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BabySlothXYaoi- Got to be honest, canned bacon freaked me out when I found out it was a thing, so Rhys is probably just speaking my mind there, lol. Same with the chicken, I always get frustrated at survival shows for killing chickens! Enid is the character that I use to release all the drama and I love her for it XD. This three-parter is very much focused on how Sasha's doing/ leading up to her getting a bit better. Felt like Sasha needs some love. Thanks for reading!


-Rhys' POV-

The trail of corpses leads away from Sasha's woodland shooting range. When Michonne suggested her theory, I didn't want to believe it. But the further we go and the more walkers we see, all killed from behind, It gets harder to deny it. Sasha is hunting the dead.

We follow the trail to a clearing, trees still surrounding us but spread far enough apart that we can see the sky above.

I hear the familiar sound of suppressed fire from up ahead, watching as a walker ahead of us falls to the floor, Sasha standing behind it.

"Sasha," Michonne sternly calls out to her back.

I see Sasha's shoulders rise and fall as she lets out a heavy breath like she knew someone would come, not turning to face the three of us.

"Go back," she growls.

"What are you doing?" Rosita asks her, sounding discouraged as she looks around and realises how many fallen walkers there are.

"I'm sick of playing defence," Sasha snaps, raising her voice enough to catch the attention of a cluster of the dead past some trees ahead.

"Sasha..." I take a step closer, not sure what to say.

I hear her breath catch, and she turns, there's a darkness in her piercing brown eyes, then a sadness.

"Rhys... go back," Sasha whines.

Michonne cuts in, "So you're just gonna take on all of them?"

The look is gone, replaced with something new.

Determination.

"Yeah," Sasha tells her.

She turns back to the approaching walkers, throwing her bag down to the leaves, raising her rifle to her cheek, taking down three in a second. She keeps shooting, not missing a shot, but the dead keep stumbling forward, barely denting their ranks.

"We've gotta get out of here," Rosita urges.

Sasha takes a break from shooting to look at us, "You do. I don't."

I'm so angry at her for doing this. So sad that she won't listen. All that rage and sorrow boils like hot water under my skin, bubbling up my arms, making me raise my rifle, aim down its sights. It takes me three shots to kill one. I step closer with each pull of the trigger, a moving target harder to hit. My steps bring me beside Sasha, and it feels different to our target practice, more real. Sasha glances at me, and I think she might push me back, scream at me to go, but she instead nods to me like it's what she wants.

Michonne steps forward as well, firing her pistol into the crowd.

Sasha glares back at her. "We don't need your help."

"This isn't for you," Michonne tells her.

Rosita steps in too. Taking down the closer dead ones with her knife.

I take down another, only needing two shots this time.

One walker gets too close, a rotten lady with yellow teeth and bleeding eyes startling me from the side. Her teeth try for my arm, but I shove her away, her back whipping against a tree. She hisses at me before I bring the butt of my rifle bursting through her head, an explosion of red gunk covering me.

Two more come from behind, Michonne snapping around and taking their heads with her handgun.

Rosita breaks the leg of another with a swift kick, sending the walker tumbling to the floor, letting her knife sink into its head with ease.

The dead keep getting closer.

I drop the rifle and draw my Glock, stealing away two of them from their undead state.

The shorter distance is making aiming easier.

Sasha's rifle clicks an empty note at her, so she drops it to the floor with a clatter, drawing her knife and killing two more before a third manages to lunge and pin her to the ground. Michonne blows the back of its head open, the last corpse tumbling to Sasha's side. Her face enraged as Michonne offers a helping hand.

"I had it!" She slaps Michonne's hand away. "I don't need your help!"

Sasha climbs to her feet, pacing with rage, looking between the three of us with manic stares. "I told you to go!"

No one says anything to her. Michonne and Rosita give looks of pitty. I can't help myself doing the same.

Sasha recognises it. She looks overcome by the expressions, disarmed. So lost from what she was that she can't even see how far gone she is.

"You..." Sasha sticks a finger in front of Michonne's nose. "You can't do anything!" Her voice is high in pitch as she grows closer to Michonne, trying to gauge a reaction from the stoic woman. "It all worked out for you!" Sasha cries, "Don't you see that?"

Michonne's look of pity only grows, only stokes the fire beneath Sasha's heartbreak.

"You can't help me," she tells Michonne, her scream all but a whisper, shaking me through.

