There were three communities that didn't need much rebuilding and one that needed extensive rehab. And I wasn't very welcome in any of them. How would I know this? Because, ALL of the population of ALL three were at Hilltop in the beginning, at some point on another. And while Daryl had promised that I wouldn't be subjected to the abuse of their collective feelings of disappointment and irritation with me, and I'm downplaying it trust me, he couldn't be with me twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Not that he didn't try his damnedest.

I spent my days getting used to my bow again. Soon, my Simon target was fully beheaded, and I had to grin as I made a new one. Sometimes I took Judith with me, sitting her on a blanket at my feet, telling her stories about Carl as I notched arrow after arrow and kept an eye on any danger that might try to sneak up on us, walker or human. She was walking now, and I would take her hand in mine, fold the blanket and sling my bow over my shoulder as we took our time getting back to the rest of the world.

She came with me to visit Negan on most days, even once he'd been removed to a more secure spot. I'd sit by him as she toddled around and I hoped he found some measure of peace from our time with him. On the visits that we were alone, he'd touch me more often. Taking my hand and kissing the knuckles, or leaning in to smell the side of my neck. I knew, once we returned to Alexandria, that he'd be the first real visitor to Morgan's cell and he wouldn't be able to get as close to me as he did in Hilltop, so I savored it as much as he did.

We knew it wouldn't last. The quiet, the ease of our visits, but we also knew that we both found comfort in them. Negan's lips brushing my neck, my fingers linked with his, such simple signs of affection, yet we knew what they brought to each of us. Pain. Whispered threats. And the dirty looks. When I was alone with him, I could care less about what was being said or who was shooting those damn looks my way. And then I'd leave, and the strength of his presence was gone, and I'd have to walk with my chin up and back straight as though I could give a shit.

I did though. It hurt me to know that people I barely knew thought so little of me. It hurt worse to know that the people who did know me, and quite well, seemed to share those same thoughts. Unlike my brush with falling apart from those days before meeting Negan, however, I didn't fight feeling it. I was wide open and I owned my emotions. I cried when I felt like crying, and as Daryl and my family were learning quickly, when I was pissed they knew it now.

"Damn it, Dad," I was glaring at him as we sat together discussing what came next. He wanted Daryl, and me clearly, to head to the Sanctuary and get it back on track. "You promised." Not just visits with Negan, but damn it, I just got back to seeing Judith every damn day. "How the hell is this supposed to work? Plus, don't you need all fucking hands on deck at Alexandria? You said that it was a mess that needed rebuilding."

I knew that Daryl's eyes were on me. I also knew that Michonne, Maggie, Glenn, Carol, and Ezekiel were watching me intently. Too fucking bad.

"Jessi," Dad was using his patient parent voice and I nearly growled at him. "Honey, you know the place better than anyone here." I shook my head. "You do, I can't put one of the former Saviors in charge, not yet."

"I barely left-" I stopped, feeling Daryl tense. Shit. "I wasn't really given much free reign, Dad." Not until I was ready to run away from him, I added in my head. I sighed. "I don't know his people, I don't know what they fucking did there."

Daryl's arms wrapped around me, trying to calm me down. "Jessi," his face was practically buried in my hair. "We can go and get an idea of what needs done. We'll visit Alexandria as much as ya want, I swear." I wanted to fight free, but I knew that he was trying to compromise. Trying to make me see that fighting against it wouldn't help my cause at all. And so I relaxed into his touch and sighed again.

"Fine." I agreed, looking up at Dad with hard eyes. "What are we expected to do?"

What we were expected to do, I learned quickly, was determine who was trustworthy and how to tame those who would undoubtedly fight back. Daryl and I were supposed to take stock of the Sanctuary and learn not just what it used to be, but what it COULD become now. And so, with me at his side, dealing with the reports and people that Daryl didn't have the patience to contend with, we started to reteach Negan's people how things had to be from here on out.

Corn ethanol fuel, that was the plan for the Sanctuary. No one seemed to want to hear that we didn't have nearly enough fertile ground for crops. And Eugene as a constant presence wasn't exactly welcome for me either. Dad tried, during my trips to Alexandria, to remind me that Eugene was intelligent and he had helped win the war. Sure, thought, but you keep forgetting that I care for Negan and that smart asshole could have killed him with that backfiring gun. And, there was that memory of why I ran away from Negan, the fear that another Eugene would come and as his newest girl, I'd be expected to entertain him.

I helped where I could. Learning that the majority of Negan's people were go with the flow types. They transferred their loyalty strangely easily, and I had to hold back an absolutely hysterical laugh when they tried to kneel for Daryl and then Dad. Once they were told those types of displays were no longer necessary, most of them fell in line quickly. There were hiccups. People not feeling safe when Daryl insisted the walker security line be killed for good. People fighting against the more open, no points, system of being fed and clothed. These were easily squashed, mostly. Daryl's biggest issue was his discomfort in leading this way.

Nights were spent explaining that he had to understand it from their point of view. They'd been here, some of them at least from what they'd told me, for years. Negan had kept them safe. He'd given them jobs and security. Learning that he was gone AND that all the rules and ways they'd learned to live were different wasn't an easy thing to get used to. Daryl would counter with the ones that had easily changed, and I'd point out that most were Negan's true soldiers, the ones that were leaders because they could sense the change in tides. When you're looking at grunts, or even the lower totem Saviors, you're looking at people who want stability, change is hard.

I fell back into mediating easily. It was natural for me. As was hunting, which Daryl and I did regularly. Mostly for his sanity, because being trapped behind the walls of a huge brick building was never going to suit him easily. I rested easily in knowing that Daryl, and not me, would eventually be asking Dad for a reassignment. He hated it here as much as I did, even if I was growing used to navigating through the people's issues and finding solutions to the rising problems.

So we'd hunt. Sometimes just to get away, and other times as we left to visit Alexandria. Daryl never let me go alone. I tried to tell myself it was because he wanted to check in with Dad. I tried to convince myself that he wanted to keep me safe, even if I was more than capable of it myself, or that he wanted to see the progress in rebuilding our former home. I even tried, as he and I sat with Judith and watched her paint and listened as she told ME a story, that he wanted to visit with her. But, I could feel his eyes on me as I walked to the cell that held Negan, and all those illusions I'd try to build in my mind for his presence here with me would fade and I knew. He was here to make sure I didn't release him, that I didn't stay behind with him, that Negan never got to know me as intimately as he already did again.

It took around eighteen months to rebuild and for us to all be back in the flow of things. The Sanctuary wasn't in perfect order. Not even close, but it was better. As long as no one wanted to stay in any of the rooms that held the broken windows. Windows that were gone thanks to gunfire from a war that never had to be. The crops, still not nearly enough, were growing, but for how long? And the corn ethanol was being produced as it could be.

Alexandria was almost better than it had been. Wind mills, flowing water, and rebuilt homes along with crops of their own and a new hope filled the air. I didn't check on Hilltop or the Kingdom personally, but regular reports and updates came in over the radios or in person. We were getting back to normal, or most of us were.

Daryl was chafing under the strain of leadership and having to walk the same path that Negan had walked. He begged me, more than once, not to remind him of whose apartment we lived in. Not to mention that I'd slept in the bed, that I'd made love in the bed, with anyone other than him. He chafed at the reminders of Negan, and I chafed at the absence of him. This wasn't right. Not the building, not Daryl's body on those sheets in this bed. Nothing was right, even if the flow of life continued, everything felt wrong.