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Daryl woke up a few weeks after they had gone camping and looked down at Ani curled into his chest. They were laying on their sides facing each other as he watched her sleeping soundly in his arms. She looked so young when she was sleeping, more so than she already did, with her face relaxed rather than the furrowed brow she usually wore. Her lips turned up in a slight smile and she was lightly snoring for the first time in a long while. It made moments like this, where she was nothing more than a vulnerable woman he held in his arms, all the more special because she was so strong during the day. She had been the biggest reason that the Sanctuary was running as smoothly as it was in only a month and how many had been able to come to terms with their issues. Things had been starting to settle down and she wasn't needed in the main areas as much during gatherings because the problematic of the Savior's soldiers had been sent to the other communities. Ani believed that the people who were on the fence needed to see how the other leaders created an equilibrium within their borders and it had created a sort of equilibrium. It wasn't perfect and there were still problems between the old factions, but they were slowly merging into one group. There were plenty of outliers, mostly from the soldiers, that resisted, but not to the point that they weren't able to coexist. While they were starting to heal, Ani was adamant about continuing her work at repairing the damage Negan had caused.

The two of them were finally able to have some down time to just relax before they had to deal with the influx of people from the other communities riding in to talk to Ani about their problems. Because of the pregnancy and the fact that it was getting colder, Ani had decided she didn't want to risk traveling between the communities. There were too many possibilities that varied in degree of severity; the minor of which being stranded without a vehicle, the worst of which getting shredded by walkers. She claimed that it was better to be safe than sorry and it meant that she didn't have to worry about half of the things that had been plaguing her as of late. Most of them still had a lot to do with the Sanctuary and Saviors and how they still had a long way to go before they fully integrated them with the other communities. And the other communities weren't being quick in forgiving the Saviors, which was why she had offered to continue seeing people from their communities if they were willing to come to the Sanctuary. She wanted them to see firsthand the changes they were trying to make, although she had been willing to go to the Hilltop, Daryl wasn't thrilled on the idea of her getting trapped outside of the walls of one of the other places. It didn't help that her blood pressure was still fluctuating and she had begun to have random dizzy spells due to low iron. Carson had gone back to the Hilltop, but the Kingdom had decided to send one of their doctors to the Sanctuary for the duration of her pregnancy, at the very least. The doctor had said that there was a possibility that Ani would have to go on bed rest if her blood pressure didn't stabilize and the dizzy spells didn't stop.

He carefully climbed out of bed and replaced himself with his pillow, watching her curl around it, a small smile playing on his face. Daryl wanted to let her sleep for as long as she could since she was finally getting a good rest. Rick was expecting both of them and the others for a group meeting in a little while, but he wasn't going to wake her up just to humor him. There wasn't anything she could tell him that Daryl couldn't tell him instead and she could tell him later if there was something she needed to say. He left the room as silently as he could after scrawling out a note on a piece of paper letting her know where he was. They had slowly been able to leave each other for short periods of time as long as they kept the other up to date on what they were up to. Rick was going to be at the Sanctuary for a few days to see how things were going and to rally the spirits of the Saviors and keep them hopeful for a better future. Ani could only do so much by providing therapy and conflict resolution, but the fact that she still wanted Negan dead had soiled her image in some minds. She honestly didn't care, but it was obvious that Rick wasn't happy with her point of view and no matter how much he tried to convince her that this was the better way, she simply ignored him.

"Hey, baby brother," Merle said as he walked up. "Where's Ani?"

"Sleepin'."

"'Bout damn time," he replied. "When was the last time either of you got any sleep?"

"Been a while. Finally didn't wake up from a damn nightmare. Damn near wakes up every hour or two most nights."

"Ain't gonna get any better when the baby gets here."

"I can do somethin' to help with the baby. I can't do shit about the nightmares. Don't even wake me up anymore."

"You know the brat," Merle said. "She don't take help from no one if she ain't forced to."

"Yeah," Daryl told him. "C'mon, let's see what Rick wants."

They walked together until they met up with Eugene and went out to the courtyard where Rick was wanting to talk to everyone. Daryl lit up a cigarette and leaned against one of the trailers listening to what the man had to say about the other communities. So far, Gavin had managed to make amends with the Kingdom, since he was the only Savior left from his outpost and had only harmed some stuff outside, not the people, to begin with, and had proven that he was truly sorry. Maggie no longer kept Simon under armed guard and he was no longer locked in a room when he wasn't working, but he still had an escort when he left the house. Negan was kept in the cell Morgan had built when they attacked the Satellite outpost and he was behaving relatively well. He'd had a couple of outbursts and was regularly trying to provoke everyone who delivered food to him, but it seemed to finally be sinking in that he was no longer in charge of anything. Daryl really didn't care to hear about what Rick had to say about the man, a thought Merle not-so-eloquently orated. That was another reason he was happy he hadn't woken Ani up and brought her along to the meeting; he didn't want her to hear about it. She was still almost as angry as Maggie was about the fact that Rick had made the decision for everyone when it wasn't his choice.

