02: The Stain
Written to Death by Preoccupations
She's gone and every waking moment at Deanna's party is a fucking nightmare. Back at his place, he ends up scrubbing up his right hand, picking and dabbing at the letter A with his fingernails until his skin is sore. There's a hot pain throbbing behind his eyeballs, accompanied by raging tears and furious sobs, and he inhales sharply as a new surge of sudsy water spills over the fresh wound, gnawing at his nerve endings and setting them on fire.
"Why are you still out there?" he growls as he dries off his hands and leaves light red spots on the crisp white towel, "What the fuck is taking you so long?"
He makes his way downstairs and straight to the kitchen where Carol is busy packing up the rest of her belongings. A cake mould, a measuring cup, a couple of tinged silver spoons. She's moving into her own house and successfully pissing off Daryl by doing so.
"Evening, Constable-To-Be."
Within the span of a few days, Carol has become a completely different person: she's wearing pastel sweaters, she's beguiling the ladies from the pantry, and she's baking unreasonable amounts of chocolate chip cookies. When she finally turns around to look at him, there's a sweet, syrupy smile plastered on her face. A smile that doesn't match her hard eyes.
"You look like hell", she goes on, zipping up her backpack before crossing her arms and leaning against the counter, "Here's a tip for you: take a shower, get rid of that horrible beard, and get to work. We have to act soon."
Rick can't remember why they came up with it: their plan to take this place and shed blood if necessary. Carol is right – of course she is – but he can't brace himself up for going through with anything right now, so he refrains from rolling his eyes and settles for a sigh instead.
"What do you want me to do?" he puts his hands on his hips, "Play along for a while and bite their heads off later?"
"Yes."
"Well, I can't do that. Not when she's still –"
"You can and you will. This has to stop", she points at his right hand, her voice suddenly sheathed with ice, "These people are scared of you. They don't like you. You have to make amends if you want to take this place. You have to assimilate. On the surface, that is", it's her turn to sigh, "Where's Daryl?"
He shrugs. God knows where his brother is lurking about at this hour. With yet another sigh and a shake of her head, Carol straps on her backpack and pats his shoulder on her way out.
"Don't get me wrong. I miss her, too. I know that you think you're responsible for what happened out there and who knows? Maybe you are", she says and her words hit him like stray bullets, making him flinch and fight for air simultaneously, "The thing is: we don't have much time. We have to make sure that this place can be kept safe and we have to keep an eye on Dr Anderson, too. Apparently, he has a natural knack for beating up his wife and children, and it looks like Deanna has a natural knack for turning a blind eye to that matter, so I guess we'll have to take care of it", she offers him a sad smile and he wants to hurl, "After that, no one's gonna stop you, Rick. After that, you can grieve for as long as you want."
He gets rid of the beard, he cleans up – quite well, according to Deanna – he puts on his uniform, and they're still scared of him, they still don't like him, but he couldn't care less. He couldn't care less about their fearful gasps or how they scrunch up their noses whenever they see him making his rounds. He's doing what he's told. He's assimilating, he's playing along: he's doing perimeter checks, he's taking shifts on the guard tower, and he's lying awake at night, brooding over that moment in the woods until he's about to break under the weight of his guilt because all he has to do is close his eyes and then he sees her.
The way she moves – smooth and gazelle-like, powerful and unforgiving – and her perfect skin – anointed with the foul blood of her opponents. She's slaying her way through an endless sea of roamers, beheading two of them in one go and lunging at the next one without batting an eye. She's a force of nature, a woman made to thrive on this world, and then she's gone.
Carl hates him. There's no need giving voice to it because Rick already knows. He took her away from him, took away his son's best friend and fed her to the dead, and he looks back upon the prison and screws his face up into a sad grimace: he wasn't happy back then, not in the slightest. Still sick with grief over Lori's demise, he would spend his days digging into hard earth. He would learn the ropes of his new profession, and sometimes he would pause for a moment and cast a glance at the gates, feeling composed and even a bit winged for knowing that a certain someone would find their way back home eventually.
He used to take her for granted, but now he doesn't. Now that she's gone, Rick allows himself to realise that her presence has been a gift to him, and he should be grateful, but the greed that's boiling in his veins – scorching, seething, and searing – keeps him in check.
"I mean, it's just a stupid owl statue… it's nothing", the blonde woman – Jessie, the doctor's wife – says with a self-deprecating smile, "But working on it kinda kept me busy, you know?"
Rick stares at her. It's something he became quite good at recently: staring at this woman and not really seeing her, listening to her soft voice and having no idea what the hell she's talking about. And it's not that he doesn't like her. He barely knows her and she scares the crap out of him because she's a ghost, a blurred memory that's slowly emerging from a glaucous mire of all the painful mementos he locked up ever since Lori's grave – his home – was blown to pieces by a raving psychopath.
Lori.
