AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
Much, much more to come. I'm so glad that some of you seem to be enjoying it so far! I know that I am and I'm excited about all that's to come!
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"So you've just been following us?" Michonne asked from her spot, leaned against the wall of the living room in the house that they'd chosen for everyone to share for the night. Daryl hadn't known what to do with Aaron, but he'd also known that a decision like this was one that he couldn't make on his own. He was going to have to let everyone in the group speak to the man—and he was going to have to let everyone weigh in with their opinions. That's the way they did things.
And Aaron seemed to already understand that.
"For a while," Aaron said. "Off and on. You're not that difficult to track. We've been camping at night, close by, and moving out in the morning to find you again."
"We?" Carol asked.
She was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, so that her knee bumped Daryl's leg every time she shifted—and she was shifting a good deal. He'd have suggested she might have to go take a piss with all the wiggling about she was doing, but a lot of the others were doing the same thing and he assumed that it was, more than likely, a way to spend some nervous energy and excitement.
"My partner and I," Aaron said. "He stays a bit farther away than I do until it's time to retire for the night. It's sort of—when we go on excursions like this to look for supplies and possible new people? It's sort of an escape plan."
"Escape plan? Why would you need an escape plan?" Melodye asked from where she was sitting. "You're the one following us. We're not pursuing you at all."
Aaron looked a little nervous, but Daryl didn't figure there was any need to read into it. He got the feeling that the man wasn't nervous because he was hiding a single damn thing—rather, he was nervous because he was surrounded. He was grossly outnumbered—partner hiding just out of sight or not.
And after Eugene? Daryl figured he had a pretty good grasp on what someone was like when they were being shifty because they were full of shit. This guy? He seemed pretty much on the up and up—or he was one hell of an actor.
"I'm following you, you're right," Aaron said. "But that doesn't mean that, if you were to become aware of me, I might not need a way to escape quickly. It's also a type of insurance. We've come across more groups than you probably want to imagine. We don't invite all of them back to Alexandria. Some of them? Some of them I need to escape from long before they even know I'm there."
"People of all types in the world," Merle mused.
"People of all types," Aaron said. "But now? They've got even less control than they once had. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've heard and seen since I took this position."
There was a collective laugh that hummed, here and there, through the group.
"We seen some shit ourselves, Princess," Merle mused.
"This place," Andrea said. "You said it's a town?"
"It's a town," Aaron said, nodding his head. "It's a community? I guess—it's something in between. We're forever working on expanding, and we're forever working on plans for making it bigger and better, but it started out as a neighborhood. Now—we've added to it. That's why it's important that we bring in people—good people—that all have something to contribute."
"What exactly do you think we've got to contribute?" Rick asked. "What do you think you can get from us? You say you've been following this group. I'm sure you've been following us long enough to see that we've got nothing to offer you—so why are you so interested in us."
Aaron chuckled to himself and then shook his head.
"Rick," he said. "Outsider, to some degree. Though I haven't been following long enough to know why. Forever suspicious?"
Rick didn't respond, but it was probably because Daryl, even though he hadn't meant to, snorted.
Aaron cleared his throat.
"Look, I don't have anything to hide. What I'm offering you is a chance to live somewhere that's better than the shuffling about, but you're not required to stay. You want to leave? You leave," Aaron said. "But—I know you've all got survival skills. I know you work together, at least most of the time, and you make a good team. You're problem solvers. And…beyond that? I know that you've got the will to live and you've got a lot of desire to make your lives better. I'm offering you a way to do that while helping other people do the same."
"What do you get out of it, exactly?" Michonne asked. "I think…that's what Rick's trying to ask."
"I get out of it the same thing that everybody does," Aaron said. "I get what you all bring to the community. Everyone there contributes, what they can at least, and everyone reaps the benefit from it."
"And how many barbecues you got?" Merle asked, laughing to himself.
Everyone looked at him, but he didn't look sheepish at all about the question.
Aaron simply looked confused. He stammered for a moment before he spoke clearly enough to offer anything that might be considered a serious answer to a not so serious question.
"We've got—well—quite a few of the houses have barbecue grills, but…we really only have barbecues for special occasions and holidays," Aaron stammered out.
"Holidays—they have holidays," Carol mused, bumping Daryl with her hand as though he might not have heard what the man had said.
He couldn't help but smile to himself.
He thought the decision had been made—at least the preliminary one. The group was going to want to see this place.
For him, that was the ticket. He wanted to see this place. He wanted to check it out with his own eyes before he fell into growing excited about it. He felt like this Aaron fellow was telling the truth, and he felt like this place could possibly be the dream that they were all chasing, but he wanted to see it with his own eyes.
Standing in front of the place? He wanted to know if he was going to keep feeling that way or if he'd get the gut instinct that he should've listened to back at the end of the line…back when they should've known better than to get themselves caught and thrown into train cars.
The only comfort, perhaps, was knowing that his group was larger than it once had been—and that he had a pretty good idea that many of the people with him, though they were tired and road weary, weren't going down without some kind of fight.
It might not be a fight that the other group, if they were looking for one at all, was willing to enter into.
Daryl cleared his throat.
"Anybody got somethin' to say, by all means say it, but I reckon we're interested in seeing this here place you're talking about," Daryl said.
"Alexandria," Aaron said.
"Whatever," Daryl said with some amusement. He didn't give a damn if they wanted to call this place Heaven—the name wasn't what was going to sell him on it. "Wanna see the damn place. Check it out. Then? We'll decide if we stay or if we go."
