steps forward, voicing Edie's immediate concern for her. "What?"
Rick turns back to him intensely. "They don't get to live."
Her eyebrows furrow as she tries to wrap her head around this. Sure, she gets where he's coming from - she just stopped herself from climbing that fence and getting to safety at even the chance to try and shoot Gareth - but they made it out. And that place was a surefire shitshow - no one else is making it out of there. Going back to try and finish the job just feels like taking all this, what they had just accomplished, for granted. They just got insanely lucky; that couldn't happen twice.
"Rick, we got out," Glenn says cautiously. "It's over."
"It's not over 'til they're all dead."
"The hell it isn't," quips the woman in the hat. "That place is on fire. Full of walkers."
"I'm not dickin' around with this crap," the bodyguard says. Edie shares a glance with Michonne, and she can tell they're pretty much on the same page again. "We just made it out."
Rick stands and looks to Edie, as if he can count on her sharing the same sentiment as him towards these people. She heaves a sigh. "Fences are down, Rick," she says, trying to reason with him. "They either die in there, or they run and die out here."
He looks disappointed at her saying this; she expected him to, but it still hurts to see him upset with what she's said to him. She's about to try some other line of thinking with him when she hears running footsteps. Her eyes snap to the source of the sound and she sees Daryl running over to someone standing a few paces away in the forest. As he wraps the person into a hug, Edie feels like her eyes are playing tricks on her once more - but this time, not in a horrible, terrifying way. Edie blinks a few times and catches one definitive glance over Daryl's shoulder as he lifts her into the air and settles her back on the ground.
Carol.
Edie lets out a sigh, a laugh, a cry? She's not sure what she lets out, but her stomach unleashes butterflies swarming through her chest as she sees the woman she previously thought she would never get to see again. The tears flood her eyes faster than she expects as the group from the prison all advance to meet her.
"Did you do that?" Rick asks her.
Carol is unable to answer - the warm glow of the sunlight through the trees illuminates her beautiful blue eyes, glistening with tears. Rick pulls her into a hug. Edie smiles, her heart soaring. It's Carol. Carol is alive and she's found them - she helped save all of their lives. It's Carol. She's alive, and she's back. She's with them again. She's alive. Thank god. Rick and Carol hold onto each other for a while. Edie doesn't dare interfere with the reunion, but she does stay firmly planted next to Rick, waiting for her turn admittedly a little impatiently.
Once they let go, Carol lays eyes on Edie and quickly hides her immediate reaction at her beaten face. Edie still sees it; she doesn't care. She smiles warmly, tears cascading down her pink cheeks - Edie's tears let loose at about the same time. Her entire body feels warmth as she wraps her arms around the woman, still not fully believing that she's standing in front of them. Carol lets out a little laugh into Edie's ear, and Edie's heart feels even fuller. Carol basically supports Edie in her arms - she's collapsed into them like a child collapses into her mother's embrace. Edie cries some into her shoulder, and Carol lets her - of course she does. She hasn't changed at all since the prison, at least to Edie, and Edie loves it.
Once they finally release each other, Carol brings a warm hand first to the cut above Edie's eyebrow, then down to her cheek. Edie leans her face into Carol's hand, closing her eyes and letting out an exhale of pure relief.
Suddenly urgent, Carol looks to Edie and then quickly to Rick.
"You have to come with me," she says.
The walk is silent and brisk - Carol won't say anything, and everyone else is too nervous to ask anything. Edie is still basking in the pure joy of having Carol back with them, especially after she was sure she would never see her again. She barely processes what they're headed to, and why, and anything else at all.
After a slight uphill trek that Edie's ankle does not appreciate, she sees a small shabby cabin on the horizon with a bottomed-out car parked permanently in front of it. Edie just manages to make out a crudely hung pair of deer antlers across the front door when it opens.
A large man emerges, holding a small baby. Edie's stomach does a backflip. She's just starting to come to terms with the fact that it's Tyreese, and Judith, when she sees -
"Oh," Edie says. It escapes her body like a gasp. She doesn't even know she says it. But she keeps saying it. "Oh. Oh. Oh."
And she starts running. She sprints. As fast as her ankle can carry her, maybe even faster. She throws the gun off her shoulder and onto the ground, she ignores the aching in her ankle - she can't feel anything. Her entire body moves as fast as lightning, and it feels completely weightless. She feels perpetually like she's just gone down the apex of a giant roller coaster as she coasts towards the house. Tears immediately start running down her cheeks, endless, hot, incandescently joyful.
She reaches the porch and holds her arms out.
And Bee runs into them.
Edie takes the little girl and crashes to the ground, her shoulders heaving with sobs, her entire body aflame with complete exultation. She cries out and she laughs and she weeps. She is not alone - Bee is doing all the same. Bee. Bee. She's alive. Bee is alive and in Edie's arms again. Edie breathes in the familiar scent of woodchips and sweet morning air, something she never thought she'd smell again, and her body cries out even more.
The two messes in a heap on the ground finally let go in order to actually look at each other. Edie cups Bee's round, tear-stained cheeks in her hands. She looks the same, but she also looks older. The biggest attribute aiding this sudden aging is the fact that she's chopped most of her curls off, and now they reach just above her chin. It suits her, of course it suits her - anything would suit her in this moment, even if she was completely bald. There's a small scrape on her cheek; Edie almost counts her freckles to make sure they're all there. It's her. It's Bee. It's Bee.
Edie, unable to think of anything else, says faux-reprimanding, "You said you'd stay at the bus."
Bee shoots back immediately, "You said you'd be right back."
Edie lets out an exhale, a laugh, of complete relief as she pulls the girl back into her arms. It is her. It's really her.
"Oh, my girl," Edie says. She hears Bee exhale into her shoulder as her heart fills, it overfills, it spills over into the rest of her, pure joy and love and triumph. "My girl. My girl. I love you. I love you."
Edie thinks about how a few others from the group will want to reunite with Bee, and also about how Edie wants to see Judith - but right now, Bee is all hers. She holds her girl in her arms, rocking back and forth, cooing into her ear. Her girl. Her Bee.
"I found you."