"Is there anything the Sanctuary needs that we haven't thought of yet?" Rick asked him. "We've got the windows repaired. Got groups out scavenging for food. We finished bringing in its share of the MREs we found."

"Why the hell didn't you bring those in earlier?" Daryl asked in reply.

"We were in the middle of a war. If we brought it back, it'd go to the Saviors, to Negan. We didn't want to risk it. Once the war was over, it didn't make sense not to divide it up. We all need food for the winter," he said rationally. "Those meals are gonna help us survive the cold months. It's gets really cold up here. We're gonna need to make adjustments to this place if we're gonna keep it warm."

"Ania says we can board up the windows, work on bringing as much wood from all the downed trees in the area. We can keep the smelter burnin' and a few other barrels goin'. Should keep the place warm enough."

"Alright. We'll work on getting somethin' together we can use. We'll also get some people on gathering firewood. Everyone's gonna need that, too. Maggie needs a few more builders to make a barn or somethin' to keep the animals warm in the winter. They're up to three cows now that Jazz has had her calf. She said she's seen some sheep roamin' around in the fields near there too."

"That could come in handy," Eugene said. "If they can be caught, we have the means to turn wool into clothes...blankets, hats, mittens, that kind of thing. There's a fair few handy with a needle and knowledgeable in the fine art of linenry. Bringing in those animals could make or break the future of garments."

"Alright. We'll work on bringin' them in."

They stayed talking about various things they needed to get done before the worst of winter hit until they were interrupted by Arat as she came running out, "We got trouble."

~x~

Ani woke up snuggling Daryl's pillow and looked around confused and afraid for a moment; the last time she'd woken up to just his pillow was when Negan had them separated. She began to feel her spine go numb, a sure sign she was about to have a panic attack and bolted out of bed. She had just gotten to the door when she noticed the note stuck to it telling her he'd be back after meeting with Rick. Cursing under her breath, Ani did a few breathing exercises to calm her nerves before getting ready for the day. Aside from talking with Rick, there wasn't much else she needed to do and she was hoping she'd be able to convince Daryl into just staying in the room with her or going out onto the roof. They had found a relatively secluded corner that they would frequent when he wanted to smoke or she wanted to soak in the sun or moon. He'd taken to standing with his hand splayed over her now-obvious bump any time he was around her and that had become a lot more often. She was twenty two weeks along and she was able to feel the baby kicking a lot more now. In fact, it was absolutely adorable how Daryl kept telling her that he wanted to feel Lou kick, too. He'd talk to her stomach every once in a while when he thought she was sleeping and he was always touching her stomach if he could. Likewise, Sophia had become fascinated by her stomach as well and had taken to asking a lot of questions about pregnancy and childbirth that she'd had to send the girl to the Hilltop to learn from Carson.

Leaving the room after pulling on her boots, Ani walked down to the factory floor to check in on things and make sure the supplies that Rick had brought with him had been properly sorted. He had brought enough MREs with him to last them a couple months if rationed right and she had been drying as many plants as she could so that they could make stew during the winter. She had also taught a few of the others how to dry the meat to keep it for the colder months when it would be harder to hunt. Ani was preparing the Sanctuary for being stuck and snowed in for at least a week without need for anything, from wood to water to food. If winters in Virginia were anything like winters in Michigan had been, the freezing temperatures and snow would be their biggest threat. Where the other settlements had a way to heat their living quarters easily enough with their ability to generate power. The Sanctuary, however, only had the smelting floor without solar power or multiple fireplaces available to provide warmth. They could only set up so many fire barrels and she was honestly worried about how well the place would be able to hold up being made of concrete. Concrete notoriously bled warmth in the winter and retained heat in the summer, something she worried about for the vulnerable among their number as well as Lou when he was born. That was a worry for a different day, though, as she walked onto the catwalk leading to the stairs only to see a fight brewing below.

With a roll of her eyes, she quickly finished descending the stairs and headed straight towards the area the conflict was occurring. Everyone moved out of the way as they saw her coming and some even gave her tidbits as to what was happening. It wasn't so much of a soldier vs worker thing this time, which was a huge improvement, but it was a soldier vs a soldier on different sides of the fence. The fight had started over a comment about things being better under Negan and one of the people who had found they liked the way things were going commented back just that. It had gone from a petty exchange of comments to an exchange of insults and was currently on the way to falling to blows. Ani was sick of the petty little squabbles having too many people with differing views in such a small space created, even if the Sanctuary looked big from the outside. A lot of the Sanctuary was nothing more than a hollow shell, the smelting floor and room being the most open and useless waste of space. There weren't enough rooms in the upper levels to give everyone their own privacy, thus the reason she had been sending families to other settlements. There wasn't enough time or resources to try to build something up within the room itself, let alone anyone at the Sanctuary who even knew how to do something like that. Even without those families, the Sanctuary was going to be reliant on the other communities for food entirely after the MREs Rick brought in for the winter and the supplies they'd been allowed to keep after the division of goods the Sanctuary had to begin with. The in-fighting needed to stop if they were going to be able to pool their resources together properly and create any semblance of a thriving community before the worst of the snowstorms hit.

