Chapter 52: The Cell

It was late, and the house was finally quiet. Andrea and Merle had taken Lydia and Luke for the night, and Henry was sticking close to his dad. He was sleeping on the couch in Carol and Daryl's living room when Daryl came down the stairs to find Negan sitting in the chair by the couch. He was watching his boy sleep, but when he heard Daryl step into the room, he looked up.

"Everything ok up there?" Negan asked.

"Yeah. Baby's sleeping, so Carol's sleeping."

"Good. Congratulations, man. She's beautiful." Daryl nodded his thanks, and looked at Henry.

"How's he doing?"

"Can't tell if he's glad I'm back or mad at me for leaving. Maybe both. I can't blame him." He cleared his throat and rubbed his tired eyes. "Jesus, I feel like I'm gonna crash for a goddamn week. Not exactly sure where I'm sleeping tonight, but…"

"You can stay at Merle's. Think there might be a bed left over there. It's gonna be a damn crowded winter, but at least everybody'll keep warm." Negan chuckled at that. "How the hell did you find them?"

"Still not quite sure myself," Negan admitted. He nodded toward the kitchen, and Daryl followed him. The two men sat down across from each other at the table, and Negan cleared his throat. "After I ran into Andrea and her kid out there on the road, I just kept heading east. I turned back half a dozen times, just wanting to get back to my kid, but I was going out of my fucking mind. I mean, you don't even know the half of it. Second week I was out there alone, I swear I started hallucinating. I was seeing my wife, hearing her voice. Sometimes, I swear I could feel her hand touching mine. I was losing it. You ever see that movie with Tom Hanks. Shit, what was that called? The one with the volleyball. Castaway. Yeah, that one. He named the goddamn thing, and you know, I was walking around with that bat, swinging it, hitting tree trunks and shit, and I just kept hearing the words in my head. Lucille. Lucille. And I remember Lucy teasing me about how I should give it a girl's name." He shook his head and took a deep breath.

"So what kept you going?"

"Henry," Negan admitted. "Every time I felt myself starting to lose my grip on reality, I just thought of him. It was hard at first, because every time I saw him, I wanted to slit my own throat for leaving him like that. But I kept going, and I told myself that I was going to keep going until I knew for sure I could be the kind of dad he needed. He didn't need some worthless, half-cracked asshole going through the motions. He needs a dad. He needs me. So I kept going, and I kept thinking about him and how I was going to find whatever the hell it was I was looking for." Daryl narrowed his eyes at Negan. "Yeah, I know. It sounds crazy. I was crazy. Hell, I was hallucinating my dead wife and having conversations with her. I didn't know what I was doing out there. But I kept going."

"East."

"Yeah. And then I started getting this cough. It was a little tickle in the throat, at first, and then it was this rattling, racking cough that made my bones shake. I fought some old cough syrup about two years expired, and I damn near drank the whole bottle. Blacked out for what was probably two days, and when I woke up, I was sicker than before. But I kept going. And one night, I heard something. This little laugh. And at first I thought I was hallucinating again, but I kept walking. And then I heard another laugh. A different laugh. And I got closer, and then I saw it. Houses lit up behind walls. At first I thought I was home. Here. The gates opened, and somebody stepped out, and the next thing I knew, everything was spinning. I woke up handcuffed to a goddamn hospital bed. I had some makeshift IV that looked like a candy striper set it up, and there was this man sitting at the end of my bed. He had these dark, sunken eyes, like he'd been through some shit. His voice was hoarse when he asked me my name. And then I passed out again. Next time I woke up, I was in some dark little jail cell, laying on a stiff, musty mattress, and I heard this voice. I looked over, and I saw this woman in the cell next to mine. This pale woman with short, patchy hair, like it'd just grown in. Her skin was splotchy like she'd been picking at it. And she was rocking in her cot, just rocking and staring up at the moon. Was the creepiest fucking thing I've ever seen. And she was just singing. Singing this goddamn line over and over again. 'Lydia, oh! Lydia, that encyclopedia. Oh! Lydia, the Queen of Tattoo. On her back is the Battle of Waterloo.' Just over and over and over again."

