Naomi
"Sasha's dead."
The news came to me in the dark. I'd been in the dark for a long time. First, it had been unconscious nothingness, and then painful awakening into a darkness where everything hurt. I knew by the smell that I was back in the windowless cell deep inside Sanctuary.
There had been nobody at my door for what felt like days. Not to feed me. Not even to beat me. It had given me a small hope that Negan was dead, which had now been swiftly crushed.
Dwight's was the first voice I'd heard in a long while. Until now, there had been a very real chance that I'd died and gone to Hell, which had shaped itself to be specific to me. Sealing me forever in a place where time didn't move, keeping me suspended in the agony of not knowing what had happened to the people I love.
"How'd it happen?" I asked. I'd been desperate to know what had happened to all of them, but now that Dwight was here, I was scared of the answers I might be about to get.
"On the way to Alexandria," Dwight said. "Either she ran out of air or killed herself on the way."
It was worse than a kick in the gut, and I'd taken enough of those lately to know. This was sharper, more acute, like a knife.
Shit.
They've been.
Dwight was here, and he wasn't letting me out, which suggested Negan had lived. Every question I had rose in my throat at once and got stuck there behind a barrage of tears. For however long I'd been in here, grief and rage had hit me, one storm after another. Waves of sorrow a thousand feet high had battered against me and swept me away, turning me inside out before spitting me out again. And then, in the silences between storms, there was nothing. I drifted without direction, trying to catch my breath before the next one.
"Did you warn them?" I asked. It was the easier question to ask, and it meant I'd have someone to be mad at if the worst had happened.
"Yes," he said. "They fought. They had time to get a message to the Kingdom and the Hilltop. They fought with them. Negan had to retreat."
Retreat.
I rested my head on the wall behind me and stared up at the dark. My tears were tinged with relief now. A retreat was a victory of sorts. Not a full one. But it was a start.
"Was anyone hurt?" I asked, wiping my eyes. "Are they okay?"
"Most of them lived. Daryl's okay. And Rick. Carl, too. Michonne's injured, a few others probably, but I don't know their names… I don't… I'm sorry."
"Mia?" I could barely say her name.
He said the Kingdom had fought; did that mean she had fought with them? Or had Daryl kept her with him? I couldn't imagine Daryl putting her in any kind of fight deliberately, but I couldn't imagine him leaving her on her own, either. Whatever decision had been made would've been hard, but I trusted him to make the right one.
"I don't know, I'm sorry," Dwight said. "I couldn't let the Saviors catch me talking to anyone."
"Can you find out?"
"I'll do my best."
"Thanks."
There was a moment of silence. Dwight didn't leave, so I knew there was more.
"I gotta move you now," Dwight said. He sounded apologetic about it and maybe a little scared. "Negan's planning something… I don't know what. I'm not even sure he does."
"Okay," I said, because what else could I say? Whatever was about to happen was going to happen whether we consented to it or not. Until now, I'd only really seen Negan on a winning streak. I didn't know what to expect now he was losing.
Dwight unlocked the door. He flinched when he saw me; I guessed I looked worse than I thought. I'd done my best to dig out all of the tiny pieces of glass that had embedded themselves in my skin, but they'd left behind a myriad of small cuts. I could feel bruising almost everywhere but didn't know the extent of it.
"Looks worse than it feels," I said. Dwight nodded but didn't look like he believed me. I got to my feet. It hurt to stand up, I hadn't done it in a few days, and the scabs on my knees felt like they were cracking. Dwight gave me a moment to stretch my legs, and I was glad that it was him Negan had sent. I couldn't imagine Simon treating me the same way.
When I stepped out into the hallway, Dwight raised a gun and pointed it at me. Nothing about it felt threatening, especially given the faint look of concern still etched on his face, but I went along with it anyway. If anyone turned the corner, we couldn't be caught chit-chatting.
Dwight took me to a room I hadn't been in before a few floors up from where they were keeping me. Negan was sitting at the head of a long table. Simon, Gavin, and Regina sat with him.
"What took you so long?" Negan asked.
"She resisted," Dwight said. I couldn't blame him for it; it was the most believable lie he could've told.
Negan's gaze slid over to me. I expected his usual grin, for him to at least tell me I looked like shit. But he didn't. He looked away from me again, and I wondered if he was trying to hide that little bit of fear I'd seen in his eyes before.
Negan was quiet, sullen. A big kid in a big sulk. It was rare to see him like this. I'd had a glimpse of it when Daryl and Mia had got out, but this was different. His bravado had been peeled away, and without it, he was all edges. Which was fine, because at this point, so was I.
