AUTHOR'S NOTE – Welcome to the second book of Many Hearts to Tread! I hope you enjoy this section of the story. This is something I have put my heart and soul in so I hope you can read that through the pages! I put a disclaimer in the beginning of Book 1 where I state that I have taken many liberties with the character of Dwight in particular. Please understand that my interpretation of these characters aren't really trying to stay true to the comic book characters or their TV show equivalent. I wanted to do my own thing. Enjoy!

Chapter 1

11 Months After The Events of Book 1

"Name?" The man asked as Sherry stopped twiddling her thumbs and jumped at the man's voice. It was a frequent occurrence for her to meander in a daze while having zero thoughts in particular. She had been sent to that part of Sanctuary and was escorted by Yolanda. The reason she was in the infirmary talking to the mysterious man who sat before her, she didn't know. She glanced at her surroundings to see herself inside a nicely furnished room. She and the man were the only ones in the room. The thought made her shake with fear even though she didn't mean to. It had just become a habit of hers to be afraid all the time.

The man in his mid-fifties had light short hair with steel blue eyes behind small glasses. Sherry observed that he dressed well with a button down shirt and noticed that there was not a single wrinkle. He looked untouched by the apocalypse. Even his character didn't seem entirely fazed by the trauma that seemed to plague everyone else. It was an appeal that Sherry found intriguing about him as he gazed back to her expectantly.

"What's your name?" The man repeated in a kind voice that was nearly pleading with her to answer. He held a pen as a notebook laid on his lap. "Your full name."

"Sherilyn Anne Ciccone," Sherry relented in a less enthusiastic voice. She still had yet to understand why she was there. She wanted to gaze at the door behind her but didn't want to take her eyes off of the man in front of her. She didn't trust him yet. Nor did she know if she ever would.

He looked puzzled and started writing down her name that she gave him. He handed her the notebook with an embarrassed smile. "Did I spell your name correctly?" He asked. It read, "Chick-onay."

She motioned towards his pen as the man handed it to her. She corrected the misspelled last name like she had to do a million times in grade school and then gave the pen and paper back to the man.

"Excellent," the man said and looked at his notes before he moved on. "Sherilyn, do you know why you are here today?"

Sherry watched him with wary eyes but then shrugged at his question. "I honestly have no idea why I am here. Or really where here is. I have never been in this part of Sanctuary before," she admitted just above a mutter.

"I am new to Sanctuary. One of the men in charge was aware of my occupation before things started to go south with the virus. I used to be a psychiatrist," the man explained as Sherry silently scoffed at his answer. She had cracked enough to receive a shrink. "That same person asked me to help you. Do you know why that person would ask me to do that?"

Sherry shrugged again quickly losing patience but knew he was stepping on territory that she would rather not talk about. "Maybe because my life is kind of fucked and talking about my problems will make it all magically go away," Sherry said sarcastically but with a small shaky voice. The man had no idea how many land mines he was going to step on before she became a blubbering mess.

"I have been briefly informed about your unique situation in Sanctuary," Kevin informed. "Yolanda was kind enough to explain some things to me."

Sherry shot a look towards him as she felt her personal life had been unlocked for a stranger to see. It made her feel uncomfortable. "What did she say?" Sherry demanded.

"Not much. She only said that your mental health has declined drastically since you have been here. And that your relationship with your husband has a lot to do with that," the man explained gently. Sherry's body relaxed upon the information as the man continued. "Sherilyn, how long have you been with Negan?"

Sherry looked up to the ceiling in thought. "Um, I have been here for an entire year."

The man sighed and laughed slightly. "Excuse my manners! My name is Doctor Kevin Mitchell." He leaned forward in his seat and stretched his hand out. The quick movement startled Sherry as she could only stare at his outstretched hand with uncertainty.

Kevin smiled apologetically and sat back in his seat. "We don't need to be so formal. You can call me Kevin if you would like," he proposed. When she didn't reply he gave her a warm smile and went with an even more gentle approach. "Sherilyn, you are here for a reason. You know that, right?"

