HAPPY NEW YEAR! i hope 2018 brings you all lots of good things. thought i'd open the year with an update. finally amirite?
oOo
Diana, Rick, and T-Dog took off to their designated area of waiting and surveillance, keeping a low profile. Diana had insisted on taking the lead, aggressively gesturing at her bow and putting a finger to her lips. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, her godawful sense of direction made her embarrassingly invite the other two men to walk ahead.
She wouldn't get them lost due to a stubborn sense of pride.
Arriving at the alley undetected was easy enough. Now they just had to keep their eyes open for Glenn while avoiding being seen by any walker strolling by on its eternal promenade.
While they waited, Diana felt the burning of a staring gaze on her, it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight. She felt relieved to see it was only T-Dog, although it was still pretty unnerving.
His eyes were trained on her bow. Diana adjusted her fingers around the grip and cleared her throat. "You uh- you need something?" she asked sheepishly, voice in a whisper.
It caught Rick's attention as well as T-Dog's, and both men looked at her. T-Dog had the decency to look flustered. "Nah, it's nothing." His mouth opened and closed as if he was reconsidering. When Diana thought he'd put it to rest, he spoke again. "It's… that thing, you never really explained. You took that thing with you everywhere but I never thought… It's just some weird-ass shit, man."
"Zombies are weird-ass shit, too," she responded with a shrug.
"Yeah, but that could have an explanation, ya know? A virus or whatever. How d'you explain that?" He pointed at it emphatically. "I mean, it's just-"
"It is what it is," Rick interrupted. "Maybe we'll find out one day, maybe we won't. It's not our business."
Diana gathered her courage, about to openly admit for the first time that it was possible she wasn't the only one. Right then, they heard someone call out 'Ayúdame', which resonated down the street. Glenn couldn't speak Spanish… Neither could Daryl.
Rick shared a look of worry with them and then gestured back down the alley. They took off running and winded up at Daryl's post. Diana looked on in surprise at the spectacle, leaning against the wall, trying to catch her breath.
Daryl was pressing an unknown guy against the side of the building, making all sorts of colorful threats. Judging by the look of the guy, he'd been the one to call out for help.
Rick separated the two, holding back Daryl while T-Dog grabbed a fistful of the other guy's tank top, keeping him pressed against the building, but with far less force. Diana tried to make sense of what had transpired, what they'd missed.
What in the actual hell was actually going on?
At the front of the alley, blocking the street, a mass of walkers pressed against a precarious fence, threatening to tip over. That was when she raised her bow, fingers ready to draw, just in case.
She asked Daryl where Glenn was, his absence a sore thumb to her, and his answer was what made the last thread break.
oOo
Glenn was missing and this little shit was playing tough.
They'd brought him back to their previous hideout, intent on getting answers out of him.
Diana hung out at the back of the room, arms crossed. She could see the kid occasionally between Daryl's pacing self and Rick's looming stature. She felt herself seethe, her breathing coming in and out shallowly and her short fingernails digging little half-moons into her arms.
The kid was younger than her – she couldn't tell by how many years, she'd always been bad at guessing ages – but his age didn't matter, because he was the only obstacle between her and her friend, and she was hating his smug little smirk more and more by the second.
Diana considered herself a kind and compassionate person, but those were traits she had grown into.
"I ain't telling you nothing," the guy said with an irritating calmness. He lounged on the chair they'd forced him onto like the people surrounding him didn't intimidate him. It wasn't true, his knee bobbed up and down slightly every now and then, it was subconscious, but a tell nonetheless.
Diana plowed past Rick and Daryl and crouched in front of the kid, giving him a taut smile. "Hey," she started, and he looked her up and down. "¿Cómo te llamas?"
He stayed silent for a moment and looked to the side before spitting, "Miguel, bitch."
"Hey, watch it!" Daryl started behind her, and T-Dog held him back by the elbow.
Diana sighed and scrunched her nose in impatience. "Miguel, oye, si no me dices dónde está mi amigo, te voy a cortar los cujones, aplastarlos a pulpa e te los daré de comer con una cuchara. ¿Entiendes?" she said, her tongue rolling around the accent and her heart thumping in her ears.
He swallowed heavily and announced, "Bitch, you don't scare me, I said I ain't telling you shit."
The tug of his lips was condescending and it pissed her off even more. She wanted nothing more than to grab his face and smash it nose first onto a desk.
She stood up with a deep inhale and faced her companions. They eyed her with mild suspicion and curiosity. She approached Daryl and removed his hunting knife from the holster on his belt with fumbling hands. Once she had it, she turned around and blindly slammed the blade into the leather seat of the chair between the boy's legs, succeeding in making him jump and shriek and scoot away.
"Which one do you like the least?" she hissed, surprised and relieved that she'd managed to hit the chair and not the boy. She wanted to intimidate, not maim, despite her rightful anger and bloodthirsty thoughts.
