Reviews:
SlumberingVoid — Hilltop's leadership is cursed, that's for sure!
Bucket Hat — I'm glad you think so! I'm honestly very happy at how many people have been reading this far into the time jump. I try not to worry too much about the numbers, but I thought they would slowly go down after the jump. But honestly, it seems to have been the opposite which is really nice.
Notes: Sorry for the wait, busy week!
-Carl-
Hours after falling asleep, Carl jolted up, awake, clutching at an intense pain that pounded at his temple as a sharp yelp escaped his throat. He didn't do so well sleeping anymore. He had hoped that at Hilltop it might have been different, but the thick strings of sweat running across his face and the sweltering pain in his head proved otherwise.
Rhys hadn't woken up, his breathing calm and steady beside him. Carl smiled, finding some comfort in knowing Rhys didn't seem to find sleeping quite as hard as he did. Carl tried to lie there and just enjoy the feeling of a warm body in his bed again, but the pain in his head kept thumping against his brain until he sat up, carefully and quickly untangling from Rhys and reached for his jeans, getting the half-empty bottle of painkillers from the pocket.
The sky was a deep and midnight black, and the faint moonlight that pierced the cloudy atmosphere lit Carl's way to the dresser by the window. He poured some water from a china pitcher into a small glass and took three pills in one tough swallow.
Carl got dressed and crept from the room. He found Daryl sitting in the dewy grass outside the cellar door, his back to the wall, a few inches from one of the cell windows. He thought he might be asleep for a moment, but then Carl saw that he just had his head turned towards the window like he was concentrating.
Carl went to speak, but Daryl held a dirty finger to his lips and beckoned for him to join him. Carl heard the voice of the girl they captured inside—
"I've never been alone. My people travelled in groups with the dead." Her voice was dry and worn from all the screaming earlier, but high enough to remind them that she was still a kid. "I miss the sounds... the smell..."
Carl carefully sat on the other side of the window from Daryl, listening to Henry respond to the girl inside. Daryl told him about this earlier — Enid came up with the idea since the girl seemed comfortable talking to Henry, they should take shifts listening in on what she said.
"Not gonna lie, walking around in dead people's skins is pretty messed up," Henry groaned.
"Thinking this place isn't gonna fall like every other place... that's messed up."
"Agree to disagree."
"Your dad's an asshole like mine was," the girl whispered. "All you did was sneak out. Is it even that hard? Are there a lot of guards posted here?"
Carl shot Daryl a concerned look, worried Henry might reveal too much, but Daryl just kept listening.
"Daryl's not my dad," Henry chuckled, either overlooking the obvious fish for information or missing it entirely. "He doesn't even want to be here. He's only doing it as a favour to my mom. And she's only asking him to do it because she doesn't want to just dump me on my brother."
They heard the girl stand up and shuffle towards the gate.
"You told me your mom and brother died," the girl said slowly.
"My second mom, I mean," Henry said. "She's tough. Not somebody you want to mess with. And he's not my actual brother. Rhys was just close with my brother, and has just kinda always been there for me, I guess."
"Which one was Rhys..." the girl's voice trailed on his name like it oozed familiarity.
Henry paused like he was worried explaining might be a mistake.
"He was one of the ones that brought you here," Henry finally said. "The one with messy hair, missing half an ear... can be an asshole."
The girl made a breathy sound. Maybe she found that funny. Maybe she just realised who he meant.
"You didn't hear him chewing me out over sneaking past the walls earlier?" Henry asked.
The girl paused. "I'm sick of listening to you people arguing."
"So, what happened to your dad?" Henry changed the subject.
"My dad was a stupid man," the girl answered after a much longer pause. "My mom, though, she kept me alive. Kept me safe. She's a lot like your mom. You don't mess with her, either."
The thought made Carl's spine tingle. When the cells went quiet for a long while, Daryl pointed his head towards the graveyard. Carl got up and followed him, the two stopping by Jesus' grave.
