When night fell, Amity was thankful for the reprieve from the Georgia sun that was heating up the metal car they were in like a stove. She couldn't imagine being in there all day long, but she knew that her friends had dealt with that already.
Though locked away, with her friends beside of her Amity was the most at ease that she had been for days and that led to her nodding off fairly quickly after settling down beside of Maggie, her head resting against the younger woman's thigh.
She heard the murmur of voices around her, noted the unfamiliar ones that came from the four people she had been briefly introduced to until Glenn saw both her and Maggie's emotional exhaustion and decided that they could catch up in the morning.
She knew Abraham was military just by looking at the man, something that Bandit confirmed to her. He seemed to be cozy with Rosita, the gorgeous hispanic woman that he rolled with. Tara was friendly, and funny from what Amity had gathered, but the woman was quiet and looked to Glenn with something that she couldn't place.
At first she had thought it was attraction, but that was something she quickly dismissed just due to the vibe of their interaction. It was like she owed her friend something, which interested Amity.
Then there was Eugene.
The man with the Billy Ray Cyrus haircut who spoke like a he was reading straight off of a wikipedia page. Amity didn't know what to make of the man, but something about him had her narrowing her eyes at him, trying to get a read on him every time he spoke.
When she woke up, the group had spread out through the train car a bit. The rising heat making them hesitant to be scrunched up near one another though that didn't stop Amity.
She sat just next to Maggie, leaning back against the side of the train car with her feet laid out straight in front of her.
The rest of the group was spread around but within earshot as Amity explained her time on her own, ghosting over the finer details of the attack in the garage though the look on Maggie's face said that they would talk about it later.
When she got to the part about Bandit saving her, she all but beamed over at the Marine who was still on his feet and leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the train car from her.
Maggie looked at the man as well, her expression less open than Amity's but after a second she nodded her head at the man, offering a silent thanks for helping out her best friend. Bandit only hesitated a moment before nodding back.
Maggie took it upon herself to recount her journey with Merle, Sasha, and Bob. As she spun her tale up until the point where they had ran into Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene, Merle took to interjecting at random points and Amity could barely keep the smile off her face as he did so.
She would be lying if she said she hadn't missed the crude man.
After Glenn told his story, Amity looked towards Abraham expectantly.
"You need something, Red?" The man asked her and Amity raised a brow at him.
"Your story, Red. I want to hear it." Amity told him in return, smirking as she was finally able to turn the nickname that so many used for her back onto someone for once.
Her reply had an amused snort coming from Merle, the man looking over at Abraham in a way that made it obvious to Amity that they did not get along.
"Yeah, Sarge, you go on and tell Miss Amity here about your big ole mission." Merle drawled out, sitting forward as if he was settling in to watch a show. Amity looked at him with a bit of confusion, but Merle met her eyes steadily.
"Oh, wait. Ya ain't no Miss though, are ya, sugar?" Merle asked her, seeming to correct himself but Amity still wasn't following. "Nah, she's Doctor Amity Walker. So I'm sure you'd rather talk to her, huh, Camero Cut?"
Amity's attention was redirected to Eugene then and she noted a flash of something behind his eyes- unease, maybe nervousness? She knew that it was a common effect Merle had on people, but she would have thought the man would be used to him at that point.
"Okay, I'm lost." Amity told the train car, trying to clear the air and get back on track.
"We're on a mission to get Eugene to Washington, D.C.." Abraham announced, puffing his chest out a bit while Amity looked at him like he lost his marbles.
What in the hell could be in D.C. that would make it worth tromping all of the way up there?
"Eugene's a scientist. He knows what caused this whole thing." Rosita supplied, obviously trying to be more helpful than her companion.
It didn't really help anything though as Amity could scarcely believe what she was hearing. She turned her eyes to Bandit, catching his look of utter disbelief as well before he seemed to really look at her for a moment and shrug.
The way he saw it, she was living proof that a cause could be known and a cure could be created.
Their silent exchange wasn't missed by anyone in the train car.