Dwight sat down. I hesitated, hovering behind an empty seat near him.
"You stay standing," Negan said to me. "There could have been a seat at this table for you. Hell, I wanted there to be, but not now."
"If you thought I would ever-" I started, but he didn't let me finish.
"Uh-uh," Negan raised a hand. "Not a fucking word from you unless you're spoken to. I'm serious, one more word outta your mouth, and I'm gonna let Lucille do what she's been itching to do since you got here."
I closed my mouth, held my lips tightly shut, and kept my eyes on him. If he'd let me talk, I'd have told him that killing me was his best chance of survival. The longer he kept me alive, the more I healed and the stronger I got. He could beat me and starve me all he liked, but I would not break. Not when I had so much more to lose outside these walls than I did inside them.
But he didn't. So I stared back at him and didn't flinch.
"All due respect, I don't get why she's still here," Simon said, looking at me like I was some kind of annoying poltergeist that refused to be exorcised. "Alive, I mean."
"Well," Negan said. "That's exactly what we're all here to decide."
"Kill her," Simon said. "With all the shit she's pulled, she deserves it. She's attacked me. She's attacked you. She let her friends escape..."
"Actually," Dwight interrupted. "It was Sherry who-"
"What the hell does that matter who it was that let them out?" Simon asked. Dwight hesitated.
"You on her side or something?" Regina narrowed her eyes across the table at him. "You aren't going soft on her, are you?"
"No," Dwight said, glancing down at the table. "Just setting the record straight. If there's going to be a trail, it should at least be for things she's actually done."
"This isn't no trial," Simon said. "She's gotta die; it's just a question of setting the execution date, right?"
He looked at Negan for confirmation. Everyone did, including me. Negan set Lucille down on the table in front of him. "I'm still thinking about that."
"How can you still be thinking about it?" Simon said. "Kill her, stick her head on the fence for Rick to see if he tries to get near this place. What's the hold-up? I don't get it."
"I wouldn't expect you to get it," Negan said, glancing up at Simon. "But people are a resource."
"The bitch is feral. Put her down," Simon said like that should be the last word on the subject.
"We don't know Rick's going to come here," Dwight said. "They might all hole up in Alexandria and wait for us to come back."
"Why the hell would we go back there?" Gavin said. "So they can set more traps, try and blow us up again? Only this time, we won't have Jadis to warn us before we get there."
"At least if we stay here, we've got the home turf advantage," Regina agreed.
"So it's agreed," Simon said, "we kill her, and then we put her body right out front to greet Rick when he gets here. And then we blow the rest of them to hell."
There was a murmur of general agreement around the table.
"We haven't agreed on shit," Negan snapped. They all looked at him. He leaned back in his seat and propped his feet up on the table next to Lucille. "Alexandria, the Kingdom, and Hilltop all still owe us their regular deliveries. How's it going to look to them if we just sit here waiting for their next move? It's going to make me look weak."
"Okay, so, we kill her, package up her body and send it to Rick as a message," Simon said.
"Nah, that ain't right either," Negan said, shaking his head like he was puzzling over something. It was only then that I realized he genuinely had no idea what to do with me or how to punish me for what I'd done. I'd thought this was part of his usual showmanship, that he'd dragged me in here to taunt me before inflicting something horrible. But he was genuinely at a loss over what to do with me.
"It wouldn't be a message for Rick," Dwight said. He hadn't spoken for a while, and everyone looked at him. It got Negan's attention much more than anything Simon had said.
"What do you mean?" Negan pressed.
"If she dies-"
"She's going to," Simon interrupted.
"Alright, when she dies," Dwight corrected himself. "It's not Rick who's going to be hit by it. It's Daryl."
The truth of that made me feel weaker than anything the Saviors had done to me since I'd tried to kill their leader. Negan nodded as Dwight spoke and looked over at me. He watched the fear set right into my bones. I didn't want to think about what Daryl would do if Negan sent him my head in a box.
"Finally, someone's thinking about this in the right way," Negan said. He took his feet off the table, sat up, and leaned forward on his elbows. "Carry on, Dwight."
Dwight hesitated. Sent one glance in my direction, but it wasn't long enough for me to read anything into it or work out if he was still on my side. I had to remind myself that it really seemed like he had sent a message to Rick and the others, or we probably wouldn't be in this room. The fight would've been over. Negan would either have walked back in and bashed my brains out, or he'd have dumped me back in whatever was left of Alexandria so that grief could eat me alive.
