Thank you all for your patience! I know it has been a while since I updated. Career changes, house repairs, yada yada. But, despite all the distractions, we are still moving onwards and upwards!
Daryl left his companions and turned back down the street he had last seen Star on. Try as he might, he couldn't seem to her find her in the empty, dark roads of Alexandria. He kept his ears trained for the swish swish of her spear, but only heard night bugs and the rustling of thebreeze through the branches.
We are gonna need all the family we can get. Michonne's words echoed in his head. He had told Rick that she was with them, and now was the time to prove it. If only he could find her.
A faint tap tap tap echoed as he grew closer to the tall, fortified fences. He turned his head towards the source of the sound, and saw a dark figure in the shadows further down the line, tapping a pointed stick against the sturdy walls.
"Hey," he whispered to her. He saw the outline of her head turn towards him, but she made no motion to approach him. He sighed and began trudging towards her instead.
When he reached her, he saw that she was methodically touching her spear point to the fence, a tap sounding out with every point of impact.
"Whatcha doin' that for?" he asked. She still didn't face him, but turned her gaze further up the fence and lowered her spear to her side.
"How long do you think this will hold?" she whispered.
"What? The wall?"
She nodded in the dark.
"I dunno. Long as it does, I suppose."
The corners of her lips twitched upwards at his matter-of-fact response.
"And what do we do when it doesn't?" she probed.
Daryl shot her a glare. Why was she testing him like this? He knew that the wall wouldn't hold forever, and he knew what it took to survive out there. He didn't need to be cross-examined like a school kid.
"Why ya askin' me all of this? I know what's out there, an' I know this ain't no safe haven."
"I'm asking because I don't know," she responded evenly. "And I am terrible at not knowing things."
He didn't have a reply for that, so he turned his focus back to his mission. "Michonne sent me to come an' get ya. We need ya on our side now."
Star didn't respond to him but just kept staring up at the 12 feet of steel and wood. Suddenly, she let out a chuckle and turned to gaze at the darkened, quiet houses to their backs.
"You know, for how smart I seem to think I am," she told him, "I never considered that we might be on the wrong side of this fence."
He understood what she was worried about, and placed an open palm on her shoulder.
"Ain't no right side of the fence anymore," he told her, steering her away from the border of town and back into the residences. She came willingly, flipping her spear around in her opposite hand.
"What does Michonne want with me?" she asked, refocusing on the present conflict.
"We want ya," Daryl corrected her. "Yer in the group now, and we all gotta band together. Shit's bout to go down."
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The two family homes were the only ones in Alexandria with candles lit and silhouettes moving around. The rest of the citizens seemed too shocked to take any liberties with their light or their shadows.
Daryl and Star walked up the front steps, and immediately the motion and quiet whispers inside the building ceased. Daryl knocked twice on the door frame and said, "'s me."
The door swung open to reveal Sasha with a knife in her hand. She tilted her head into the house, inviting them to enter.
The majority of the group was seated or standing around the kitchen counters and dining table. Abraham was intently studying a collection of papers on the counter with Rick and Michonne, and looked up to see the two newcomers. He shook his head at them.
"I said tomorrow morning, dumbass," he muttered to Daryl. Daryl flipped him off, earning a stifled laugh from Carl. Star looked confused, but decided not to push it. Rick came from around the counter and approached the two, stopping right in front of Star. She held eye contact with the leader, unphased.
"Good," Rick said finally, and turned to the rest of the family. "Folks, I believe we all know Rylynn. She's with us now."
Daryl watched every member smile or nod their approval.
"Star," he heard her say. He turned back to her in surprise. She took a visible breath and continued. "If we're family, then you should know that my real name is Star."
Rick beckoned her over to the counter and the pile of papers. She and Daryl approached the opposite side, and Daryl saw that the papers were the town list of families, the storage inventory, and maps of the surrounding area.
"Alright Star," Rick said. "What do we do?"
All of her uncertainty and her self-consciousness instantly vanished, replaced by commanding confidence. "Tell me where you are at, Rick. What are we thinking right now?"
"Stay," Abraham said promptly. "Take control of the town and lock it down tighter. Train folks. Re-disperse weapons."
She nodded curtly. "Other options?"
"Back on the road," Michonne promptly supplied. "Take as much as we can and see what we find. But we did that before, and it nearly killed all of us."
"What else?"
"Go back to the prison?" Carl suggested. "I mean, with the supplies we take from here, we might be able to rebuild it."
"Anything that involves leaving means either sentencing everyone else to death or bringing them all with us," Sasha chimed in.
"Bringing them with us is essentially a death sentence, too," Carol reminded them all. "There's no way these people will last a week on the road."
