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SlumberingVoid — I haven't actually started the newest spin-off yet, but hopefully will soonish. Honestly, I hated the idea of walkers evolving and was glad when it was just whisperers, but yeah, I think they handled the stuff later on pretty well.


Rhys didn't bother knocking on Henry's door before walking in.

"Hey!" Henry barked, sitting up from his bed where he seemed to be sulking from. "Learn to knock."

Rhys stood at the end of the bed, staring Henry down until the younger boy threw his chin up and looked away.

"I'm sorry," Rhys told him to his side while Henry stared out the window, a sour look on his face as he sucked on his cheeks. He said sorry in that way you do when you really don't think you were in the wrong. "I shouldn't have let them keep it from you."

"She's a good person," Henry said. "You guys all think she's some monster."

"Maybe she is a good person," Rhys told him. "Maybe she's not. Her people definitely aren't, so we had to be careful. We still do."

"She's just a girl..."

Rhys rolled his eyes.

"Shut up," Henry groaned.

"I didn't say anything."

"You implied it!"

Rhys held up his hands, not speaking any more silent words on the matter. He sat down on the bed beside Henry, sniffing and grimacing at the stale stench of moonshine and body odour.

"So, you hung out with Addy all night?"

Henry shoved him, smirking. "Rodney and Gage were there, too."

"Sure..."

"They were!"

Rhys held his hands up again.

"She's cool," Henry said. "I don't know."

"It's hard to know," Rhys admitted.

Henry frowned. "Have you and Carl been hanging out?"

"We might have been."

"Because that would be cool."

"It would be cool?"

Henry shrugged, scrunching his face up. "Yeah, I mean... sure. You always seem so distant about that stuff."

"That stuff?"

"Dating," Henry clarified. "It'll be nice to see you happy again."

Rhys snorted at him, wondering if he was really so pathetic that people thought he wasn't happy by himself.

"I am happy."

"You want to be single and alone forever?"

"I'm not alone," Rhys laughed. "I've got your rude ass to deal with."

Henry didn't laugh. "You seem sad sometimes."

"I'm fine, man." Rhys stood. "Wash up before you get some rest. You stink."


Enid met him outside later for dinner, only neither was hungry, so Rhys and her just climbed the medical trailer from some old crates outside that used to stock their aspirin years ago. Enid helped Rhys up after she scaled the trailer quicker than him, the two sitting down and facing towards the gate.

"So it's true about them wearing skins?" Enid's breath caught on the last word, her eyes fixed on something by the blacksmith shack that Rhys couldn't see. He knew, though.

"Alden will be okay," he told her.

"You know Carl wrote me a letter?" She changed the subject.

Rhys glanced at her from the corner of his eye, shaking his head.

"Before you were..." she frowned.

"Kicked out?"

Enid nodded. "Carl had a letter sent to me. Daryl and Dog delivered it."

Rhys leant his head against her shoulder and waited patiently.

"Don't worry about Henry," she said instead of telling him what it said.

He scoffed. "Don't worry about Alden."

"Touché."

They both liked it up here. Enid's trailer being central for everybody else meant they could watch Hilltop in every direction. It gave them a sweeping view similar to that of the one Maggie's balcony gives. Only, from down here, you could hear it all, too. Conversations of crop yields and missing laundry pegs. They could hear it all.

Rhys had been watching Henry for a while now. He had snuck out of his room to sit by Lydia's cell window and pick at the grass. Enid looked, too, when she heard the sound of the cellar door flying open, Daryl storming up the cellar steps.

"You could have just asked me to help!" Henry called after Daryl as he stormed around the house and to the front porch. When Daryl didn't wait up, Henry chased him. "Daryl! Where are you going?"

"Girl's too messed up. She's a waste of time," Daryl shrugged Henry off, going for the front door. "She's Tara and Sasha's problem now."

"What's gonna happen to her?" Henry asked.

Daryl stopped, not looking at Henry. Rhys waited and listened, the faint humming of night bugs in his ears.

"Did someone used to beat you up, too?" Henry asked.

Daryl did turn around then.

"Once, I heard my dad ask my mom why she kept her hair so short," Henry continued, his voice catching in his throat a little. "She said when it was long, her first husband would grab it when she tried to get away. He would pull it and slam her against the wall, so one day she just cut it all off so he couldn't. And I guess it took her this long to feel safe again. Sometimes you act like the type of guy that slams people against walls, but I don't think that's it."

"You shouldn't listen to people talk," Daryl said.

"My brother told me something similar," Henry said. "Bad people got a hold of him out there. He said that it was easier to just let the pain happen because the thought of something different was worse. And he doesn't tell people that because he still thinks it's his fault. I know you were there for that, too."

Rhys felt his skin peel from his bones. Ghosts were trying to unbury themselves from under there. He had heard about the scars Daryl found on the girl.

Daryl took the smallest of steps closer to Henry.

"Look, I know Lydia's people are bad, but that doesn't mean she's bad at all," Henry said. "She's just scared. You can show her there's nothing to be afraid of. You can do that."

Daryl disappeared inside.

Enid had been watching Rhys for a little bit.