"You know or you think you know?" Amity asked Eugene, moving to rise to her feet and taking ahold of Bandit's offered hand of assistance.
Once she had her boots under her once again, the woman stalked closer to Eugene, ignoring the way Abraham sidled up next to him as if he would need to intervene.
The man didn't intimidate her for a second.
"Because there is a hell of a difference between the two." She informed him.
"He'd been talking to the muckety-mucks in Washington on his satellite phone. The past couple weeks, nobody's been picking up on the other end." Abraham informed her, but Amity didn't spare the ginger man a glance.
She kept her eyes trained on Eugene.
"The CDC didn't know, but you do?" Amity asked him, scanning his face. "Then let's hear it."
"It's classified." Eugene replied and Amity heard Merle snort derisively once more as Bandit scoffed.
"That's all the fucker says. 'It's classified.' Ain't nothin' us simple folk can wrap our heads around apparently." Merle called out from where he was sat, giving Eugene a dirty look.
It was obvious that Merle wasn't buying the guy's story for a hot minute.
"Nothing is classified anymore, or have you forgotten the dead people walking around outside?" Bandit asked hotly.
"Listen, fucknut, Eugene's got the answers while you don't have two brain cells to rub together to keep you warm at night-" Abraham began but Bandit cut him off.
"Oh, so the ground pounder's got lip, huh? I suggest you tuck it the fuck away, Sergeant." Bandit snapped in a tone that Amity had never heard him use before, but from the look on Abraham's face, it was a kind of language they both spoke. Even Merle was looking at the man with renewed interest.
"Jarhead." Abraham replied simply, eyeing Bandit who crossed thick arms over his broad chest. "Should have known from the name."
"Bandit was a Major General in the Marines." Amity supplied as an explaination with a wave towards her traveling companion, watching as Abraham suddenly looked torn. It was the end of the world, but the ginger man still proclaimed his title and respected his years of service, with that came the struggle of trying to drop his training.
"I'm assuming you outrank him?" Amity asked her friend who chuckled at her question, still amused with Amity's lack of knowledge involving the military.
"Outranks near everyone, Red." Merle chimed in, making the woman shoot Bandit a look that clearly said they would discuss that slight of information soon enough.
"Moving past that-" Amity began, waving off both Abraham and Bandit as she redirected her attention to Eugene. "-You can't just make claims like that without backing them up. I spoke to a doctor at the CDC, I saw the brain scans of an infected. I studied those scans for months, and you just have all of the answers, but it's classified?"
"That it is, m'am. I am sure that they will appreciate your work at the capitol but it is unnecessary for you to continue any longer." Eugene told her and Amity was sure that she looked murderous at that point.
"Unnecessary!?" She yelled, about to say more but the sound of footsteps on the top of the container had them all freezing.
"Sounds like someone is getting worked up in there." Gareth's voice called from outside, making Amity's temper spike that much more.
"Motherfu-" Amity began, but Gareth cut her off.
"Put your backs to the wall on either side of the train car now!" He demanded and after exchanging looks, they all complied.
"Amity, put your hands on your head and move towards the door you came in through. I want to take a little walk." He added.
The redhead found herself unable to move, not that she wanted to, and she looked first at Maggie and Glenn before turning her eyes on Merle and finally Bandit.
"Don't move, Bambi." Bandit told her, his voice low as he almost silently crossed the trailer to her, his body tense and defensive as he put himself between her and the door.
"Do I have to remind you about what happens if you don't listen, Die Hard?" Gareth called out, as if the man knew what Bandit had done. "I brought you to your friends just like I said I would, Amity. The least you could do is take a walk with me."
Swallowing hard, Amity steeled her nerves before she placed a small hand against Bandit's chest, pushing against the man in a request for him to move back.
"No, you're not-" Bandit started but Amity shook her head at him, pushing harder until he complied and she was crossing the rail car towards the door.
She heard Maggie let out a distressed whimper from behind her and looked over her shoulder to give her friend a reassuring smile.
