fandomismylife oh I LOVE Princess in the show. She's wonderful. I'm so glad she's getting so much more attention than in the comics.

VerbalWalker Agreed!

For a few days, we've been sending small shifts of two or three people to shadow the horde around Hilltop, where it hasn't moved from since the invasion. This morning, the shadow team is me, Aaron, and Thurídur.

"They must be vaiting for Beta to recover before they move the horde," Thurídur says.

"Maybe he already died from his injuries." Aaron grimaces. "And the rest of 'em are squabbling over what to do next."

I glare through the trees, watching the distant figures, and the peak of Hilltop's windmill, its wings un-turning.

"He's alive," I tell them. "If he wasn't, the rest of them would've disbanded already, and the horde would've moved on on its own..."

Aaron and Thurídur seem to agree with me.

"Wait," Aaron says, "look..."

We do look, and we notice that the horde really is starting to move. Somewhere specific, too. Not just ambling aimlessly. It sends a jolt of fear through me. I have to hold my breath.

We move into a better position, higher up in the wood-covered hills, eventually taking cover behind a thicket of trees. Thurídur raises her binoculars to her face to watch the walkers. Shaking her head, she makes a low, irritated grumble of confusion, then passes me the binoculars. Through them, I search for Beta among the dead, but I don't spot him either.

"There..." Aaron says quietly.

I look at the direction he raises his prosthetic hand — over by the base of the windmill, stepping out and into the surrounding horde, Beta, tall as a bear, guides the way out of Hilltop. He's limping, but otherwise looks well. My heart drops.

Thurídur takes the binoculars back. When she spots him, too, her maroon lips curl into a grimace and she folds her log-sized arms over her chest. "Bastarður..."

Aaron radios the information in.

"Come on," I say, nodding towards the direction the horde is moving. "Let's go..."

We keep on the horde's tail, staying out of sight. The Whisperers don't leave any stragglers. Almost all the fallen Hilltoppers are part of them now. It turns my blood.

We get some distance from them a mile or so later in order to reach a nearby broken pylon that's been converted into a watch tower, which we climb up in the cover of some trees. At the top, which is only about as high as two storeys, we have a good view through the leaves over the horde in the distance, and manage to get a better look at the direction it's heading.

Thurídur turns around to Aaron, picking dirt out from under her thumbnail with her spearhead. "You vere right," she tells him. "He's leading them to Oceanside."

Aaron nods. "It's a good thing you guys got to the tower before it was too late. I'll radio it in." He switches on his walkie talkie but it spews out static. Aaron hits it against his prosthetic a few times, then raises it to his mouth. "Howard, do you copy?"

"Yeah. Copy."

"They're headed to Oceanside, as expected."

"Alright. Let me know if they start to slow down."

"Okay. We'll stay on them. If anything changes, we'll send word."

"Copy that. Be safe."

"Be safe. Over." Aaron pockets the walkie talkie.

We climb down the pylon, and then we're back to shadowing the horde. As we get closer, the noise of the dead makes it hard to hear each other, so the three of us stick close. Suddenly, after several miles, Thurídur taps my shoulder. I glance at her. She points to something between us and the horde—

I see it, too—

Scurrying through the woods—

Looking back at the horde nervously—

"Is thet… Olifer's cet?"

To our horror, the horde are noticing Scab as well, looking right our way.

"Oh, God," I hiss. "Scab, you stupid cat..."

"They're changing direction," Aaron warns, "towards the tower."

Towards us.

"She's leading them right to it. Call it in," I say, and Aaron tries to, but the walkie talkie goes to static again and he doesn't manage to get a signal.

He looks up at us, horrified. "It's no good. We gotta leave… now. I need to get to Gracie."

The three of us turn and run, then skid to a stop — five Whisperers surround us, out of nowhere. We form a circle instinctively, backs on each other. I draw my bow. Aaron unsheathes his sword. Thurídur raises her spear.

