A/N: so there might be a little bit of an intermission between this chapter and the ones that come after because the draft for those chapters is still quite rough (they were a last minute addition) so I need more time to iron them out. Probably no more than an extra week or two.

Also, apologies in advance. I haven't quite got the handle on writing Daryl yet so he might come off a little ooc.

"Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid."
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

There was a strong sense of deja vu as she and Daryl picked off the few sickos that had wandered too close to the gates. It was less than exciting work as most of the crumbling creatures had become entangled in the traps that'd been set up around the perimeter and were little more than sitting ducks. But it was a good opportunity for conversation. Which was what Yumiko had been banking on when she'd volunteered to do the rounds with Daryl.

Magna had peered at her somewhat suspiciously when she'd made that offer but she hadn't said anything so Yumiko took that as a green light.

Or as close to one as she was going to get.

Magna was paranoid by nature, so doubtless she'd caught on quickly to Yumiko's ulterior motives when it came to volunteering. But she hadn't intervened.

Green light.

"So I heard you and Magna had an interesting chat the other day," Yumiko said, voice deceptively casual as she scanned the traps for her next target - she may or may not have been imagining Daryl's face on each and every sicko she shot down.

She considered it a healthy outlet for her rage.

Healthier than punching someone, at any rate.

He eyed her carefully. "Wouldn't really call it interesting."

Well, the conversation she'd had with Magna afterwards certainly had been.

"I like you," Yumiko started, not sparing him a glance as she aimed her bow at what looked to have been a nice little old lady at one point. Unfortunately. She preferred it when she couldn't see any trace of the humanity they'd once possessed. "And I trust Connie's judgment, so I know that you're a good person. And I know why you have a problem with Magna." She could even understand it. "But if you say anything like that to my girlfriend again, we're going to have problem. Understood?"

Yumiko didn't have the patience to tiptoe around it and she had a feeling he would appreciate her getting straight to the point, anyway. Like Magna, she suspected he preferred a certain amount of directness. A stark contrast to the suits she'd grown used to dealing with at her firm, but she still knew how to handle both kinds of people.

Daryl grunted. "Understood."

Letting loose, she watched as the arrow hit home. Nodded. "Good." Yumiko hesitated, glancing over at him. "She's a good person too, you know. She made a mistake. But her intentions were good."

He scratched the back of his head, thinking that over. "Yeah, well, good intentions don't always breed good results."

"I know." God, did she know. "It wasn't malicious - what she did. She really does care about the people here." Yumiko lifted her shoulder in a half-shrug, meeting his gaze. "She just cares about us more. And that's why you won't get an apology out of her for it. She'll never apologize for protecting us."

Yumiko still couldn't quite believe she'd gotten an apology. But then, Magna hadn't been apologizing for making the stash - only for lying about it.

Which was all she'd needed to hear.

Yumiko doubted Daryl would be so easily mollified.

He snorted. "That might bring you comfort, me not so much."

"You still trust Kelly," she pointed out, turning back to the writhing mass of walkers. A thunk followed her words as her arrow pierced the eye socket of one that had started to break free of its trappings.

His mouth twisted slightly in acknowledgment of her point. "Well, Kelly ain't been stealing my knives."

So, he was no longer simply 'suspicious' then.

Yumiko didn't bother to deny her girlfriend's escapades. He wasn't an idiot and she wouldn't treat him like one. Besides, that wasn't the real reason. "You disliked Magna long before she started stealing your knives."

"Yeah," he exhaled, giving in, "I know. Girl just has a knack for getting on my nerves."

"It's a gift." She smiled a little. "But trust me, you'll like her better as a friend than an enemy. And you'll definitely like me better as a friend." The last thing she wanted was to be at odds with Daryl, especially given his importance to Connie.

But she would do so in a heartbeat, if he ever hurt Magna again.

It had been a battle to swallow down the urge to punch Daryl after she'd found out what he'd said. Magna had spent enough of her life being thought the worst of, and judged accordingly. Yumiko would be damned if she got that here too.

