fandomismylife That's a great idea! I'll have to see where the delayed final episode goes. I might have to start splitting pov's between Oliver and Enid and maybe even Carol to be honest. Thank you for the help! Means a lot.

Dampish Ahh, thank you so much!

Thank you so much, fandomismylife, for proofreading this chapter!

This was it. They were crossing Alpha's border to reach the thing that had fallen. Just like in the snowstorm, they were left with no choice. Only instead of the cold being a threat to them it was the fire. If they didn't stop the spread their hunting grounds would be ruined and Oceanside wouldn't stand a chance. But they knew, too, that if the Whisperers caught them in their land it would mean war.

A crushed satellite was sitting in the worst of the flames. They started on the outside and pushed in. Some groups cranked water hose rigs, others dug trenches, while some more buried flames under sand.

Oliver barely dug for fifteen minutes before breathing became so difficult that Carol was forced to haul him away through the smouldering trees. He was coughing and wheezing and puffing on his inhaler with no relief. He barely made it out of the smoke before he collapsed. He didn't know for how long he was unconscious but when he awoke night had fallen. His head felt split into pieces. He was squashed inside an Oceanside carriage that was otherwise filled with sand, barrels of water, shovels, and buckets. He sat up carefully and saw more carriages hitched along the road in a row. Alpha's piked boarder was lined before them. Through it, and through the misty woods, Oliver could see a faint orange glow from far away, and hear distant yelling voices.

He cursed under his breath, then coughed violently.

Thurídur, standing outside the carriage on watch with a speargun over her shoulder, turned to face him with a surprised frown knitting her brows together. "How are you feeling, Olifer?" she asked sternly. "You want inhaler, nei?"

He found it hard to speak so he nodded and fished around inside his pockets. His inhaler was gone. "I must've— must've dropped it."

"Ah," Thurídur said, and held up a finger while she reached into her fanny-pack with her other hand. "You use mine, okay?"

"Sure. Thank you."

"Oh, já. No problem."

Oliver took a long slow breath of Ventolin. When he tried to hand it back to Thurídur she shook her head and pushed it towards his chest.

"You keep, for now," she said. "I am feeling fine without so long as I stay here, away from flame and smoke. I keep lookout. I get supplies, fill up water tanks, and I keep you öndun!"

Oliver cleared his throat and asked croakily, "Öndun?"

"Mmm, means, eh... breath, in lungs."

He pocketed the inhaler gratefully. "I didn't know you had asthma, too."

She nodded earnestly. "No-one does because of our good sea air. Saltvatn — keeping nose, throat, lungs... free. I grow strong lungs now. Not weak like when small. It is why I fish. It is why I elska ocean!"

Oliver smiled. "I, err... like it, too."

She nodded to him like she knew this and then she turned away to survey along the border. Every now and again a singed squirrel or racoon would scurry out and across the road towards safety, leaving a small trail of ash in its wake. Someone yelled something very far away and the carrying noise of a creaking tree could be heard.

"It doesn't sound good in there," Oliver said, his mouth dry.

Thurídur shook her head slowly. "Not good. Fire is spreading."

"What can we do?"

"Stay here. Fill buckets. Not slow them down."

Oliver sighed like a child being told off.

"It will be a long wait, Olifer," Thurídur said gravely. "Better focus on öndun. Later, worry about other things."

Oliver and Thurídur kept watch together all night. They filled water caskets whenever someone came running with an empty barrel and they replaced broken shovels and they shovelled sand into empty buckets. A steady staggering of walkers came along all night and to the morning, attracted by the light from the flames. Oliver and Thurídur kept quiet and quick enough to take out as many as they could while radioing in to everyone inside the border so that they would be ready to deal with the rest. Finally, when the sun was high over their heads, the fire was out and groups began returning, coated in ash and dirt, to take their carriages and equipment with them as they headed on back to their respective communities. The final convoy consisting of Michonne, Eugene, Yumiko, Luke, Enid, and Magna returned carting wheelbarrows full of what Oliver eventually realised was satellite parts with them.

"Is that safe?" Oliver asked. "Like, won't it be all radiated or something?"

"Don't worry, man," Luke said. He had a new mace. Its head resembled two large metal gears fitted together. He rested it over one shoulder and shrugged. "Eugene says we're not getting superpowers today."