"I'll be back in a bit." She told them, looking to Merle as the man grumbled angrily.
"I'll gut every last one of 'em if ya ain't, princess." He told her, his words as touching as they could be when practically growled at her.
Amity gave the man a nod before the door to the train car was being pulled open.
She squinted against the abrupt sunlight before she took a step out.
They were well into dusk by the time the group around him began to slow and Joe began muttering to himself.
"I was damn sure that we were gonna catch up to the son of a bitch today." He lamented, sounding displeased but Daryl didn't comment on anything he was on about.
The two men were lingering near the back end of the group like they usually did and Daryl was more than ready to turn in for the night. He planned on slipping away soon enough and needed some good rest before doing so.
He was just about to suggest stopping when suddenly Tony hissed from ahead of them.
"There's a light." He informed them all, the group dropping into low crouches immediately as they stalked up towards the road.
Daryl could faintly spot two figures against the light, a large shadow nearby making up the shape of a vehicle.
He hung back as Joe continued to creep forward and had a whispered conversation with Tony.
"We're movin' in, boys!" Joe informed them all with a dark smile. "The reckonin' has arrived."
As a unit, the group moved silently forward and up the slope towards the people. Daryl found himself circling around the back of the car, hanging on the edges as Joe drew his gun and went directly for the pair with Tony at his side.
It didn't take long for Daryl to realize that he wanted no part of any of it, but something was keeping him lingering.
The hunter had relied on his gut for years and even more so once the world went to hell. It never led him astray before and he didn't think it was going to start now.
With that in mind, the hunter crept closer in time to hear Joe's small speech.
"Today is a day of reckoning, sir. Restitution. A balancing of the whole damn universe." Joe announced to the man at the end of his gun.
Daryl pushed closer.
"Shit, and I was thinking of turning in for the night on New Year's Eve!" Joe said, shaking his head as he laughed. "Now who's gonna count down the ball dropper with me, huh? Nine Mississippi."
Daryl noted the familiar figure that the man and woman cut against the darkness.
"Eight Mississippi."
Daryl felt his stomach drop to his feet at the same time his heart leapt into his throat.
"Joe!" He called out, moving quickly forward now and confirming that the pair in front of him really were who he had thought they were.
He had found Rick and Michonne.
They weren't all dead.
"Hold up." He choked out.
"You're stopping me on eight, Daryl." Joe told him, his voice a warning.
"Just hold up." The hunter insisted, trying to keep the plea out of his voice.
Weakness wouldn't fly with the men he had been rolling with.
"This is the guy that killed Lou, so we got nothing to talk about." Tony growled out, but Joe shook his head.
"The thing about nowadays is we got nothing but time." The leader reasoned. "Say your piece, Daryl."
Swallowing hard, the hunter ran over anything and everything that he could say to convince Joe to let his friends go. Again, he found himself wishing for Amity's skill with people, for her silver tongue.
"These people, you're gonna let 'em go." Daryl said slowly. "These are good people."
"Now, I think Lou would disagree with you on that." Joe said, and the man knew that his words hadn't done the trick. "I'll, of course, have to speak for him and all 'cause your friend here strangled him in a bathroom."
Desperation rose inside of Daryl and he quickly pressed on.
"You want blood, I get it." He said, laying down his crossbow against the asphalt. "Take it from me, man. Come on."
"This man killed our friend." Joe said slowly, looking at Daryl as if he had just kicked his cat. "You say he's good people. See, now that right there is a lie. It's a lie!" He snapped and it was the other boot dropping.
A blow from behind his Daryl before he even had a chance to consider defending himself.
"No!" Rick called out, seeing the men converge on his friend.
"Teach him, fellas." Joe encouraged. "Teach him all the way."
Daryl struggled against the men around him, taking blow after blow before he was being slammed up against a car. He could faintly make out the sound of a small voice, Carl, and swung back against his attackers but a hit to his head had his ears ringing.
He tried to shove himself away from the men, spotting Carl on the ground and the large fucker that was a part of the Claimers stalking towards him.