And then when Kelly had told her what else Daryl had said, weeks earlier. . . she'd nearly lost it.

This was their home. And she wanted her girlfriend to feel every bit as welcome and safe in it as she did.

Another grunt, this time punctuated by the thunk of a crossbow arrow. "Understood." He paused. "I trust Connie's judgment, too. And she trusts Magna so I guess I'll give her another shot."

Yumiko breathed a little easier, grateful that he was slightly less difficult to reason with than her girlfriend. "Thankyou."

"But if she keeps stealing my damn knives, all bets are off."

She smirked to herself. "Mm. That you'll have to work out with her. I'm not getting in the middle of it." She'd gotten in the middle of one of Bernie and Magna's prank wars once and Magna, (falsely) assuming that she was taking Bernie's side, had given her the cold shoulder for a week. It was not an experience Yumiko wanted to relive, not after she'd just gotten over the last cold shoulder.

She certainly wasn't going to risk it over a bunch of fucking knives.

Nope. The two of them wanted to behave like children, she'd let them sort it out like children.

Playground style, if need be.

Daryl stared at her. "If she goes for my arrows next, I'm shooting her."

Yumiko grimaced. But she felt reasonably confident that Magna's approach was going to be far more conservative. "I think your arrows are safe." Hoped so, at least. She hesitated a moment but knew that she had to give a little more if the cease-fire she was aiming for actually stood a chance of coming to pass. "She's testing you. Trying to make sure you're good enough for Connie."

Daryl flushed slightly, looking away. "We're just friends."

Fool.

"And so were Magna and I." Yumiko grinned. "It didn't last."

He grimaced, looked like he was about to protest but seemed to recognize it as a losing battle. Most arguments with her were. She hadn't been a lawyer for nothing. "What's stealing my knives gonna prove?"

Yumiko hesitated. She wasn't sure if she should say. But if it helped the situation, eased some of the tension between the two, well. . . "She's testing how you react. If you're dangerous."

Daryl narrowed his eyes at that.

Yumiko bit her lip. "She wants to see how far she can push you. What you're like when you're angry."

She'd had a similar process of assessment with Magna herself, more times than she could count. Not in the form of a prank war, though that might have been more enjoyable. Her girlfriend, particularly in the beginning stages of their friendship, had often gone out of her way to piss Yumiko off. To say things she knew would provoke an argument, a lot of the time they were things Magna didn't even seem to mean. But she said them anyway.

Like a child, testing to see how far they could push their parents before they pushed back, or left.

Magna was constantly waiting for the pushback.

Or for the inevitable abandonment that had always concluded every one of her relationships, in the days before Yumiko had known her.

Being left alone hurt less if it happened before any attachment was allowed to take hold.

Yumiko hadn't realized what Magna was doing at first, but eventually she'd caught on. Once she did, the arguments had been easy enough to diffuse. When Magna poked her, all she had to do was not snap. Respond with patience. And the prodding ceased.

But with Daryl it was a little different.

Magna didn't want his friendship, didn't particularly want him in her life at all. But he was there anyway. And he was growing closer and closer to someone Magna loved, someone she considered her responsibility to protect.

(a responsibility she took very seriously, even over-zealously, in reflection of what had happened to the first two people she'd assigned herself to protect)

Yumiko suspected that Daryl's friendship with Connie was the main motivator when it came to Magna's dislike for him.

"She wants to make sure you're safe," she finished, confident that she hadn't given away too much of Magna's personal information in the conversation. She certainly wasn't going to elaborate and explain why her girlfriend had developed the need to do this.

Especially when she wasn't certain it was something Magna even knew she was doing, let alone that she'd been able to come to such an understanding herself.

But Yumiko had been given enough time to form her own suspicions and theories - and she didn't like any of them.

Daryl's face scrunched up. "That don't make no sense. She's worried I'm gonna get angry so she's trying to make me angry?"

Yumiko smiled half-heartedly and pulled another arrow out of her quiver. "Magna Logic."

"Magna Logic?"