Oliver felt himself smiling in spite of himself. He helped them load up the last carriage. When they were done he handed Thurídur back her inhaler and she patted his shoulder firmly enough that his knees buckled.

"This will earn us kudos, eh?" Thurídur asked Michonne. "Putting out fire — good for Alpha's people, too. Eh?"

"We did good for our people," Michonne said sourly. "That's enough for me."

Thurídur gave a relenting shrug. "Já, frú."

"Wait," Oliver said, "where are Carol and Daryl?"

Just as he asked this the pair of them came rushing towards the boarder. They crossed, checking over their shoulders, out of breath, and bent into their knees. Daryl could hardly catch his breath but finally after a large inhale he grunted out, "Alpha saw us. She knows."

Alexandria was where everyone would be safest in anticipation of Alpha's retaliation. Although they'd heard nothing from the Whisperers in person after their trespass they still suspected it was by Alpha's command that the waves came. Clusters of walkers arrived the next afternoon. The sound of people yelling woke Oliver up from his exhaustion lie-in. It woke most of Alexandria up by the looks of it when he and everyone who'd fought the fires the night before came stumbling bleary-eyed from their houses half-dressed out of their sleepwear.

After two more days the clusters had not yet stopped. Wave after wave and more incoming waves being tracked by lookouts from miles away, with only small gaps of rest in between. Oceanside and Hilltop were on lock-down, too, but so far neither had been hit according to Cyndie and Ezekiel over the radios so they decided to send their remaining soldiers to help at Alexandria. Everyone stuck to their training and worked hard in defending the place.

"There's more coming!"

By the third morning Oliver, filthy and exhausted, had barely sat down in the grass by the gate for a minute, his head cradled in his arms after almost no sleep, when he jumped up an instant later when the incoming cluster was spotted coming along the driveway. Running on fumes he took his place at the gate again, combat knife wielded. As the walkers impaled themselves on the spikes he and the others picked them off until they were all dead. Oliver was so tired he had to gulp down vomit. They got to removing the bodies from the spikes and leaving them out of the way, ready for the next wave, long since abandoning any hope of sleep. A belief reinforced further when Eugene alerted them all that another cluster was expected to arrive in under an hour. It looked like another night at the gate and Oliver felt like both a solid man and a liquid one — strong enough to pierce a skull but so weak that with one push, emotional or physical, he might shatter.

"Hey, heads up!"

A walker was approaching alone. Oliver saw the different skin texture between the face and the body and immediately drew his knife. The Whisperer wore a dirty, purple, flannel shirt. She stopped before the gate spikes, a bored lilt to her posture.

"The north border," she said, "now."

"Call off your walkers," Michonne ordered.

"Not us."

"Yeah, right?" Daryl growled.

"Not us..." She looked at Michonne and said again, "Go to the border, lay down your weapons, and wait."

"Wait for what?"

"Her..."

The Alexandria council announced a community meeting. While some people were left on watch for the next wave Oliver joined everyone else in the loud and crowded mess hall. Quan, who had arrived with the volunteer convoys to help with the waves, caught eyes with him as he crossed the room, then smiled this tiny bit, almost consolingly. Oliver looked away, frowning at the table in front of himself. He was suddenly overcome by the sensation to kick the chair opposite but he didn't because Carol was sitting in it. He peeked up to watch Quan sit next to Brandon a few rows of seats ahead, to Oliver's relief. Brandon shot leering looks across the room because Oliver was stupid enough to get caught glaring at them. He tried not to lament over this, which was easier when Enid slumped into the seat beside him. She looked to be in a foul mood, though, so Oliver decided it was best not to try to speak to her.

Fighting against their fatigue, he, Carol, and Enid tried to concentrate on the meeting, which was about to begin. People were arguing over one another while Michonne tried to settle them. Oliver waited for the noise to stop. He felt heavy now that he had more than a moment to sit down. It was all he had to resist falling asleep. Finally Michonne had had enough and let out a loud shout as she banged her fists against the table. Oliver, dozing off, almost jumped out of his chair. The crowd fell silent.

Michonne turned to Lydia. "Is this your mother?"

"No. I don't think it is."

"Why does she want to talk with us?" Daryl asked, standing at a pillar beside her.

"You crossed into her land," Lydia answered shyly. "Again. You have to answer for that."

"We don't have to do anything," Aaron said. "We could just not go."

"That's a bad idea."