Sherry looked to him and wanted to cry. "Why?" She nearly pleaded. Talking about the things that had happened within the walls of Sanctuary and with Negan didn't seem like it would help at all. It brought heartache and misery to dwell on what her life was like.

Kevin removed his glasses and looked to her with concern. "In my line of work, I have come across many people who were lost and broken. With these trying times, almost everyone seems like that. For good reason. We have all been through a traumatic experience. I have not had the privilege to sit down and talk to someone about their afflictions for some time now. Granted, there are so many things wrong in the world that I cannot guarantee fixing anyone's problems. Even before the world changed, I could never make that empty promise. But I can guarantee that it does feel better to talk to someone about certain things. So I ask you, Sherilyn, do you know the reason that you are here?" Kevin inquired as his blue eyes looked directly at her.

Sherry tried to hold back a sob but it came regardless as Kevin handed her tissues that stood on the nightstand next to his armchair. Once she started crying, she felt that she couldn't stop. They continued while she thought of the many months in Sanctuary. The first month hardly even scratched the surface of the pain that she felt as she sat in Kevin's little makeshift office. It almost seemed too unbearable.

"When you are ready, we can move on," Kevin suggested. "I am only here to help you, Sherilyn."

A few minutes passed as Sherry fought for composure once more. Kevin stared at her as she looked around the room. It was darkly lit but she could see that the place was merely decorated with the furniture that stood in the middle of it; a small couch that she sat, Kevin's arm chair, a nightstand, a coffee table and a large desk in the corner of the room. There was a medium sized photograph of red and yellow flowers in a meadow that hung to Sherry's right. Beyond that attempt of décor, the room was empty of any personal items.

She took her eyes of the photo and stared at her lap. "I have gone by Sherry since I was a baby. You don't have to call me Sherilyn."

Kevin smiled as the tone of her voice seemed a good place to move on. "Great! I had an aunt named Sherry. Sweet woman," Kevin commented as he wrote down some notes.

"What do you want to know?" Sherry questioned cautiously.

"I want to know about your time here," Kevin said honestly. "As difficult as it is to talk about, it will help you heal some of the mental scars that have festered from surviving in what is now our dystopian world. You don't have to go into details if you don't want to. But always remember that I am your friend throughout this ordeal. All of what you say will be confidential. So you have been with Negan and have lived in Sanctuary for a year, you say?"

Sherry nodded with a weighted gloom. "One whole year."

"And when did Negan ask you to marry him?" Kevin asked innocently. Sherry eyed him as he thought to clarify. "One of the things Yolanda had told me about before meeting you."

Sherry scoffed. "He told me that I would be his wife the first day that I was here. He didn't ask," she elucidated.

Kevin tried not to look surprised as he wrote in his notebook what she had just revealed. "Did that aggressive request and lack of respect make you harbor some bitterness towards Sanctuary and Negan?" He asked.

"If that were all he had done to me, I would have considered myself lucky," Sherry said quietly while looking down at her hands.

"Has he treated you unkindly?" Kevin asked as he leaned forward in his chair to look her in the eyes.

Sherry suddenly felt bad for Kevin. Despite talking to someone about her personal calamity, nothing was going to change the environment that she found herself in. All the progress that Kevin hoped for Sherry wasn't going to do any good with Negan still around. She was slowly starting to trust Kevin. He was able to adapt to their new world in the way that seemed logical to only him. It was refreshing. However, it still didn't make any sense to her that Negan had requested that she speak to a shrink. Was her walking around like a dead person of any importance to him?

Sherry moved her hair to one side arched her neck for Kevin to see a large sized scar on the side. "This was when I tried to run away from Sanctuary after a month of living here. I was punished for it." Sherry sighed as she remembered being whipped by Negan over and over again. "Any time that I have been treated poorly it was because I did something wrong to deserve it. So to you it would seem that Negan was being unkind but to him…he is just maintaining his power in Sanctuary…and over me."

