There wasn't any sleeping in the church that night. Except for maybe the baby. The baby didn't know about the blood and gore staining the floor. Or the tears and fury in every corner, in every space behind closed doors where no one but Owen's old god could see. She didn't know about the missing people. About the missing girl with the quick tongue and the smile. That smile.
Before sunup, there was a lot of destruction in the church. Owen helped. He was damn good at destruction. They chopped and broke up pews. Chairs, too. A desk. Everything wooden. They stole the pipes from the organ, too. When light was breaking, Owen was around back with Abraham, hammering a scavenged board over a window, nails held in his teeth. He'd seen his dad do that. The man he called "Dad," not the man he shot on a road like a dying dog.
He didn't have a hammer. He had a heavy-set chair leg. Worked just fine. Felt good, too. BANG BANG BANG. Breaking the wall with the nail. God, it felt good to break something. To make loud noises and not give a fuck if a walker showed up. He had a gun, he had a knife. Let the walkers come.
He finished up the window, moved onto the next. In the white wood next to this one, now, there's where he saw something interesting: YOU'LL BURN FOR THIS. Carved right into the paneling like a stupid love proclamation two third-graders would engrave on an oak. Only, you know, not about love. About someone going to hell. YOU'LL BURN FOR THIS.
"Won't we all?" he muttered.
He hammered the window shut behind a shield of cigarette smoke. Daryl had found a few packs in Atlanta. Owen had lifted one off of him. Sharing is caring, after all.
He was almost done with the third cigarette of the day when he came around the house. He passed Carl, who was working with the black bastard that nobody seemed to remember pushed Sydney into the arms of the walker that bit off her fingers. Owen could have made eye contact, he knew the guy looked up when he passed by. He didn't bother. He wasn't in the mood to see a puppy with its tail tucked between its legs. He was in the mood to shoot the puppy's fucking brains out.
Past Rick, past Michonne. To the front of the church. He walked around the brand-new makeshift fence. Organ pipes shoved into dirt, mostly, with some wooden pieces here and there. If a walker wanted to come to Sunday service, it would impale itself. How horrific.
Owen glanced over the fence, through the open church doors, all the way down the aisle and up to the cross. Jesus loves me, this I know, for he screwed us over so.
"Owen."
Owen turned to see Daryl and Leah standing there, a perfect pair. They had been awfully cozy last night. Missing daughter, perfect bonding time. There was a bag at their feet. Leah, LC, Ms. Cartwright, whatever Owen was supposed to call her – she was the one who spoke. She stood in front of Daryl, dark bags under her eyes still leaving her beautiful. Owen had had such a massive crush on her back in the day. Now she didn't do much of anything for him.
"Ms. Cartwright," he drawled. That term was as good as any. He took the cigarette from his mouth and blew smoke at the sky. "What can I do for you?"
"We need to be clear on something."
Owen eyed her. He wondered if this was the moment, the moment when she would reveal to the group – or reveal to him that she had already revealed to the group – the kind of kid he had been before the apocalypse. The kind of kid who didn't just go to juvie for taking a joyride. But what she said hit him much harder.
"You're not going to Atlanta. You know that, right?"
He stared at her. Then he laughed, took a last puff from the cigarette, let it fall down and stomped it out while he said, "Sorry, you're gonna have to say that again. Couldn't hear through all the bullshit."
"Watch it," Daryl said. Owen looked at him coolly. He more or less assumed he and Daryl would come to blows eventually, and they might as well get it over with. He would get his ass kicked, no doubt, but the few punches he could get in before Daryl turned him into a pulp would feel pretty good. Nothing personal against Daryl, really. Well, a thing or two. But mostly Owen just wanted to hurt something.
At Daryl's voice, Ms. Cartwright glanced over her shoulder at him. Daryl's expression didn't change. It wasn't a venomous one, really, just a hard-ass kind of this-is-where-I-stand-you-dickhead look that Owen could admire. He was a fan of wearing that look himself. Not right now, though. Right now he grabbed his best crooked grin and slapped it on for the lady, who had turned back to him, lifting her chin.
"Owen," she said softly, way too much so for comfort, "We can't take you."
It was perfect, utterly perfect, that Rick, Michonne, Carl, and Noah chose to walk around the corner at that moment. Owen pointed at the latter as soon as he appeared. "But you'll take the gimp who shoved Sydney at a walker with you?"
"Hey, man, that was an accident!" Noah said for the tenth time.
"Tell it to the judge." Owen jerked his head at the door. "Hear there's a great one in there. Say hi for me."
"What's going on?"