"I've only ever seen Daryl cry a few times," Rhys whispered.

Enid's voice was a whisper, too. "I can't imagine it."

Somehow, neither could Rhys.

"When we lost Maggie's sister, and when he told us that it was his fault that Glenn died."

"I think people often cry when something's gone."

Rhys nodded in agreement but answered with a contradiction that was trapped in his head; rattling around and bothering him like a stone in his shoe. "There was also this one time, I don't know... it was years ago, but when we were all trapped in this train car— just, erm... just after what Henry was talking about. Daryl said something to me about letting everything go. I don't remember what he said exactly. I just have this picture in my head of him being all... I don't know."

Rhys let the contradiction go.

There were voices under their feet then. People in the dark, passing through the narrow gaps between the trailers. Rhys recognised Yumiko's voice and hushed whispers from Magna, too.

Enid scrunched her face up, all confused, but Rhys put a finger to his lips.

"It's just here," they heard Kelly say. "Saw some kids sneaking out through it the other night."

"You think this is a good idea, Connie?" Magna hissed under her breath. "We could lose our place here if we go against Tara and—"

"She voted," Kelly snapped at her. "We all did. We go find Luke together. It's all of us... that's how it's always been."

Enid and Rhys listened as the trapdoor beneath the fake wood pile leading out of Hilltop opened and shut.

Enid's breath turned to a daunting frost in the air as she sighed.

"What now?" she asked.

"I'll go tell Tara," Rhys answered.


Rhys didn't particularly want to be accused of snitching when Tara's guards dragged Yumiko's group back through Hilltop's gates, so instead of waiting on the wall like she was, Rhys skulked onto the porch in the early morning with Carl to wait for their return from a safe distance.

Sasha wanted to wait with Tara, but got sent to check on Lydia with Daryl after she mentioned one too many times that they were gonna regret sneaking out.

"You think she's mad at them?" Carl asked. He knew the whole story since Rhys told him everything when he got back to his room last night and Carl was hanging around outside his door. They didn't discuss if that night was a one-time thing or not. But Carl was there, and Rhys let him in again.

"Oh, definitely," Rhys said. Rhys knew from Tara's chipper tone last night and this morning that she was pissed off — this tone of voice he knew far better than Carl did. The madder Tara got, often the higher and merrier her voice would climb.

"Maybe it was a mistake to bring them to you," Carl said, thanking Sasha for the coffee after she joined them on the porch with three steaming mugs, apparently done with Lydia.

"Nah," Sasha said, leaning against one of the washed-out white pillars and sipping her coffee. "Tara will understand trying to look out for their own."

Carl looked surprised by her answer.

"What?" Sasha asked.

"I just figured if Tara was angry then... you know..."

"Me?" Sasha hummed. "I'm a damn peach. Not my fault they can't follow rules."

Carl nodded, filling his boots a tad more as he seemed to shrink a little.

Sasha sighed. "I'd do the same thing if I didn't have responsibilities."

Rhys could tell by the way Carl was staring at his coffee that he still hated the stuff. He looked grateful when Rhys took it from his hands and disappeared inside Barrington house, coming back with a glass of water instead. When Rhys did come back out, Yumiko and Magna were back. No Alden or Luke, nor Connie and Kelly. Sasha had already taken off to talk to them.

"What did I miss?" Rhys asked, handing Carl the water.

"Yumiko's talking with Tara," Carl said, sounding concerned. "Think she'll kick them out?"

Rhys shook his head, looking at Carl with a cocked smirk.

"What?" Carl laughed.

"You haven't changed, have you, Grimes," Rhys said. "Still trying to save everyone."

Carl smiled, grinding the heel of his boot against the deck nervously. He noticed Rhys tapping the hammer on his hip.

"We could still go, you know..." Carl nodded to Rhys' hand. "Tyreese's grave. I promised you we would during the war... when the Saviors attacked Hilltop."

Rhys smiled at him. "I remember."

Carl bumped Rhys' shoulder gently with his own.

"We've already been," Rhys said then, his smile not fading. "Sasha and I, we go once a year. Well, last year was actually the first time we went... but we're trying to make it a yearly thing." He shrugged. "I think it's good."

"That's nice," Carl said, his eye creasing as he smiled.

"It would have been nice to go with you, too."

"I'm sorry we got here," Carl sighed, leaning into the porch railing. "I wish we'd had more time together."

"We still have time," Rhys said.

"Does it help?" Carl asked then. "Visiting their graves... I've never really done it."

Rhys dipped his head, smiling at his boots. "We took flowers from Hilltop to him. Thought it would be nice to bring him a little bit of our home."

Carl smiled warmly.

"Helps me," Rhys finally said. "I mean, Ty's grave was a lot of work. We had to find it, then clear a bramble bush and a tree that fell by it. But it helps me, I think. I visit Glenn and Abraham a lot. I still sometimes get the urge to visit Ron's, then remember it's in Alexandria. But, yeah, I think it helps put things in perspective."

"It's funny," Carl said, his face not matching that description. "We never found Dad. But even if we had, I'm not sure I would have ever visited him."