"Mm." She took aim at a sicko by the tree. "Expect the worst from people and when they don't show it to you, make them show it." She suspected that some of that signature logic had come into play weeks ago, when Yumiko had confronted her about the missing supplies.

Magna had gone out of her way to make every conversation surrounding that issue as combative as possible. When pushed further into talking about it - when Yumiko had cornered her in the lie - she'd upped the ante. Introduced a tidbit of information that would break her trust completely.

There were so many ways they could have had the conversation about the stash. About lawson. Ways that wouldn't have hurt either of them nearly as much. But Magna had used that thirteen-year-old lie to instigate a fight, to push Yumiko away - possibly with the intention of earning her hatred, or at least destroying whatever love she possessed.

Magna had predicted a negative reaction and had, in many ways, employed great effort in forcing one into existence.

It still confused Yumiko, even weeks later, but it followed a familiar pattern of behavior that she'd been recognizing in the other woman for over a decade.

Knowing how to navigate conflict appropriately was one of the most important things a person could learn when growing up. It was pivotal to one's social development. But some never got taught how, or were denied the tools they needed to learn.

Yumiko had long suspected that was the case with Magna. And she knew that prison had only exacerbated the issue. Having this understanding of the other woman had helped her steer through and diffuse many of the conflicts between them that had cropped up over the years. But not always.

Magna had become very gifted at pushing people's buttons and knew exactly which ones to lay a finger on when it came to her.

Sometimes it was hard not to bite back, to give Magna the reaction she was so sure would come.

In short, it was frustrating as hell.

"She doesn't trust you," Yumiko continued, as though that point wasn't obscenely obvious by now.

Daryl grunted. "That's funny. Considering she's the one who stole shit. I ain't done nothing to earn her distrust."

She could empathize with his confusion but she didn't share it. Yumiko could guess at a number of reasons why Daryl might be declared untrustworthy, but the most glaring one was Connie.

He huffed at her silence, turning away. "I swear these are the kind of mind games my brother would pull. Thought I'd seen the last of them."

Something seemed to click then, the confusion clearing.

He paused, peered at her closely, a certain understanding dawning as darkness overcame his expression. "She's trying to see if I'll hurt her."

Yumiko hesitated but nodded. "Yeah." Clearing her throat, she pushed on, hoping to distract from that. It was too close. She couldn't let him wade further into waters that she knew Magna wouldn't be comfortable with him entering. "But mostly she's getting a kick out of pissing you off."

Daryl snorted and raised his crossbow. "Thought so."

Thunk.

"So, what, you expect me to just ignore her when she steals from me?" He didn't look too happy about the idea. "This isn't the playground."

Yumiko shrugged. "Playground rules apply, though. Steal something back. It won't make her stop, but it's a way for you to acknowledge what's happening without proving her right."

Proving that he was the threat Magna had painted him as in her head.

It was how the conflict between her and Bernie had slowly developed into a begrudging friendship. He'd engaged Magna in her game, and in doing so proved that he wasn't quick to anger.

"If you turn it into a game, that's what it'll eventually become. And then she'll stop testing you."

"She do this with you, too?"

Her mouth quirked slightly. As frustrating as those past exchanges with Magna had been at the time, Yumiko was almost fond of them now. "Yep. Only minus the knives." Though, one time she'd swiped a bracelet off Yumiko's bathroom counter whilst staying over. She'd then left the jewelry in one of the most conspicuous places possible in her new apartment so that Yumiko would come across it the next time she visited. It had been exasperating - not to mention, confusing - and more than a little irritating. "Magna likes to push. It's best not to push back."

Yumiko had pocketed the bracelet and never raised the issue with Magna - and in the week after, she'd witnessed a notable shift in the other woman's behavior around her.

She'd become slightly more relaxed.

And had never stolen anything else again.

Yumiko didn't know if that had been the right response, if in fact she should have talked about the incident with Magna, but she couldn't deny the results.

Should have or shouldn't have, her plan of attack had worked.

Hopefully, this one would prove just as successful.

"She's trying to piss you off," Yumiko concluded.

He huffed. "Yeah, no kidding."