"No-" Daryl tried put a foot being planted into his ribcage had him biting off his protest, his body going into pure survival mode as he attempted to drag himself away now that he was on the ground, but he was being yanked up a second later.
All at once, the beating seemed to fall back and Daryl found himself with his back against the car, a wet gurgling sound reaching his ears and he turned just in time to see Joe fall to the ground with his throat tore out.
Michonne acted a second before he did, shooting her captor in the head with his own gun as Daryl pushed one of his attackers away. The woman blew a shot through that man's head as well before turning to the guy who held Carl captive a blade to his throat.
Daryl's focus for the moment was on the other man who had been beating him. He sent him to the ground with a heavy blow to the face, kicking him for good measure once he was there before slamming the heel of his boot into his temple.
He wouldn't be coming back.
Daryl stumbled back to the car, leaning heavily against the hood as his vision spun the world around him. He breathed heavily, trying to take note of the situation and found that Carl was safely tucked into Michonne's arms, both of their eyes on Rick.
The hunter found his friend and watched as he dug the knife he held into the shoulder of the man who had been trying to force himself on his son. He spat out blood as he watched him do it again, and again, and again.
The guy was all but dead, and yet Daryl didn't care to tell Rick to stop.
"So, what happened to your face?" Gareth asked as they walked along, his fingers threaded through Amity's once more after the man greeted her with a casual threat to her friends if she didn't do as he directed.
His power trip was something that she ached to ruin.
"That's rather rude to ask someone, don't you think?" Amity replied, her tone clipped as she wanted nothing more than to be anywhere but in conversation with the man at her side.
Shrugging his shoulders, Gareth's eye searched the redhead's expression.
Understanding that he was still waiting for an answer, Amity sighed softly to herself before speaking.
"I got cut by a board. It was an accident." She told him.
"Before or after the Outbreak?" He asked in return.
"After."
"By one of your group members?" He questioned further.
"He died a long time ago." Amity said, her voice quiet.
"Good." Gareth stated simply.
His reply had her teeth clenching together, her jaw twitching under the force of it as she tried to hold it together.
Shane's passing had maybe been for the best in the end, but it wasn't something she saw as good at all. He was her friend even as he began to lose himself, and he meant a lot to Rick and Carl.
"Is there a reason you wanted me out here?" Amity asked, losing her patience with the man's silence.
"Can I not just take pleasure in your presence?" Gareth wondered and Amity scoffed in return.
Shaking his head a bit at her attitude, Gareth led the woman along towards one of the big buildings.
"There actually is a reason, yes." He told her, pushing open the door and pulling her into a large dark room.
The space was lit only by the glow of the numerous candles that were spread throughout the room. She took in the names on the floor, the flowers and pictures and other memorials laying about.
"We used to help people." Gareth said, speaking softly but still his voice echoed hauntingly throughout the large room. "We saved people, but things changed. People came in and..."
After trailing off, the young man's eyes seemed to ghost over each and every name painted near the center of the room. "...After that things changed. We couldn't afford to be soft anymore. We couldn't afford to be weak."
Turning his gaze to Amity, who was frozen by his side, the man pulled their clasped hands to his chest and though she could feel the rhythm of his heart against her knuckles, she wasn't certain that it was anything more than an organ to him.
"I know that you've been through a lot out there. I can see it in your eyes, in your scars, but.. you don't know what it is to be hungry." Gareth told her, his words making Amity's stomach violently turn over.
Bile rose in her throat at the thought of what he was trying to sell her on.
"You know bears, when they start to starve, they eat their young. If the bear dies, the cub dies anyway. But if the bear lives, it can always have another cub." Gareth said, his tone persuasive and his words informative, but Amity wasn't sure what kind of person he took her for.
He had first told her that her friends were dead and cooked, threw her in a train car, and though they were alive, he now expected her to be on board with his twisted lifestyle.
Fuck that.