"If we kill her now and send the body to Alexandria, it'll hurt Daryl. It'll either make him angry enough to launch something big against this place or reckless enough to get caught again," he said. "But, for Rick, who's probably trying to rally support for the next part of the fight, it'll fuel the fire he's trying to start. Might even give people in the Kingdom and Hilltop who sat out the last fight a reason to pick up arms and turn against us. She'll be a martyr. A reason for them to fight."
Negan looked at me. "You think Rick cares about you?"
"I'm sure he cares about all of his people."
"But some more than others, right?" he said. I didn't like the way he said it. Not because it wasn't true, but because it seemed to be getting his mind working. Turning different options over and over. "Don't think he'd have let me keep Carl here this long. I mean, Rick's gotta have a tight grip on your boyfriend's leash to stop him from howling outside the door every night, huh?"
Negan straightened up. A little glint was back in his eye. He still didn't have his usual sickening grin plastered all over his face, but it was ever so slightly like talking to his old self.
"Answer honestly," Negan said. "If it came down to it, would Rick risk everyone in Alexandria to save you?"
"No," I said without hesitation. Rick was a good man. A great leader and part of that was knowing that the best outcome was the greatest number of survivors. I knew it. Rick knew it.
"I wonder how Daryl would feel about that…" Negan said. And there it was. His fucking grin. Back in full force.
"Who cares?" Simon said. "You want to end this, let's just go over there and end it. Kill them all."
"I am trying to minimize loss of life here, Simon," Negan snapped. "Not just of our own people, but those people who are fighting against us will make good workers when this is over. Maybe even soldiers. In time. That's what we need. People are what keeps places like this running. How many times do I gotta tell you that?"
"Surely, these people have gotta be an exception," Simon shook his head and then pointed his finger at me. "She sure is. She hasn't been any damn use since she got here."
"I really gotta spell this out for you?" Negan said. "If we take her out at the right moment, we turn Rick's right-hand man against him. No more Daryl to do his dirty work. If we take her out at the wrong moment, we're handing them all another reason to fight. God knows we don't need another one of those."
"Whatever you say, boss," Simon sighed in a way that clearly said if it was up to him, I'd have been dead weeks ago.
"Alright," Negan glanced at Dwight. "Get her outta my sight."
Dwight stood up and grabbed me by the arm, dragging me out of the room and into the corridor, only easing up when we were out of sight and earshot of Negan's meeting room.
"I think we did good in there," Dwight said. I couldn't tell if he was trying to reassure himself or me. "Certainly won Negan round."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe a little too good."
"Would you rather we did things Simon's way?"
"No," I admitted reluctantly. Nothing Dwight said had technically been wrong. I just didn't like that he'd handed Negan a semi-decent plan.
"This buys Daryl and the others more time," he said. "They're coming soon."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"We're communicating," Dwight said. He cleared his throat and followed up with, "Daryl, uh... told me to tell you not to make another move against Negan, to sit tight and wait for them. They're coming for you."
I didn't see how I could get to Negan again. He'd locked me away in one room and refused to deal with me. But, if the chance came up for me to end this, I couldn't say I wouldn't try it again. "No promises."
"Yeah," Dwight nodded like that was the response he expected. "I'm not telling him you said that."
"That's wise," I said, as he opened the door to my cell, ready to return me to the dark. That apologetic look was back on his face. I walked in of my own accord, so he didn't have to feel bad about forcing me in there. There was a small pile of bloodied glass by the door. I'd tried to stack all of the pieces I'd pulled out of myself in one place so I wouldn't stand on them and hurt myself all over again. I looked at them in the light. None were big enough to use as a knife. Throwing them in Negan's eyes could do some damage if he was ever brave enough to come close again.
"I'll try and sneak you some food," Dwight said quietly.
"Thanks."
He closed the door, and I was back in that dark place where time stood still. What felt like a few hours passed, and Dwight opened the door just wide enough to throw in a chunk of bread. It was stale and possibly moldy, but I wasn't in a position to be fussy. It was the only thing I could remember being given to eat since I'd been locked in here.
From that point on, my days in the dark were punctuated only by brief flashes of light when Dwight opened the door just wide enough to throw in whatever small morsel of food he'd managed to scrounge for me. Things that other people would overlook, scraps they'd already thrown out. It wasn't much, and it wasn't good. But it kept me alive, and it kept me stronger than I would've been without it.
Tell her to sit tight. Tell her we're coming for her. I could almost hear Daryl saying it. I knew the exact way his jaw set when he was fixed on something like this. I knew that look he got in his eye. I thought about it over and over until that voice in my head that sounded so much like him, wound up saying, 'Sit tight. I'm coming for ya'.