"Girl's name is Lydia," Daryl grunted. "Talked awhile about how she spent the start in a basement with her mom and dad and some other survivors."
"Sounded like the dad was an asshole," Carl said.
Daryl nodded. "Maybe."
"She say anything else?"
"Nothing useful," Daryl said. "Her group sounds nomadic. He's told her more than she has him, but nothin' that'll hurt."
"Does Henry know that y'all are listening?"
"Nah," Daryl said. "Kid doesn't need to."
"Rhys won't be happy that they're talking."
"Enid spoke to him about it. He's fine."
Carl didn't bother trying to go back to sleep. He took over for Daryl in listening over the cells, and by the time it was light, one of the guards came to take over. They hadn't said much, sleeping for most of it.
Carl saw Enid over by the well pump and waved.
"Hi," she smiled, yanking the metal lever until one of her two plastic buckets was filled.
They hadn't spoken. Carl had kind of been avoiding her. Worrying about what she might say — what Rhys might have told her.
"Siddiq mentioned your headaches," she said, handing Carl one of the buckets to carry without asking. He nodded while she filled the other. "How regular are they?"
Carl smiled politely. "You don't have to worry about me."
She gave him a smile back, the kind you give a customer at the store when they're taking too long. "I'm not asking as a friend. If you're staying here long, I need to know these things. I've already gotten those newbies you brought in to go through their medical history with me."
"Right," Carl said, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "Maybe every other night... sometimes in the day if it gets real bad."
"How long have you been getting them?"
"On and off since I stopped going out with Daryl. They've been worse this year, I suppose."
Enid nodded, picking up the second, now full, bucket and walking towards the medical trailer. Carl followed with his bucket. "Siddiq's got you on normal painkillers for that, right? If you're staying for long, you'll need to talk to Tara about a job to pay for your prescription here. Or talk to Rhys about lending some of his trade points to you if you guys are close again — honestly, it doesn't matter, just work it out."
Carl waited for her to finish, putting the bucket down beside hers outside the trailer door. She climbed the steps and opened it.
"So we're not friends?" Carl chuckled slightly.
"I didn't say that." Enid rolled her eyes at him. "Look, I'm just busy. I haven't taken on an apprentice yet — unless you include Rhys occasionally reading something in a book that freaks him out and then asking me to show him what to do if it ever happens — so, yeah, I've got my hands full. What little time I do get, I'm trying to give to Alden right now because he's been working extra shifts too, with Earl."
Carl nodded, smiling up at her. "I'm glad you've built something here. Even if it's... busy. Suppose we just have to find a way to survive somehow, right?"
She smirked and nodded at him, pulling a band off her wrist to put her brown hair, which was shorter than it used to be, up in a ponytail. Before closing the door, she smiled again. "It's good to see you again, sport."
Carl almost called after her but got distracted by shouting down at the gates. By the time he jogged down there, he saw Sasha and Tara arguing with Kelly, Magna, and Yumiko — Connie standing off to the side with a lopsided frown on her face — Rhys next to her, looking of two minds about something.
"The girl said it's just her mum out there, right?" Yumiko barked. "That means it's safe to go look for Luke and Alden!"
"It only took one of them for Jesus to get killed," Sasha growled at her.
"We didn't know the assholes were wearing dead faces," Magna hissed at her. "We'll be ready for it this time."
"We can't leave Luke out there!" Kelly cried, looking close to tears. "Please."
Tara pulled a face at Rhys, who shrugged and said, "Your call, boss."
She frowned, nodding. "Fine. Sasha and I will take a small party out. Rhys, you game?"
He looked at the gates hesitantly, probably remembering how scary the cemetery was that night when walkers came sprinting out of the darkness. He nodded.
"Hold on," Sasha said, holding up a hand. "You really think it's a good idea for all three of us to go out there right now? We just lost Jesus."
Tara frowned at her. "We need people that know what they're doing. Despite what you've said, Daryl told me Rhys more than held his own in that graveyard."
Sasha grimaced at her.