"It's a choice, Amity. You can join us or you can feed us." He finished and the woman stood quietly for a moment, simply looking at him before wrenching her hand from his and bolting towards one of the doors.
Gareth didn't seem concerned with her fleeing though and followed along at a more leisurely pace until the woman found herself outside of the same train car she had come from, the one with her family inside of it.
"Is that what you want, Amity? To give up and become food?" Gareth called out as he strolled into the yard, watching the woman take in the area with wide calculating eyes as she tried to formulate some kind of plan.
"I'm offering you a chance. A chance to survive!" He said, stopping only a few paces away from her.
Spinning on her heel to face them, fury being the main emotion that she felt welling up in her chest, her blue eyes blazing with it, Amity sneered at the man.
"There's more to life than just survival." She told him, her chest clenching.
The man regarded her for a moment before shaking his head slowly, a frown in place on his lips as he looked at her.
"I thought you were smarter than that." He said, his voice holding regret.
It was only seconds later that the woman found herself being dragged towards the train car again, the men surrounding it warning her friends inside to stay back as the door was pulled open and she was shoved inside, a pair of strong arms catching her as she stumbled.
"Welcome back." Bandit said, steadying her as the door screeched shut once more.
"Sounds like ya had a hell of time with Hannibal out there." Merle commented, pulling a heavy sigh from the woman.
It took a while for Daryl's head to stop spinning enough that he could be useful, and as the sun rose in the sky, the hunter made quick work of dragging the corpses of the Claimers into the tree line where Carl wouldn't have to see them before grabbing a bottle of water from Tony's pack and heading over to Rick who was sat down on the road, leaning against the side of the car.
Inside the vehicle was Michonne and Carl, the two taking refuge there and the hunter hoped that they were getting some rest after the shit that went down that night.
Stopping near Rick, Daryl pulled the cloth he kept out of his back pocket and poured some water onto it.
"We should save it to drink." Rick told him but Daryl shook his head, offering out the damp rag to his friend.
"You can't see yourself, he can." He informed the former sheriff.
To Daryl, the man looked like the survivor he was through and through, and to him, that was nothing to be ashamed of.
Looking at the man through the eyes of his son, or even the eyes of himself at Carl's age, he knew that he would have seen something different.
"I didn't know what they were." Daryl said softly, placing his crossbow against the vehicle before sitting down next to Rick as he wiped his face.
He felt the need to explain himself to the other man, to make him understand that he was still someone he could trust.
"How'd you wind up with them?" Rick asked.
"I was with Beth. We got out together. I was with her for a while." Daryl explained, holding back the emotion that threatened to choke up his words.
A heavy silence fell between them for a long while until Rick spoke again.
"Is she dead?" He wondered.
"She's just... gone." Daryl replied, and Rick nodded.
The leader may not have fully understood the details of what had happened, but he understood about people just being gone.
Everyone from the prison was just gone.
Everyone but them.
"After that, that's when they found me." Daryl continued to explain. "I mean, I knew they were bad, but they had a code. It was simple. Stupid, but it was somethin'. It was enough."
"And you were alone." Rick stated.
Daryl considered that for a moment, his tongue darting out to wet his lips before he pressed on with his story.
"They said they were looking for some guy." He said. "Last night they said they spotted him. I was hanging back and I was gonna leave... but I stayed. That's when I saw it was you three. Right when you saw me."
Daryl took a deep breath, trying to steady himself amongst the guilt and disgust he felt.
"I didn't know what they could do." He admitted.
"It's not on you, Daryl." Rick said, watching the hole that his friend was digging in his mind.
"Hey." He said firmly, gaining the hunter's attention. "It's not on you."
Daryl heard his words, comprehended them, but they didn't lessen the guilt in his chest over what had happened.
He could have stopped them- it was just another situation he fell flat in.
"You being back with us here, now, that's everything." Rick told him, pulling him out of his mind once again. "You're my brother."
That statement had the hunter pausing, his sharp eyes searching the face of the man next to him as if hunting for any discrepancy, any hint of a lie. He didn't want Rick to be talking just to try to make him feel better because he was a good man, but as he met his gaze, he knew that Rick had meant what he said.
