My apologies for the format flub. This is the real chapter 12
Lupe traveled for days. Weeks. Months, maybe. She didn't fucking know. After leaving her note on the desk, she fled the Sanctuary as covertly as possible. Lupe and Alma always had a plan. With the Saviors all over them and Negan breathing down Lupe's neck, they had to keep pushing it back. The deaths, the fights, the injuries, all that time needed to heal. They were gonna leave after the scar incident. Then, more bad things got in the way. As the days passed and Alma remained unconscious, Lupe was afraid they'd never realize their plan. As Negan's grip continued to tighten around her, his seduction becoming more aggressive, Lupe was afraid he'd break her before the two had the chance.
Lupe thinks she might be broken remembering how she clung to Negan as her sister's body burned. She thinks she might be broken because as he kissed her, she burned for him, ached to be cared for, and wanted. She knows none of it was true with him, all of it was a screaming misery inside her. But deep within her well of sorrow and insecurity, she wanted something to erase the wretched loss of her sister. And she had literally nothing else.
She's still glad she stopped him. Still glad she pissed him off, made him go off and drink so much he actually slept through the night. It made it so much easier her for sneak out of the Sanctuary. She only had to kill a few of his Saviors. Thankful she was right about the shifts that night, she didn't have to risk harming some of the ones she grew to tolerate. She had taken their weapons, their clothes, absconded back into the forest where she belonged, and left them to turn.
She doesn't know where she's going. She thought about returning to her and Alma's camp and getting the car. She didn't want to risk it right away. Negan might go looking in that direction and she promised herself she'd rather die than ever lay eyes on him again. But it doesn't matter. Lupe just has to go. She has to get as far away from the Sanctuary as she can. She isn't going to profane her sister's memory by staying in or near that place one second longer.
So much of Lupe's efforts are spent dodging Saviors and other people. She barely has enough time to get food, water, or distance. She lost most of her guns a while back. She'd had no luck finding bullets anyway. She scavenges, but doesn't want to risk coming across any of the people or communities out there. She knows about other places with more people, but she isn't familiar enough with the area or their temperament. She hadn't really been out of the Sanctuary since she arrived there. The last thing she needs is more people on her ass.
The waning summer has a reaping, relentless heat to it that feels like an extra dollop of gravity. Lupe survives though, like she always does. She knows she's fading, but over the last few days, she isn't sure she cares. Alma is gone. Alma. The purest source of goodness that Lupe ever laid eyes on. Her sister, who devoted her life to being kind, is not just dead, but was brutalized, tortured, and abused. Alone… Lupe is wholly possessed by the knowledge that she is responsible for what happened. If she hadn't pushed back against Negan so deliberately, he may not have been so frequently incensed enough to toss her in the cells. It left Alma vulnerable. It was irresponsible and selfish.
Lupe remembers her father, a refugee from a destabilized nation. He told both her and Alma that sometimes safety had to be more important than integrity. No, he couldn't have gone out and sprayed down the insurgents that killed most of his city's people all by himself. He could not have been a single handed hero. They had to bend to the will of murderers. They couldn't fight. They had to plan and run so they could live. They had to survive and defy those that would crush them to nothing. Lupe hated to hear it then, but she understands why. It kept people alive. Now she knows.
That's why she's still walking. She refuses to get caught. She'd rather wither into nothing than turn back. Rather than step a foot in his direction, she'd happily be consumed by trees, tortured by their roots growing through her veins for all eternity. She would never go back to that place. It would be an insult to the memory of her family. The family that lived for her and taught her what it was to exist in this grim world. That she deserved love and respect, despite it.
Lupe knows what she deserves now. With her sister gone and her body empty, all that's left is death. Maybe a little revenge flickers, but it isn't worth being caught. She escaped. She escaped and she despises her ill gotten freedom. She won't renege on it though. Lupe knew. From the second that shadowed monster showed her Alma's body, she knew it was the breaking point. She may have been handcuffed, but she was unshackled. It wasn't the burden of fear, of always being terrified of losing the one person she loved. It wasn't the exhausting efforts to feed, clothe, and keep her baby sister safe. No, for Lupe those were all beautiful blessings. Alma would always be as such. Lupe would carry the weight of her lost soul always. But with the smoke that released Alma from their horrific prison, Lupe knew. Alma still had one last act of pure goodness, becoming a true savior, and proving to Lupe that she deserved to be free too.