I knew it wasn't real, but I clung to it.
Maybe that was Negan's real plan all along; let me drive myself mad in solitary confinement for so long that if anyone did get me out of here, I'd be an unrecognizable shell of who I'd been.
No.
I would not break. I couldn't.
Daryl and Mia were out there. Aaron and Rick and Michonne and Eric and everyone else in Alexandria were out there risking their lives. If the Kingdom had joined the fight, Bryce would be there too. Would Carol? Had she stayed after I'd taken her there? All of that felt like a lifetime ago. I whispered their names to myself over and over. A mantra of sorts. A reminder of what was at stake out there and why all of this suffering was worth it.
"Tomorrow," Dwight's voice came through the dark again. It was such a shock to hear a voice that wasn't my own, and one that spoke above a whisper that I jumped. "They're coming tomorrow."
I had no way of knowing how far away 'tomorrow' was; I hadn't the foggiest idea of what the time was when he said it. His footsteps left again, and I felt the small amount of food in my stomach threaten to rise up. This was what I'd been waiting in the dark for but had secretly hoped would never come. If they were going to take a stand, many of them could die. And there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
I curled up by the door and pressed my ear to it. Nothing changed for a very long time. Footsteps passed by occasionally, doors opened and closed from time to time. But nothing that signaled there was anything to be concerned about.
And then, all at once, a series of loud and echoing bangs. It sounded like it was coming from outside. Co-ordinated. My stomach flipped over, and I got to my feet.
This was it.
They were here.
I pressed my ear to the door but couldn't hear a thing. No more bangs. No gunfire. Just silence. And then, a door slammed. Hurried footsteps down the corridor to my room. Others heading elsewhere.
The door opened, but it wasn't Dwight. It wasn't even Simon. Some Savior I'd never seen before, armed to the teeth, stood over me.
"Looks like it's your time to shine," he said, reaching in to grab me by the scruff of the neck, dragging me down the hallway. "Negan needs you. You ready for this?"
I didn't bother struggling. Partly because I knew it was pointless but partly because I was conserving my energy. I didn't have much, but if my friends were here to fight, chances were I'd need a whole lot of it real soon.
He took me to the Sanctuary doors. They were open. Light was streaming through them, and on the other side, I could hear a voice. I knew at once that it was Rick's. Couldn't make out what he was saying, but I knew it was him.
They're really here.
After so much waiting and so many false starts, I couldn't believe my ears. The Savior who'd taken me from my cell pushed me up against a nearby wall and hissed, "You wait here until Negan needs you, alright?"
I was about to tell him that I didn't give a shit what Negan needed when I noticed a man cowering next to me. He looked at me and then hurriedly away.
"Gregory?" I whispered. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"
You'd have thought a friendly face in this place would've been a welcome sight. But Gregory backed away from me like I was poisonous. He didn't look hurt, but how had they got him here?
"You have no idea the shit that's about to go down," Negan was saying. "Let me ask you something, Rick. You think you have the numbers for this fight?"
There was a pause where I felt my heart swell and rise, beating in the back of my throat. How many of them were out there? Had the Saviors taken out the Hilltop? Is that why Gregory was here?
"You don't," Negan warned him. "Simon."
Simon walked into the hallway. He shot me a horrible grin before he grabbed Gregory and hauled him outside.
"What do you have to say to Rick and the piss patrol, Gregory?" Negan's gleeful voice boomed out.
"The Hilltop stands with Negan and the Saviors," Gregory said.
Son of a bitch.
No wonder he couldn't look me in the eye.
"Any resident of the Hilltop who takes up arms, or who supports this ultimatum against the Sanctuary or any of the Saviors, will no longer be welcome at the colony," Gregory finished.
"And?" Negan prompted.
"Their families will be thrown out and left to fend for themselves," he added.
"And?" Negan prompted again. There was a slight pause.
"Go home now," Gregory said firmly. "Or you won't have a home to go back to."
I waited. I listened. Were people leaving? I couldn't hear any weapons being laid down.
"You heard the man," Negan said. "Get back to separating wheat and shit or whatever the hell it is you people do."
"Doesn't look like anyone's going, does it?" I heard Maggie's voice yell back, and my heart soared. They were really doing this.
"The Hilltop stands with-" Gregory started to say.
"The Hilltop stands with Maggie!" someone yelled back. His voice was recognizable, but I was too busy celebrating to figure it out.
"I feel like I invested a lot in you," Simon yelled. "And I am very, very disappointed."
I heard Gregory stammer something. And then a series of loud crashes, screams, and then the screaming stopped.
Is he dead?