Rick pried her hand off the handle and removed the knife from its firm embedding before returning it to Daryl. "Let's not do that," he said with slight exasperation and grabbed her lightly by the upper arm to bring her up and away from the guy.
The frightened look in the boy's wide eyes almost made her want to apologize, almost.
"Savage," T-Dog whispered as she was moved past him and then he asked Daryl, "Man, what the hell happened back in that alley?"
"I told you, this little turd and his douchebag friends came out of nowhere and jumped me," Daryl accused, pointing at Miguel.
Diana's head snapped to him, examining him. "Are you hurt?" she asked and hopped off the desk she'd just sat on. He looked a bit roughened up but no worse for wear.
Daryl shook his head.
Miguel complained about Daryl being the one who'd jumped him, something to do with Merle.
"They took Glenn, could've taken Merle, too," Daryl defended and Diana had to object.
"I don't know… Merle's injured, why would they want an injured man?" She shrugged apologetically at Daryl. "No offense, but it'd only be more work for them with no profit, you know? And it seems to me that's why they took Glenn – for profit."
"Go on," Rick encouraged.
Diana shrugged once more and crossed her arms. "As much as I hate to say it, Glenn's a bargaining chip for them now, it's him for something we have. And I'm guessing we only have one thing valuable enough to make that trade."
"The kid?" T-Dog asked, pointing a thumb at Miguel over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
"No, I mean, yeah, also, I guess, but consider this: what were they doing out there in the first place? They were very likely after the same thing we were. And we got it and they didn't, so they took something of ours..."
"You mean they want the guns," Rick concluded.
Diana nodded. "I mean they want the guns."
oOo
Miguel ended up taking them to his people's hideout after all, after some more well-placed threats.
Diana peeked through a sizeable hole in the wall surrounding said hideout. The place looked run down, much like everything did nowadays, the brick façade and surrounding walls were covered in vines, the glass windows were broken and boarded up from the inside. The front terrace was covered in weeds and stray garbage. It looked abandoned to her. So it was perfect.
"You sure this is the place?" she asked Miguel once again. "If it's not, te juro por Dios…"
"Cálmate perra."
"Call me that again," she hissed between clenched teeth and stepped closer to his defiant self.
Rick stepped in between them and looked at Diana with apprehension. "How about we stop this. I know you're upset, but this'll be over soon."
This was not only being upset, Diana hadn't felt this livid in a long time, and that fucker was trying her patience. She didn't like that she was being treated like a child throwing a tantrum because it was so much more than that.
They started readying themselves. Rick loaded up his pistol, T-Dog took a sniper rifle from the duffel bag and checked the scope, Daryl loaded a bolt onto his cross, and Diana stood there, trying her best to calm herself down.
Miguel looked at Diana's bow in her tight grip, and up to her. He cocked a mocking eyebrow.
"What?" she asked with an annoyed raise of her arms and started at him, making him flinch.
The corner of Rick's lip tugged up in amusement at the exchange, and then he addressed her and T-Dog. "You sure you're up for this?"
T-Dog nodded. "Yeah."
"I don't get why can't I go with you guys? I literally speak their language," Diana complained, unsatisfied with the arrangements Ricks had made. She could understand why her weapon would work better long range, up from a point of advantage, much like a sniper, but wouldn't it also be smart to have someone on the front that shared some common ground with the enemy?
"We don't know how things are gonna carry out down here. Anything happens, I want you up high, somewhere safe where you can cover our backs," Rick negotiated patiently.
Diana sighed and nodded while looking off to the side, feeling absurd for having argued.
While T-Dog took the duffel and left to one side, she parted in the opposite direction.
She easily shot down a lone walker on her path and once the alley was clear and secure, she climbed on top of a garbage container and then onto a metal awning that allowed her to see over the wall.
Across the yard, on the rooftop of a neighboring building, Diana spotted T-Dog with the sniper rifle ready, his eye on the scope, so she made herself as comfortable as she could and drew an arrow.
Down at the gate, Miguel took the front, Daryl and Rick behind him, their weapons trained on him. The tension was high and all senses were alert and focused as the doors slowly creaked open and a handful of men stepped out of the building.
She could barely hear the conversation going on at ground level. She heard Miguel mention her to their obvious boss – Guillermo, she'd heard – as the 'crazy puta who had wanted to spoon-feed him his balls' and she winced. She resented his derogatory term, but she had gone a little over the top with that.
Daryl stepped to the side to peek inside the open gates, where more men stood menacingly with their varied assembly of melee and fire weapons, and asked, "You got my brother in there?"
"Sorry," Guillermo said with a calm and broad gesture of his hands, proving Diana right, "We're fresh outta white boys." He cocked his head. "But I've got Asian, you interested?"