The Saviors are like a virus, posing as something else but infecting, and fundamentally fucking with the natural order of things. They ruin whatever they encounter. The horror of being with them couldn't last a moment longer. Lupe couldn't survive in an environment like that, hostile and noxious. She can be a mean bitch. She'd rather step on someone's neck than risk the looks they give her. But she wasn't like them. She could never be like the Saviors and she'd never let herself fall that far.
Alma would be disappointed if Lupe truly lost herself. Though Alma was dead so it didn't exactly matter what she thought. Especially because Lupe is absolutely not in the right mindset to process anything appropriately. She is just a soulless body now, avoiding the dead and living, suspended somewhere lost between them. She became an embodiment of their mutual suffering. She hungered so strongly, she ached. She thirsted so desperately, her throat burned. She was so painfully empty, but without the nascent peace of actually being dead and gone. Lupe knows Alma wouldn't want her to die. But she's unsure just how much longer she can hold on.
Stumbling, Lupe slides down a tiny embankment, cussing at herself for not paying attention. As she crumbles into a pile of empty skin and bones, she stares up at the sky, unblocked by trees and doesn't bother to get up. The clouds roll around in the big blue expanse. The tumbling cumulus looks soft enough to touch. Summer is finally ending, though some days are like its final, thrashing death throes. To Lupe, the earth is just carefully edging its way into autumn. She appreciates its hesitance, because as hot as it could be in the summer, she was in no way prepared to survive the crisp autumn and biting winter to come.
Hopefully, the Saviors and Negan would just think she gave up and died. Lying on the lushness of the earth, she thinks it might not be the worst idea. She closes her eyes, gripping Alma's gun. The only thing she still has and the only thing that still matters. Lupe has one more bullet. She just hopes that she wakes one more time to use it. She doesn't want to die. But she doesn't want to change either.
She can feel Alma there with her. Waiting. Soft as the wind, she strokes Lupe's hair like she always used to, and tells her to rest. So Lupe does. She tries to rest, to touch Alma and feel the warmth of her spirit again. The void consumes Lupe like an old friend. She grasps it in her fingertips, leans into the emptiness, only to have it ripped from her. The hunger in her stomach claws from the inside out, like barbed wire lining her gut, wrenching tears from her eyes at all the memories. The dryness in her throat drags her back into consciousness because she can't swallow or breathe. She wants to fall back into the darkness, gasping for breath and begging for it to end. Lupe wants to be free, like Alma.
When Lupe opens her eyes, barely lucid and no longer seeing the soft comfort of the clouds, she knows she's ready. She has to be. Blinking unevenly, her eyes can barely focus, but she can still hear the crunching of gravel and leaves as someone steps through it.
"Alma?" Lupe tries to say, but it comes out a garbled crackling. The dryness of her throat chokes her into silence.
A back lit silhouette hovers in her tunneling vision. She figures it's either the undead or a Savior. She doesn't care which one. She smells the tang of leather, the sweet decay of guts and death, and the sharp choke of engine smog. She tries to blink her eyes fully open for the shadow, to truly face it. She knows it doesn't really matter.
Lupe's weakened arm shakes as she raises it up, beckoning the shadow forward, welcoming it with open arms. She smiles as it approaches, slowly floating in and out of her focus. She grips onto the thing and yanks it down, holding it against her as tight as she can. She wedges her dirty temple against the same patch of skin on the shadow, proving it's real. With joyous tears in her eyes, Lupe's last breath is a whisper, "God, killer, savior, or all three, I am so grateful—," she holds on tight and snarls, "— that I get to take one of you fuckers down with me!"
She smiles as it squirms against her, readying to try and destroy her. Killing or kidnapping, she would not survive. She raises her other arm like a flash. The barrel of Alma's gun presses against the head of the squirming thing and it stills. Lupe prays her aim is true enough to blow straight through.
The sham of her existence is undeserved.
Her last act is an effortless pull of the trigger.