She would've liked it here, given the fact that she always had a soft spot for escapism and illusory figments. She would console herself with impossible dreams and silently resent him for being the living proof that those dreams would never make a reality. This place though… it would've been a decent alternative. This place would've been good for her.
"I'll look into it."
Startled by his gruff tone, Jessie gives a mild jerk.
"I – I uh… thank you, Rick."
He takes his cue to leave, bids her goodbye with a short nod, and attempts to withdraw from her garage when she grabs his arm. Her delicate fingers wrap around his bicep like a tourniquet and her pulse burns through the fabric of his jacket, turning him into a pillar of salt and forcing him to look at her as her skin starts to peel off.
Dark bruises and fist-sized lacerations flare up on her face, neck and arms. He didn't want to see it, didn't want to believe it, and now he does, now he has to. He takes a shaky breath, he finally gets it, and he wants to scream because this place… this place is –
"What the fuck is going on here?"
A third person enters the scene and he breaks away from Jessie's grip. He cracks his knuckles and greets Dr Anderson with a crooked grin as realisation descends upon him, digs into his flesh, and pushes him back into the smothering arms of harsh anger and acrid distress.
He spins around to split the shrivelled head of a walker dressed in a shredded track suit, and he groans in disgust and plain annoyance when he pulls back and gets rewarded by a deluge of bits of blood and brain splattering onto his face.
"You good over there, old man?"
"Yeah. You?"
"You do realise who you're talking to, right?"
A grin begins to tear at his face and takes a second to look at her, to watch her cut bodies in halves like it's the easiest thing in the world. She's a sight for sore eyes. She's incredible. She's strong, she's ravishingly beautiful, and she knows how to get shit done.
It almost pains him to get back to it and face the next throng of walkers that's already headed in their direction, but this is his life now. Out here, he's fighting for his life, fighting for another chance to get back to his children in one piece, and fucking hell, he's actually enjoying it since it's her, who's with him right now. They're doing this together and he wouldn't want it any other way. He trusts her more than anybody else, and spending time with her – even when it's all about slicing up walkers like loaves of bread – has become something he can't help but crave for on a daily basis by now.
"Shit!"
His musings are choked off by the time he sees a particularly burly walker snatching a fistful of her braids and dragging her into the darkness and suddenly – just when he's about to reach her, just when he's about to haul off and drive the blade of his machete straight through the biter's head – there's a wall between them, a living, snarling, pitch-black wall, and he's left behind screaming. He's left behind pushing against them with all his might because he has to get to her, he has to find her, but he doesn't, he can't.
He's not sure about how much time has passed when Glenn and Aaron thrust themselves into his field of view. They pull him away and his face grows stiff with agony. She's lost, she's gone, and – no matter how hard he tries to break loose with his arms flailing, no matter how often he cries her name against the thundering beat of his heart – she won't come back.
They spend five days combing through the nearby woods and towns with Aaron and he's ready to fight them when they decide to move on to Alexandria, but he looks at his daughter and he knows that this has to stop.
And now, about two and a half weeks later, he's pacing around in his makeshift cell, his hand pressed against the back of his neck, the other one wrapped up in a sloppy gauze bandage. His knuckles are swollen, his fingers are twitching, and his body is shaking with rage.
This place is a lie.
It should be an open community, but once you it stripped off its deceiving layers – the houses, the perfectly mowed lawns, the stone-flagged streets – you'll find a twisted refuge for reckless cowards and combative drunks.
Nicholas, Dr Anderson, the whole fucking lot: They all tried to kill his family right from the start and he has to stop them. He can't lose anybody else, not after Noah. Not after Michonne, who – technically – didn't die at the hands of Deanna's people but because of them, because she wanted this place, because she wanted Rick, the kids, and the rest of the group to get here at all costs.
"What am I supposed to do now, huh?"
He's losing it. He's alone and he's in a blood-red daze. He hates her for abandoning him, for turning her back on him and letting herself get pulled out of his reach when he all he wanted for her was to stay a little longer, and if she could see him now, she sure as hell wouldn't approve of the way he's been handling himself lately. No, she would set him straight again. She would kick his ass and he would end up thanking her for it. And then, she would tell him to let go of the fight and he would do so eventually.
He would watch her drift away, watch her assimilate and build a life of her own. And he would try to be okay with that. He would try not to lean on her too much. He would try not to suffocate her with his need to be around her all the time. He would try his best not to keep her from spreading her wings. He would try, but he probably – most certainly – wouldn't succeed.
"This is on you", he grunts with his eyes shut; she's gone – gone, gone, gone – and none of that makes sense to him, "I'm gonna take this place and you can't stop me, you can't talk me out of it because you're not here."
He opens his eyes and rolls his aching shoulders. He makes for the front door, ready to face his trial, ready to take this place and be done with it. His head is full of violence as he draws his gun and bursts off into the night.