"You want to take charge?" Tara asked her. "Be my guest, Sash."
Sasha stayed quiet.
"Pick someone to spot you out there," Tara told her and Rhys. "But just the one person. Sasha's not wrong... I don't want too many people away from home."
Rhys turned to look towards the blacksmith shed, where Earl was using a hammer to crack out sparks against a red hot spearhead, and Marco was sitting on a stool eating an apple.
"Marco!" Rhys called. "You on break?"
Marco looked up from the apple, nodding.
"We're going after Alden. You want in?"
Marco stood up, putting his apple down and saying something to Earl before grabbing two spears off a rack of finished weapons.
Sasha called up something similar to Kal on the gate, who answered similarly to Marco, passing his binoculars to another guard.
"We're coming, too," Magna said stubbornly.
"Sure," Tara sighed.
"Hey!" Carl called, coming closer. "I can help."
Tara pulled another unsure face as Marco shoved one of the spears into Rhys' open hand.
"You said you need people that know what they're doing... plus, you need someone to watch your back too, right?" Carl asked her.
The fog from the cemetery seemed to have followed them back, the woods around Hilltop thick with its mystery. Tara walked ahead of the rest of them, spear under arm as she scanned the trees with a pair of binoculars. Carl walked with Connie and Kelly on his left and Marco with Kal on his right. Behind him, Sasha and Rhys were walking in stride, Magna trailing behind them.
"I'm fine," Carl heard Rhys whisper, looking behind him to see Sasha trying to pass him a canteen of water. Sasha clipped it back on her belt, nodding, her eyes saying that she didn't believe him.
"It's funny," Kelly said to Carl. "You're kinda like us now."
Carl looked at her.
"Seems like you're as much a stranger to these people as we are."
Tara passed the binoculars back to Connie, who seemed to spot something she didn't immediately.
"What?" Tara asked her, noticing. "What do you got?"
Connie signed something to Kelly and Magna before passing the binoculars to Yumiko. She pointed towards some close-knit trees, a group of the dead we'd missed, feasting on something on the ground.
"Maybe the dead... maybe not," Yumiko said after looking. "Keep your distance and watch their hands. They could go for knives."
Yumiko took a step forward, but the flat side of Sasha's axe pushed against her chest, stopping her in her tracks.
"Where are you going?" Sasha asked, an eyebrow raised.
"You seriously don't trust us?" Yumiko hissed. "After we helped you?"
"It's not a question of trust," Sasha said. "I don't need you to run ahead and play hero. I need to know you can play well with my team."
Everyone was watching.
"Your team?" Yumiko asked.
"My team."
"Let us show you," Magna hissed.
Sasha watched her before slowly lowering the axe and pointing toward the dead. "I counted thirteen. You and your people will take point with Rhys... take down one each with projectiles. Then you fall back and let the rest of us clean house."
They sprung into action on Sasha's go. Yumiko and Rhys took out the first two with whizzing arrows from their bows, their walkers falling limp along the horse corpse they were eating. Magna tossed a knife through one's skull, and Connie and Kelly used their slingshots to blow holes through two more.
Carl and the others slipped past the ranged fighters.
Tara looked one up and down. "Funky walk, check. No weapons... check. Okay." She drove her spear through its face, which was more bone than skin.
Sasha pinned one to a tree with her foot, slicing off another's jaw and sending it staggering back before finishing the one still tacked to the bark under her boot. Marco and Kal finished two still eating the horse.
No skin people Carl thought, cutting down one.
Tara and Sasha got the last two easily. Sasha strode back towards the harmless one that she relieved of its bottom jaw, raising her axe, but one of Magna's knives hit it first. She did a quick pirouette when Sasha glanced at her after the walker hit the dirt.
"None of the masked ones," Magna pointed to the bodies.
"The horses..." Marco narrowed his eyes at two bodies. "These are Alden's and Luke's."
"At least it's just the horses," Carl sighed.
Rhys pulled a face. "Amos and Bobby were good horses."
