Chapter 3.

Rick couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours when a blood-curdling scream rent the stillness of the house.

Carl, his sleep-muddled brain thought, but no, that couldn't be right. The voice he heard was unmistakably female. Too high for Carl, too old for Judith, who mercifully seemed to have slept through it… Then it all came flooding back to him: the party, Andrea, his offer to let her stay with them.

While the rational part of his brain knew that no one or thing could have gotten past him without him being aware of it, this did little to quell his fear; he was off the couch and on his feet in an instant, pistol in hand as he raced up the stairs.

"Andrea?" he called from the landing outside the master bedroom.

He didn't wait for a response, throwing the door open without knocking, his eyes performing a perfunctory scan of the room. The lack of a breeze told him that the window was still sealed tightly behind the thin drapes, and there was no sign of a disturbance, human or otherwise.

He turned his attention on her. She was wide awake, sitting up in bed, dressed in a grey sweatshirt and a pair of blue pyjama bottoms, her hair mussed from sleep. He might have thought she looked cute if she wasn't so pale, the smudges left by her mascara making her appear almost ghostly in the thin light shining in from the hall.

"What happened?" he asked her. "What's wrong?"

Physically, she seemed fine, but she was shivering violently, her breath coming out in ragged gasps.

"He caught me and he put me in the room he was going to use for Michonne," she explained once she had recovered enough to speak, and it took Rick a moment to realise that what she was talking about was another one of her dreams, and not something that she had actually endured during her time with the Governor. "He stabbed Milton and he locked him in there with me so that he would tear me apart. I was chained up and I couldn't stop him and…" The rest of the story was lost as she began to cry, burying her face in both hands, but it wasn't hard to figure out how the dream must have ended, especially when he managed to discern something that sounded a lot like, "In this world, you kill or you die".

He stared at her helplessly, wondering if he should do something. He had never been any good at bringing comfort to people, even during death knocks, when he would wuss out and let Shane do most of the talking. It had always been a point of contention between him and Lori, who resented his inability to give her the emotional support that she craved, which in the end, might have been why she'd decided to seek it from someone else.

When Andrea showed no sign of calming down on her own, Rick did the only thing he could think of: he sat down on the bed beside her and, prying her hands from her face, pulled her into his arms.

She stiffened in his embrace, and worried that he'd misjudged the situation, he was about to let go, but then her head drooped against his chest as all of the fight left her.

He could feel her tears soaking into his shirt as she continued to sob against him, great hiccoughing sobs. It should have been awkward, but it wasn't; at least not as much as he would have imagined.

"It's okay," he murmured, rocking her gently like he did with Judith. "You're safe now. We're all safe now because of you."

Eventually, she stopped crying, but she didn't pull away; instead, she tilted her head to look at him, and he found himself mesmerised by her eyes, which seemed to shine even brighter than usual against her red-rimmed eyelids and pallid skin.

He had never met anyone with eyes that shade of green before, like polished sea glass. Sea foam, he remembered his mother calling it on a long ago trip to the ocean.

He considered telling her this, but before he could find the right words, her mouth was on his, driving all coherent thoughts from his brain.

He kissed her back with a fervour that surprised him, all the while knowing that it was a bad idea – that his wife's body was barely cold (if she'd still had a body left to bury), that his children were just down the hall, that it was only happening because they were both sad and lonely and in Andrea's case, probably still a little inebriated – but it felt so good to touch someone again, to be touched that he couldn't bring himself to feel as guilty as he thought he should.

His marriage was dead long before his wife, he reminded himself, both kids were asleep, and the draw he'd been fighting since that first day in the department store had been building steadily over the past few weeks as they worked side by side. It wasn't surprising that the dam had finally burst now that they were both free to act on that attraction however they liked.

She broke the kiss long enough to help him rid himself of his t-shirt, before moving on to her sweatshirt, pulling it over her head to reveal heretofore unseen expanses of alabaster skin, covered only by a flimsy white tank top.

He pushed the strap aside, mapping the curve of her shoulder carefully with his lips, delighting in the soft sigh of pleasure that escaped her.

Gaining confidence from that sound, he lowered her onto the bed, her hands in his hair, fingernails raking lightly over his scalp as his mouth found hers again, kissing her like a drowning man who'd finally caught a glimpse of the shore.

"Rick, stop," she said without opening her eyes, her voice coming out as a breathy moan as he shifted his focus to her throat, "We need to stop," and it occurred to him that if he didn't, he was going to leave a mark that would be difficult to explain.

He wasn't sure if tonight was a one time thing, or the start of something new between them, but either way, he didn't want to fuel the Woodbury gossip mill by giving her a noticeable hickey.

He brought his mouth back to hers, bewildered when instead of returning his kiss like she had every other time, she turned her face away.

