Night again. It seems like night came too early today. It seems like, lately, most of my days have been made up of night.

Our little fire is warm but the ground is cold. And bigger. Dad puts his arm around me and I cozy up against his chest, closing my eyes, and it's just another hunting trip, right? Tomorrow I'll shoot squirrel with my .22 and Merle'll tease me and then Dad'll take me back to Mom's, where I'll shower and eat something delicious and let her sing me to sleep in my soft bed in my private room in my safe house.

One of the reasons I'm able to go there, on this hunting trip where walkers are unheard of and I'm completely safe and sound, is because everyone else is quiet. Quiet is how it should be. It's fitting and it lets my mind go free. But then Carol talks and she doesn't belong on hunting trips and she ruins it and now I'm thrust back into reality.

Not a good reality.

"We're not safe with him – keepin' something like that from us?"

She's whispering, and over the crackling fire, I doubt the others will be able to hear her. No, this is meant just for my dad. So let 'em talk, let the grownups talk about him, Rick, about his lies, about how we're all infected with the walker disease. Me, I'm ten and I'm tired and I don't want to talk or even think anymore. I don't want to feel anymore, not tonight.

"Why do you need him?" Carol goes on. "He's just gonna pull you down."

"Nah. Rick's done alright by me." Dad's running his fingers up and down my arm. I don't think he thinks I'm asleep, but I bet Carol does. I doubt she'd be saying this if she knew I could hear.

"You're his henchman. And I'm a burden."

At Papaw and Nana's, I'd sometimes watch cartoons, cartoons about superheroes or spies. The villains always worked with people called henchmen, usually men, usually big and stupid and easy to trick. My dad's no villain, and he sure as hell ain't no henchman. Carol being a burden? Maybe. But all she has to do is learn how to use a gun, and then she'll be pulling her own weight. Like Andrea. Who's probably dead.

"We deserve better . . . Don't you think Sydney does?"

Dad readjusts the arm around me. "What do you want?" he asks, and I don't get this conversation, I just want to sleep. Sleep, Sydney, sleep. You're on a hunting trip. Sleep.

" . . . A man of honor."

And my dad says, "Rick has honor."

Truthfully? I wish he didn't say that. I wish my dad would be mad at Rick, because me? I want to be mad at Rick. It feels like I should be mad at Rick, but it can't be right to be mad at him if Dad isn't. He kept something from us, though, something big . . .

We're all infected.

Sleep, Sydney. Sleep.

Then there's a sound. Something out in the woods, off behind Maggie and Hershel and Glenn and Beth, off somewhere the trees and the stone hide from our eyes. A snapping sound, dry leaves moving around, and I'm sitting up and wide awake and my hand goes for my knife and Beth's saying, "What was that?"

"Could be anything." Dad keeps an arm on me as he rises, until he gets his crossbow from over his back, which is not reassuring, not at all. I stand, too, watching him, flexing my fingers. "Could be a raccoon," Dad says, "Could be a possum . . ."

"A walker?" offers Glenn.

Everyone's on their feet now, except for Lori and Carl. I eye T-Dog, standing on top of one of the stone walls, gun in hand, keeping watch.

"We need to leave," Carol says, this time to everyone, "I mean, what're we waitin' for?"

"Which way?" asks Glenn.

"It came from over there." Maggie's eyes are in one direction, her rifle half-raised. Something about it reminds me of Buck treeing a squirrel.

"Back from where we came?" asks Beth. Maggie sounds ready, Beth sounds scared.

"Yeah."

"Last thing we need is for everyone to be runnin' off in the dark."

Rick. I look at him now as I grip Dad's shirt. He's been walking around the perimeter, Rick has, and I didn't notice him getting back. "We don't have the vehicles," he says now, "No one's travelling on foot."

Hershel tells one of his daughters not to panic. Maggie, I guess, because then she's saying she's not panicking, but she's not sitting here waiting for another herd to come, and I want them all to stop talking. I want to get back to my hunting trip.