"The only way you win this game is if you don't get pissed off."

Daryl didn't seem overly pleased with that advice, raising his crossbow once more. "I don't even want to be in this damn game, and I sure as hell don't care who wins it."

"Tough." She watched as his arrow hit the throat of what had once been a child - no more than six or seven, if she had to guess. It wasn't his best shot. But, then, Yumiko had always found the kids harder as well. "You're a part of Connie's life so you're a part of ours now, too. That includes Magna. This is how she makes friends."

"By pissing people off?"

"By testing them."

He grunted, not seeming anymore convinced by that. "So you've said."

Yumiko exhaled in minor frustration. She'd hoped to have this handled in half the time they'd been talking but he was proving less than amenable to making that happen.

Magna had told her she was a patient person once and Yumiko had laughed. Yes, she could be patient. With Magna. Give her someone else who was stepping on her nerves and it was a struggle not to blow a gasket - or aim an arrow at their head.

She knew she had to give him something else, though. "She doesn't hate you at least."

"Find that a little hard to believe."

Yumiko shrugged. "She's taking your knives because they're yours. But she's leaving your arrows and your crossbow because she knows they're significant to you." It was a fact that had jumped out at her right from the beginning. Magna was an expert at pissing people off, at knowing which moves and words would garner the most explosive reactions, and which ones would provoke irritation but not necessarily rage. It was no mistake that she'd contented herself with only stealing Daryl's knives. "That means she doesn't hate you."

He snorted. "I'm thrilled."

Yumiko sighed. "Just let her take the damn knives. You'll get them back. Eventually. And hopefully by that point all this will be behind us and we can move on."

Daryl frowned. "You know, we don't actually have to get along, right? Some people just don't mesh well. Nothin' wrong with that."

On that count, he was mistaken.

"You have to get along because you're important to Connie and Connie's important to Magna. You don't have to be friends but this constant antagonization is driving the rest of us crazy." She could just imagine Connie's exasperation when she returned: 'These two knuckleheads still haven't sorted their shit out?'. She hated conflict almost as much as Yumiko, though was a sight better at diffusing it. "And I'm the one who has to deal with Magna when she's in a shitty mood because of something you said."

'Deal with' wasn't exactly the right term. She didn't deal with Magna. That made her sound like a chore. But Magna in a shitty mood wasn't anyone's friend and things could become very tense.

That she could handle. They all had shitty days, Yumiko included.

But she'd be damned if she had to watch the self-loathing and doubt eat away at Magna after a conversation with Daryl one more time.

It was exhausting.

And it hurt to see.

He grunted in acknowledgment of that. "Take it you've had this conversation before."

Yumiko smiled wryly. "A few times. Mostly with Luke. Magna took a while to warm up to him, too." Probably because he was the first man, other than her brother, to enter Magna's life without the intention of harming her or someone she cared about - an 'act' Magna had stubbornly refused to buy. She hadn't responded at all well to his addition to their little group and Yumiko knew that, at the time, Magna wished that it had stayed just them, Connie and Kelly. But Luke had earned her trust eventually, and her love.

Yumiko didn't have such high hopes for Daryl. But she didn't think it was unrealistic to conceive that one day they might at least be able to tolerate one another's presence.

"You know, it could be worse," she added with a small smile.

"Yeah, sure," he grunted. "How?"

Yumiko shrugged. "She used to steal Luke's instruments. And they're a lot harder to come by than knives."

He narrowed his eyes at her, taking that in. "Think you need to tell your girlfriend to stop stealing shit."

She snorted. "If you think anyone can tell Magna to do anything, you really don't know her."

Daryl took aim once more, this time at a walker missing several limbs. "That what she went to prison for? Stealing shit?"

Yumiko clenched her jaw but said nothing.

"Right. None of my business." A thunk and all that remained of the sicko's consciousness ceased to be.

Yumiko wasn't sure when the stealing had started, only that it hadn't existed in the first two years that she'd known Magna. She wasn't sure about her little habit beforehand but, certainly in prison, Yumiko had never been alerted to anything./

To be honest, she was fairly certain the other woman would have gotten shanked in a heartbeat if she ever thought to pull this kind of shit in there.