One Whisperer cocks a muddy pump-action and aims it at Aaron's chest.

"Put your hands — hurrk!"

As quickly as Thurídur had thrown her spear she has sprinted forth and wrenched it back out of the centre of the Whisperers face. In the same moment, she grabs the pump-action, too. Roaring, she swings around to fire, but it's empty.

Tutting, like she knows she should've known better, Thurídur throws it aside. The remaining four Whisperers must still be in shock from her attack because they're faltering and shifting anxiously on their feet. It gives Thurídur enough time to snatch her spear back, waving it threateningly at them to keep them back, and at the top of her lungs she shouts at Aaron and I, "RUN!"

Aaron pulls me by my collar. The Whisperers chase us. The horde, too. The three of us try to lead them away from the tower, but in the chaos it's impossible to tell which way we need to go in the first place. There's so many of them, impossible in our rush to tell which are dead or alive. Just outrunning them is a colossal effort in itself. Even when we manage to make it out of the fray, a handful of Whisperers are still on our tail, so we keep going, through the woods, trying to get away from them.

"Een, on your right!" Aaron shouts.

They're flanking us. On reflex, I send an arrow through someone's chests. They drop dead and another crops up behind a tree, a knife in each hand. My arrow punctures their stomach. Another is running at me. I reach for an arrow. My quiver is empty. I stumble back, yelping and grabbing for my mother's knife. And Thurídur, lethal with her spear, runs the incoming Whisperer through the throat.

She helps me to my feet. Aaron slashes another Whisperer across the face, but collapses to his knees under their dead body. Out of breath, I rush to help him free and pull him to stand up, spotting another incoming Whisperer.

"Aaron!"

We all square up, spear, sword, and knife to the ready, heaving our breaths. The Whisperer laughs at us, her voice high and scratchy, and her head twitching, gripping two bloody knives in her hands. And without warning, her head and body detach with a fountain of blood.

I yelp.

As her body hits the ground, another figure remains standing behind it. Masked... but not like the Whisperers. This person's mask is made of metal plates and fine leather. They're wearing a hooded, beige, trench coat, black gloves, and carrying nothing but two razored scythes, which they twist in their hands quickly and proficiently, causing two thick splatters of blood to fling off in each direction.

We stare at them, breathless and ready for anything.

Then the masked stranger relaxes their poise and nods to the three of us, and without a single word, turns on their heel and walks away. The three of us are stunned. The stranger glances back after a few steps to gesture us to follow.

"We… We have to get to our people," Aaron says hoarsely, clearing his throat. He glances at the suns position, regaining his bearings. From it, we can tell the horde is still heading for the tower. "If you're here to help, you're going the wrong way..."

The masked stranger glances back once more, inclines their head, and then turns around and continues on through the woods. Aaron, Thurídur, and I exchange uneasy looks. Thurídur, who lets out a short grunt, is the first to head after them.

"Thur," I whisper.

She turns and gestures us to come, walking backwards. "Et this point, vhat do ve heff to lose?"

Aaron and I look at each other, and with a shrug, Aaron goes after them, too. I have to stop myself from stomping my foot, and instead settle for an annoyed huff before I follow the masked stranger, too. They don't take us very far. Just to a clearing of woods a mile or so away. I recognise where we are. This is the place I ride out every few months to leave letters for—

I stop in my tracks.

I lose my breath.

All of today's fear and anger and pain drains out of me like water through a plug.

And I'm just warm, all over.

And I say her name, softly...

"Maggie."

She stands back from a tree log, where the letterbox is hidden underneath, and turns around to face us all with a handful of letters and the bottle I left them in cradled in her hands. Tears are falling down her cheeks but now as she sees us —as she sees me— she smiles. And I am running into her hug.

"Oh, Maggie!"