Kevin breathed slowly as he jotted in his notebook. Once he looked back up, he put his mouth in a tight line with apology on his face. "My first patient was a woman who was beat by her husband. Since then, I have gained a strong personal hatred for domestic abuse. Only because the mental state that this woman in particular found herself in was something we call traumatic bonding. In my time with her, she was living with her mother. However, after six months of supposed progress, she went back to live with him again. I have no idea what happened to her after that. I hope that she found her inner strength once more and continued with the progress that we started with. It wasn't my failure to help that made me hate domestic abuse. It was knowing that she felt she couldn't be strong enough on her own." Kevin put his notebook down on the nightstand beside him and surveyed Sherry's face.

"Sherry, I don't believe that you have any unhealthy attachment to Negan. From the tone and the things that you have said already, I can tell that you are strong. You are trying to fight him. Most importantly, you aren't broken yet! But that inner strength, similar to my first patient, is slowly beginning to fade. That is what I want to work on. Even though we are stuck in this trench of a place, we can still be strong inside," Kevin said as he interlaced his finger together on his lap.

"How do you suggest we do that?" Sherry tried to ask in a voice that didn't sound so defeated.

"Talking about everything that has happened to you is a good start. I won't be able to help you if I don't know the whole story. But as you continue to reveal your experiences, I will give you some exercises to go over or we can discuss anything that seems confusing to you. Take a chance on me. Trust me. If you don't start feeling an ounce better after one session, then we can go our separate ways if you wish. However, parting ways will be very difficult for me," Kevin confided with another warm smile.

Sherry looked slightly overwhelmed at the idea of talking about everything that had happened throughout the entire year that she had been in Sanctuary. She didn't know where to begin.

Kevin seemed to understand the inner turmoil she had and spoke up. "Describe your first time meeting Negan."

Sherry nodded and tried to think back to what seemed like centuries ago. "When everything started going to shit, I was in Georgia. I was with two guys that went to the same college as me." She envisioned Haruki and Takuya's faces and went on. "From there, we kept on bumping into people on the road and that group made it to fourteen survivors at one point." She thought of Dean, the McCoy family, Hannah, Yolanda and Jenna…Dwight. "Two fell to walkers." Her mind flashed to two graves under a willow tree at the abandoned mansion. "After that, we kind of stumbled around without a destination in mind. We didn't really know that we were in Washington D.C. until after we came to Sanctuary. We camped out in the forest when Negan came to our group. He fooled us. He made it seem like he was a loner that just wanted a group to be a part of." She remembered how the atmosphere changed that night when she and Dwight saw him for the first time. It was in that moment that she wished she could reverse back time to never meet him. "Then we were surrounded by the Saviors brandishing knives and holding us at gun point.

"Negan demanded that I drop my shotgun as he held a knife to my throat. I felt it my responsibility to protect my group. Most of them were just waking up and not prepared to defend themselves. Only two of us had our guns at the ready. I didn't listen to Negan. He threatened my life if I didn't put my gun down. He wasn't having progress with that route and instead jeopardized another woman in our camp. So I dropped my weapon to protect her." Sherry sighed. "No matter though. He ended up killing her anyways because I didn't discard my weapon. It was bullshit."

"I was knocked unconscious as my group was taken to Sanctuary. When I woke up, I was immediately informed of Negan's plans that I become his wife," Sherry stopped as words suddenly started replaying in her head.

"One day, I promise to make things better for you, Sherry. I promise," Sherry heard a voice say in her head as she thought of that fateful conversation with Dwight. She shut that sentence out of her head and went on with her story. "If I didn't accept his proposition, he would kill the rest of my group and I would still be in the same predicament. So I felt inclined to accept his offer."

"And are your people still among us?" Kevin asked hopefully.

"There are four left including me. When we came here, there were eleven. We all tried to escape but we were caught. We didn't want the children to go back to Sanctuary so we split up. The kids went with the McCoy family and the rest of us were forced to return to Sanctuary. I don't dare hope that they made it out alive. They had three kids with them," Sherry tried to stifle a sob that formed in her throat. She wanted to have faith that Terri and Jason made it out alive with the kids in tow. But her pessimism made it difficult to think they were alive.

"So when they separated from your group, how many went back to Sanctuary?" Kevin asked.

