Summary: It's been eight years since the fall of the prison and Daryl has seen most of his family separate and be taken away from him. But with new threats around the corner, an old familiar face shows up with a surprising connection to the Whisperers themselves. Co-Written with WalkingPotterGirl14. Daryl/OC, Merle/Carol, Beth/OC. AU after the mid-season finale but will loosely follow the show and spoilers.
Rebuilding The Heart
Chapter 1
The woods were covered in a thick fog, as the young woman kept her left hand over the Whisperer's mouth. She slit his throat and stabbed him in the back of the head. She wouldn't let them take her back there. She'd rather die than be taken back to those people, who would rape her, and try to force her to be like them.
She wasn't too far gone. She wasn't that far gone. She swallowed and hid in the bushes, as she saw the Whisperers going towards the barn that Beta had talked about where a man was hiding from them.
"Leave that group, Beta. Alpha wants us to find your pet seeing as she's killed three of our own," a male voice ordered angrily. She frowned as she looked at the group of Whisperers, who were going towards a graveyard.
She looked at the last bomb she had, which was a nail bomb. She threw it towards them. It landed with a thud, and one of the Whisperers walked near it. The bomb went off, pieces of shrapnel and nails impaling them and drawing in walkers.
Lena cautiously walked towards their dead or dying bodies, before stabbing them in the head individually. She wanted to spit at their corpses, but they weren't worth the effort. She grabbed their weapons, which were a few arrows from the female Whisperer, a machete from the male Whisperer, and took a Bowie knife from the young child Whisperer.
Once, she would have hated doing this, but she had hardened up, and kept on going. She saw firecrackers in the distance, lighting up in the darkening sky and heard a dog barking. She frowned. Was this person trying to divert the Whisperers?
'Not my problem if he is,' she thought flatly. She cautiously walked through the forest, when she saw three Whisperers up ahead. They were holding torches, and someone was crying.
She peered from behind a tree, and saw a man hanging from the branch of an acorn tree. She grimaced as she listened to the conversation.
"Please, don't do this, please. I didn't mean to come down here, I got lost. Please!" The man begged pleadingly. The tall looking Whisperer glared at him, and she felt her stomach drop as she realized who he was.
Beta.
"You're where you do not belong," he whispered menacingly, and plunged one of his knives into the man's stomach. The man gurgled on his blood. Lena watched as Beta pulled his knife out, and they heard a Whisperer whistle.
"They got away, but that girl's been here. Three of our own are dead, and their weapons are gone," a Whisperer said sourly. Lena privately hoped that the group that Beta and Alpha were hunting had managed to get away to safety.
"Spread out. Forget about that damn group that were looking for the fat fuck. We need to look for this redhead bitch before we lose the trail!" A man ordered angrily. Everyone went out after throwing their torches into a puddle.
Lena waited until they were gone, and quietly took out the man hanging from the branch lifelessly. He hadn't turned yet, but he would soon She fired an arrow at him, the arrow hitting him in the left side of the head.
She crawled through a gap in an abandoned car park, seeing two Whisperers up ahead. She took out the first one with her bow, but the woman spotted her.
"She's here!" The woman shouted quickly. Lena cursed and slashed her neck with her machete. The woman clutched at her neck as she collapsed on the ground.
"Don't let her escape! Remember, Beta wants her alive!"
Of course he did. They all did. Lena shakes her head and runs to the trees, finding time to hide in a crack between them a while in. Her mind thought back to what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
Nick. Fucking Nick. He had royally fucked her over this time.
It had been years since she had last seen her group. She had met Nick in a depressing time when she felt she had no hope of ever finding anyone again besides the little boy that travelled with her. He offered her sanctuary and a warm bed. She had taken it.
She had hit it off with him at first and even 'technically' got married, but now after six years, she was starting to feel the ache of being with him. He had completely taken a 180 on her and become someone completely different. It wasn't that he was abusive – she didn't put up with that shit after what her aunt had been through – but it's that he just treated her like crap. He barely talked to her, made eye contact with her, did anything.
Then everything else had happened, and she had just stopped caring about him or anyone. She knew she still had to find him in the chaos that was surrounding her life as of this moment, but for now, her only concern was herself.