"Enid," she coos, in her soothing, maternal way. She squeezes around my shoulders firmly, and she doesn't let go even when she speaks to me: "I just read what's been goin' on. I'm… I'm so sorry."

It's all I have in me not to sob as I bury my face in her khaki coat collar, tears falling. When I collect myself again, I stand back. She and Aaron hug tightly, too, kissing each others cheeks. Thurídur watches with her arms crossed, nodding. She leans towards me and casts out a finger. "Your old boss leddy, right?"

I chuckle wetly. "Yeah. That's her."

"Agh. Yes. Now I remember. She hed much shorter hair beck then."

I think of all the things that've changed here since Maggie left, and all the things I don't know that's changed on her end since then, too. I pull myself together, once again. I look at her and I look at her masked friend, who hasn't yet said a word.

"Maggie," I say, "this is pretty bad timing… it's not safe here for you, or any of us."

"I realise that," she says, showing me the letter Carol wrote her. "I read that there's gonna be another attack?"

"It happened already," I explain, swalowing. "Hilltop fell..."

I see the devastation hit her hard. She has to clutch her ribs.

"We escaped to a tower," Aaron explains. "We tried to trick them into thinking we went to Oceanside, but they're coming for us all now. We have to help them. Divert the horde, try to get to the tower first — something."

"Oh, it's too late for thet!" Thurídur grumbles angrily. "Don't you see? Ve'll heff to fight, now."

Maggie looks around at us all. She puts a black Stetson hat on her head, then nods.

"Alright," she says, nodding. "Take us to them."

It takes us most of the day to manoeuvrer around the horde without being spotted. We eventually get close enough to see, in the distance through the trees, the top of the tower. The surrounding area is impenetrable. Walkers fill everywhere; the parking lot, the driveway, the ambulance courtyard, and even the surrounding streets.

The sun it setting. We stop and duck into the twilight shadows to regroup and figure out how we're going to get close and help our people. Maggie comes up with a plan to cover ourselves in walker guts and sneak up, through the dead, to the hospital entrance. To begin, she takes out a nearby lurker that's wandered off in it's own confusion. I cover myself first, drenching my jacket in a layer of rotten abdomen fat.

Breathing through my mouth, I dip my hand into the walker's lungs and then reach out towards Maggie's nice coat, apology all over my face for having to ruin it, when suddenly music blares in the distance.

"WATCH OUT, YOU MIGHT GET WHAT YOU'RE AFTER
COOL BABIES, STRANGE BUT NOT A STRANGER
I'M AN ORDINARY GUY
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE…"

I drop my bloody hand, tossing a gunk-covered rib bone into the dirt; Maggie's coat spared, for now. We watch as the horde turns towards the noise, too, and duck down before any see us, pushing ourselves into the shadows. To our amazement, the dead start to move off, away from us and the tower, to the sound. It must be a diversion. Some of our people must've managed to get out of the tower to cause it.

"HOLD TIGHT
WAIT 'TIL THE PARTY'S OVER
HOLD TIGHT
WE'RE IN FOR NASTY WEATHER
THERE HAS GOT TO BE A WAY
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE..."

A while later, the same song is still playing on repeat, the half-moon is our only light source, and the dead surrounding the hospital has thinned to only a few stragglers stuck behind fences. We haven't spotted any remaining Whisperers. They must all be too busy trying to control the horde.

"HERE'S YOUR TICKET, PACK YOUR BAGS
TIME FOR JUMPIN' OVERBOARD
THE TRANSPORTATION IS HERE
CLOSE ENOUGH BUT NOT TOO FAR
MAYBE YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE
FIGHTIN' FIRE WITH FIRE..."

We wait until we know it's safe enough to move in towards the tower, keeping our heads low and our weapons drawn. The gunk on me makes my arms and legs sticky. If only I'd waited one more minute before I'd started covering myself, and I'd be as clean as the others.