"I can't do this," she told him, sitting up so abruptly that he almost fell off the bed. "I'm sorry."

A selfish part of him was disappointed, but the other, more dominant part was ashamed of his weakness. He didn't like to think of himself as the type of man who would take advantage of a woman who was drunk and teetering on the brink of what he feared was some kind of trauma-induced breakdown, even if she was the one who'd initiated it.

"I'm the one who should be sorry," he apologised, handing her sweatshirt. "I don't know what got into me."

He was relieved when she pulled it back on, hiding her body from view. He picked up his own shirt, slipping it on hurriedly so that they were both fully-clothed.

"It's not you," she assured him, combing her hair out with her fingers. "It's just that the last man I had sex with tried to kill me and everyone I care about, so I hope you understand why I'm not ready to jump into anything right now."

He wondered how long she was going to beat herself up for falling under the Governor's spell. From what he'd witnessed, the man had had a whole town in his thrall long before she ever set eyes on him. He thought of Michonne's spot on assessment of him: Pretty boy, charming, Jim Jones type. With his classic good looks and slippery Southern drawl, Philip Blake was a born manipulator; it was little wonder that she hadn't seen him for the aberration that he was inside.

"That wasn't your fault, Andrea. You made a mistake. It happens." He was just glad that she was able to fix it before it cost her her life.

"Two. Two mistakes." For a moment, he thought she was talking about him, and what she'd almost let happen between them; he must have looked confused until she added, "I slept with Shane."

Rick sucked in a sharp breath, shocked, and if he was honest, a little disgusted at hearing that while he was busy trying to hold them all together, his friend had been working his way through every woman of consensual age in the group. He wouldn't be surprised if he found out that he'd bedded Carol too. "When?"

"On the farm, after gun training. You remember that private lesson he gave me?" she finished sheepishly.

Rick fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Classic Shane. He never could resist a pretty girl."

Even if that girl was my wife, he thought bitterly.

It stung a little that he'd gotten to Andrea too, especially since it was painfully clear to him that he was only using her to get over Lori.

She deserved better than to be someone's rebound. She deserved better than to be a psychopath's plaything, too.

"You realise that's the second time you've commented on my appearance tonight?" she teased him, cutting his train of thought short. "Anyone would think you were flirting with me, Rick."

He let out a self-deprecating chuckle. "I'm not sure I know how to flirt anymore," he admitted. It was a long time since he'd had anyone he needed to impress.

The smile faded from her lips. "Good, because your wife just died and I'm a train wreck and we work together so it would be stupid for us to get involved with each other. Not that it wasn't nice," she added hastily. "I just don't think it would be wise to let it happen again."

As usual, she presented a solid case. "Exactly," he agreed, because what else could he say? She was right, neither of them was ready, both still reeling from their recent experiences.

"So… friends?" she asked hopefully.

"Absolutely."

He decided that that was his cue to leave until she said, "Since we're friends, do you think you could stay here with me tonight?", pinning him with those magnificent green eyes.

The last thing he wanted to do was sleep next to her after what had just happened, but as his mind flashed back on her earlier terror, he felt his resolve faltering. After all, he had promised her that she wouldn't have to be alone.

"Sure."

She levelled him with a mock glare. "But no more funny business," she warned him.

"Scout's honour," he agreed, bringing his hand up to his head in a two-fingered salute and they both laughed.

She settled back into bed, and retrieving the spare blanket from the chair in the corner, he stretched out on top of the covers beside her, grateful for the barrier the comforter provided. Despite what he'd told her, he didn't trust himself to hold back if she brushed up against him some time in the early hours of the morning.

"You know, I could see you as a boy scout, with the uniform and that big goofy hat." She looked over at him with a grin. "Come to think of it, that's not all that different to when I met you."

"You wanna talk about the day we met, Ms. Ladysmith? I'm just lucky you had no idea what to do with a gun back then."

"Too bad I do now," she said softly, her melancholy mood returning in full force. "Dale would be so ashamed of me if he could see what I've become. I promised him I would find another way."

"And he would be wrong," Rick insisted, though he couldn't imagine the old man being anything but proud of her for everything she'd achieved here in Woodbury. "You tried to do it his way, and when that didn't work, you made the only choice you could. You did the right thing, Andrea. Deep down, I think you know that."

"That doesn't make it any easier."

He thought of Shane. Of the look on his face as his oldest and dearest friend plunged a knife deep into his heart. "It never does," he agreed.

In this world, you kill or you die, she had said. He hated that it was true.

They didn't talk much after that, each lost in their own private reflections.

Rick stayed awake long after she had fallen back asleep, watching her expression closely for signs of distress, but as far as he could tell, she didn't have any more nightmares that night.