Do I care?
Before the silence could settle too long, something exploded in the distance.
"Sounds like shit is going down, Rick," Negan said. He snapped his fingers. Simon was back in the doorway, and this time his eyes were fixed on me with more than just a passing glance.
"You lieutenants, you're gonna have to make up your minds," Rick said. There was a note of urgency in his voice. Like that explosion meant something to him. Simon grabbed my arm and started pulling me toward the door.
"Maybe we could take a time out here?" someone close to the door said.
"No," Rick said. "This has to happen now. This is the only way."
Simon shoved me out of the door ahead of him. I stumbled forward into the kind of daylight I hadn't seen for days. It was blinding for a moment. Searing pain in my eyes and I turned away from it.
"And here she is," Negan bellowed, throwing his arm out toward me like he was a ringleader introducing some kind of circus act. "Surely, you guys haven't forgotten about the lovely Naomi?"
I couldn't look at any of them. I focussed on the ground, trying to get used to being in the light again. My head hurt. There was a breeze on my skin for the first time in more than a week, and I shivered even though it wasn't a cold day. After the silence of my cell, everything seemed so loud. It wasn't just Negan and Rick yelling at each other; something metal rattled slightly in the wind. Walkers that I'd once spent time fixing around the parameters snarled. Birds circled up above us. The sky was vast, expansive. Big enough to swallow me.
"Shit, you don't look so good. What's the matter, darlin'?" Negan asked. He came real close, put a hand under my chin, and forced my eyes up. "Not enjoying this little reunion?"
Beyond the Sanctuary fence was a fleet of makeshift armored vehicles. I squinted at them, searching for the faces I could see in the gaps. I found Rick.
"I'm curious, Rick," Negan said. "Do your little plans take her into account?"
"I already told you," Rick said. "Everyone in there can survive this. Except you. All they gotta do is surrender, and hand her over."
"Well, now," Negan said, with a little glance at his men. "Doesn't look like anyone's going, does it?"
"I'm serious…" Rick said.
"No, I'm serious," Negan said. "' Cause I've got an offer for you, Rick. You can take Naomi back, all in one piece, right now. And all you have to do is march your little piss patrol back to Alexandria, and we'll pretend none of this shit ever happened."
I fixed my eyes on Rick and shook my head so he'd know that this wasn't what I wanted, that I understood a bigger victory would require small sacrifices.
"That's not gonna happen," Rick said.
"Oh, that's it, huh?" Negan said. "You just decided that for everyone? Doesn't our boy Daryl have something to say about it?"
In the silence that followed, I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest. Waiting for an answer I already knew was coming. The fact that there was a silence, or that the conversation reached this point at all, meant that Daryl wasn't here. But where was he?
"Looks like he doesn't give a shit about you, darlin'," Negan said to me and then turned back to Rick. "What's his problem? He too busy to be here today? Was that him?"
Negan used Lucille to point at the pillar of smoke rising in the distance. I focussed on it for a moment. Rick neither confirmed or denied it, but some small part of me latched on to the idea that he was here. Close. But not close enough to be hurt by whatever was about to go down. Negan's plan to use me to drive a wedge between Daryl and Rick wouldn't work, and that was what mattered.
"Hand her over," Rick said. "Nobody has to get hurt."
"Finally, we agree on something," Negan said. "See, you come here threatening my people, and I am gracious enough to offer you the opportunity to take back one of yours, only for you to pass it up? Is that how little your people mean to you? Is our little pissing match worth her life?"
He pointed at me again, this time with Lucille.
"Don't listen to him!" I yelled. I knew Rick would get it. I knew Rick would see the bigger picture in all of this. "This ain't about me. This is about all of us. Don't-"
A swift kick to the back of my legs from Simon brought me to my knees. I threw my hands out in front of me to stop myself from toppling over. I looked up at Negan. He strode over to me, Lucille raised.
"You don't want to do this," Rick warned him.
"I know," Negan said. "I don't want to do this. Shit. I really liked this girl, she's scrappy as shit, but you're leaving me no choice, Rick. Either you pack up your shit and toddle on home with Naomi, never to darken my door again. Or I kill her right now. It's up to you."
He let the silence sit with all of them. With me. I looked up and found Rick's face again.
"Don't listen to him," I called out. Simon's fist slammed into the side of my face. I wobbled on my knees but pushed through the pain. "This is what he wants! He's the one choosing this. He wants you-"
Negan grabbed me by the hair and pulled, hard enough to force my head up and around to look at him.
"Look at you," he said. His eyes were sad in a way I didn't expect. "Loyal to the end."