"ALL WET, HEY, YOU MIGHT NEED A RAINCOAT
SHAKEDOWN, DREAMS WALKING IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
THREE-HUNDRED-SIXTY-FIVE DEGREES
BURNING DOWN THE—"

The music stops.

I skid in the trampled mud to turn and look back.

"Enid," Aaron complains, "hurry..."

"The diversion," I say. "Some of our people are out there. They could be in trouble."

"They probably set up a boombox and left it."

"No. It was moving. Didn't you hear it getting farther and farther away?"

"I noticed thet, too," Thurídur seconds me.

I nod to her. "I'll go."

Maggie is at the tower door, keeping guard while her masked friend takes out a few stragglers inside the hospital foyer. "Wait until we're done here," she says to me, "and we'll come with you..."

"No, it's not safe for you in the horde. It has to be me," I say firmly, pulling up my bloody collar. "I'll be hidden."

"Are you sure?" she asks me.

They look so afraid; her, Aaron, and Thurídur. Even the masked one looks to be giving me a head-shake that firmly communicates that they think I have a few brain circuit disconnections. I realise I'm shaking but I nod again and I say, "Yeah. Don't worry about me."

They all watch me. Running out of time, Maggie nods. Aaron, too, telling me to be careful, and then they hurry up the stairs behind Maggie's masked friend. Thurídur, who's stuck behind, marches over to me quickly. I'm about to yell at her to stay with the others and get our people to safety, but she thrusts her spear into my gutty hand, grabs me by each muddy shoulder, and kisses me firmly on each cheek.

"Good lack!" she barks, wiping mud off her mouth, smudging her lipstick.

"Thank you," I reply, tilting her spear in my fist.

She nods, heading to the door. "Bring it beck vhen you are done!"

She shuts the door behind herself as I cross the wide parking lot, running in the direction the music came from, in the direction the horde's roar —though faint and far away now— is still audible through the night air. I follow them into the woods, across desolate, overgrown streets. After a while, I reach what used to be Hilltop's carriage, abandoned, with a large, destroyed stereo perched on the back, wires and metal parts strewn everywhere. Walkers surround it. Nothing close to the horde's amount, but a small cluster left behind, kept here by the fresh, dead bodies on the ground. I can't get close enough to see if any of them are those I know, but I do recognise the carriage horses, Flax and Fido, dead and unzipped across the road with the walkers fighting and feasting over their parts, too preoccupied even to take much notice of me as I sneak by. I think of Oliver. He'll be devastated.

Someone screams in the distance. I gasp, stopping to listen. It sounds like a man. I gasp again when I hear a woman scream, too. I run faster. More screams wind between the trees. I picture my people, unzipped like the poor carriage horses. Finally I slow down when I find another small cluster. Carefully, I mingle through it. Again, it's nothing close to the amount that would indicate I have found the horde, but something is attracting them here. Another scream. I see a figure go down under the walkers not far from me, wailing in pain. More walkers close in on them, thinning out the rest of the crowd.

I see a walker tumble back from a body it'd just been feasting on, blood dribbling down its face as it lies back against the road, showing its large pregnant-looking belly filled with flesh. It's not even hungry anymore, by the looks. It's as though it's so full it can barely even move anymore. I search for someone I recognise. Someone else to my left screams suddenly, and more walkers close in and feast. I twist around, confused.

And then it occurs to me that I've stumbled into the middle of a massacre.

Only I don't know who is attacking who.

I search for living faces, or rotten, leathery masks, but it's no use. It's too dangerous. I know I need to get out of here, and as I turn to escape through a gap in the dead crowd, a fist closes around my elbow, restraining my spear arm. I spin on the spot, leaping out of my skin when I see a Whisperer. Only I know this person. His leather jacket gives him away. Negan. After so many years fearing and hating him, my first instinct is to get as far away from him as I can, but I'm so shocked to even see him that I just gawp up at him in horror as he raises a single finger to his lips, then lets go of me and turns away.