"Fuck, fuck…" She whispers to herself. She leaves her little hiding spot and heads through the trees once more, before reaching a dead end. The young woman quickly turns and finds four Whisperers around her. She glares and takes out the scythe that she had learnt how to use.
It didn't take her long. She had been taught how to fight by multiple people back when she was part of a bigger group. The key to fighting these guys was somehow separating them. She was usually quick enough to do that.
"Come and get me," she whispers. Before long, they were lunging at her. But her skills allowed her to dodge, slash and repeat on each of the enemies. Once they had all fallen to the ground, dead, Lena quickly escapes from the area.
She had to find safety. Somewhere. Before she could focus on anything else, even on finding anyone, she had to find shelter.
Thunder crackled in the distance. It was going to rain.
When Daryl saw the rest of his group suddenly break through the trees, the first thing he thought was someone else had been hurt. What he wasn't expecting was the explanation that Magna gave him about their escape.
"They're after someone else," she quickly breathes as she tries to catch her heart after running. "Some girl they were yelling about. She was attacking them, and they went after her. Whoever she is, she might be able to help us."
Daryl shakes his head. "It's too dangerous."
Suddenly, more gunshots echo through the woods. Just as it does, some trickles of rain start to drip onto the ground. Daryl sighs and then looks over at Magna, who was helping Yumiko with a cut on her arm.
"Ya head back to the zone with the others. I'll catch up once I figure out who did this." Magna nods as Daryl nods at Dog, who heads out into the road. Daryl quickly gets on his bike and drives off, wondering who the hell could cause these fuckers to do a complete 180 on who they were currently on.
Once he does feel like he is close enough, he gets off his bike and walks into the woods. In a clearing, he sees six dead bodies. Four of which looked like they had been completely slaughtered. The other two were gunshots, the ones he had heard.
He walks over and tries to feel around the forehead, feeling the skin warm. Whoever had done it was close, but he didn't want to risk hurting himself for the sake of a stranger. He needed to get out and quickly.
Daryl sighs and looks over at the other four bodies. Whoever it was, they knew how to fight too. The cuts were clean and there wasn't a sign of a struggle at all. Just a bunch of slices across the throat, chest and head. All of which looked like they were killed shots. But he guessed that because they all had an extra layer of skin, whoever it was had to double the cuts.
Whatever she did, it worked.
Daryl stands up as thunder starts to crackle again. More rain drops begin to fall. Dog whimpers. "It's alright," he states to him, scratching his ear. "Let's get back to the zone." He climbs on his bike and nods, and the dog takes off. Daryl takes a look behind him once more time to look at the dead bodies, before heading off.
Whoever this girl was, she meant business.
When the sun had finally risen, Lena had come out of her tent to find that the ground was drenched. She had run all the way to the edge of the forest near a cliff and had found a backpack in an abandoned store once the rain started. From there, she set up a tent with some old bark and stayed in there.
Living out in the woods was nothing new to her, but she did wish she had found somewhere better.
Her mind drifts quietly to where her family was now. If they were even alive. If Nick was even alive.
Well, he wasn't really her family anymore. She didn't know who she could trust or who was real. Everything was a dream nowadays ever since Danny had died. Danny, her precious little boy. She had adopted him at the very beginning of the world when it went to shit because he had no parents. They had left him.
And then the world took him too. Just like it took everyone else she cared about.
Lena shakes her head as she stands, not wanting to think about the past. All memories ever did was make her sad and not want to continue on with her day. But that was what they were: memories. Nothing she could change but would always be there, so she just had to live with them on the backburner of her mind.
"I need food," she finally mumbles to herself before heading down to the lake she had seen. "Food and water. That's it. Then I find somewhere safer to stay. I need to. It's too dangerous," she mumbles again.
She talked to herself daily, sometimes just randomly out in the open as if someone was next to her. Maybe she looked a little insane from the outside, but it was how she kept her daily to-do list in check. Besides, if she didn't talk at all she would surely go completely crazy.
Her death of her son made her that way. How Nick had abandoned her made her that way. And how the Whisperers had treated her had made her that way. Each and every one of those events had made her lose a little but more of her sanity. And if talking to herself conserved that last little part, then she would do it.
Lena suddenly stops and glances around her, hearing bells in the distance. Strange. She had never heard bells since…
She shakes her head. It was nothing. She knew it was probably just a recording from an old church or whatever. It didn't matter to her. What mattered was the fish that were in the lake and that she needed to eat at least one to live.
