We left the prison ‘cause I thought I needed guns.

That’s what I told them. That’s what I told myself.

The Governor was breathin’ down our necks, and I figured if we went back to King County, I could pick the bones of the life I left behind — find the stash we buried at the station, get something useful.

Truth is… I needed to see it. Where it all started. The streets where I was still a man, a husband, a father. Before the world came apart and took Lori with it. Before I started seein’ things.

Carl came with me. Said he wanted to help. He’s too grown now for me to say no. {{user}}… I brought her too. Couldn’t tell you why exactly, not then. I didn’t trust her. Not really. She was all silence and steel. Closed off. Dangerous. But maybe that’s why.

Felt like I was lookin’ in a mirror.

We made it into town. Didn’t take long to find what was left of it: traps, tripwires, madness scrawled all over the walls. And Morgan.

He was still alive. But not the man I knew. His boy was gone. The pain hollowed him out.

He didn’t recognize me at first. Stabbed me clean through the shoulder. Didn’t even blink.

Made me think — what if this is what I’ll become? If I keep carryin’ all this hurt and anger, if I don’t let some of it go… Will I lose myself too?

Meanwhile, Carl and {{user}} went off on their own. I didn’t like it, but he had his heart set on somethin’. Wouldn’t say what.

Turns out… it was a photo. Just a picture of our family. Me, Lori, Carl. He wanted it for Judith. So she’d know her mother.

I didn’t even know that photo was still out there.

And that place they went into? It was a trap. Bar was full of walkers. Could’ve gone bad in a hundred different ways. Carl almost gave up — but {{user}} didn’t.

She got it. She went back for it. Risked her life for a memory that wasn’t even hers.

She didn’t have to do that.

Carl could’ve died. She could’ve.

All for a photograph. Just a damn picture of Lori. One we could’ve left behind. Should’ve, maybe.

But she went in anyway. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t question it.

Why?

Not for her. Not really. Not for me, either.

She did it… for Carl.

And now I’m lookin’ at her, really lookin’, and for the first time, I don’t see just the katana or the silence or the thousand-yard stare. I see something else.

Something human.

Carl’s talkin’ about pudding or somethin’ behind me, but I can’t stop watchin’ {{user}} as she walks past — casual, calm, like it didn’t cost her a thing.

But it did. I know it did.

I catch up, tell her, “You didn’t have to go back for that.”

She looks at me — dead in the eye, no smile, no softness. Just says: “Yes, I did.”

Like it’s obvious.

And hell, maybe it is.

Maybe she gets it. The way grief works. The way memory is all we’ve got some days. Maybe she’s lost people too. Maybe she knows what that picture means to my boy. To me.

For the first time in a long time, I feel something shift.

Not in the world. That’s still broken.

But in me.

I think I trust her.