(Night)

LC is running along the railroad tracks, exhausted and panting, but she keeps running, gritting her teeth. She trips, falls, and skids through the dirt. She coughs and slaps the ground.

"Go," she chokes out. "Gotta find her . . . go, you stupid bitch. Come on."

She stands and, after a moment, begins running again.

Meanwhile, Rick, Carl, and Michonne are camped out in the woods, a hundred yards from where LC fell.

….

(The next day)

Rick, Carl, and Michonne walk along the tracks. Carl's face is stone. Michonne tries to get him to play on the tracks with her, but he won't. When she tries to bribe him with the last Big Cat, he takes the candy bar but doesn't play, just walks faster, past Michonne and his dad, who watches Carl go and then exchanges a brief look with Michonne, before lowering his eyes and going after his son. Michonne watches them both go, eyes slightly narrowed.

….

LC is on the ground by the railroad tracks again. She drains her canteen and stares at it. Gradually, her face crumples, and she starts to sob, and then to yell. No words, just a yell. She hurls the canteen into the forest and grabs her hair and yanks, rolling on the ground, then beating it.

A walker emerges from the woods, a used-to-be teenage girl. LC doesn't hear it coming – the sounds of her breakdown are too loud – she only knows it's there when it's on her. LC gasps, stops yelling and starts fighting, shoving her shoulder into the walker so it stumbles over. She manages to get to her feet and pulls out her machete, tears still on her face, fury burning through her, but she pauses as she takes in the walker. Then she starts screaming, because the walker is Sydney.

"No! No!"

She falls to her knees as the walker comes for her again.

"No," she sobs. "No."

She takes the walker by the shoulders as it comes for her, keeping its snapping jaws inches from her face. "Honey! Honey, it's Mama! It's Mama!"

A sword plunges through the walker's skull. LC looks up to see Michonne. "No," she says one more time, disbelievingly, and she attacks Michonne, though her machete is still on the ground. "You killed her!" she screeches as she tackles the other woman, who drops her sword. "You killed Sydney! You killed –"

Rick appears and wrenches LC off of Michonne, keeping her in a headlock as he drags her back to the walker's body, as LC struggles and screams. Carl is standing off, watching, incredulous.

"Look at it," Rick says when he has LC over the body. "It isn't Sydney. It isn't."

LC, gasping, stares at the walker, then closes her eyes, rolls them around. Opening them, she sees that Rick's right. The walker is a stranger to all of them. A few moments pass, and Rick lets LC go. She falls on all fours and keeps her eyes on the walker.

Carl steps forward. "It was you," he says to LC, disbelievingly, and his voice begins to rise. "You're why she saw things. Why she –"

"Carl –" says Rick.

"You made her like – like you! It's your fault!"

"Carl, that's enough!" Rick stares him down. Carl is breathing hard. LC is watching Carl now, but Rick tells her, "Listen. Listen. The last time we saw Sydney, she was alive."

LC is dirty and disheveled, but her eyes are trying to focus as they go to Rick. "At the prison?"

"No. No." Rick looks away from her. "She was with us. With me."

….

"I have to go back to the prison," LC says, screwing on the top of Rick's canteen.

"I've been back to the prison," says Michonne. She and Carl are standing, while LC and Rick are sitting by the tracks. Carl's staring off into the woods and Michonne has a hand on the hilt of her sword. "Right after the attack. It's overrun."

"If Sydney went back there, I have to go get her."

"I don't think Sydney would have gone back to the prison by herself, not really," says Rick. "She's too smart."

"Then we should have gone looking for her," Carl says quietly.

"You know we couldn't do that. Not when she could be anywhere, not with hardly any supplies, not without a car. And LC, you can't do it now."

"I have to. If it was your kid, you would do the same." She stands, wobbly, and hands Rick his canteen. He takes it but stands, too.

"It has been my kid. When I first woke up in that hospital to find what the world had become, I had no idea where my son was, and believe me, I would have gone to the ends of the earth to find him . . . I get it. But if you try to find your way back to the prison, or even to – to the house where we last saw Sydney, that neighborhood – you're not gonna make it. Not alone."

LC stares at the ground. She's shaking.

"Now, if you come with us to Terminus," says Rick, "and if it's everything these . . . signs claim it to be, they might have cars. Maps. Enough food and supplies to spare for a trip like that, a search like that. And I swear to you, if they do, I will be right there with you, looking for her. Looking for all of our people, anyone that might still be . . . But – for her, most of all." He stares hard at LC. "Because I do get it."

After a moment, LC whispers, "I can't lose her again."

