CHAPTER 11

– Kate -

It wasn't until the next day, sometime in the late morning, that they heard the sound of tires crunching up the gravel lane.

"Please be them." Carl said under his breath.

Carol and Carl were down at the fence with Kate. It felt like they had been gone forever. In the relatively short amount of time since they'd left to rescue Maggie and Glenn, a group of four found their way through a back, unsecured part of the prison.

The people, Tyreese, his sister Sasha, a man named Allen and his teenage son, Ben, seemed nice enough, but the new people made her nervous without Rick or Daryl around. Now that they knew there was a way in, she felt vulnerable. She was anxious for Rick to handle the newcomers, see Maggie and Glenn safe at home and to have Daryl back.

Sure enough, the Hyundai came into view and the three of them hurried to open the gates. Rick opened the door.

"Drive it up, I'll meet you up there". He said to Maggie who she was relieved to see in the driver's seat. She couldn't make out who else was in the car and she was desperate to know if Daryl and Glenn were ok.

"Is everyone back?" Kate demanded.

Rick looked at her carefully and the expression on his face made her feel like she'd swallowed a boulder.

"We lost Oscar at Woodbury..."

"Where's Daryl?" Carol asked, panicked as she peered through the back window.

Kate made some kind of sound she didn't recognize as her own and she felt like her knees were going to collapse under her. Carol didn't look much better. Rick, realizing they were all suspecting the worst, quickly spoke up.

"It's alright. He's alive."

She felt like she could breathe again, but her mind started to race. Was he following behind in another vehicle, was he hunting, did he get captured?

"Where is he then?" She heard herself demand.

"We ran into his brother. Merle. They went off." Rick explained gently.

"His brother? How?" Rick wasn't filling her in fast enough. "Went off? Where? Hunting?"

He just shook his head.

"They left?" Carol asked incredulously. "Daryl left? He's gone? Is he coming back?"

The two women stood there in front of Rick trying to understand. It was clear Rick was struggling with the answer as much as they were.

"Why!? Why wouldn't they come back?" Kate needed to understand.

This didn't make sense. She remembered that night in the tower, Daryl's fear that the group wouldn't accept Merle.

"Did you try to stop them? Did something happen?"

She was trying her best to keep from sobbing, but there were tears in her eyes and her voice shook. Carol had started to whimper at her side. Somewhere in the back of her mind Kate was wondering about Carol's reaction, but she couldn't think about that now.

"It was Merle that took Maggie and Glenn." Rick said gravely.

Kate covered her face with her hands. Rick continued, "He worked for the leader of the group, the Governor is what they call him. Merle tortured Glenn and when we got there they were about to be executed."

It was too much. The thought of her friends being in that situation, how close they had come to losing Maggie and Glenn, that Merle was responsible for it all. That Daryl had been forced to choose. She needed to think, needed to not be here right now. She nodded tearfully at Rick and walked past the fence and up the drive.

She knew she couldn't go back to her cell. She knew Hershel and Beth would be joyfully welcoming Maggie and Glenn home and she didn't want to bring them down. So instead she walked into the field, towards the fence. She reached the end, to a spot there weren't any walkers and sank into the long grass.

She understood of course. On some level anyway. She had brothers that she loved, she would never be able to walk away from them. But she also knew she wouldn't have to. Her brothers would never do the things Merle had done. Part of her felt foolish. She stood there and forced him to promise something he couldn't. There were no guarantees in this world, especially going into something dangerous and unknown like he had been. But she had wanted him to know that she cared for him. That it wasn't just Daryl Dixon out there in the world alone. She wanted him to know he had something to come back to, something that was just his if he wanted. But not only did he not come back, he chose not to. He knew he was breaking his promise to her, and although she understood his devotion to his brother, it hurt.

She cried about Daryl being gone, what it meant for her selfishly. Her heart broken, her pride wounded. She cried because losing another member of their family was a loss for everyone, emotionally and because Daryl provided so much to the group. She cried because she knew Daryl didn't have a choice and she hated that he had been put in that losing situation. Once the tears were flowing it was like she was crying for everything they had been through: the deaths, the lack of security over the months, no food, the constant fear that the worst was still to come. She cried for her mother and brothers. Mourning people she didn't even know were dead or alive. She cried for all the times she didn't let herself.

And when she had no tears left, her face swollen and her body feeling like an empty shell, she just sat there staring at the woods, willing him to come walking out of them. Ignoring the walkers that hungrily swarmed at the fence in front of her.

The next few days at the prison were dark and desperate. Rick was spiraling again, except this time, instead of chasing walkers in the bowels of the prison, he was chasing ghosts. Tyreese's group was forced to flee when Rick became frighteningly unhinged. One minute he was fine and the next he was shaking, screaming up at the walls and waving his gun.

Maggie and Glenn were both still traumatized by their experience at Woodbury. Glenn seemed to be trying to take back control by acting out. He saw Rick's current descent into madness and Daryl's absence as his call to step-up. In the shadow of the Governor's threat, he wanted to be aggressive, defensive and take action. Hershel, who seemed to be holding them altogether, tried to reason with him, counter his rash strategies with practical thinking.

Maggie, in the meantime, spent most her time in her cell, turned towards the wall. Whatever she went through had turned her lifeless and unreachable.

Axel, normally chattery and cheerful, was mourning the death of Oscar. While Michonne, suffering from a concussion, practically slept for two days straight, locked behind a cell door where Rick insisted she stay. He planned to make her leave as soon as she was able, although what she had done to earn his mistrust wasn't exactly clear to the rest of them.

Much discussion was had about whether they should stay or run. Hershel thought leaving was the safest bet, but Glenn argued that it would be impossible with a crying newborn and a one-legged man on crutches. Kate was afraid to stay, but secretly dreaded leaving. She knew if they did, any chance of Daryl returning to them would be gone.