Rick offered to trade Miguel for Glenn, but Guillermo wasn't willing to take him up on that deal. He wanted the bag of guns as 'compensation' for his people's 'pain and suffering'.
Diana ground her teeth together; she'd said as much.
They played 'it's mine, it's yours' with the concept of said bag of guns, and Diana almost yelled down at them to hurry it up. Fuck the guns, she wanted Glenn.
"-What's to stop my people from unloading on you right here and now and I take what's mine?" Guillermo threatened, jutting his chin out in pride and broadening his stance.
That was her cue. She saw Guillermo glance up at T-Dog's location due to Rick's implication that they were being observed. Always a hoe for the dramatic effect – and because she was getting impatient as hell – Diana finally released the arrow she'd been painstakingly holding.
It whizzed by Guillermo's nose by a mere inch, unintentional on Diana's part. She whispered a curse, grateful it hadn't hit him.
The men were startled by it, as she'd expected, but even more so when it simply vanished. Some shifted in place in uneasiness, while others called out with anxious voices, their weapons raised against the invisible threat.
Guillermo didn't betray his façade; his surprise was quickly replaced by quiet as he asked his men to calm down with a raise of his hand. His gaze followed the trajectory of the arrow up to her location, looking right at her.
Diana knocked another arrow, just to see the look on his face as it reappeared; the strain on her muscles was worth the expression. What surprised her was the smirk right after.
He called out to the roof above him. Diana looked up to see two buff men bring out a guy – her Glenn – with his hands tied behind his back and a sack over his head. The sack was forcefully removed, showing them his terror-filled face as he swayed on the edge of the roof, his words muffled by tape over his mouth.
Diana withdrew the arrow in shocked fear.
She wanted to shout out to him but bit her tongue. She saw his wide eyes on her soon enough and she mouthed 'I'm coming for you' while pointing from herself to him so that even if he couldn't discern the words from the distance, the meaning behind the gesture would be clear enough for him.
He was distracted from her when the man holding him pretended to lean him over the edge and she started in place, heart tightening in her chest.
"I see two options," Guillermo said, an arrogance in his tone that irked Diana to no end, perceptible even from the distance, "You come back with Miguel and my bag of guns, everybody walks. Or you come back locked and loaded, we'll see which side spills more blood." He looked up at where she was, gave a wink and smirk and retreated with nothing more to say, the gates closing behind him.
Diana reached out helplessly for Glenn as the two men took him away, sack once again over his head.
oOo
They emptied out a building near the Vatos' hideout to retreat and ponder their options.
Diana said nothing. She'd already pestered Rick enough on the way over about how they should've had a plan from the beginning and how they had only wasted time. Eventually, he told her that she wasn't helping and she shut up, feeling childish and ridiculous and no less angry.
She sulked at the back wall, occasionally coughing from the tickle in her throat caused by the dust, her arms crossed and glare stapled on her face.
Rick dropped the duffel on a cluttered desk, unzipped it and went through the armament.
Daryl paced in front of the desk, his eyes on the guns and then Rick. "Them guns are worth more than gold. Gold won't protect your family or put food on the table. You're gonna give that up for that kid?"
That made her even angrier. She kicked off the wall and pointed at Daryl. "How can you say that? Glenn matters, okay? If not to you, at least to me; he matters more than this entire bag and every other working gun on this planet combined, so don't you dare."
Daryl had the decency to look a bit ashamed as he appraised her but didn't give any indication of taking back his words.
"You'd do it for Merle, wouldn't you?" Diana asked and Daryl looked away from her rich brown gaze, and she added silently, "Or for me?"
That stilled all sound in the room, as even Rick stopped what he was doing to listen in. What he knew from Daryl up to this point would probably take him to bet on a negative answer, but what he'd witnessed of their interactions so far didn't leave him so sure.
Diana took his silence for a 'no' and sighed. "Whatever, what I meant was, if you won't do it for Glenn, then for me, but I guess that's- whatever." She shook her head, feeling disappointed and hurt, but not wanting to admit it.
Then there was another of those indescribable looks that she hadn't learned to decipher yet, and she shook her head once more, conveying that it didn't matter now and that she was simply against his easy dismissal of Glenn's importance.
Diana glanced at everyone in the room in search of support and threw her hands up. "Really? Fine, I said my part, I need some air, now." She left the room and slammed the door behind her. Then coughed into the inside of her elbow, harsher and longer than before, making her bend at the waist and leaving her winded when the fit was over.
She opened the window, mixing some fresh air with the dust and mildew from inside, and leaned out the windowsill.
Ugh, she felt like such a silly fool, getting so emotional in a time of objectivity. She knew those guns could save their lives and the lives of others, and statistically and objectively speaking that was worth more than Glenn's life, but she'd never accept that. She would not be going home without Glenn, that was that.