"It ain't gonna work," I said to him. "Daryl ain't here. It won't work."
"Oh, darlin'," Negan said, his voice heavy with pity. "You really think he won't hear about this?"
Before I could say anything else, Simon kicked me in the stomach. Negan let go of my hair as I doubled over. If my stomach hadn't been so empty, I would've thrown up. I knew what Negan was doing. I knew the more of a spectacle he made out of this, the more it looked like Rick was doing nothing to stop it, the more chance Negan had of turning his allies against him. Turning Daryl against him.
"You make me sick, Rick, y' know that?" Negan said. He sounded genuinely angry on my behalf, like he really thought Rick was the cause of all this. As if he couldn't just let me go now. Or stop Simon from hitting me if he wanted to. "She has been nothing but loyal while she's been in here. She could've made something of herself in this place, she could've been Royalty around here, but she passed it all up for you people. This is how you repay her? Standing by while she dies up here like a damn dog? This is the leader you all choose to follow?"
I spat blood out onto the walkway and looked up at the few faces I could see looking back at me. I found Aaron. His distress was enough to make me twice as glad that Daryl wasn't here to witness this. I looked back at Rick. "Don't t-"
Negan's foot hit my jaw and knocked me backward.
"NOW!" Rick yelled, and a barrage of gunfire came over the tops of their vehicles. I could hear glass smashing all around me. Negan and his men took cover and started firing back. From where I was lying, I was more or less safe from the bullets. I crawled a little distance away to take shelter by the steps and calculate my next move.
I didn't have a weapon.
But I was free.
For the first time since I'd been shoved in the back of that damn van, I had choices. Real, legitimate choices. As far as I could see, I had two options. Run into the onslaught of bullets and pray that one of my friends didn't accidentally hit me. Or shelter deeper, and help them from within.
I saw my chance, and I took it.
Daryl
I was flying.
The whole time I'd been leading a herd of Walkers to Sanctuary, my bike had felt like it was made of air. All of the planning, all of the sitting around and talking, it was over. This was it. Today, we'd end this. We'd kill Negan. I'd get Naomi back. Every bullet that I fired into the oil barrels we'd lined up was a weight off me. Every tower of smoke that rose from them felt like I was sending up a message from me to her.
I'm coming for you.
I'll see you soon.
Of course, I couldn't know if she'd be able to see them from wherever she was, and I knew that even if she did, there was no way to know I was the one making them. But it sure felt like they were bringing us closer. I heard the distant gunfire of the others shooting up the front of Sanctuary, and to me, it sounded like a damn parade.
They've got her.
Rick wouldn't fire if they didn't. He'd have radioed to tell me to stop if she wasn't safe yet, and if he wasn't ready for this herd to get there. I wanted to whoop and holler, but I held back. The Walkers were going where I wanted them to, and I couldn't risk pulling them off track to celebrate.
When I got to our agreed-upon meeting place, I threw my bike down. My whole body felt electric. Anticipation coursing through me with every heartbeat. We were winning this thing. I'd have Naomi home real soon. Me, her, and Mia. The Saviors would be gone, Negan would be dead, and we'd finally have the chance to be a real family.
I was used to fighting; I was good at it. I felt good doing it because I had something to fight for. There was a time when I'd have given anything to get out of sleepy Alexandria, where people looked at me like I was a stray dog and blow some shit up. But all I wanted right then was a moment of peace, a sleepy morning with Naomi, and a quiet afternoon hunting in the woods.
The armored cars were already parked up and waiting. People around them were checking in with one another, reloading weapons, and waiting for any stragglers. I searched all of them, looking for her in the crowd. I wondered if she'd be looking for me too, or if she even knew that part of the plan was for me to meet them here. I thought about sneaking and surprising her, but I didn't have the patience for any of that. I had to see her now.
"Naomi!" I yelled, and I looked for her head, turning to look at me. That big smile of hers. I looked for her running toward me. A few people did turn and look, but I didn't pay attention to them. Maybe if I had, I'd have noticed the looks on their faces. The pity in their eyes.
"Daryl," Rick approached me like I was a bomb about to go off. I didn't think much of it, maybe just that he could see the excitement coming off me. I hugged him, but I barely looked at him. I was too busy looking over his shoulder, scanning the faces around us. Maybe she just hadn't heard me. Maybe I should yell for her again.
"Hey, you good?" I asked. He nodded and took a breath to say something else, but I was too excited to let him finish. "Where is she?"
Rick looked at me for a moment with an expression I was too stubborn and stupid to read. A heavy sigh, something heavier hidden in his eyes. "We didn't see her, Daryl. I'm sorry."
