On the first day, it's Michonne who suggests they go to the highway.

Andrea's told her about the group - delirious, babbled fragments of thoughts, that tumbled loosely from her lips until Michonne was able to sit her down and get some food and water in to her. Then, on their first night together, sitting in tree branches while Michonne's two pet walkers circled below; Andrea told her almost everything. The roadtrip with Amy, meeting Dale, stumbling across Rick's group, the walker attack and Amy's death, the Greene farm...she tells her about Glenn's canny street smarts, Shane's roaming hands and wandering eyes, Carol's loss and greif, Beth's attempt at suicide and later realisation that she wanted to live. She tells her about the last night on the farm, about the walkers and the fire, about the screaming and the tears; and the horrifying moment when she couldn't find anyone amongst the carnage and had to run to the woods for safety as a last resort. She tells her almost everything, except for a few key details - she glosses over one person, still unsure how she's going to tell the story because it seems almost surreal to her. There was a man, Daryl, a hunter from the mountains of Georgia, good with a crossbow and intelligent in ways she never expected him to be. That's all, she says, and her eyes don't meet Michonne's as she speaks.

The next morning when they wake, bones aching from lying in a bed of branches all night, Michonne rations out breakfast and then starts walking, katana in hand.

"Where are we going?" Andrea still feels nervous in the woods, she doesn't have Michonne's cynical ease in the forest yet.

"To the highway," Michonne says, "Don't you want to find your group?"

By the time they get to the road, Andrea's heart is in her throat. When they reach the long stretch of highway, she can't hold back, and she runs down the road, jumping over discarded boxes and clothing, weaving around cars and bodies; until she loses her breath. She turns her head wildly, looking for a sign, anything to show that they were there.

"Rick!" she calls, tears starting to form in her eyes. "Daryl!"

"Honey - shh," Michonne approaches from behind and puts a hand on her shoulder. "There could be more than just your group out here."

Andrea nods, swallowing around the lump in her throat. "They left," she whispers. "They didn't wait."

"You don't know that," Michonne says, although the look in her eyes is hard.

"They either didn't wait or they never came," Andrea says. "I thought they'd - I mean, I thought if there was anywhere that we'd meet, it'd be here."

"Are you sure they'd have made it?" Michonne asks, measured, and Andrea nods.

"They had cars, bikes - they would've made it out," she says. "I know it."

Michonne turns and looks up and down the highway. Next to her, her two walkers groan unhappily. "We can wait," she says at last. "Maybe tomorrow they'll come."

They sleep in a car on the side of the road that night, the front two seats pushed down as far as they can go. Andrea pulls the blanket over her head as she closes her eyes, willing herself to shut out the moans of the walkers outside, willing herself to imagine that the events at the farm never happened; and that she's back in the Greene's yard, in Daryl's tent, pillowed against his chest as he sleeps.

The next morning, she wakes to find Michonne sitting on the hood of the car, katana between her feet.

"No sign yet," she says, and Andrea tries to ignore the rising bile in her throat.

They pick through the abandoned cars for supplies, finding clothing, first-aid kits, and packaged food. Michonne stuffs a rucksack full of the found items and hoists it over her shoulder, and Andrea does the same, wandering down the highway until they almost can't see the part of the woods they came out of.

"...we should stay for another night," Andrea says, nervously. "It's almost dark."

Michonne watches her for a second, takes in her shaky breaths and the despondent look in her eyes, and says, "Sure".

It's Andrea who wakes first the next morning, and as the sun rises on her side, she calls his name down the empty highway. "Daryl?" She fears to raise her voice too loud. "Daryl...?"

The dawn is silent, and she wipes her eyes, folds her arms around herself, and goes to find a protein bar.

That night, when she begins to cry out her sister's name in her sleep; she wakes with a gasp to find Michonne's hand over her mouth. "Shh," the woman says, sharply, "We can't have that. You're going to attract attention."

Andrea nods silently, tears streaming from her eyes, and curls back in to her car seat; imagining that she's not alone out on the highway with a woman she barely knows, that instead she is with him, warm and safe, in the privacy of his tent - his arms around her, breath warm on her neck, crossbow nudging against her foot. She doesn't know what time she finally falls asleep, but she sees the sun peeking from beyond the horizon as she does.

They stay another day, for supplies, Andrea protests, and safety, it's better sleeping in cars than in trees - and Michonne begrudgingly accepts it, slipping the walkers' chains from her shoulders and letting them wander away, locked together, for a little while before she goes to collect them. Andrea watches, disgusted, as they stumble over each other attempting to get at Michonne. The woman shows no fear on her face, however, no reaction, as she nudges them away with her boot. "Go play somewhere else," she mutters to them, twirling her katana between her hands.

The next morning, Andrea wakes with the sun again, and takes to the highway again, calling his name. Again. This time, she's not greeted with the rev of a motorcycle (as she hopes), or silence (which would almost be preferable to what she does get) - she's startled by a low moan near her ear.

