"No," Rick said gruffly, stepping forward. "You talk to me first.

Rick wandered the room while Deanna spoke with Aaron outside, his hands on his hips, and his machete sheathed at his waist. He glanced at the various chotchkies and books that lined the white painted shelves, his patience wearing thinner with each nanosecond that passed.

"I'm Deanna Monroe," the woman began as she entered the room.

"Rick Grimes."

"Are you okay with me filming our talk?"

"Go ahead," Rick said dismissively, peering out the window at a tall tower just outside the wall. "Why film this?"

"We're about transparency here," Deanna told him, jutting her chin at the large, floral patterned chair opposite a coffee table and a black leather couch.

"Please," she said as she took her seat on the leather couch, the camera pointed over her shoulder.

"How long have you been out there?"

"Since the beginning," Rick responded gruffly, perching himself on the edge of the chair and hanging his hands.

"How did you all find each other? Did you know each other before, or—"

"We didn't know each other before," Rick interrupted, talking over the end of her question. He looked around the room again like a caged animal.

"I was a congress person. Ohio. Fifteenth district," she told him, leaning back and clasping her hands together around her knee. "You?"

"I don't think it matters anymore," he said shortly.

"Oh, I know it does," the woman pressed.

"What is this place?" Rick asked, dodging the question again.

"This is the start of sustainability. That's what the brochures we found say. This was a planned community, with its own solar grid, cisterns, eco-based sewage filtration, starting in the low eight hundred thousands. Can you imagine such a thing?"

Rick remained silent. He held his skeptical gaze, his blue eyes shining against the layers of dirt and grime packed into the lines of his face and his beard.

"And they sold them all," she finished with a laugh.

"How'd you end up here?"

"Well, my family and I were trying to get back to Ohio, so I could help my district manage the crisis, and, uh—" she paused to let out a sigh, "The army stopped us on a back road and redirected us here. They were supposed to come later. They didn't. But, there was supplies here, and we made the best of it."

"You put up the wall?"

"Well, there was this huge shopping mall being built nearby, and my husband, Reg, is a professor of architecture, and who he was mattered quite a bit; he got the first plates up with our sons, and after a few weeks, more people arrived, and we had help. We had a community."

"You've been behind these walls the entire time?" Rick asked, his voice dripping with disbelief and skepticism.

"We need people who have lived out there. Your group is the first we've even considered taking in for a long time."

"You should keep your gates closed."

"Why?" Deanna breathed.

"Because it's all about survival now," Rick said, his shoulders moving in the smallest shrug, "At any cost. People out there are always looking for an angle, looking to play on your weakness; they measure you by what they can take from you, by how they can use you to live. So, bringing people into a place like this, now—"

"Are you telling me not to bring your people in?" Deanna demanded, interrupting the man across from her.

"Or are you already looking out for this place?"

Rick considered her for a moment.

"Aaron says I can trust you —"

"Aaron doesn't know me," Rick scoffed. "I've killed people. I don't even know how many by now. But I do know why they're all dead: they're dead so my family, all those people out there, can be alive. So I can be alive for them."

"Sounds like I'd wanna be apart of your family," she said sincerely, nodding in slight approval. "Rick. Northern Virginia was effectively evacuated, millions of people gone, for a long time there's hardly been anyone, living or dead, but still... We have lost people. And, uh, I've done things."

"What've you done?"

Maisie shifted uncomfortably under the stares of the people they stood before. She felt naked and exposed and she knew the rest of the outside group felt it too. There was a certain hostility in the eyes of the Alexandrians, all except one man. He looked like someone she'd seen before. She stared at him until the recognition clicked in her brain.

Shoving her crossbow into the hands of the closest person, Maisie ran to him. She jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, nearly knocking the young man off his feet as he returned the embrace.

"I missed you," she whispered over his shoulder.

"I missed you too."

Behind them, a muscle in Daryl's jaw flickered. He didn't know that was her brother.

"I exiled three men who weren't working out, and you and I both know that's as good as killing them," Deanna admitted, wringing her hands.

Rick stood up and went to the window, his back to the woman.

"What do you want from us?"

"These families... These families should be able to raise their children in a safe environment. Your son, your daughter, should have a place to grow up," Deanna said fiercely, joining Rick at the window. "What do I want? I want you to help us survive. I know you can help us do that."

"How?"

"I am exceptionally good at reading people, if I didn't win re-election, I was gonna be a professional poker player.

"I'm not kidding," she added after Rick snickered. "Rick—" she consulted her watch —"it's three-thirty-seven pm, you're skeptical... you have a right to be, but it's time to decide. If you're the one doing the deciding."

Rick started turning the knob on the side of the dust-coated watch he wore on his left wrist, setting the time.

"I was a sheriff."

"Yeah, I knew it was something like that."

〄

"They're still your guns," Deanna told them as Rosita put her machine gun down on the cart.

"You can check them out whenever you go beyond the wall, but inside here, we're going to be safe."

Maisie trudged forward and reluctantly placed her crossbow down on top of Noah's gun, jumping as a hand was placed on her shoulder.

"Can I talk to you now? Only if you're ready." It was Deanna. Maisie nodded wordlessly and followed the older woman into her home, her dog trailing behind her.

"Don't," she growled as Deanna almost closed the door on Jackson.

"I'd prefer—"

"Oh, guess you really don't want to interview me then," Maisie said, uncrossing her arms and starting for the door.

"Alright, it can stay."

"Thanks."

"Would you please sit?" Deanna asked, nodding at the chair Rick had sat in twenty minutes previous. Maisie sat and leaned back, crossing her arms tightly across her chest as Jackson hopped into her lap.

"I'm going to record this, alright?"

"Whatever," Maisie said curtly, green eyes flicking uneasily to the black camera on it's tripod.

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Maisie."

"Full name please."

"Maisie Winters."

Deanna, who had been fiddling with a book on the shelf, stopped and turned to stare at her.

"Are you...?"

"Jon's sister? Yeah."

Deanna smiled. "He talks an awful lot about you."

Maisie felt the blood bite her cheeks.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-six. Maybe twenty-seven by now, I've lost track."

"How long have you been out there?"

"Since the beginning."

"What is your role in Rick Grimes' group?"

"Newcomer," Maisie said with a slight smirk. She was careful to keep her answers short and to the point, to avoid eliciting more information than the older woman really needed.

Deanna frowned. "How new?"

"A day or two."

The wrinkles in Deanna's forehead deepened. "So nobody knows anything about you?"

"You know Jonathan, Jonathan knows me," Maisie responded dryly, rubbing her thumb against Jackson's ear.

"You don't trust me, do you?" Deanna asked, a knowing smile playing at her lips.

"Give me a reason to, woman I met half an hour ago," Maisie said pointedly. Inside her head, she cringed at herself. She knew her mother would've been appalled to hear her talking to someone like that.

But she wasn't around, and this was a whole new world.

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