"Hey… ass… hole..."

I don't know who he's speaking to so I search across the crowd, and see, in the midst of the screaming and the shambling, Beta, with a new, freshly-sewn mask made from Alpha's face. He turns to Negan's whisper. Goosebumps twist up my skin. I can't even breath for a moment, the memories of those few nights ago churning my stomach.

Then Beta charges, teeth bared, bashing through the dead. I flinch away from him, and I only realise he wasn't coming for me because I see him shove a walker into Negan. It hits him square in the chest and knocks him to the mud. Negan struggles under it. Beta towers over him, his knife gripped in both his hands.

He raises his arms.

He whispers, "We are the end of the world!"

And my heart is bashing in my mouth.

And my legs and my body and my arms are working on their own.

And I twist and swing my arm and with the sheer strength of force and adrenaline alone—

I plunge Thurídur's spear through one side of Beta's neck.

He staggers from the momentum of it, then hunches forward, dropping to his knees and gargling in pain. As he wrenches the spear out of himself, blood pours from him in waves, sloshing down into the mud at his knees. He drops both the spear and his own knife with two wet thuds. He tries to clutch his neck, to stem the flow, but his blood soaks between his fingers and floods down his arms. As he turns to finally see me, the fury in his eyes is so fierce I almost fall backwards. I think of how I froze before, under the van, when I could and should have ended it. I think about how Oliver understood why I couldn't do it. I think about how Alden would have understood, too, and Tammy Rose. And Beta sees it, too. He sees the fury in my eyes. A fury strong enough that for the first time it's his turn to freeze — his turn to feel small.

He doesn't even try to stop me.

He just gazes up at me, confusion and surprise all over his face.

Watching me snatch his knife from the ground.

Watching me draw my own from my hip.

And I tower over him.

And I slam the two blades down through his eyes.

A splash of blood hits my chin. I feel the heat of it. I wrench my knife out of his face, leaving his own inside, and step back from him, grunting and out of breath. I retrieve Thurídur's spear from the ground. Beta kneels there, his sockets oozing, growling in pain. The surrounding stragglers, yet to find a meal, catch the scent of his blood and move in on him, passing around me to feast —to worship— in his flesh. He doesn't scream, or cry, even when they tear off his mask, even when they rip open his chest. He just smiles up at the half-moon hanging in the sky, face uncovered, with his arms spread open. And the dead enclose him, pulling him down and down to a place somewhere that I can no longer see.

"Holy mother Mary..." a voice murmurs beside me. Negan, I remember, when I glance at him. He's removed his mask, dropped it aside. His face is paler than normal. He looks at me like he's scared of me. "Do you know who that asshole was?"

Too out of breath to answer aloud, I just nod, blinking away sweat and shocked tears. My tongue is sandpaper in my mouth. I have to swallow several times before my lips stop cracking. I look around at the feasting dead, all too preoccupied to notice us. Among them, I only just realise, are people watching us. One pulls back a gut-coated hood, revealing Daryl.

My chest leaps.

Daryl nods to me.

Kelly reveals herself, too, and Luke, and Jules, and Marco, and Jerry, and Magna. They had set up the music, I realise. They were here the whole time, putting down the Whisperers who'd followed them from the carriage.

Without speaking, we all leave the feasting ground. Once we're far enough away, I realise I can still hear the faint roar of the horde somewhere to the west. Marco slings his arm around my shoulders and hugs me as we walk, swearing in Spanish at the shock of what he just watched me do. I'm too tired and relieved to do much more than laugh a little, and sob. By the time he lets me go, the rest of our group have patted my shoulder or cast me relieved smiles or words of praise or greeting. Negan keeps back, but watches nonetheless.

"We need to find somewhere safe," someone says, "to wait for Carol and Lydia."

"Why? What are they doing?" I ask.

"Leading the horde off the cliff."

My gut tightens in worry. I nod. "I know somewhere we can go."