Well, maybe not to live, but to at least keep herself from eating the next bunny.
Daryl gathered around with the other outside as Tara rang the bell at Hilltop, signalling for the town to come together. While he was standing by the outskirts, Magna comes over to him. "Hey, did you find anything about who that girl was? Did she cause those gunshots?"
"She did more than that," he mutters, looking at her. "Didn't see her, whoever she was. But she fuckin' murdered six of 'em. Four were chopped up. Two were shot."
Magna's brow raises. "Jesus, really?" He nods. "Damn. Nice having her on our side if this goes further. We should try and find her."
Daryl shakes his head. "Too dangerous now."
She raises an eyebrow. "So, you don't want to risk finding this girl who is a killing machine? She knows those fuckers personally. You can tell by how much they wanted her. I think it would be worth it to try and find her if we can get inside information on who those people were."
She heads back over to the others while Daryl minded with his thoughts. It wasn't that he didn't want to find her. In fact, a part of him really fucking did. To be able to kill that many people all around her and not die? Shit, Jesus couldn't even do that, and he had known all these moves, yet this girl succeeded.
Of course, a part of him wanted to figure out who she was.
But the fact was that it was dangerous. He didn't want to risk more people's lives out there than they had to and them tracking down a girl they didn't know was a huge risk. Unless more people agreed on it, he couldn't do that. He wouldn't do that.
"People of Hilltop," Tara suddenly yells, calling his attention. "We lost someone, today. Someone we all cared about. Deeply." She was trying to contain her emotions. "But what we know now is that we have a new enemy. Someone was having to fight to keep our land safe. And I know that none of us want our land to fall. Am I right?"
The crowd cheers and nods.
Tara turns to Daryl, who was quiet. "Magna told me that you investigated last night. Is there anything you found out about these people, Daryl?"
"Yeah, they dress as walkers and wear their faces as masks to attack people and blend in with walkers. From what we've seen, it sounds like there are a lot of them," Daryl said grimly, as he glanced at Yumiko, Michonne, Beth, Jamie, Aaron and Magna.
Tara nodded grimly and looked at Beth, the young woman nodded gravely, and Tara spoke up again.
"I'll send a messenger to the Kingdom. This concerns all of us and we need to be prepared for an attack," Tara said gravely. Everyone nodded. Beth quietly walked towards Daryl with his cousin next to him.
Both of them ignored Michonne. Daryl internally cringed, as he wished Merle was here, but his brother was at the Kingdom with Carol. Both of them were trying to keep the Kingdom running with Ezekiel. The place was falling apart. Henry was apprenticing under Earl to learn how to fix the place. Michonne hadn't even said she would come to the festival.
Daryl sighed quietly and glanced at Jamie. He'd been helping Beth with one of the horses giving birth. With Jesus dead, that left only Beth, Tara and Bertie on the Hilltop Council. He sighed and hoped that Merle and Carol were alright.
Suddenly, he heard gunshots echoing from somewhere.
"What the hell was that?!" Rodney asked alarmed. Kal had been on watch and called down to them urgently. Daryl hoped it wasn't the Whisperers attacking, because they would be fucked.
"There's a group of Whisperers chasing someone in the woods, Tara and Beth!" Kal shouted warningly. Daryl was already on his feet as he nodded at Beth, Jamie and Tara.
"I'll go see what's goin' on. Maybe we'll find out who this girl is and why they're lookin' for her," Daryl said grimly. Beth nodded, and Jamie looked at his cousin silently.
"Be careful, Daryl. We don't wanna lose ya like we've just lost Jesus. Merle would be broken if he lost ya," Jamie warned seriously. Daryl nodded. Beth hugged him before they watched him leave.
Lena had managed to catch a fish and was now frying it over a fire on a stick. She checked to see it was cooked. It wasn't pink in the middle, so she started eating it hungrily with her bare hands. It reminded her of the quarry, when she and the rest of their group had eaten at that large campfire. With her aunt Carol and people that she had come to care about…it felt like centuries ago. Almost all of the group were dead now if they weren't already.
She wondered if that group had gotten away last night. They'd been trapped in a graveyard. She sighed, wondering why the hell she was worried over a bunch of strangers? She needed to worry about herself, not other people.