"Nobody-"

Then Sasha looks at me, her words cut short, as she just stares at me, the blazing rage in her eyes suddenly extinguished by tears.

"Noah-" She says to me like no one else is here. Like we're the only ones left. "I told him he wouldn't make it."

"It wasn't you..." I tell her.

"I-," she tries, almost sobbing. "I told... Noah- I told him he wouldn't make it..."

"Come back," Is all I can say. "Please come back."

Sasha is shaking her head no, a piece of straw from the forest floor stuck in her hair, the smallest of things adding to the mess. Her head shakes turn to nods. Back to shakes, then nods again. Fluctuating between yes and no as she watches me. Her eyes are so big- like they might swallow me whole. Me, the whole forest, and the world. Swallowed into sadness.

Michonne and Rosita are quiet, letting Sasha suffer, trapped in her big sad eyes.

Sasha finally stops shaking her head and just nods. Relief washing over me, warm and easing.


-Carl's POV-

After a close call with a walker and an egg timer- where Enid threw said egg time at a walker to save us from being spotted -Enid and I find a seat against a dead log, moss climbing its ribs, wild mushrooms growing in its hollow belly.

"We're supposed to be out here," Enid huffs through a smile. Both of us are out of breath from running. "We're supposed to feel like this."

"Breathless?" I laugh.

"No, idiot. Outside. Free. I don't wanna forget." She grins at me, "plus, running makes me feel better."

"I can't forget," I tell her. "I dream about being out here. In the forest with them," I nod in the direction of the walker we bamboozled with the egg timer.

"Are you alone?" Enid asks me. "When you dream."

"Sometimes," I smile, closing my eyes and leaning my head back, letting the sun past my hat. "But that's okay."

"Why?"

"Because I know I won't be alone when I wake up."

"I dream like that too," Enid tells me. I open my eyes to see her and something about Enid looks sad. Like she doesn't wake up the same way I do.

"Ron's a good guy," I tell her. Pointing out she's not as alone as she thinks.

"So's Rhys," she smiles back.

"Yeah," I nod, "he is."

"I saw him this morning," Enid tells me.

"Rhys?"

She nods, playing with her chewed hoodie sleeve. "Came by to get some guns. Michonne and Rosita too."

I nod, not saying anything else.

"Don't you wanna know where he went?"

I shake my head. "He'll tell me when he gets back."

"You guys tell each other everything?"

"We do now." I pause. "Don't you and Ron?"

"He doesn't know I come out here," Enid admits. "He wouldn't understand."

"Wait..." I wander my scattered thoughts back to earlier when she had been hiding with the trees. "Why do I scare you?"

"You just do," Enid shrugs, grabbing an elegant knife from her pack. Digging at the log we're leaning on, scraping away the moss and mushrooms.

Feeling self-conscious and scary, I change the subject dumbly.

"Cool knife."

She thumbs at the bone grip, "It was my mom's."

"Does Rhys scare you, too?"

"No," she laughs, although not seeming to find it funny.

"Why?"

"I don't think it's as easy for him to be out here," Enid tells me.

Not understanding what she means, I change the subject again. "What happened to you?"

"Does it matter?" Enid whispers.

"Yes..."

"Then what happened to you?" she asks in turn. "What happened to Rhys?"

I bite my tongue so that it doesn't tell her secrets.

The sound of walkers spins our heads, so many growls coming from behind us.

"We should go back- sounds like a lot," I tell her. She jumps to her feet, grabbing the sleeve of my blue jacket and pulling me towards a tree. The centre hollowed, the two of us squeezing in to hide.

The tree lacks space as we face each other, our noses almost touching. I turn my head away to look out of the tree, watching as the dead pass us by. I can feel Enid's hot breathe against my cheek. She leans closer, whispering into my ear.

"It's their world. We're just living in it."

The walkers bump against the tree as they wander past, sending hollowed thuds through my body. My hand inches forward, brushing against hers as we hide. I pull it back, not wanting Enid to see me.

"Cool," Enid whispers, seeing all. "You're afraid of me, too."


A/N

Changed a bit around in this one. Sasha agreeing to come back outright since in this story she has Rhys to pull her back from the brink a little bit. Also, the dialogue in the Carl and Enid scene always felt odd to me, I got rid of the part where Carl tells her that something 'bad' happened to him. I don't think he's that open with her yet.