"We're already under attack," Enid said.

People in the hall shouted their agreement.

"It isn't her," Lydia insisted. "If she wanted you dead she'd send the horde. All of it, not just a few waves at a time."

"Maybe she's trying to wear us down first," Carol suggested.

Eugene began suggesting that it might be the satellite and fire that's drawing the dead but a Highwayman, a woman named Margo, cut him off — "I don't want to hear about the damn satellite anymore, Eugene! My friends died trying to save yours and ended up with their heads on spikes."

Before thinking Oliver was yelling at her. "Nobody asked you to help us in the first place! You came to the Kingdom. It was your choice to stick your noses into all of this! If you want to try blaming anybody but yourself for that then vaffanculo!"

Margo glowered at him and a small argument broke out between the Highwaymen and those either defending what Oliver had said or apologising on his behalf. Through it all Oliver heard one Highwayman tell Michonne, "All I want to hear from you is that you're gonna take a dozen of us to meet these freaks at the border and that we're gonna take that lead bitch's head off!"

"We cut it off!" Alfredo, another Highwayman, shouted.

"And then we'll put their heads on spikes!" Gage yelled.

Oliver glared ahead of himself.

"So," Michonne said to them, "what's your plan for taking them out?"

None answered.

"Oh," she added, "that wasn't rhetorical..."

"We don't have one," a Highwayman said.

"Does anybody?" Michonne asked. "If she still plans on sending her horde, that's it!"

"It might not even be real," someone said.

"It is," Lydia said gravely. "I've seen it."

Michonne sighed. "Right now, all she wants to do is talk. And we are going to listen. Now, while we are doing that, everyone here needs to focus on the two clusters coming in from the north and the south."

"What clusters?"

"The north one is the one coming next, it's dense, but we can take it. The south one is more dispersed, and further away, so we'll need some volunteers to go out and put it down before it gets here," Michonne explained.

Displeased murmurs were heard throughout.

Michonne looked at Oliver, silently asking if he was on board with this.

He nodded moodily.

"We're tired," Michonne said with a struggling sense of hope and determination in her voice. "We are on edge. And it is going to get worse before it gets better. But we aren't gonna get through it at all if we do not act as one. Three objectives means three groups. Gabriel will take point in guarding the gate from the northern wave while Aaron will take some troops and handle the southern wave, breaking it up before it hits the wall."

She looked at Carol, Daryl, and the remaining, unassigned council members.

She said to them, "That leaves us to the border."

"Unarmed," Carol said, "really?"

"We got no choice," Daryl said, and stalked off out of the hall to get ready.

After wishing Carol and the others luck Oliver volunteered to help Aaron with the southern wave. He wanted to use the opportunity to have a word with Enid, too, who had also volunteered with the southern wave, but Aaron suggested Oliver stay at Alexandria to help with the northern wave instead.

"Why?"

"You have a bad leg," Aaron said, "and a missing arm."

"Aaron, we literally have the same amount of arms."

Aaron was sporting a spiked mace on his prosthetic today. He gave a disregarding sigh and opened his mouth to speak but Oliver cut him off.

"Come on, man, I've been cooped up on a boat for months. My leg is as good as it's ever going to be and I'm ready for some real work..."

This was possibly the worst thing Oliver could have said because in response Aaron smiled and simply said, "Fine. Then you've got Negan duty."

Oliver blinked at him. He saw Enid smirk from where her and the rest of Aaron's crew were preparing their things but she stopped and turned her head away when she saw him glare at her.

"Off you go," Aaron added, pushing a broomless broomstick into Oliver's arms. "He's waiting in his cell."

"No," Oliver said, like the word meant anything at this point, like he hadn't just dug his own hole and handed over his resume at the same time. Aaron ignored him and continued instructing his group so Oliver tried again. "Come on, man, why me?"

"You wanted some 'real work', right?" Aaron said. "It'll give me more time to focus on the rest of the troops. Plus, Negan likes you."

"He did before I ignored him for half a decade."

"Peanut butter..." Aaron said, and made a motion to himself, as if lifting some pre-placed curse, which he promptly seemed to cast upon Oliver instead, "go and get jelly from his cell."

"Wha—"

"You're taking him off my hands. End of discussion."

"Aaron—"

"That's an order!"