Lena saw someone in the distance and started packing up her tent. She shoved it into her backpack and headed into a town that had been reclaimed by nature. Thick, long tree roots had grown under the pavement and in some shops, while cars, and trucks rotted away. It was like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, which was ironic as that was happening already.
That was when she heard it. Whistling. She quickly hid under a van, as she saw seven Whisperers coming over. One of them had a bow, while three had machetes, and a man that was as tall as Beta had what looked like a claymore.
She took a deep breath, as she saw one of the female Whisperers crouch down. Lena shot her in the head. The gunshot echoed, and the woman fell backwards with a bullet hole over her left eyebrow.
Before she could even move, she was being dragged out from under the car and turned around to see it was a male Whisperer. She kicked him, but he wouldn't let go. "You wench! You fucking bitch! You're where you don't belong!" He snarled enraged. She grabbed her revolver and shot him twice in the chest, and then stabbed him in the head.
"Ethan!" One of the Whisperers yelled angrily, and fired at her, but Lena shot him in the head, before seeing a female Whisperer standing on the hood of a car. Lena shot her, but her gun clicked after she tried to shoot her again.
The Whisperer fired her bow at her and the arrow hit her in the right shoulder. Lena cursed and could feel the pain burn through her body. She started running again and jumped over a gap in the abandoned shopping mall, trying not to fall over.
The woman was still firing arrows at her, but she managed to avoid being shot by them. She saw a Whisperer running towards her with a triumphant expression.
"Come here!" She hissed excitedly. Lena threw a glass bottle at her, hitting her in the face. Lena grabbed her and put her body in front of her as she pointed her gun at her temple.
The woman fired her bow, but Lena used the Whisperer's body as a shield, the arrows hitting her in the chest. Dead. She threw the body on the overgrown pavement and heard them whistling again.
"Don't let her escape. Remember, Beta wants her alive!" one of the Whisperers shouted warningly. Lena just barely avoided being shot as one of the Whisperers spotted her.
"I have eyes!" He yelled quickly. He fired his shotgun at her, but missed, instead the hitting the glass of one of the doors to the Superdrug store. She sprinted over the counter and hid behind it. She could hear them whistling as she grabbed the head of the arrow. Lena pulled it out quickly, unshed tears stinging the corners of her eyes. Pain shot through her right shoulder, but at least none of it was still stuck underneath her skin.
She dropped it on the floor, the arrow hitting a puddle. Lena started moving around them, and saw that there were three remaining, all of which who had followed her. One had a bow, the other one had a pick axe and the third one had a hatchet that was coated in blood. She felt sorry for the poor bastard who these people had killed.
She started creeping around, and slid through a gap in between two cabinets, and saw a recently decomposing body of a young man that had been killed with an arrow to the chest. She pulled it out silently and put it in her quiver. She quickly saw some materials to make an explosive arrow, and carefully aimed it as she saw some of the Whisperers had left.
She moved from her hiding spot, and fired it at the woman, causing an explosion and sending the male Whisperer flying into a bookcase. The woman was already dead. Lena pulled out her sickle and slashed his throat, before stabbing him in the head.
The remaining Whisperer roared in anger, and charged at her, with murder in his eyes. He swung his pick axe. She avoided the first two blows and stabbed him in the side. The man blocked her on the second try, and threw her over the counter, her face smashing into the glass. She landed on the floor and staggered to her feet.
The man swung at her, but she moved out if the way, while trying to avoid being shot by arrows from the female Whisperer. Both of them were vicious, but she wasn't going down without a fight.
"Here!" The woman called out quickly. Lena slashed her throat and grabbed two of her arrows, before being hit in the side of the head by the male Whisperer. She staggered to her feet quickly and fired an arrow at him that made him trip backwards, before firing another one that hit him in the right side of the chest.
The man slumped to his knees. She ripped the mask off with her knife, glaring at the man with hatred burning in her hazel eyes.
"He won't stop. He won't stop until he has you," Gavin taunted cruelly. Lena slashed his throat.
The man falls over, completely dead. Lena falls back against the counter and runs her hands through her knotted and messed up hair. Everything felt like it was on fire and she had no idea what to do. She glances around her and examines the bodies.
She really was a monster.
Enjoy and review :)
