A/N: Hey, guys. Before everything probably goes to hell at Alexandria, I thought I'd write this. Beth and Tyreese are back for this... I thought they'd kind of like to be part of it. Plus, it satisfies my Bethyl fantasies. Anywho... I hope this'll make some depressed fans a little less depressed.

"Daddy, why do I have to go to Aunt Maggie's?" Judith asked as Rick walks her down the street. The little girl pouts, fidgeting with the straps of her backpack as she quickly glances up at her father.

Rick smiles, watching her sneak the peek and shyly turn away. "Hm? What makes you say that?" he asks, watching her as she once again focuses on the strap between her fingers.

"I just… why can't I sleep at home with you and Michonne and Carl?"

"Because if we kept you all to ourselves, Aunt Maggie would have a fit. She's your family, she wants to see you every once in a while."

"But Jeanie says that's a lie."

"Who?"

"Jeanie from school, she said it's impossible that my family is all this big. She said that it's impossible because we don't all look the same."

Judith finally looks up at her father with wide, innocent eyes. Rick couldn't imagine where all the years had went, and he'd never had this kind of discussion with his daughter. He reaches out, touching the light hair on her head.

"But I have brown hair," He argues. "And you have blonde hair. Doesn't that make us different?"

Judith's face scrunches up in confusion. Her bottom lip pops out as she thinks. "But… you're my daddy. That makes us family. And Carl is my brother, which makes him my family. And Michonne…"

"Isn't your mama," Rick finishes for her. "But do you love her?"

"Yes." Judith nods.

"Then she's your family, Judi. Just like you love Aunt Maggie, and Aunt Maggie loves you, which makes you family."

Judith makes a face. "But Aunt Maggie makes me eat yucky food. I don't love her for that."

Rick just laughs, and Judith playfully shoves at her dad's leg.

When the Rhee household comes into view, despite all of Judith's tough talk about vegetables, she takes off in a near sprint down the street. Rick walks in her wake, watching her run, stumble, and continue running until she was up the driveway and on the porch.

Tara's already sitting on the front steps, holding Maggie and Glenn's young son, Casey, until he sees Judith and starts to squirm. When she lets him go, the two cousins run into the house without a backward glance.

Tara gets to her feet, waving to Rick as she comes down the steps to meet him on the walkway. "Hey, Rick." She says, and Rick nods in return. "Y'know, I haven't seen you in a while."

Rick runs a hand down his chin and over his partial beard. "It has been some time, hasn't it? You holding up here okay?" He asks, remembering the living arrangement where Tara lived in the spare room at Maggie and Glenn's. It had always been that way, ever since the three of them had left the big house years ago.

She shrugs. "Couldn't ask for better. We should… get together some time, all of us again, I saw Carl the other day and I barely even recognised him. Kid's a giant now."

Rick nodded and smiled wearily. "Where'd the time go?"

Tara grinned. "Tell that to Glenn and his mustache."

Daryl Dixon was the world's worst neighbour. Even after all these years living in Alexandria, you'd have thought that the man had been living in the forest for the past twenty years. Despite their closeness, Rick had never really inquired as to what Daryl's life was like before this; but he could say as a definite fact he never lived in anything close to suburbia.

Ever since he'd been given access to the machine shop, the front yard of Daryl's house looked like a junkyard. Although Beth tried her hardest to keep everything neat and orderly inside the house, there was very little she could do about the outside without Daryl getting all terse about people touching his stuff.

He also had very little regard for the kind of limits neighbours usually had for each other.

Carol had come over to help Rick get ahead of his chores while Judith was away, and the pair were folding laundry in the living room when Daryl burst into the house like a buffalo.

"'Morning." He mumbles, barely looking their way as he makes straight for the kitchen to find God-knows-what.

"Hey," Rick says, but he's more focused on his folding. He was never good at this kind of thing, even before the apocalypse, and he couldn't believe he was doing it now.

"Good morning, Daryl." Carol says, also focused on her folding. She looks up, and her and Rick share a mischievous look before she continues. "How's Beth doing?"

There's a loud bang that sounds like falling pots coming from the kitchen. "Why does everybody keep asking me that?" He yells in response, sounding annoyed. Something sounds like it hits the countertop and makes all the fixtures rattle.