"The hell is goin' on 'ere?!" she shouted when she got to the place the men were pushing their chests up against each other. "Back the fuck up away from each otha. Now!" she added when they stayed put, both taking a few steps back. "Now, do one a ya want ta tell me exactly what ya fuckin' bein' dickfaces 'bout?"

"Why should I answer to you, psycho-bitch?" one of the men, Wade, asked in the rudest tone he could muster. "You and Rick are the reason this place has gone to hell!"

Ani scrunched up her nose even as she drew herself into a full defensive stance, squaring her shoulders back and straightening her spine while planting her feet shoulder width apart. Wade was the biggest opposer of Rick's dream of connecting all the communities in a way in which they could work together. To be fair, even Ani thought that Rick was a bit delusional to think that he could bring the four, Savior-tormented settlements around to be willing to give the Sanctuary a fair chance. It was even more obvious when people like Wade and his rag-tag group of assholes who wanted to fight against Rick's new world order actively tried to aggravate relations even more. Ani knew there would be resistance within the Saviors about how Rick wanted to 'improve' things, especially considering it wasn't even in the way she would have wanted it to improve. She wanted things to be fair, but asking for the Hilltop, Kingdom, and Oceanside to fall into line after Alexandria to open their hearts to the Sanctuary without any real recompense was anything but fair. It was a sentiment she shared with many people both within and without the Saviors; many from the communities felt the Saviors were being rewarded, instead. Many of the workers felt like those that had been soldiers weren't being made to do enough to make amends with them anymore than the communities. The Kingdom had made peace with everything and was their biggest supporter as far as goods went, but the rest of the settlements weren't so quick to forgive. The soldiers like Wade that had made it clear they weren't happy with the new way didn't help to make matters any better, either.

Wade and his group believed that they had a right to the goods the other communities held because they had more than the Sanctuary did. Ani couldn't help but agree that there were limitations to how independent the Sanctuary could be due to its location. Being in the middle of a factory district meant that there was no soil or land for them to grow crops let alone be able to adequately keep anything other than chickens as far as livestock went, maybe rabbits if they caught some to bring in. Without either of those things, the Sanctuary had to depend on gaining resources from outside their given territory, previously in whatever way they could. Hell, in an ideal situation, they could have continued offering the communities support in the form of services, like building or security, while the communities supported them with goods. There wasn't much else that they could offer other than bullets and, if the plants took to the raised beds, whatever medicine she could produce. Eugene had proposed the thought of making ethanol for vehicles like tractors and the like, Daryl and Merle taking over the conversation because, contrary to most of their beliefs, Ani didn't know what they were talking about. While she had a lot of knowledge in humans and medicine and hunting, she wasn't knowledgeable about everything, and mechanics and technology were definitely two of her weakest points. The problem was that no one other than going to work with the Sanctuary properly until everyone was on board with the way things were supposed to be changing.

"Shut the fuck up, dude!" the other guy, Jackson, told him. "Lady's pregnant and doing more for this place than your sorry ass ever did!"

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Wade shot back. "She's one of the people that made this place a mess! You actually think this is better?! We ain't got shit now! Ain't no tribute. Ain't no workers. Ain't no system. Why the hell should we let some uppity skank who thinks she's all that come in and tell us what to do?"

"'Cause ya can' do shite ta stop me," Ani told him. "And ya damn well know it. Ya can' fight me 'cause ya know I can beat ya ass and even if I don', ya got my boys, my twins, and a bunch a otha people that'll rain hell down on ya."

Wade scoffed and sneered, walking up to look down his nose at her, "You ain't got shit. If it weren't for Rick the Prick holding Negan, you'd be nothing but piss on my boot."

"Step. Back," Ani seethed.

"Or what?" Wade asked sarcastically. "Pregnant lady gonna try to put me in my place? Ha! You sure you want to risk it?" he asked in a thinly veiled threat.

"Take it easy, man," Jackson said, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him away from her. "No one thinks you're some big man going after a woman, let alone one with a bun in the oven."

"Fuck you know, asshole?" was his reply as Wade jerked his arm out of Jackson's grip and pushed him.