"You didn't lose her the first time," says Carl. "You abandoned her. You chose it."

"Carl, stop," says Rick.

"Why? It's true! She left her! She left Sydney!" Carl's near tears. "You don't do that to someone you love! We can't trust her, Dad!"

Rick approaches him, fast. His voice has a harsh edge to it. "People make mistakes! They always have, but now, the way things are, the mistakes get worse, they just do! You have to make hard decisions, sometimes – sometimes they're the wrong ones." He takes a few deep breaths. He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them, and points to LC. "What she did wasn't right. But she's sorry for it. She wants to make up for it." He lowers his arm. "The least we can do is give her the chance to do that."

LC looks from Carl to Rick, physical and mental exhaustion evident. Rick turns from Carl, but Carl keeps watching him, like he wants to say something else but doesn't know what it is.

….

(That evening, near sunset)

Michonne and LC sit by a campfire beside a wooden shed. Rick and Carl are off setting a snare. Michonne cleans her sword, and after staring into the fire for a while, LC says, "I'm sorry, Michonne."

Michonne eyes her but doesn't stop working on her weapon.

"For Woodbury," LC says softly. "For . . . Andrea. For everything."

Michonne continues cleaning her sword. LC waits for a response she doesn't get and eventually looks back to the campfire. "Yeah . . ." she says to herself.

….

(That night)

LC is outside of the shed, keeping watch, while the others sleep inside. She is staring at the sky and absentmindedly sliding her finger up and down her machete's blade. She's softly singing "Piano Man."

Carl comes out of the shed, closing the door quietly behind him. He and LC see each other. She pauses. He says, "My dad shouldn't be letting you keep watch."

She begins playing with the machete again. "Is that why you're out here? To make sure I haven't snapped yet?"

Carl steps closer. "What happened on the road," he says. "When you thought that walker was Sydney. Has something like that happened to you before?"

It takes LC a minute to answer. "Yes, it has."

Carl swallows. "It's happened to Sydney, too. She sees things sometimes. Hears things."

LC stares at the fire, and after a long time, says, "I guess that's what you meant today. When you said I made her see things. Made her like me." Her voice breaks and she clears her throat.

"Yeah," says Carl, breathing hard. "And she cuts herself. Have you seen her arms? They're covered in scars."

LC sucks in her bottom lip and bites.

"She's broken. She's – she's strong, and she's brave, and I love –" He cuts off. "But she's broken. Because of everything that's happened, because of everyone we've lost, because of Merle, but mostly because of you! You don't know what it did to her! When she thought you were dead, it was bad enough, but finding out you were alive? That you had lied to her? That you'd tried to kill yourself, that you'd bailed on her? That destroyed her! Your daughter!"

LC's eyes are closed.

"She needed you! She needed you so much, and you weren't there . . ." Carl swallows again. His eyes are wet. "Even if you do find her . . . Even if she's okay . . . She's not going to forgive you."

"I know that." LC inhales and wipes away tears/ "I know she's not going to forgive me, Carl. I know. I would never expect her to. I don't deserve it. And your father was good to me today, he was, but he was wrong about something. He said I should have the chance to make up for what I did, but the problem is, I can't make up for it. There's no making up for it."

"Then why do you want to find her?" asks Carl. "Why do you care?"

LC leans her head against the shed. "Because it's like you said. She's my daughter. She's the reason I couldn't kill myself two years ago, even though I wanted to, even though I went through all the motions and had already lost most of my life by the time I put the gun to my head. Sydney was gone. But she wasn't dead. I couldn't – I realized, all too late, that I couldn't leave her."

"You did leave her."

"Just for an hour or so," LC says. "Just long enough for her to drive away with her father and for me to understand what a terrible mistake I had made. And since then, oh, since then, all I've really made are bad decisions. I've done a lot of bad things since the turn. I – I did bad things before the turn. But when you've done so many bad things, you start clinging more and more to whatever good things you can say you did. And Sydney is the best thing I ever did." She swipes at tears again. "By far. So I don't want to find her because I think it will buy me her forgiveness, or her love, or even her gratitude. I know her better than that. I just want her safe. I want her to have . . . a chance . . . at happiness, whatever that means these days. And her best chance at happiness is with you. With Rick, with her –" She sniffs. "With people who love her." She smiles crookedly, sadly. "People she loves back."

There's nothing but the sound of the crackling fire for a while.

"What if she's dead?" Carl asks. His voice has lost its strength.

"Does she feel dead?"

"She feels . . . gone."

"Those are very different things," LC says. "Dead means dead. Gone means hope."