"Because," Carol says over the noise, "She's pregnant, remember? Or did you forget about that part?" Rick laughs as the banging from the kitchen continues.

There's a brief moment of ensuing silence that Rick and Carol use to get over themselves when Daryl appears in the threshold of the living room, a fairly large wrench in his hand. "Yea, she's pregnant, not dying; she can still kick your ass if she needed to. She don' need people asking how she's doing all goddamn day."

"You'd better watch that mouth," Carol warns playfully. "I don't think Beth's going to tolerate teaching your kids your colourful language."

"Kid." Daryl corrects, crossing his arms. "We have this one, and that's it." But he doesn't sound sure, he looks a little bit nervous. Obviously, this is something he's worried about before.

Rick looks up from his folding. "But it's funny, since you said the exact same thing about never having kids a few years ago."

Daryl just rolls his eyes, but before he can respond, the front door swings open again. Carl ducks inside, now half a head taller but not as gangly as a few years ago. He looks kind of troubled as he walks over to the living room.

"Hey, Dad, can I talk to you for a second?"

Rick nods, inviting his son to speak. Whatever he could say to him he could say to his group.

"It's just… I ran into Judith's teacher on the way over. She said she needed to talk to you about something, er, alarming Judith did in class."

"Ms… McKenzie?" Rick says unsurely, remembering suddenly that he didn't exactly remember Alexandria's teacher's name.

It was kind of weird, knocking on the door and having to ask for a teacher. Rick was reminded of another lifetime, where Carl had hit a kid on the playground and him and Lori had been called in to see the principal. It seemed too weird, and too soon, for all of this to be happening again.

The teacher is behind her desk, and she looks up as she hears Rick enter the room. "McDonald." She smiles despite the mix up, and motions for Rick to sit down at a small school chair by her desk. "And you must be Mr. Grimes, Judith's dad. Have a seat."

It's weird, being called Mr. Grimes. This lady seemed too far out of it.

"Uh, just call me Rick." He sits down quickly, on the edge of the small chair.

"Fine, Rick." She says before launching into her speech. "At the school I run, I hold a lot of things dear to me. Especially the curriculum, which I'm sure you've noticed—"

"Ms. McDonald," Rick says, outright interrupting her. God, this lady really was out of it. "In light of recent events, I've made a conscious decision to spend a little more time with my family and a little less time wasting it. Could we just cut to the chase?"

"Very well," She opens up a desk drawer and shuffles through the files. She pulls out a fist full of papers covered in messy writing. "Judith handed this in today. The assignment was to write about her family, and I don't know what to make of this." She reaches across the table and hands Rick the papers.

He skims them, very quickly. After a second he folds back the first page to look at the second. He looks back up at the teacher. "Would you mind if I took this with me? I just want to show it…"

Ms. McDonald waves her hand dismissively. "Very well, very well. Just make sure you bring it back to me, Rick. I still need to grade it. I hope you can understand that what she wrote there was none of my own doing."

Ricks nods, rolling up the papers before getting up. He makes his way out of the garage as he's interrupted.

"Mr. Grimes!" Ms. McDonald calls.

Rick twists slightly, barely looking over his shoulder at the teacher. "Yes?"

Ms. McDonald's face shifts into an unnatural-looking smile. "I don't usually say this to parents, but… your daughter is quite brilliant."

Tara had been right it wanting to get everyone together again. It felt like ages since he'd properly seen anyone from the group, even longer since he'd spoken to them. The majority of the group had been divided between the two houses for the longest time after Glenn, Maggie and Tara had moved out.

That is, until Beth made the announcement (much to Daryl's distaste) almost two years ago that she wanted to have a baby after completely falling in love with Maggie's son. The rest of the group had cleared out pretty fast after that, not really wanting to be around the ensuing arguments, flying objects and other activities that probably would have had to happen before Beth would have her wish.

That made Sasha, Tyreese, Rosita and Abraham moving to another house—although for the longest time the only thing available for them was a house almost all the way across the settlement. Carol had already left—having moved in with her already long-term boyfriend from Alexandria. Eugene had faded into an apartment building by himself.

The group had become so distant, and Rick hadn't even realized. He watched as everyone was catching up, and he couldn't believe that people as close as they had been had ever become this.