"Anything that involves staying means taking care of the same people," Abraham reminded her. "Which means taking over, and they might not be willing to work under us."
"Either way, we risk running out the other people here who cannot survive anywhere else," Rick sighed, frustrated. "If we don't' take them with us and we leave, we would take as many supplies as we can carry. Maybe even all of it."
Star listened intently to all of the plans being echoed throughout the room. She turned to the only silent voice.
"Daryl? What are your thoughts?" she prompted him.
He flexed his fingers in his hand, contemplating the options. He didn't want to condemn the townspeople to death, or to cheat them out of their only shot at life. But at the same time, if it came at a cost and potentially danger to the group…
"Our family first," he replied simply. "If they wanna join, we take em and try. If they don't…" he shrugged.
Star's gold eyes floated across the papers spread out in front of them. "There has to be a less extreme option," she mumbled.
"Like what?" Carol asked.
"I don't know. Leave, but don't take every supply? Stay, but set up a less severe form of governance?"
"Deanna tried moderate policing," Rick reminded her. "Now two men are dead, and only one deserved it."
"If we leave, we take all that we can. We don't know when we will have a chance to restock, or if we even will find somewhere to live, for any amount of time," Sasha argued.
"Communities like this are rare," Michonne mentioned. "It was experimental. We'll never find another one."
"Maybe another prison?" Carol suggested.
"That might be an option," Rick acknowledged.
"What if it gets attacked again? This place is safe because no other people are looking for it," Michonne pointed out. "Prisons are obvious, and marked on maps."
"Let's bring it back in," Star called over the increasingly passionate voices. "Instead of listing what we can't have, let's list what we need. You all had good points." She hopped up to sit on the top of the counter, grabbed a pen from the pile of papers, and pointed at Carol with it.
"Somewhere fortified," Carol responded. The pen moved on to the next person, and each voiced what they needed in a home.
"Somewhere isolated and discrete."
"Somewhere with long-term potential."
"Lots of space."
"Supplies."
"A group that agrees on how to live there."
"We can get to it from here without huge risk."
"Ok," Star dropped the pen back down, a list jolted across a national map. "Let's just…let's call it a night. No matter what we decide, we are going to be here for at least a few more days. We can revisit this tomorrow night, and try to think of anything we might have missed."
The group nodded and slowly dispersed. Michonne was the last out of the room, and smiled at the newcomer from the entryway.
"Hey, Star," she called. Star look up from the list and met Michonne's eyes.
"Yes?"
"I'm glad you're with us."
Star grinned sleepily. "Thanks Michonne. So am I."
Daryl had exited with Rick to double-check the safety of the house, and came back in just as Michonne was leaving. Star acknowledged him without looking up from her papers.
"Going to sleep?" she asked.
"Na, I told Rick I'd take watch for a coupla' hours."
"You can get some sleep if you want to," she noted. "I'm going to keep going over these, so I'll be up. I can keep an eye on things."
"That ain't keepin' watch," he admonished her. She rolled her eyes at him.
"Do you really think any people are going to leave their safe little houses tonight?"
She had a point, but he didn't tell her that. Instead, he lifted himself up to sit on the tall counter with her. She was tracing major highways across the map and chewing on the pen cap absentmindedly.
"Don't do that," he scolded, lifting his hand to take the cap out of her mouth. She stopped her marking and lifted her intense gaze to his eyes as he withdrew the cap from between her teeth. Her lip fell in to fill the gap it left.
He squinted at her and tossed the cap aside, bringing his thumb to her lip to pull it gently from her bite. She relinquished her hold on it slowly, and he left his thumb under her chin, mesmerized by the lust and magnetic pull coursing between them.
Her lips flickered down to his lips for a split second, and it was all he needed. In front of the group, and the entire town, he had felt self-conscious about their connection. He didn't want to handle the imposing remarks and the prodding, and he was unsure how he would handle people questioning a girl like her with a guy like him.
But with no audience, and no expectations, he couldn't think of a good reason not to be as connected to her as he could manage. His lips clumsily crashed into hers, his hands immediately weaving around her waist to pull her closer to him. Her fingers dug into the back of his leather vest, and he felt her push her weight into him, almost as if she was trying to put him on his back.
Never one to back down, Daryl pushed back, his larger frame overpowering her as she rocked back onto her back. His strong arm cradled her head to keep it from smacking into the cold counter, and she let out an audible sigh as she settled into and was surrounded by his warmth.
They broke apart, raggedly breathing, and her characteristic smirk flashed across her face.
"So, is this the proper way to keep watch?"
He shook his head at her sarcasm, their noses brushing together.
"That's too bad," she continued. "Because I was gonna go ask Rick to sign me up for watch duty for the next thirty years."