It devolved into a shouting match between the men and them arguing all over again, although this time it was nothing but insults flying between the two. Wade also kept throwing insults at her and the others from their group with a lot of vulgarity and insinuations that Jackson was less than intelligent. Ani tried to get in between the two to break them apart, but instead got caught up in the fight that started when Wade threw a punch. She caught it and redirected it only for the man to get hit by Jackson instead and ended up getting shoved to the side in the process and prompting more to join the fight. Within seconds, there were at least twelve guys trying to beat each other all to hell with her stuck in the middle trying to get everyone to separate from each other. No one wanted to listen, though, and as more people tried to break the fight apart, she got jostled even more. She was beginning to panic as she got pushed around to the point that she'd taken a fist to the jaw and another to the side before she took another defensive stance that allowed her to redirect every attack that came her way. While most weren't purposely aimed at her, Wade and Mike, his right-hand man, took turns taking swings at her as often as they were able to. The twins were doing their best to keep people away from her, but there was only so much a couple cats that barely came up to her knees could do against a pack of crazed human beings. There were plenty enough in the brawl that were trying to keep her defended, a few of the women included, though they were complicating things more than anything by trying to pull her out of it. The entire situation was spiraling out of control and she had been completely cut off from the safety of the edge of the fight as more people joined it. Ani ended up being pushed right to the ground where she took a boot to the back before a gunshot sounded from above.

"What the hell is goin' on here?!" Rick's voice carried through the factory.

"Where the fuck's Ania?!" Daryl roared, the group of people surrounding her splitting to let him through.

Ani knew that shit was about to hit the fan the second she saw his face contorting in rage as he stormed right up to Wade and sucker-punched him in the jaw. She knew she was breathing heavy and, as she was in a darker shirt, he had seen that someone had at the very least stepped on her back. Considering Wade was the closest to her and their biggest opposition, there was no one else in Daryl's mind that could have done it. Ani didn't even have a chance to stand up before Merle was joining him and when she did, she had tried to pry them off of him. They were both pissed off at what had happened and what they knew the man had done and neither were about to let him go without possibly killing him. Trying to get them to move in itself was quite a feat because both Daryl and Merle weren't willing to stop throwing punches. Arat and Jerry helped to get Merle back and Ani barely managed to get between Daryl and Wade when Daryl pulled a knife to push her husband back. They were both yelling and cursing at the man and were trying to get through the people separating them from their target. Daryl was being much less violent about it as he stalked back and forth looking like a wild animal as the kittens continued to swipe at anyone who tried to get close to her now that the fight had broken up. Jerry told Merle that he needed to cool his jet but neither of the Dixon men were willing to back down. Rick walked down the stairs and warned them both to stop and let him figure it out before going up to Wade and the others. Ani walked into Daryl's chest and leaned hard against him, her back in pain from both the boot she took and the fact that she had started to shake now that everything was over. One arm wrapped around her waist while the other checked her face, noticing her busted lip and glowering at Wade all over again.

"Well?" Rick asked.

"It was stupid comments turned into bullshit," Arat informed them. "It wasn't a fight when I left to get you guys."

"Shite went ta hell in a handbasket quick. I wasn' even able ta start tryin' ta get things unda control 'fore a fist was thrown," Ani told him. "Barely even had a handle on what was goin' on."

"Who started it?"

"Wade threw the first punch after he started throwing insults her way," Jackson said. "He's still Negan. It's bullshit."

"You think this place is worth it? That this asshole is worth following?" Wade shouted.

"That's enough!" Rick said sternly. "You've been a problem for this place from the start, Wade. It's time you moved somewhere else. Go get your shit together."

"You think you can kick me out of this place?"

"Best get the fuck to steppin' 'fore I shove my fist down your throat!" Merle told him.

"That's enough, Merle," Rick told him. "Wade, it's either you leave with me and go to Alexandria where I can keep my eye on you, or I let Daryl deal with you however he wants to."

"Asshole's dead if he stays," Daryl threatened, his hold on Ani tightening as if she was the only thing keeping him from lashing out and killing Wade right then and there.

Wade scoffed and looked at Rick and asked, "You really gonna let that happen? Really gonna let him kill me after all your big talk about healing? I mean, you kept Negan alive, but you're gonna let him do that to me?"

"I'm telling you to leave with me so that doesn't happen," reasoned Rick. "You can't stay here. Someone will kill you. Could be Daryl today, Ani tomorrow, one of the others...You're making a lot of enemies here and I'm trying to save your life."

"Wade, if ya don' leave with Rick, ya ain' goin' ta savive the next hour," Ani warned him. "And I don' care 'bout bein' nice. I'll let Merle and Daryl do whateva they want ta ya 'til ya dead, then cut ya dick off and stuff it in ya mouth."

"Yeah right."

"She's done it before," Rick told him, making everyone go pale. "So I suggest you leave with me."