"Five," Sherry answered. "One was killed. One of the guys who went to college with me didn't try to escape Sanctuary. He ratted us out instead. Negan gave us the choice to kill him for betraying us." Sherry said ominously as her voice got quiet.

"And did you?" Kevin asked, engrossed in her story.

"Maybe it would make me feel better knowing that I didn't do it personally but a member in my group did. It was an unspoken but unanimous decision," Sherry finally said. She didn't know how much that moment weighed on her but to speak it out loud made her feel lighter.

Kevin pursed his lips together and wrote down everything she said. "What is your relationship with everyone in your group that has survived? Are you allowed to see them at all? Have they provided you any source of comfort during your time in Sanctuary?" He asked.

Sherry stared at the window and sighed. She shook her head. "I see Yolanda all the time. She has been a great help to me. But I am not allowed to see the rest of them," she said heavily as it was almost painful to say.

Kevin looked at her quizzically as she started to shake visibly. "We don't need to discuss that right now if you don't want to. But I can already tell that is one source of sorrow that we need to get to the bottom of," he reasoned.

Silent tears started falling down her face without warning. She quickly moved to wipe them away. "I did something wrong. I threatened the life of someone else only because it was my one source of happiness in this godforsaken place. I can't even look at him without feeling guilty for all the pain I have caused him." Her breaths started to come short and shaky as she tried to speak. Her thoughts were all blinded by the sight of Dwight. Memories flooded of when she saw him at his happiest moment then to his lowest moment. "And now we are under constant supervision. I can't go anywhere without Negan being somewhere near. I feel like he's going to kill me any second. And sometimes I wish he would and just get it over with. I would rather die than live another day here."

Kevin looked her in the eye again with an even deeper concern. "And I'm here to help prevent that thought process. We can find your own personal happiness. Even if it's a place that we have to dig deep inside. I want to help you find that place. Because where you find happiness, you can find hope. And hope is a precious commodity nowadays," he contributed and smiled benevolently.

Sherry glanced back at Kevin but couldn't retain eye contact for long. He in turn looked back to his notebook politely. "Let's leave the topic that you wish to avoid and just talk about it later. When you are ready. For now, let's talk about happy things. As a way for me to get to know you better. Also, I have a few questions that I just feel the need to ask for a professional standpoint. Have you ever seen professional help before?" He asked.

She nodded her head slightly. "Back in high school, my mom took me to see a psychiatrist for an eating disorder," she disclosed.

"Was that issue rectified?" Kevin asked as he took a glance at Sherry's fragile, scanty body.

Sherry snorted. "If I were allowed to eat bigger portions now, I would. It's no longer a personal problem and when I did have an eating disorder, it was resolved fairly quick." Sherry could tell that she looked unhealthy to others. Even before the walkers, she didn't weigh that much but was healthy for her height which gave doctors no cause for alarm. Negan worried about all of his wives physical appearances and made sure to keep their food portions small so they wouldn't gain pounds. However, it was wearing on them mentally and physically.

Kevin wrote down more notes and wore a quizzical brow when he gazed back up. "I fear that the lack of nutrition and your current trauma throughout the entire apocalypse has made you mentally unstable," Kevin interjected boldly. Sherry only shrugged because she couldn't necessarily disagree with him. "Signs of mental instability include a plethora of symptoms. So, if you wouldn't mind going over those with me so I can see where you at. There is the feeling of sadness. I think we have already discussed that one. Have you had the reduced ability to concentrate?"

Sherry thought of being escorted by Yolanda to Kevin's office and how she could hardly remember the walk there because her focus was entirely on nothing in particular. "You can put that down as a 'yes.'"

"Do you have extreme mood changes?" Kevin quizzed.

"No, I'm always relatively depressed," Sherry said as a matter-of-factly.

"Do you feel tired or have problems sleeping?" Kevin pressed further.

"Yes and yes," Sherry replied.

"Do you suffer from paranoia or hallucinations?" Kevin asked with slight trepidation.