"Jesus -" she leaps to the side as the walker grabs for her, it's bedraggled hand only inches from her side. "Michonne!"

Before she can finish screaming the other woman's name, she is there, but she doesn't dispatch the walker with a swift blade to the head as Andrea expects - she takes it down with a boot to the chest then a quick stamp to the knees, before thrashing its skull with her boot heel. By the time the thing finishes moaning and writhing, it's been a good five minutes, and Michonne is breathless and shaking, legs spattered with walker blood.

"Fuck," Andrea whispers, stomach churning. "Why even carry the knife, then...?"

Michonne shrugs. "Need something to take your emotions out on," she says nonchalantly, eyeing off her two walkers as they tangle themselves around the telephone pole she stationed them at the previous evening; before she turns to Andrea and looks her square in the eye. "Now, who's Daryl?"

"I - what?" Andrea stutters.

"Daryl. You say your sister's name in your sleep, that I understand. But you say his as well. And then you come out here in the mornings and call his name. He was in your group, wasn't he?"

"Yes," she whispers.

"And you loved him?"

"Michonne -"

"That's why you've been waiting here, right? For him to come back."

Andrea drops her head, silent. "I'm sorry," she says, at length. "I was...I didn't want to say."

Michonne shrugs. "We've all been in love."

"Were you...?"

"I was," she says, and with a hand on Andrea's arm, nods at the walkers bumping in to each other by the telephone pole. Andrea almost laughs at them, until Michonne interjects: "The one on the left - my boyfriend. The one on the right - his best friend."

Andrea's knees almost give out. "What? Why...? Why do you...keep them?"

Michonne doesn't answer. She looks down the highway to the left, then to the right. Finally, she grabs the fallen walker by the arm and begins to drag him off in to the forest. "Two days," she calls over her shoulder. "We wait two more days."

The sun rises the next day, and Andrea can feel the hours ticking by on a time limit. She longs to hear the sound of his motorcycle, of a car, of anything, so badly that she thinks her ears will burst from it. She finds herself scanning the horizon constantly, mistaking every leaf that blows and bird that flaps for a sign of him arriving over the horizon. But he never comes, and still she waits, loyal and utterly heartbroken, until Michonne comes to her side on the afternoon of the second day.

"Sweetie," she whispers, and she doesn't have to continue, because Andrea knows what she's going to say.

"One more day," Andrea says, and doesn't try to stop the tears that fall on to her cheeks.

"Andrea," Michonne's hands reach out for Andrea's chin, and she turns her face so the two women are facing each other. "He may not have made it out. It's not safe for us to wait around here for someone who might be arriving as a man, or as a walker, or not at all. Walkers aren't the only things that roam these highways, and they're certainly not the most dangerous. If you want to stay...honey, after tomorrow morning, you're on your own."

Defeated, Andrea remains on watch for the rest of the evening. Slumped against the car bonnet, she remains in a state of half-consciousness while Michonne sleeps in the driver's seat behind locked doors. She wants to wrap her head around the two walkers Michonne brings with her, but she can't. For not the first time recently in her rational, well-portioned, highly-managed life; she sags under grief. In a way, it wouldn't be as hard if he was dead, because then at least she'd know - but no, it would be just as hard, she thinks, because the one thing that's been keeping her going over the past months and making her hang on would be taken from her forever. If he isn't dead, then at least he's safe, she reasons; even if the reason why he never came back for her was because he didn't love her enough, or it was too dangerous too, or maybe just the demons in his own head turned out to be a bigger threat than any walker. Maybe she wasn't enough to break down those walls he put up, to help him forgive and to forget, to help him learn to open up...

By the time the sun rises, Andrea's eyes are red and puffy from crying, her eyelids half-closed. She's dimly aware of a lowing behind her, and only when she hears a thud-thud-thud on the car does she spin around. The walker approaching her isn't one of Michonne's, it's a female, with long flowing dark hair and a torn dress. Andrea rises from her seated position quickly and calmly, fronting the walker head-on and delivering a swift kick to its side. It stumbles, bones snapping as it trips, and Andrea uses its hair as leverage as she slams the head against the car wheel, again and again, until all that's left in her hand is a mass of hair and muddled flesh.

"Nice work," Michonne says, from above.

Andrea looks up. "Thanks," she says, and hopes the tears of fear she undoubtedly wept aren't too evident on her face.

"We have to get a move on."

Andrea nods and stands, wiping her bloodied hands on her trousers. As she waits for Michonne to untie her walkers before they leave the highway for the last time, she catches a glimpse of someone in a truck window nearby. She almost jumps - the person she sees standing there is tall and slightly-too-slender, with wiry muscles visible beneath her sunburnt skin. Her blonde hair is pulled back in to a ponytail and could probably use a trim, and on her belt she carries a pistol that matches nicely the other guns in the bag she holds. It takes Andrea a while to realise she's looking at herself.

It doesn't take her long to realise her face isn't tear-stained at all.

"Come on," she sets her jaw and calls to Michonne. "Let's go."