Judith looks like she doesn't know what to do first. She wanders around with wide eyes, completely unaware Rick had gathered the group in their living room all because of her. Casey followers her around like a lost puppy.

"C'mon, Rick." Sasha, standing by the door with Rosita, jumps in his way as he tries to get past the crowd. "What are we all here for, exactly? Should we be expecting another Rick Jr. to be popping up?" She hints not-so-subtly, and Rick can't help bit grin.

"Can't say it won't happen, but that's not it." She says as he slips by them, and the answer seems satisfying enough because the two women huddle together and giggle.

When he's finally at the head of the living room, Rick calls in everyone's attention. Just like it was years ago, the group settles into silence quite easily under Rick's command. Some things never change.

"A lot of you guys have asked me why we're all here… but I think we all know that a meeting like this is long overdue. We've gotten so wrapped up in having all this," He waves his arms around, motioning to mean Alexandria. "space, that we've forgotten what it means to be together. I forgot, honestly.

And we all know we're not those people anymore." A lot of the group murmurs in agreement. "It took my kid writing a paper for school to remind me who my family is… and I thought we should all hear this."

Judith is standing by Michonne, hugging onto her leg as she stares up in wonder at her father. She doesn't say anything, and Rick smiles.

Rick pulls out the paper Ms. McDonald have given him earlier that day. "My Family by Judith Grimes." He looks up at the rest of the group. "In my family, I have a daddy and a brother. My daddy is always there for me, but he doesn't always help me up when I fall down. He helps me to get up on my own."

Everyone is looking over at Judith at this point, and she smiles shyly before burying her face in Michonne's leg.

"And my brother, Carl, stays up late with me all the time even when he knows we'll get in trouble, and he sometimes lets me wear his hat. But not a lot, because I think he likes it too much and he knows how messy I get."

Carl gets a stern-looking glare from Michonne. The older boy shrugs and grins.

"I don't have a mommy." Beth sounds like she's about to protest, but Rick continues. "I have a whole bunch—Michonne, and Beth, and Carol, and Sasha and even my Aunt Maggie, even though she makes me eat all my vegetables, even when I really don't want to."

Everyone lets up a collective chuckle before Rick continues.

"Michonne married my Daddy, which makes her my mommy even more. And Beth, she took care of me when I was just a little baby, even when she was still little too. And when I couldn't be with Beth, my Aunt Carol took care of me with my uncle Tyreese."

Carol looks over at Tyreese, and both share a knowing glance. Tyreese smiles.

"In fact, when I was a baby, everyone took care of me. My uncle Daryl went out just to find food for me when I was just born. He's silly, because he doesn't think he can be a daddy, and he was like a daddy for me."

Beth elbows Daryl's shoulder, and he tries to hide a faint smile.

"I have a cousin, and his name is Casey. I go over to his house all the time, and he comes over to mine, and my Uncle Glenn calls us Bonnie and Clyde, which I don't get but I think is funny. And my Aunt Tara, she lets me and Casey eat bad food when Aunt Maggie's not looking."

Tara wraps an arm around Maggie's shoulder, the two women leaning into each other and sharing a mischievous look.

"And Rosita, and Abraham and Eugene, they didn't know me, but they helped me anyway. They helped my whole family, and we became a family all together.

There are so many people that helped me before, that were part of my family but I can't remember. They are gone now, but my Daddy tells me every day never to forget the people that helped us.

My family is weird. To tell the truth, most of my aunts and uncles aren't really my aunts and uncles. We don't all look the same, and we don't all live together. Somebody told me you couldn't do that, she said that it doesn't count. But even though we don't do that, we all love each other. And even though we don't live all together, no one can ever take away what makes us all a family…together."

Michonne bends over, pulling Judith off her leg and propping the girl up in her arms. "That was beautiful, Judi." She says. Everyone else murmured in agreement, and the little girl blushed in the presence of all of that attention.

Glenn, standing beside Rick, leans over and makes a face. "That was something else, Rick."

Rick looks over at his daughter fondly. "She's something else, ain't she?"

Glenn follow's Rick gaze. "I'm usually okay with you Grimes' and your inspiration speeches and all. But we all just got our asses kicked by a seven-year-old."