And so I lead the way, explaining where we're headed as I go.

We get to the clearing with the hidden letterbox just as the sun is starting to rise, turning the woodland a pale, misty turquoise and gold colour. Maggie is already here, along with Aaron, Thurídur, the masked stranger, and the rest of our people from the tower. Some didn't make it, like Beatrice and Oscar, but Judith is here, and RJ, and the rest of the children and Hilltop and Oceanside residents.

Thurídur spots me first. She grabs me into a tight hug, then holds me at arms length and takes in the filthy sight of me.

"My duglegur girl, you got busy," she says.

Puffing through a grin, I hand her back her bloody spear. "I did."

She nods gratefully, letting out a brilliant, cackling, belly laugh, and cheering the words, "Sjáðu hvað kraftur reiðrar konu getur gert, ha? Stelpukraftur!" which I don't know the meaning of in the slightest, but am immensely flattered by all the same. I can feel my face burning.

Bertie and Nabila are taking care of some of the children. Aaron is introducing Judith, RJ, and Gracie to Maggie. Rosita and Gabriel are sitting together cradling Coco. Dianne is tending to a few of our injured. I rush to help instantly. Kelly cut her arm, and her ankle isn't doing much better either. I pull out the gauze wrap from my pocket.

At some point, Thurídur and Marco, who must've been sent off to search, return with Carol and Lydia, who throw aside their gutty coats as they enter our temporary encampment.

"Is it…?" Jerry asks them.

"It is," Carol answers, panting. "They're all gone. Thanks to her." She pats Lydia's back, who chuckles shyly and hides her hands in her sleeves, eyes on the floor as she bumps Carol's shoulder.

"And her."

Everyone seems to breathe a sigh of relief, hugging and thanking and congratulating each other. Plans start evolving on how to meet up with the rest of Maggie's people, as well as how we're going to get everyone back to Alexandria and Oceanside. I have questions but I'm so tired that I just sit back against a tree stump. Negan wanders my way, avoiding Maggie, I guess. I glance at him as he sits across from me, but he doesn't catch my eyes. He watches Lydia come over. She sits between us.

"You still here?" she asks him.

"For now," Negan replies.

I put my head in my hands. It's hard to keep my eyes open. One of the last things I remember before drifting off to sleep is Carol and Daryl's conversation a few yards away. They're voices float through my mind like leaves in a breeze.

"Y'good?"

"Yeah. It's over."

"It is… You get what you wanted?"

"No. And I won't. Not really."

"Hey... you're not alone in this."

"I know. I just keep thinking about if it'll ever end up that way."

"New Mexico's always out there."

"Maybe… but, I hope it'll never come to that."

"Yeah."

"We've still got enough to do here."

"Yeah. We do."

And then hours have passed and the night sky has turned to daylight with the sun high above my head, and I'm curled up on the floor under a blanket someone must've put over me. Blinking, I twist around to the sound of hoof-beats and people gasping in surprise. We all watch, seizing up inside, as Blondie, Traveller, and Sunday trot through our camp-ground, all three of them panting with sweat dripping from their muzzles and shoulders, and their saddles, empty.

Notes

Song was "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads.

Thur's sentence should mean: 'See what the power of an angry woman can do, huh? Girl power!' But alas I am restricted by google translate and having no Icelandic friends. If you have any corrections, including the way I portray the accent, please go ahead and let me know.

I gave Enid the Beta kill because her arc with him is more prominent and has more history to it than Daryl's arc is in this fic, considering I took out the elevator-fight arc and all from the show. I changed Daryl and Carol's dialogue at the end there, too, as a presumptive/draft set up for the possible spin-off in the future, which according to my tentative plans and predictions, Enid needs to have heard, but I might have just missed the mark on what I hope it'll turn out like so I expect to change it one day. If I do, I'll put a note somewhere to let you know.

As always,
Happy reading.