Daryl sat forward a little in his chair.

"Now I know what you're thinking. I was hallucinating, right? I had just lost what was left of my fucking mind, right?" Negan snorted. "Yeah, well after about the seven hundredth loop, I was ready to bash my own brains against the brick wall. And when sunrise came, that same man that'd been sitting at the end of my bed came in. Him and some guy that looked like Jesus. Funny story. He goes by Jesus." He cleared his throat. "They took me to some room. Some little makeshift church or something. I stood in front of a council of people I'd never seen a day in my goddamned life. And they tell me to tell my story. And the guy from the infirmary is leaning against the wall staring at me like I fucked his mother and made him call me daddy. And they tell me to tell them why they should let me in. And I never asked for that. I just passed out at their gates. All I did was walk up to their gates and pass the fuck out. These people looked weak. Hungry. Beaten down. Like the sky had opened up and taken a giant shit on their parade."

"So what'd you tell them?"

"I just started talking."

"Yeah, you're good at that," Daryl snorted.

"I told them I'd come from a safe zone in Georgia outside of Atlanta. That was my first mistake. See, the prick leaning against the wall comes over and grabs me by the shirt and makes me sit down. Cuffs me to a chair. I figure he's going to blow my brains out or torture me or some shit just for telling the truth. Instead, they let me keep talking. So I told them I'd lost my wife and I've been traveling for weeks just trying to get my head on straight and get my shit together so I could go back and be a dad to my kid. So they keep asking me all kinds of shit about where I came from, so I'm telling them without telling them, you know, because these people seem like the shoot first, ask questions type. But imagine my surprise when I mention your name. Amazing how one five letter word can almost light a room on fire. So this guy, this asshole that cuffed me to a chair comes up and grabs me by the throat, asks me how I know that name. And I think pretty hard about kneeing him in the balls, but I figure he's got the upper hand, so I just said you had a place in Georgia that was safe. He asked some more questions, and I guess I answered right, cause they took the handcuffs back off. Next thing I know, they're taking me back to jail. Before he slams the bars in my face, I ask him his name. He looks at me, he gets real close and then he tells me. Rick Grimes."

Daryl got up from the table then, and he took a few pacing steps before he turned back to Negan.

"Well, my dumbass just lit up with a big 'ole smile and said 'yeah, I know all about you,' which, in retrospect isn't what you wanna say to a guy that looks like he'd rip your throat out with his teeth. So he gets all paranoid, and I'm backtracking, talking about how I know Daryl was with his group originally. I tell him I know about Atlanta, that he's got a kid and a wife. I tell him I know how the group got split up after the farm got overrun. He's looking at me like he's seen a ghost. And then he just turns and walks away." He shook his head. "And the woman in the other cell, she doesn't even look my way. She just stares at the wall, and she just starts singing that goddamn song again."

He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair.

"They kept me in that cell almost a week. They brought me food. They'd bring her food, and she'd pick at it like a bird. And on that last day, she actually looked at me, and she told me she was in Georgia once. Her eyes go wide, and I realize she's crying. And she tells me she was near Atlanta once and asks me if I saw a girl where I was. A little girl that maybe looked like her. A little girl with her eyes." He watched as the color drained from Daryl's face. "She asked about a dog. A german shepherd. Said the little girl would be about five now. Last she saw her was somewhere between here and Birmingham, somewhere not far from Atlanta."

Daryl felt like he'd been punched in the gut. He bowed his head for a moment and he moved to stand behind the chair, keeping his hands on the back rest for support.

"That's when I remember hearing Carol tell Lucy about Lydia. And I think, how on this goddamn earth did I end up in a cell next to this woman? This woman. And I played it off. I told her I didn't see any kids. And she looks, I don't know, relieved. Like she really didn't want to know. And she starts singing that goddamn song again."