"We need to move, now," Maggie says, and Rick turns on her, finger raised.

"No one is going anywhere."

He doesn't sound like Rick. He doesn't sound like a man of honor. I shut my eyes.

"Do something," Carol says. She's hissing, like I was earlier, before night came and I got too tired.

"I am doing somethin'! I'm keepin' this group together, alive! I've been doin' that all along, no matter what – I didn't ask for this!"

Then Rick says something he can't take back.

"I killed my best friend for you people, for Christ's sake!"

I'd fall over, if not for Dad. Instead I fall into him. Because it's too much, it's too much, all of this and everything, and I want to throw up but there's nothing in me so I just want to sleep. No, I want to see Carl. So I see Carl. I look at him, sitting in his mother's arms. She's kissing the back of his head. He's staring at his dad with his mouth wide open. Because Rick killed his own best friend. Rick killed Shane.

And now I look at him, I look at Rick. Numb inside, I look at Rick. It's like watching a movie or something, something that doesn't really matter, because it's so far-fetched you can't believe it, but you have to watch it because everyone else is.

"You saw what he was like," Rick says, not to anyone in particular. "How he pushed me . . . How he compromisedus . . . How he threatenedus . . ."

Did Shane do all that? Did he? How could I not know . . . Dad and me, we were in a separate camp, but did Dad see?

"He staged the whole Randall thing, led me out to put a bullet in my back. He gave me no choice!"

My dad's rubbing my neck.

"He was my friend, but he came after me . . ."

Carl's crying. Wailing, in a muffled way, probably into Lori's shirt. I don't look. I watch Rick. Rick doesn't look at Carl, either. He looks at everyone else, though, including me. His eyes are wrong. His eyes aren't like Rick's. "My hands are clean," he insists. There's a gun in his hand, because he was patrolling. But I wish he would put the gun away. I wish Carl would stop crying, I wish I was on a hunting trip and I wish I could see my mom tomorrow.

". . . Maybe you people are better off without me," says Rick now, which is a strange thing to say. He gestures behind him. Oh. It's a challenge. "Go ahead. I say there's a place for us, but maybe – maybe it's just another pipe dream. Maybe – maybe I'm foolin' myself again." He uses his gun to point at someone – Maggie, Glenn? – and then away, off behind him. "Why don't you – why don't you go and find out yourself? Send me a postcard!"

No one says anything. No one does anything. Dad's perfectly still beside me. He knows best. Dad knows best.

"Go on, there's the door. You can do better? Let's see how far you get."

Nothing.

"No takers? Fine. But get one thing straight: You're staying . . ."

I'm not going to like this. I'm not going to like this.

"This isn't a democracy anymore."

Something in the air shifts around and lands right on my heart, weighing it down, making my legs tremble and beg for a rest. Rick walks off again. Leaving that shift untouched, letting it wrap its way all around us, into us, through us. Leaving his son sobbing in his wife's arms. Leaving me almost too tired to care about Carl or the shift or anything.

Almost.

We settle down again. We settle down, because what else can we do? Dad sits again and I lie against him again. He strokes my arm again and I shut my eyes again.

But I don't sleep. The shift changed too much. The shift changed everything.

Except my dad. Except my dad being here. So I find his arm and wrap both of mine around it, pretend it's a teddy bear even though I'm too old for teddy bears, and I listen to Dad's breathing instead of his pulse and I find a peaceful sort of in-between, an in-between of sleeping and being awake, and I stay there and keep my heart calm until the night runs out and it's another dawn. Another beginning, a fresh start. Even after the night, after Rick's speech and after Carl breaking down and after the shift, the dawn manages to give me hope. The warm air and the gray color the sky's taken on when Dad nudges me up to see it all happen, to see this fresh start come to life . . . Hope.

And so I sit there with my dad and watch the new day begin.

. . . . .

The End

. . . . .

A.N.: "Sydney: Season Three" is now posted.