That was everything to Daryl.
Leaning his head back against the car, Daryl let the words of trust, of reliance, sink into him before he was looking back at his friend, his brother, once more.
"Hey, what ya did last night..." He began, regaining Rick's attention. "Anybody woulda done that."
"No, not that." Rick protested with a shake of his head.
"Somethin' happened. That ain't you." Daryl told him.
"Daryl, you saw what I did to Tyreese." Rick reasoned. "It ain't all of it, but that's me. That's why I'm here now. That's why Carl is. I want to keep him safe, that's all that matters."
Now back in the relative safety of the train car, and most importantly, away from Gareth, Amity found herself sitting on the floor of the trailer once again.
This time it was Bandit who was sat close to her side, his hands reaching for her arm so that he could go about inspecting the bandages that encased her wrists.
She noticed the way that her friends eyed the dirty gauze with varying emotions; some concern, some sadness, and in the case of Merle Dixon- anger.
Amity knew the eldest Dixon well enough to know when he was pissed off and she was sure that at the root of it all, it was the helplessness of the situation they were in that was causing it.
"Ya know my baby brother ain't gonna take to kindly to you touchin' his woman like that." Merle drawled out towards Bandit, the Marine's hands stilling where they had enfolded Amity's now bruised knuckles between them.
He looked up at the redhead before over to the crude redneck, his face holding nothing but indifference as he observed him.
"Knock it off, Dixon." Amity sighed with a roll of her eyes.
It wasn't like that between her and Bandit, especially not on her end.
Her hunter was out there somewhere, she just had to get out of the damn train car in order to find him.
"I know ya ain't tryin' to step out, Red. If ya think I'm gonna sit over here while my brother's woman-" Merle began but Amity cut him off with a huff.
"While your brother's woman does what, Merle? What am I doing that is oh so damn upsetting to you?" Amity snapped, her sudden temper spike surprising the newcomers to their group while the older members simply watched the fireworks.
"Damn jarhead is-"
"What? Helping me with my bandages? Helping to make sure the wounds I got thanks to a group of sick fucks don't get infected after he risked his life to save me from them? Is that what he's doing, Dixon?" Amity spat, Merle's ire rising to meet her's.
From the start Amity and Merle had challenged one another and seemed to take pleasure in doing so, but put the two in a hot metal box when they are both already riled up and you could expect nothing less than an explosion.
"If Daryl was here-" Merle tried again.
"Daryl's not here, Merle, or haven't you noticed? Because I sure the hell have!" The woman said, her voice suddenly lacking its previous heat as her words got caught in her throat.
Up until that point, Amity had done a fairly good job at keeping her mind in the positives despite what she had gone through. She focused on the fact that she would find people from the prison. That there would be survivors.
In that moment though, the negatives kept piling up.
The loneliness she had felt, the fear and helplessness in the garage, the wariness then sudden relief of Bandit's appearence, the hope that came at the sight of Maggie's sign to Glenn.
Then there came the wariness of Terminus, the anger when they thought they were hiding her friends from her, then the anguish when she thought they were dead. That was followed by the quick relief of finding them alive, but being trapped in a box, and to top it all off, Michael and Daryl were nowhere to be found and Merle Dixon was being an asshole.
A tense silence had fallen over the train car after Amity's last statement.
The woman kept her blue eyes focused on Bandit's hands as the man continued to fiddle with her bandages before gently rubbing the pad of his thumb over her bruised knuckles, pulling her eyes up to his where he offered her a reassuring nod.
"We need to get the hell out of here." Abraham muttered after a few long moments, breaking the silence as everyone voiced various agreements.
"We need to figure out how." Bandit added, his dark eyes roving over the group in front of him.
"All I know is that we're going to have to be prepared to fight." Amity said, her voice soft as she leaned back against the metal wall of the car, a sigh leaving her lips.
She was always ready for a fight.