"Maybe Alden and Luke had to bail," Tara said.
"Maybe the skins caught up to them," Carl said.
Sasha looked to Kal after he stood up from inspecting the walkers. "Check the area. Look for tracks. Stay close."
Connie studied Luke's horse, a few deep cuts on its legs. She told Kelly something with her hands.
"Hey, guys," Kelly said. "Connie says the horses were cut open... and skinned with knives. This wasn't just the dead."
Kal came jogging back to them from behind a tree. "Plenty of walker tracks but nothing else. Horses could've been wandering for a while."
"Well, then we split up," Yumiko called suddenly, pointing people in different paths. "We break in different directions."
"No, no," Tara hissed. "We stay here. It's not safe out here anymore. Walkers aren't just walkers. That girl, Lydia, told us it was just her mother... but this?" She points at the horses. "She's a liar. There could be three more of them out there. There could be three hundred."
Magna's group all glared at her.
"We head back," Tara said. "We stay behind the walls, and we make a plan."
Connie looked at her, upset, signing something.
Kelly stepped up to Tara, getting uncomfortably close. "And what if we don't?"
"Hey!" Rhys barked at her suddenly. "If Tara says we head back, we head back. C'mon, you just said you want to prove you're part of the team."
Kelly's frown was crooked, but she nodded, stepping back. "Sorry."
"And what if Luke and your guy are dead by the time we work out this plan?" Magna barked back at him.
Tara grimaced. "Throwing away our lives because we want to act rash won't help them."
Magna grimaced back.
"Hey," Sasha sighed at her. "You don't like it? Go look for your friend. Go on, I ain't stopping you. Just know that our biggest advantage over these skin freaks is our walls... and if you keep pushing back against everything we say, you won't be back behind them when the sun goes down."
"We will work out a plan," Tara added, pointing back the way they came. "Let's go."
Rhys walked at the back with Carl this time. Carl smiled at him as they came up to Hilltop's gates, but Rhys looked numb to it.
"Why'd you get so angry with them back there?" Carl asked.
"A multitude of reasons," Rhys chuckled.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Can you believe Sasha side-lined me?" Rhys asked suddenly.
"She did?"
"Put me at the back with the archers."
"I mean, you are—"
"That's not why, though!"
"It isn't?"
"No!" Rhys groaned. "She still thinks I'm not ready to come back out here."
"I didn't realise that you'd stopped," Carl said.
"Uh-huh," Rhys grunted. "She told me this morning that I barely made it out of that graveyard."
"Seems harsh."
"Thank you."
Once they were through the gates, the excitement followed them through, Rhys running towards the big house when he spotted Daryl dragging Henry out of the cellar by his arm. Carl wasn't sure why, but he followed.
"Everything okay?" Carl asked, catching up to Rhys in Hilltop's graveyard where Daryl was fuming, Henry cowering to it.
"I'm sorry!" Henry yelled.
"Kid thought it'd be a good time to tell that girl about the Kingdom," Daryl barked. "What were you thinking?! You got family at the Kingdom!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't think—" Henry paused like something just came to him. "Wait, you were listening?"
"Yeah, of course we were," Daryl hissed. "Me, Carl, Enid... few of the others. We've been switching off... see what she'd say to you."
Henry glared at Rhys. "You knew about this?"
Rhys' mouth was open and stuttered an apology before saying, "I didn't think it would hurt."
"You were using me!" Henry shouted.
"Yeah," Daryl grunted. "And it was workin', too."
"She's a good person who got messed up out there," Henry blurted at them. "And she's right about you, Daryl. You know that? You're an asshole."
"Henry, don't—" Rhys tried.
"You all want answers?" he cut back in. "Get them yourself."
Henry stormed off towards the house, Rhys chasing after him. Carl didn't follow that time.
A/N
Not sure if I've mentioned it, but my biggest issue with this season was that Daryl came in and just sort of barked orders in Hilltop. I wish Tara got to be a little more assertive, so having Rhys and Sasha around to back her up makes me really happy.