Sherry thought to herself but already knew the answer. "About seven months ago, I started seeing my dad walk around Sanctuary in his police uniform. I could follow him around for several minutes and he would be there as clear as day."

"So 'yes,'" Kevin said and looked at all the things he had written down. "There are other things on the list of symptoms but I believe that your mental state is something that needs to be rectified. I think it's important that we discuss the things that I have said earlier only because it can prevent your mentality from spiraling into a worse state. Like I said, you aren't broken yet. We can find the switch in your brain and finally turn on the light."

Kevin seemed very hopeful about her. It seemed alien to her that anyone really cared about her at all. She had felt alone for so long. A spark of hope almost felt ignited inside of her but the rest of her tried to extinguish it so she wouldn't hurt worse than she did.

Kevin's mood went from worrisome on her behalf to a lighter side as he smirked. "Where did you live before the apocalypse?" Kevin asked.

"Chicago, Illinois," Sherry answered as she reminisced about her hometown. She was reminded of going to the museums with her dad twice a year and going to the Nutcracker with her mom at the Joffrey Ballet.

"What's your favorite holiday?" Kevin questioned.

Sherry snickered softly. Holidays seems so an inconsequential thing to her since nobody celebrated them anymore. "It was Halloween."

Kevin smiled. "Why?" He inquired.

"Candy, dressing up as something I wasn't, watching old movies with my friends and family. The classics."

"Like?" Kevin urged.

"Pretty much any Alfred Hitchcock movie. But we watched Psycho every year on Halloween for parties. That was my family tradition," Sherry responded.

"I'm a Hitchcock fan myself. I used to tell everyone that hadn't seen his movies that they needed to stop what they were doing and get cultured," Kevin remarked.

Sherry found herself smiling. She used to think the same thing. However, her mind didn't feel it appropriate to smile so she snuffed it out and replaced the somber mask she'd been wearing over her face.

Kevin saw her change of mood and smiled reassuringly. "You know, we don't have to talk about the incident but we could over the things that led up to it. Would you like to do that?" He suggested.

Sherry sighed and clasped her hands together. "Not really. But I don't want to feel worse than I do now. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to talk about it."

Kevin smiled again. "Good! Talking about things that are difficult is progress! Never mistake it for something else! Begin where you feel necessary."

Sherry didn't even know where to start. Then as she contemplated all the major events that had happened in the last year, she knew there was only one person to begin with. "I haven't even said his name out loud in so long. It seems weird to talk about him now," Sherry began.

Kevin waited as she sat in silence. Finally, she relented and sighed before she uttered his name. "Dwight," she revealed.

Kevin looked to her with some recollection but shook his head at whatever popped in his mind. "And who is Dwight?" Kevin asked.

Sherry was taken back to the time where they lived in the mansion and their time surviving outside of Sanctuary. Many times, she remembered seeing him full of life and laughter when their group had no choice but to brave the dangerous world. But Sherry always saw him smile every day as they lightly bantered each other endlessly. In spite of all the danger, they were happy. He was happy before. Sherry wondered if she would ever see that smile again.

"Dwight is a member of my original group," Sherry explained. "Throughout the time we have met, we became close. Since we have lived in Sanctuary, Negan has asked him to do terrible things. Now he is Negan's right hand man. I don't really know if he is the same person I knew. And I understand why. Only because I am not the person I was when all of this started. It may not give him a pass for the things that he has done but it does for me. He's been through some disturbing things like the rest of us." Sherry explained. "I feel bad because he only does the things Negan tells him to do…because of me. He doesn't want me to get hurt. But because I don't see him, I can't let him know that Negan still hurts me regardless of what he does anymore."

Kevin didn't write down what she said. Instead he put all of his focus on her and the story she wanted to tell. "Does the incident start with him?" He asked.

She nodded. "It all started with letters."

AUTHOR'S NOTE – Doctor Kevin Mitchell is a character that I have made up! I decided to start the story off by having Sherry remember it and revealing it so someone else in a personal setting. The story will sometimes go off in Dwight's perspective to see what's going on with him and what his thought process is. Anyways, that's the first chapter! Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!