"You think that was…"

"I think that was a crazy woman who didn't have any business being around any human beings, let alone a kid."

"What else did she say?"

"Not another thing to me. Not one thing. Rick came and brought me out a few days after that. They let me out on a trial basis, and not long after that, I see a familiar face again. Merle shows up with the lovebirds and Aaron. He looks at me like he's having a stroke, and then Ricky Boy looked like he was gonna have himself his own stroke. Shit, he does not like your brother. But, as we both know, he tends to lack a certain charm that endears people to him right off. I could tell they had a past, and Glenn was trying to smooth things over with Rick, explaining that Carol was about to have a kid and you couldn't come, and so Merle was there to help get things back to where they were before. Rick wasn't having it, but Aaron and Jesus convinced him to let Merle help. And hell, I volunteered. Anything to keep me out of that god forsaken cell." He snorted. "Though I found out all about the crazy woman, how she called herself Alpha. She led her people wearing walker skins to Alexandria's gates, infiltrated the walls and killed some of their people."

Daryl swallowed hard. His tongue felt thick and dry in his mouth, and he tried hard to process all of the information being thrown at him at once. Rick, Alexandria, the woman who very well may have been Lydia's mother. But surely that wasn't her. It was a big world out there, albeit smaller in population, but surely it wasn't the same woman. Still, Daryl couldn't shake the feeling that Lydia's mother was this awful, evil woman that had led her people to kill Carl and Maggie and many others.

"Where is she?" Daryl asked. "The woman. What happened to her?"

"Well, wasn't long after Merle came that a few rogue Whisperers showed up. They got over the walls in the dead of night, and they just started fucking slaughtering people. Now, you'll have to ask your brother about the rest with the woman in the cell. All I know is what he told me, and that's that her people came for her. Oh, but they weren't there to save her. They were there to kill her. Well, in all the chaos with bodies out in the street, Merle sees the basement door of Rick's house just wide open. He shows up just as these freaks are about to off Alpha, and he kills 'em. Rick comes out, all covered in blood from the fight outside, and I guess him and Merle were going to take her someplace else. The whole fucking house was in flames, and the smoke was starting to pour in. They got her out of the jail and were just about to cuff her when a couple of the walkers came stumbling in. See, the folks these skin freaks killed were starting to reanimate. The way Merle tells it? She didn't even put up a fight when one of those things sunk its teeth into her neck. She just closed her eyes and started humming that goddamn song." He looked to Daryl. "Now all I know is that was one scary woman, and Lydia is lucky as hell the two of you found her. Whatever the truth is, Lydia's a great kid. I just thought maybe you should know."

"Thanks for telling me. I, uh, I don't really know how to take all of this."

"A lot of bad shit went down. A lot. Alexandria was a total loss. Everybody grabbed what they could and got the hell outta there. Merle and me decided we'd bring 'em back here. We're gonna have some expanding to do, but at least everybody's in one spot." He looked toward the living room. "Think he'll forgive me for leaving?"

"You're his dad. And you're here now. That's what's gonna matter to him when it counts."

"Thank you. I owe you and Carol everything. It was a shitty thing to do, leaving like that, just dropping him on you guys like that."

"Henry's a good kid. He's part of the family. So are you."

"Means a lot to hear you say that, Daryl." Both men headed for the living room again, and Negan leaned down to pick his sleeping son up off the couch. "You've got a lot of people eager to see you, you know?"

"How is he?" Daryl asked. "Rick."

"I didn't know the man before all this. I mean, I didn't have much of a chance to get to know him except for these past few weeks on the road. The man's tired. He's lost almost everything. Some things you don't come back from. Losing Lucy nearly killed me. I came back though. I'm glad I came back."

"Go get some sleep."

"Yeah, you too, if she'll let you," Negan chuckled. Henry yawned in his sleep and curled his arms around his dad's neck. Negan reached out, and he and Daryl clasped hands. "Congratulations, brother."