"What do you mean you didn't see her?" I asked. "Negan was supposed to hand her over. That was the deal."
Had they made a new deal? Was Dwight bringing her to some other location? Had they already moved her out of Sanctuary, and that was why Rick couldn't get her?
"Negan isn't giving up yet," Rick said. I'd already known that. It was why those Walkers were all around Sanctuary, but I hadn't thought that meant Negan hadn't given her up. Rick put a hand on my arm. "I'm sorry."
"Why do you keep saying that? You're sorry?" I asked. The high I'd been riding all the way here was sharply wearing off. "You let me lead all them Walkers to Sanctuary, knowing she's still in there, that what you're sorry for?"
"This is all part of it," Rick said with the same calming voice he'd been using on me a lot these days and had never once worked. "We surround them, we force them to surrender. They were never gonna give up right away."
I was falling now, down off that high I'd been on. Down into something dark and filled with hellfire. "She weren't supposed to be in there when this went down."
"You didn't believe they were just going to surrender like that, did you?" Rick said. "Or that Negan would just hand her over because we came knocking?
"Damn right, that's what I believed because that's how you made it sound."
"I'm sorry if I mislead you," Rick said, sounding more and more like a damn politician the longer he was running his mouth. "But this is about more than just about getting Naomi back."
"What's it about then, huh?" I yelled. Rick flinched. He'd known it was the wrong thing to say the second it came out of his mouth, but he couldn't un-say it now. I couldn't un-hear it either. "Your pissing match with Negan?"
"It's not like that, you know it's not. This is for all of us. For Sasha and Abraham. For everyone who's been living under the Savior's rule. For the future of Alexandria. Our future. So that kids like Carl and Mia don't grow up living under Negan's rule," Rick said. It was a dirty trick, bringing Mia into it like that. How could I say no now? Rick continued, "This is for all of us. And that was just the beginning. Once we've taken out their outposts, given them nowhere else to turn, they'll surrender. They'll hand her over. You know they will."
Do I?
He was giving me that look he gives people when he's trying to persuade them into seeing things his way. I'd seen him do it to so many people; Deanna, the Governor, my own damn brother. Never thought I'd see him giving me that look.
"We gotta move out," Rick said. "C'mon."
He didn't move until I did, watching me like I was a pot about to boil over. That was how I felt, too. Like there was so much pressure building in my head that my skull might blow off. But, eventually, I nodded, and we started to move out. It felt wrong to be walking away from the place I was supposed to be reuniting with her. But what else could we do now except push forward? There was no getting into Sanctuary while it was surrounded. All I could do was stick to the plan and make sure the rest of it went as smoothly as possible so that the Saviors surrendered quickly.
I silently vowed to be there the next time Rick went to negotiate. And I wouldn't leave until they'd surrendered or at least let me see her, even if it was just through a window. All I had to go on was Dwight's word that she was still alive, and the longer this went on, the harder it was to believe it.
But heading back to Sanctuary wasn't in the next steps of the plan. Dwight had told us where all Negan's major Outposts were and where the armories were in each one. If even one Outpost managed to get back to Sanctuary with their guns, they'd be able to shoot through the Walkers surrounding it and undo everything we'd just done. Meaning there wouldn't be a reason for Negan to surrender anymore.
Rick and I took a team of Alexandrians to Outpost the Saviors had set up in some old business park. While most of our team worked on taking out Saviors who were working in the courtyard outside, Rick and I moved to search the building Dwight said the weapons would be in. I wished he'd been more specific. A sweep of the first floor turned up nothing.
The door to the stairwell was locked. I tried kicking it down, but it wouldn't budge, so in the end, we wound up climbing the old elevator shaft to the next floor, sweeping that and climbing again. With each floor that didn't turn up any weapons, I felt myself deflating a little more. A lot was riding on this.
"Last floor," Rick said, as I helped him up out the elevator shaft. "Guns gotta be up here."
"He said they'd be here," I said, but I had more than a flicker of doubt about it now. Floors of fuck all had made me start to think that Dwight had lied. And if he'd lied about this, what else had he lied about?
"Everything else he passed to you is checking out," Rick tried to remind me.
"That guy's a piece of shit," I said. If he'd really wanted to prove anything to me, he could've let me see Naomi. Just brought her to the fence when I took a message to him. Even a window. Something that showed me she was still alive in there. Had I been a dumbass to just take him at his word?