Actually, Yumiko suspected that might be part of the reason why Magna did it now.

Because she could.

Pushing the boundaries of her habitation, Yumiko's mother would have called it.

And also because, in prison, stealing would have been enough to force a person into revealing just how dangerous they really were.

It would hardly be the first time Magna had applied Prison Logic to civilian life.

But she wasn't about to say any of that to Daryl. He didn't have a right to that information.

Or the reason Magna had been imprisoned in the first place.

"Don't care what she did, anyway," he went on, oblivious to her thoughts. "Ain't none of us who we were even a year ago, let alone before all this shit happened."

She relaxed slightly, relieved that he wasn't going to pursue that line of questioning, and that he had this understanding - it was more than Michonne had given when they'd first rocked up to Alexandria. Even knowing now that Magna's prison sentence hadn't been entirely undeserved, ire still rose inside Yumiko at the memory of that encounter, of the way her girlfriend had been treated - though, she only had a secondhand version of events from Connie to go off of and the commentary Luke had given about the terrible mood Magna had exhibited following the incident. She could understand the hostility inspired by her girlfriend's subterfuge when it came to weapons, but the judgment provoked by her tattoo infuriated her. After all these years, there wasn't a person among them who didn't have blood on their hands, who wasn't drowning in the grey zone of morality.

Yumiko included.

(at least Magna had never got anyone stuck in any caves, she thought somewhat bitterly)

"I knew Magna before 'all this shit'. She wasn't dangerous then and she's not dangerous now."

Magna had never hurt her.

Had never hurt anyone innocent.

She wasn't sure everyone at Alexandria could say the same.

Daryl shrugged, raising his crossbow once more. "We're all dangerous. Even Judith. It's why we made it this long. Don't see any lambs surviving the apocalypse."

Yumiko couldn't argue with that. Not when she still had nightmares about the number of people she'd killed. Not when it had started to get easier for her to add yet more names to that list. She barely even hesitated anymore.

God, if her parents could see her now. . .

"I know."

"I just need assurance that she's not the kind of dangerous that gets everyone killed."

"You mean like Carol?" Yumiko bit out. She empathized with the woman, she really did. Yumiko couldn't imagine what it was like to lose a child, and in such a horrific way. But every time she thought of her, all she saw was Magna stepping out of that horde, surrounded by smoke; all she felt was that split second certainty that she'd lost her. Really lost her.

And there would be no getting her back.

Yumiko could forgive a lot of things but not that.

And Carol hadn't said anything. Hadn't apologized.

It was a miracle that Magna and Connie had made it out of the cave, let alone survived all that came after. And Carol hadn't said anything.

Yumiko had spent too many nights watching her girlfriend cry in her sleep, gasping Connie's name, to forgive easily.

Daryl eyed her a moment, but there was less reproach in his gaze than weariness. "Yeah. Like Carol. I need to know she's not a loose cannon that's going to take this whole ship down."

Yumiko could at least understand how he might have come by that concern. "Magna's a hothead, it's true. And she makes mistakes - we all do. But her priority has always been keeping us safe. She's not out to sink any ships."

He wasn't placated. "If she had to sacrifice all of us to keep you lot safe, would she do it?"

Yumiko ducked her head. "I don't know." She didn't even know how she would act in those circumstances. "What would you do if it was Carol, Judith, or RJ on the line?"

A long pause. "I don't know."

Exactly.

None of them knew what they were capable of anymore and the world currently seemed determined to make them find out.

Yumiko shook her head and raised her bow. There were only two sickos left now which promised an end to this conversation, at least. If any progress had been made, however, that was something she was going to have to wait and see to find out. "If you want to know whether you can trust her with Judith, the answer is yes. Magna would never hurt a child. Whatever the situation." Yumiko snorted. "You can certainly trust her more than Negan."