Her throat tickled incessantly, forcing her into a hacking fit that left her dizzy for oxygen and with a throbbing head. She felt around for her inhaler, knowing her allergy usually led to an asthma attack, but stopped when she remembered it was long empty.
She felt panic rise in her as her throat threatened to close up and forced herself to take slow deep breaths between the coughing and slowly felt the tickle recede. There were tears in her eyes by the end of it.
She felt her hands tremble in anticipated fear as her mind recalled the last big asthma attack she'd suffered through. The memory caused her to suck in a deep breath as if she'd resurfaced from the depths of the ocean and she brought a hand to her throat to tug at her collar.
Her parents could not know of this. It would only fuel their belief that she should not be going on runs.
The bow on her shoulder purred comfort into her flesh and bones, but the damage was done, she'd thought of her parents again, and with it came a wave of guilt.
She continued schooling her breathing like she'd learned and jumped when the door to the other room swung open with T-Dog attached to the handle. She wiped her eyes clean before his gaze found her and he frowned at her state.
"Everything cool?" he asked with worry, about to walk towards her, but Diana cut him off. She stepped around him, into the other room, her hands trembling fists clutched on the hem of her shirt.
"Everything's awesome," she replied drily and addressed Rick, "What's the verdict?"
It was Daryl who answered, "We're doing this," he announced, less than pleased, shotgun in hand, while Rick held another fire weapon.
When Diana approached the desk, she heard Daryl whisper to her, "for you." Her heart leaped to her throat.
She swallowed hard, forcing the lump down, and glanced at him from the corner of her eye. His attention was on the weapon he was loading up. She nodded minutely to herself, repressing a grateful smile, and subtly bumped him with her hip.
She felt him return it and looked up at Rick, sensing his eyes on her, his blue gaze intently scrutinizing the exchange. She dropped the bullet she'd been fiddling with inside the duffel and cleared her throat before looking away.
"We heard you coughing, you okay?" Rick asked as he inserted another round into a pistol, purposefully not broaching the subject she thought he would.
"Yeah, it's just allergies," she replied, downplaying it with a light-hearted shrug. "Anyways, how are we doing this? 'Cause, like, I see weapons being loaded and I'm not entirely sure what's happening here?" Surely they weren't thinking of-
"Like Guillermo said, we'll see which side spills more blood," Rick said grandiosely while locking and loading a shotgun.
Miguel groaned in misery from his seat on the ground, and Diana never thought she would agree with him. Her righteous anger was put out like a fire.
"You kidding me?" Diana almost shrieked, her eyes wide. "Oh no, I don't condone this, noooo, nuh-uh. So you just wanna waltz in there and open fire on everything that moves, hoping not to get shot in return? What the fuck kinda plan is that? Is that what we resort to, now?"
Rick shook his head. "No, this is what they make us resort to. I don't want this any more than you do, but what other choice do they leave us? Do you see them willing to make a deal, reach an agreement?"
"They have Glenn," T-Dog added, "didn't you say you'd do anything to get him back?"
"I- I-," Diana was at a loss for words. Sure, she wanted Glenn back, but she thought they were going to go down a more peaceful road to their goal. She never wanted to actively kill anyone, she was simply counting on a more harmonious end to their ordeal, but she guessed that went to show how naïve she was.
"You ain't going in with us," Daryl said, breaking her out of her crisis. "If shit takes a rotten turn, I don't want you caught in the crossfire, none of us do."
Rick shared a look with Daryl and T-Dog and then fixed his blue eyes on her. "I told you before we came here, Diana, you're gonna outlive us all, so listen just once more, and stay out of harm's way."
Diana struggled in her mind to come to terms with Rick's words; she wasn't a coward, even if the idea of facing her own mortality did make her insides tremble and her heart rate pick up, she wasn't going to abandon everyone just to favor her own life, she could be selfish, but not to that point.
For the sake of her morals, she would do her best to aim to injure and not kill, and if by chance she came alive out of it, she would have to make sure to never, ever mention to her parents what happened. They would handcuff her to themselves.
"You must really-, I- I wanna go back to my family just as much as you wanna go back to yours, Rick. I'm-" Diana sighed, hoping she wouldn't regret her next words. "I'm going with you whether you like it or not. This is not me defying you just because you told me to stay put, okay? It's not that. You're not gonna be putting your lives on the line while I stay behind like a fucking damsel. I can- I can look after myself. And like hell I'm gonna let anyone take me down without a fight."
i wanted to ask you, faithful readers, what's your favorite thing about this story so far. whatever comes to mind, anything you've always wanted to mention. do it as a new year's favor for me, please?
i was thinking of also doing a Q&A on the story if you're interested. just let me know what your burning, pressing questions are and i'll see if the answers' a spoiler or not. LY!