"If we're really allowed to leave," Michonne said quickly.
Aaron held up a hand as though to stop everyone from speaking for a moment.
"I assure you," he said. "If you come to Alexandria, and you're accepted? You can leave any time you want. But you won't want to leave."
"If we're accepted?" Alice barked. "What the hell do you mean if we're accepted? You just ran our asses down to roll out the red carpet and now you're telling us that there's some kind of test we've gotta pass?"
Daryl shifted his own weight, a little like Carol had been doing before, at the thought of a test.
"What kinda test?" He asked.
"Ain't passin' no damn test," Merle commented. "Hell—didn't pass the damn things when I was in school. Why the fuck I left, too."
Aaron returned to doing the waving that he'd been doing before, requesting silence from everyone.
"It's not a test," he said quickly. "It's more of an—interview. You sit down with the mayor. You just—talk about yourself. Your strengths, your weaknesses, your experiences getting here. You answer a few questions—personal questions, not test questions—about your life and then the council reviews you. It's really more of a formality than anything. Then? If the council decides that you're an asset to the community, that you're not a threat? You're asked to stay."
"So you're dragging us there to find out if we're threats?" Tara piped in. "You're hand picking us out of all these people that you say you've seen to tell us about this place when you think we're threats?"
Aaron shook his head.
"I don't think you're threats," he said. "And it's a formality, like I said. It's for the protection of the community, more than anything, and it makes the members feel better when they're able to review everyone that's coming in. You'll see—once you've been there a while? You'll be reviewing people too. It just gives everyone the feeling that they've got some input on who comes and who stays."
Daryl cleared his throat.
"The feelin' that everybody's got an opinion what matters," he said.
Aaron looked at him and nodded.
"Exactly," he said. "It's a way to let everyone feel included. Everyone has the chance to have their say. Ultimately? I don't think anyone here is a threat. And—unless you're all hiding some kind of really dark secrets or something? I don't imagine anyone here is going to have any problem at the hour of doing the interview. It helps, too, to decide what role is best for everyone within the community—where you'll best fit in and what you most have to contribute."
"And if we don't pass this here test?" Merle asked. "Then what? What the hell you do with the losers?"
Aaron looked at him, shrugged, and then looked around.
"I don't know, really, if I've ever been present when anyone was turned away at the time of the interview," Aaron said. "But—if they were? We wouldn't do anything beyond ask them to leave."
"And put a bullet in they back when they do?" Merle asked.
"Merle…" Andrea said.
Merle looked at her and shook his head.
"You know what the hell happened to people," he said.
Daryl swallowed. That, apparently, had been the practice at Woodbury—let them go to kill them on their way. It wasn't a good deal any way you sliced it, but it certainly wasn't when they were the ones deciding if you stayed or if you went.
"What happens if you get turned out?" Daryl asked.
Aaron shrugged again.
"You go," he said. "We don't kill anyone. That's not how we operate. We certainly wouldn't kill someone because they decided not to stay or we decided they weren't a fit for Alexandria. But—like I said, I've never seen anyone turned away from an interview."
"Yeah," Melodye said. "I have to point out that you keep saying that."
"Well, it's true," Aaron said.
She shook her head.
"I don't doubt that it is," she said. "But the way that you're wording it? It implies that you're acutely aware that it's the truth, but it's only a partial truth. You're wording it that way to avoid the whole truth. So—I have to ask it. If you haven't seen someone turned away at the interview—when have you seen them turned away? Because your tone of voice? Your…eyes? You're implying that you've seen someone turned away."
Aaron sighed.
"In this world? There are all kinds of people. We've had some people there that we've had problems with. Ultimately they were asked to leave Alexandria," Aaron explained. "They left. That's really as much as there is to the story. There's always going to be someone who doesn't quite…work…within a society."
He shook his head at them all, looking around at each of them.
"But we didn't kill them either," he said. "We're not killing anyone. They were asked to leave. They left. They weren't followed and they certainly weren't hunted down. But—as long as you're not out to cause trouble within the society? Then you're not going to be asked to leave. And—I really don't think anyone is going to have any trouble with the interview. The only reason you'd be leaving? Would be if someone here decided to go…and I really don't know why you would want to do that."
Daryl looked around and took in the expressions of those around him.
Everyone looked like they were somewhere in the middle—perhaps made uncomfortable by this test of sorts—but they looked more like they were leaning toward going than not.
Sitting, sandwiched between Carol and Sophia, Daryl glanced at Carol. She nodded her head gently at him, but she didn't voice anything. He looked at Sophia, sighed, and moved his arm enough to slightly elbow her, bobbing her toward the side so that she looked up at him and smiled.
"What the hell ya think?" He asked her.
She smiled a little broader and nodded. Daryl tried to hide the smile that naturally spread across his lips.
"So when do we leave for this here Alexander place?" Daryl asked.
He heard the sound of a few people around him releasing breaths that they'd apparently been holding, waiting for someone—and that someone was more than likely him since it seemed to always fall on him—to make a decision.
"Alexandria," Aaron said.
"Whatever," Daryl responded.
Aaron laughed to himself.
"We can leave now if you want," he said.
"Gettin' dark," Daryl said. "We don't move in the dark. We wait for first light."
Aaron nodded.
"Then—if you'll allow Eric and I to stay the night? Among friends? We'll leave at first light," Aaron responded.