Privately, she thought that Magna was likely to be a much better influence than a mass murderer who once went about his day forcing women into marriage. With all she'd heard about Negan, it was somewhat difficult to wrap her head around the fact that he was allowed so much freedom, let alone that anyone would let him within ten meters of a child. They'd all done things to survive, but Negan hadn't acted out of necessity. She suspected that he took a certain pleasure in his actions, thrilled in them even. That was a difficult factor to dismiss.

Motives mattered.

If these were the old days, he'd still be in prison.

But these weren't the old days and Yumiko wasn't a lawyer anymore. If those in Alexandria and Hilltop who'd known Negan the longest - had, indeed, also been his victims - thought this was the best course of action, then she wouldn't argue with them. His punishment was their right to decide and if they wished to dispense with it all together from here on out, then that was their prerogative.

At the very least, they seemed to have succeeded in rehabilitating him slightly - and Yumiko had always been a staunch supporter of rehabilitation over punishment.

But it still made her uneasy. He made her uneasy. And she knew Magna was even more unsettled by his presence in their world, understandably.

He was too much like the men who had victimized her almost all her life.

Yumiko put a lot of effort into ensuring that both she and Magna kept their distance from him. She didn't know enough about Negan to say for certain whether he'd changed or not but, either way, he wasn't someone that she trusted to have any kind of role in their lives. She sure as hell didn't want him anywhere near Magna.

Daryl gave an answering snort to her comment. "Anyone's more trustworthy than Negan."

Maybe, but Yumiko still knew she'd stepped on a particular issue of concern for him. Ever since the breakfast incident, Judith had taken to following her girlfriend around, much to Magna and Daryl's equal dismay.

She'd witnessed the former con pulling out every trick in her rather impressive book in an attempt to shake the child off. Judith was impervious.

But if she hadn't been deterred by Negan's attitude then little Magna did was likely to put her off.

"I know that Judith and RJ's safety is important to you. Maybe the most important thing to you right now," Yumiko began. "But I give you my word that Magna will never be a threat to that safety."

She may be in the dark about the lengths the other woman would go in order to keep them safe - and she suspected that Magna might be also - but this was one thing she knew for certain.

Children were Magna's weak spot.

And she didn't take kindly to seeing them hurt.

"And if you do make a friend out of Magna, she'll become one of the most loyal you've ever had."

There was a reason their group had stuck together so long. Circumstance and necessity could only get you so far. All of them had proven themselves worthy of love and trust - and the moniker of family.

Including Magna.

Daryl watched her a time, growing thoughtful. "She means a lot to you."

Yumiko focused on her target, satisfaction rising in her as the arrow hit home yet again. "She's my home. Has been for almost thirteen years."

It was far too simple a description for what she and Magna were.

And 'means a lot' didn't even begin to cover it.

To be honest, there was no term or description for what they had together. It was just theirs. And Yumiko knew she wouldn't be able to find it with any other person, not if she lived for a million years.

"Yeah. I've got one of those too."

Yumiko nodded to herself. "Carol."

"It ain't romantic, but yeah. She's been my home for a long while now. She's family."

"Sorry I punched her in the face."

"Nah you ain't." His mouth twitched a little in good humor.

She smiled. "No. I'm not."

They continued in silence for a moment. With the last of the sickos taken out, they checked the perimeter for any stragglers.

He yanked his arrow out of the kid's neck, tugging Yumiko's free as well - the one that had hit its brain - and handing it back to her.

"Thanks," she said. It was good to know she hadn't made an enemy out of him with this conversation, at least.

Daryl nodded. "She's lucky to have you."

Yumiko smiled to herself. He wasn't the first to say that. Like loving Magna was some trial or favor on her part. They had no idea. "I'm lucky to have her."

No idea how lucky she was.

No idea what it felt like to be loved by Magna. Truly loved.

Nothing else could compare.

Yumiko wouldn't trade that feeling for the world.

A/N: I'm slowly, slowly trying to build up to a brotp relationship between Magna and Daryl lol. Very slowly. I just feel like they have a lot in common

Next chapter I shall bring to you some yumagna cuddling ;)

I'm curious, how many people are still reading this fic series? Raise your hand