Rick, stepping in to save the day. Fearless leader. Joe used to do the same thing. But the fearlessness there stemmed from the fact that, if push came to shove, Joe could just step back and let some guy and some other guy kill each other. Peace on earth.
Ms. Cartwright ran a hand through her hair as Rick came up next to her. She turned to him and, murmuring, said, "Daryl and I decided Owen isn't coming. He's not taking the news well."
"You – you and Daryl?" Owen grinned. "What, have you guys adopted me now? I don't remember giving my consent, don't I need to give consent? You're a lawyer, right, I do need to give consent, yeah?"
"You talk too much," said Rick, appraising him.
"I do lots of things too much."
"They're right," Rick said without inquisition. "You don't have any business going to Atlanta."
And now, now Owen was starting to crack. The surface Owen, with the easy smiles and the charisma and the flat-out charm that had gotten him in and out of so many things. Below that Owen . . . What was it the pirate maps used to say, concerning uncharted waters? Here there be dragons. "I do, actually. I know a chick there. Great girl, let me tell ya."
Rick just shook his head. "No. If LC and Daryl think you should stay here, that's what's happenin'."
He turned away. Owen clenched his fist.
"The hell it is," he spat, which was enough to make Rick turn around, eyebrows up.
"She is there," said Owen, his heart starting to pound, "because I decided to take off that night. Me and Carol did, at least, and I don't know what Carol would have done if I hadn't jumped on the bandwagon – point is, I was there when they were taken, and I saw those assholes grab Sydney like a sack of flour and toss her into the back of some strange car and drive off, and I didn't do a damn thing about it!"
"Man, I was the one who made that call," Daryl said quietly.
"And I went along with it," Owen said. "Mainly because I had every intention of going the hell back for her! For both of them, but –" He stopped there. Continuing would only mean dragons.
"Would you just shut up?"
Aw, come the hell on . . .
It was Carl. Sydney's darling Carl was jumping in now. Owen took a deep breath as he came up beside his father, past him, right up to Owen. "She's my girlfriend, and I'm not going. Why should you?"
Owen shrugged. "'Cause I could bench-press you and someone has to babysit?"
With that, the other boy shoved him. Which made Carl fair game. Although, in all honesty, Owen would have taken a cheap shot if he had to. It was bound to happen. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick BOOM.
He rammed into Carl, sent them both flying through the air. Carl landed, Owen landed on top of him, Carl lost every ounce of oxygen in his lungs, Owen didn't care, he lifted up an arm to punch him, got that arm grabbed and was lifted and thrown around and pinned to the church wall by an arm against his throat. And looking into Daryl Dixon's eyes – and, yeah, they could be called venomous now – Owen, in one of his rare lapses of wit, could not think of a single smartass thing to say.
"Daryl," came Leah Cartwright's voice. That was it, just his name. Carl was back on his feet, Owen could see that out of the corner of his eye, but he wouldn't look. He was in the middle of a staring contest. Not one he was about to lose.
To his surprise, Daryl let him go. Gave him a little slam against the paneling for the road, but – he let him go. "You care about Sydney so much?" he huffed out. "She really the last thing that means somethin' to you?"
Owen's spine went rigid. He gave Daryl a glare he hoped would pierce right through him. He was painfully aware that pretty much everyone else in the group had gathered round, eager to see the show.
"Well, guess what?" Daryl snapped. "We get her back, you know who the first person she's gonna wanna see is?" His arm flew out to Carl, panting and dirty.
And Owen hated everything because he knew Daryl was right.
"You wanna do right by her," Daryl said, "You stay here. You put one more set of hands to work keeping him safe."
"I don't need protecting," said Carl.
"Syd wouldn't give a damn if you had a hundred cavalrymen around you," Daryl answered. "She'd want more." Now his eyes came back to Owen. "You know where she'd want you to be."
That sounded way too much like something you'd say about a person who's dead.
Owen stared at the spot in ground where he and Carl had landed. Violence, such violence. How good he was at it. Like father, like son.
"Fine," he said. "Fine. I'll stay here."
"I'm staying, too," said Michonne. "So nobody kill each other under my watch, okay?"
Owen chuckled but he didn't know what was funny. Most of the time he didn't. He met Daryl's eyes one last time before slipping through the organ-pipe fence and up and into the church. He didn't know what he meant to convey to Daryl with that little glance. At least not specifically. Broadly, he supposed, it was something along the lines of Save her.
By any means necessary, save her.
Inside, alone, he kneeled at the altar and crossed himself, even though he was Catholic and this church wasn't. Desperate times, and all that shit.