Rhys went to speak, but Tara started yelling at the top of her lungs first.

"HEY! SASHA! DARYL!"

The boys looked to the wall where Yumiko and Tara stood, waving their arms to get attention. The gates opened, and Kelly was being dragged in by the guards, field workers rushing inside behind them. Daryl and Sasha were already climbing up the ladder, and by the time Rhys and Carl sprinted down and clambered up to the catwalk running along the top of the wall, they saw what everyone else was frozen by.

These weren't walkers that had arrived at their walls, despite their appearance.

The dozen Skins down there were scary, eyes carved away where their wearer's gazes watched from, sunken, dark circles of rage and unknown that sent chills down Rhys' spine. But they weren't terrifying. That honour belonged to another. The one of them that didn't need a mask to make the birds hold their back their songs. Their leader was terrifying. Her head was shaved down to the pale skin. Black soil was smeared around her sickly blue eyes until their illness popped. Between her parted lips, it seemed as though darkness poured from her maskless expression. An expression that was without expression. She stared up at them, empty and cold.

Her mouth opened, her teeth yellow, black, and rotted like the walkers they wear. Everyone waited. Even the masked creatures she stood amongst seemed patient for her words to come.

"I am Alpha," she called up in a rasped voice that sounded unpracticed in years. "And we only want one thing from you. My daughter."

Magna and Kelly climbed up behind Carl and Rhys. Kelly grabbed Sasha's binoculars and started searching for something past the Skins.

"Our community is more than capable of defending itself!" Tara barked down.

The distant dark circles of their leader's eyes seemed to float across her face.

"I show you my face because we mean you no harm," she called back, a southern drawl leaking from her words like a poisonous ooze. "I just want my daughter. I know you have her."

Carl glanced back towards the cells, his hand tapping against his leg anxiously. Rhys didn't know why, but he grabbed it.

"You should turn around," Daryl growled. "Leave now, and no one gets hurt."

"Wrong answer."

She waved her hand, and more of her people appeared from behind the cornfield they first came from. They slowly grew closer.

Kelly pulled at Rhys' arm, discretely pointing towards the field. "My sister's down there!"

"In the cornfield?" Carl hissed.

"Please— we have to—"

"She's still alive because they ain't seen her," Daryl grunted over his shoulder. "We can't do anything."

Rhys scanned the husks but couldn't see Connie.

The reinforcements Alpha called finally reached the rest of them. Two of them seemed different, though. But they kept them hidden in the crowd.

"Girl told me what her mom does to her," Daryl told them all quietly, eyes fixed on Alpha's pale skin. "We ain't sendin' her back to that."

"Yeah, but what if she has Alden and Luke?" Tara sighs. "Pissing her off can get them killed."

Rhys turned back to the community, people dotted around and looking up at them silently, nerves in their eyes. Rhys found Marco's eyes.

"Marco," he called down. "Tell Enid they're here— and tell Henry to stay in the house."

"We could always light them up right here," Sasha said calmly. "We haven't got much left in the armoury— but I only count thirty-six of 'em."

"Did you kill our friends?" Magna suddenly called out to the Skins. "We found their horses."

"No," Alpha said. Then she smiled, and it was cruel and wicked. "Which one of you leads these people."

Rhys watched Tara swallow.

"You ain't sticking around long enough to need to know," Sasha barked. "Leave."

Alpha shrugs. "I'll just address all of you then. Your people crossed into our land. There will be no conflict. Your people killed our people. There will be no conflict. I'm done talkin'. Bring me my daughter, or there will be conflict."

Rhys heard Daryl's jaw click before he spoke to Tara and marched towards the ladder. "No one touches the girl."

"Daryl!" Tara hissed. "Where are you going?"

He didn't answer. Sasha was the first down after him, Carl and Rhys behind them. Henry and Enid were waiting on the ground.

"Does she have Alden and Luke?" Enid asked, her voice shaking.

"We can't tell," Sasha told her.

"What does she want?" Henry asked, but he saw the answer in the way Daryl ignored him. "No, Daryl... we can't do that."

"She ain't gettin' her," Daryl grunted.

"Then what are you doing?"

"She's done talkin'... I'm not."

Then Daryl barked at the guards to open the smaller gates leading to the farm where the Skins were waiting. They didn't, their eyes scared when he glared at them, but more scared when they looked to Sasha— her hand outstretched to tell them to keep the gate shut.

"Daryl... what are you doing?" Sasha asked.

"Making sure she knows what she's up against," he hissed.

"We don't know what we're up against. Going out there is dumb."

"Why waste the bullets, Sasha?" Daryl was itching for this fight, and they could all see it. "Gimme five minutes."

Sasha chewed her bottom lip for a few seconds before nodding. Daryl slipped out, and the guards sealed the gates behind him.

"You're not going with him?" Rhys grabbed Sasha's arm.

"I wasn't lying when I told Magna our biggest advantage is these walls," Sasha said. "And Daryl can handle himself."

"Sasha! Rhys!" Tara was leaning from the guard tower to yell down.

"What?" Sasha called back.

Tara's face was red and stuffy, her eyes wide. "We've got a problem."