Steph sat in her cell that night, which was not the one she had been locked in but the furtherest one along on the top level, on the opposite end to most of the others downstairs and a fair distance from Daryl on the perch in the middle of the block and Merle in the cell parallel to him. She was exhausted. She shook her hair out and took her boots off before lying back on the crinkly mattress with Bandit beside her on the floor.

Staring at the ceiling, she poked her fingers up her sleeve and fingered the stitches over the bite wound. Running her fingers down her arm, Steph felt the teeth and nail wounds long healed, like giant Braille letters. She trailed her fingers up her arm, over her collarbone and up to her throat. Her pulse ran steady and her skin was soft and smooth under her fingers. She supposed it used to feel nice when other people touched her this way, too. But she couldn't remember the last time someone had put their hands on her body in a way that could be considered pleasurable, so she touched herself.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

In the morning, Ricks voice was the first thing Steph heard when she woke up. This was followed by Daryl's. She only caught the last part of their short conversation in her first few waking moments, which were "We should be back in about 4 hours. Remember what I said about your brother. Tell everybody else what I said once everyone's up, too."

Hearing that Rick was headed out of the prison, Steph automatically sat up and put on her shoes. She caught Rick as he was about to descend the stairs. "You're going out." She said. Rick turned to her before nodding his head. "Yep." He replied "You can't come this time." Steph frowned. "You know I can." She always wanted any time outside the prison when possible. "Not this time." Rick said. "I'm taking Michonne and Carl. This isn't a normal run. And I need you here. Help Daryl look after the place and Glen until we're back." He paused and looked past Steph. "And watch Merle for me." Then strode away.

As Rick exited Stephs view she was facing directly towards the man himself, Merle, after just being let out of his cell by his brother, they were both standing silently and looking at Steph with scowls on their faces. She almost shied away, looked down and scarpered back to her cell – instead she glared straight back. It was Daryl who looked away first, blinking rapidly. Merle stared on, but his frown slowly turned upwards into a smug smile. Without looking away, Steph walked along the balcony towards them and then turned and followed Rick down the stairs feeling Merles eyes burning holes into her back.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

With Rick, Carl and Michonne gone, the days routine was a little thrown off. They usually ate breakfast together in the dining hall but today Glen was feeling less than sociable and so ate in his cell, Merle and Daryl ate on the steps of the cell block and Steph bypassed everybody at the tables and exited through a door that led further into the prison. She and Bandit followed a dark corridor before coming across the two sets of double doors with armoured glass that would have once been a checkpoint for a prison guard. She pushed them open with one hand while holding her plate of food with the other. Bandit slipped through before the doors sealed shut.

The doors led out onto a walkway between two buildings. Raised about 10ft in the air, it had a view of the entire front side of the prison. The pair walked into the very middle thereupon dropping to their backsides on the concrete.

Steph looked into her bowl. In it was oatmeal, off white and pasty and eaten for breakfast 7 days a week in the prison. She ate the food but it didn't seem like food to her mouth. Bandit licked the bowl thoroughly, because he would eat anything that was set in front of him, but it seemed to be more out of duty rather than delicacy this time. Steph put her arm around him. "Prison food." She said to him, and scratched his head. "That's what you deserve too, you dicey Bandit." His tail was whipping against the chain link fence at the fond sound of the voice of his master. "They say the most commonly asked for last meals for death row inmates are steak, hamburgers, and fries. What do ya reckon?" She said "Steak?" His tail clattered against the fence and he thrust himself at Stephs face, trying to lick her. Laughing, she side-swiped him and then grabbed him and pulled the wriggly dog into her lap. "Yeah." She looked at the empty plate. "Steak." She said teasingly. She longed for a piece of real meat. Even wild rabbit on a stick would beat oatmeal and powdered mashed potatoes that had been sitting for months in the prisons pantry. Steph thought about leaving the prison on her own to go and find some fresh food, though she knew Rick would be unhappy with her if she did.

She wasn't needed here, not really. She could go and be back before he was, get a few rabbits or anything better that came along. He would appreciate the food when it was in front of him.

She had a thought then, a thought that happened to be about steak. It wasn't just another inane longing thought either. She remembered there had been steak in the freezer back at her house. There had been lots of various cuts of meat actually. There was ammunition at the house too, likely still locked in Stephs gun safe unless the intruders had figured a way in without the key.

If either of those two resources were still intact, it would be a trip worth making. It wasn't far. Not to mention the other food, lots of clothes that Steph had missed, and a cache of medicine, hidden underneath the house in a rodent proof box. Any and every painkiller, anti-biotic, anti-inflammatory, every pack of aspirin, Steph grabbed it and collected it there right since the beginning. The intruders would likely still be there. Taking all the frozen food if they didn't have a freezer themselves would have resulted in lots of rotten food. There might be more of them. Or there might be less, maybe a few guys staying there and taking food back to wherever they were from as they needed it. She could take a few if she had the element of surprise.

She remembered herself then and looked around, again finding herself surrounded by the fences, both in front of her, behind her and above her on the outside catwalk where she sat. "I don't want to be here any more." She told Bandit and rose to her feet, plans beginning to form in her head.