He handed Oliver a set of keys and a pair of rusty handcuffs which were all rather difficult to carry with one hand along with the broomless broomstick. Oliver shook his head and grumbled to himself all the way to the Brownstone apartments. Tiredness was taking its toll on him — on everyone, apparently, considering Aaron's choice to make him do this. Oliver had barely any experience in prison guard duty, let alone Negan guard duty. It had been years since he'd even spent any time with Negan at all. He pulled his composure together by the time he got to Michonne's apartment. Brandon was on guard outside the basement door. He let Oliver past once he saw the keys in his hand. Oliver didn't fail to notice the snide smirk on Brandon's face as he went inside.

Descending those steps for the first time in what felt like decades was awful for Oliver. The last time he'd done this he'd been sore over a lost love, lonely, and hopeless. Doing it again now made him wonder just how much all that had really changed. He tried not to think about it.

"Ah, I was wondering how long you lot were going to stick me on clean up. Time for me to get my hands dirty, I suppose. Might've — oh..." Negan stopped talking when he saw who was coming down to unlock his cell door. His frostbite had healed but his fingers and nose had still scarred a faint shiny purple colour. "Where's Aaron?" he asked, then laughed. "And when did you grow a beard?"

Oliver didn't answer him and instead stepped into the cell. It had been decorated since the last time he saw it. There was a bookshelf, a nicer pillow, more blankets, and a hanging plant in one corner above the bed.

"Erm, you're supposed to throw me the handcuffs," Negan said, "before you unlock the door."

"I don't care," Oliver said. "I'm tired. If you want to try escaping, I won't stop you."

He stood waiting for Negan to hold out his arms. He did after a small confused chuckle. Oliver handcuffed him and then patted the chain between the cuffs to communicate that Negan could drop his hands. Negan did, tipping his head back as if attempting to get a better look at Oliver from a taller angle only they were the same height entirely. This was strange to Oliver, who in his own mind, still caught himself, sometimes, in the mentality of being much younger and smaller than everyone, especially in comparison to Negan. It was always a little odd to be reminded that he was just as tall and threatening as most of the adults he used to be nervous of, certainly much taller and more threatening than he imagined himself. Faking indifference to all this, Oliver gave Negan a stern nod, then turned and led the way out of the cell and up the stairs.

"Look, kid," Negan said as they got outside, squinting against the sunshine, "if it's all the same to you, which it looks to me it is, considering your stand-offish attitude, I'd rather just stay here and pick tomatoes and bury corpses."

"Aaron wants you out there."

"Yeah, well, I want me in here," Negan replied. He tipped his head at the dirty cell window to his right, smirking, then lowered his voice to a whisper. "A little birdy..." he said, stealing a conspicuous glance in Brandon's direction, "has been slipping me some dirty magazines that I want to... spend some time with, if you know what I mean."

Brandon, whose face was suddenly bright pink, cleared his throat and avoided Oliver's eyes. Oliver cocked an eyebrow at him anyway.

"Especially after the last few days," Negan went on, that old cocky grin on his face. "I mean, a man can only look at so many dead bodies before he forgets the pure beauty of a nice, fresh, pair of—"

"I get it. But you're coming."

Negan smiled. "It seems I am not, but I understand."

"Why don't you swear anymore?" Oliver asked.

Negan's grin changed to something more contemplative. "Oh, I grew out of that. I think you are going to be surprised at just how clean yours truly has become nowadays."

"Sure," Oliver replied slowly.

As he turned around to keep walking Negan said from behind him, "Just you wait!"

Notes

Once again, immensely grateful to fandomismylife for proofreading this chapter for me. Thank you for putting up with my sorry, complicated, relationship with commas.

In my mind Oliver is about Rick's size now. I know Rick is an inch or so shorter than Negan but I figure, considering Negan has been worked like a mule for the past 7 years, he's probably lost at least some height, especially now that he's older, so yeah. Do with that mental image as you will.

I really love Thurídur she reminds me a lot of Red from OITNB. Thur is basically the Icelandic version of Red. With her lipstick, and her momma bear attitude, only Thur is built like a tank in my imagination and she puts far less effort into seeming intimidating and instead just is openly a softie.

Also I took out the arc where Alpha showed Daryl the horde. I'm making it so everyone things the horde threat was a bluff, and that after the Fair Massacre the two sides were 'even', until Alpha found out they'd trespassed, of course.

As always,
Happy reading.