"Those guns get to the Sanctuary; they could cut through those Walkers and free up an exit," Rick said, reminding me why we had to keep pushing forward with this. Every time my mind wandered to thoughts of going back to Sanctuary, Rick had something to say to pull me back. To remind me about the bigger picture of all this. "We'll go faster if we split up. I find the M2s, you find 'em, we use them, hit the courtyard right then and there. End this quick."
I nodded and turned to move down in the opposite direction from him. I could still hear faint gunfire from the courtyard. The Saviors must be putting up a pretty good fight.
Every room I checked was clear of people, but it was clear of weapons too. I checked every cupboard and around every corner. This whole thing was starting to feel like a set-up. If the guns were here, why was there nobody here guarding them? There had been two guards standing outside, but that was it. Hadn't seen anyone since. Were the Saviors really dumb enough to leave all of their weapons protected by only two guys while the rest of them dicked around outside?
I opened a cupboard. Stopped in my tracks.
Empty handcuffs hung down from a rusty pipe: a half-eaten shit sandwich and stain on the floor that was probably blood. No windows.
They'd kept someone chained up here. Pretty recently, too. It was almost exactly like where they'd held me in Sanctuary. Where they might be keeping Naomi. Did they torture anyone they came across, try and break them so they became as brainwashed as everyone else? Where was that prisoner now? Had they killed them, or had they only been keeping them here until they could be moved to Sanctuary?
Or, had they been moving a prisoner out of Sanctuary.
What if it was her?
Once the thought took hold of me, I couldn't shake it. It made sense. That was why Rick hadn't seen her there, why Negan hadn't brought her out or handed her over. Maybe he'd got wind of what was coming and moved her someplace else. Somewhere he could use her against us.
I gotta go.
I could feel that pull again. That one that wanted me to turn back to Sanctuary and find a way in there no matter what. But, now, I wasn't sure that Sanctuary was even where I should be heading. What if she'd been moved someplace else? What if she was at one of them other Outposts? What if she'd been here and I'd come too late?
I pushed on much faster than before. I tried to turn that deep urge to run into a drive to keep going. The faster we went, the sooner this would be over.
Once I knew for sure that my half of the top floor was clear, I headed back to find Rick. I thought he might be done after I'd gotten held up looking at that damn cell, but he wasn't waiting at the half-way point for me. I kept moving down the hall. I didn't call out for him.
About a third of the way down, I heard voices, and I moved in closer to the wall. I wasn't close enough to hear who was talking or what they were saying, but unless Rick had started talking to himself, at least one of them had to be a Savior. I listened hard and moved forward slowly. I didn't want anyone to hear me coming. I followed the voices. The rooms I passed through were different from the ones I'd searched, set up more like living quarters.
I was getting close. One of the people talking was definitely Rick. I still couldn't make out what they were saying. I got closer, took a quick look around the door to assess the situation before ducking out of sight again. It was just one guy. He was holding a gun up to Rick's head. Looked like Rick had been in a fight, but his hands were raised now in a gesture of peace. He was trying to talk the other guy down.
"You can say all the words you want. Lori. Shane. Andrea…" It took me a second, but I recognized the second voice. It was Morales, from back at our first camp outside Atlanta. "They're all dead, and somewhere along the way, Officer Friendly died right along with them. That's what I know, Rick."
Well, I know it's time for you to die too, asshole.
I stepped out. Rick saw me, and his eyes widened. "Wait, no!"
He was too late. I'd already shot him dead. I wouldn't have listened to him even if I'd had the time. I looked at Rick and asked, "You good?"
"That…" Rick stared at the still-warm body. "T-that was…"
"I know who it was. It don't matter. Not one little bit," I said, pulling the bolt out of Morales. This was war. Some guy I'd barely known didn't matter much, not when my family and my home were at stake. "You find them guns?"
Rick hesitated. He still looked shocked by what I'd done, but I couldn't see why. I'd chosen my family; Morales had chosen to leave it. And after that, he'd chosen to join the Saviors. Anyone who made that kind of choice had what was coming to them.
"They aren't hare," Rick said.
"What?" I felt my heart start racing. Fear in my veins.
If Dwight lied about this, what else did he lie about?
I kept thinking about that other cell. Those handcuffs hanging from a pipe. I tried not to imagine Naomi chained up, shackled like a damn criminal, but the thought wouldn't leave me alone. Rosita said she'd seen her working the fence like I'd done. Did that mean they were keeping her locked up in the same way they'd done to me? What about after she'd tried to kill Negan? I couldn't imagine her being treated well after that.
"He called the Saviors back from the courtyard," Rick said just as I was starting to feel sick with worry. "We gotta get out before-"
He didn't even get the chance to finish his sentence before a door not too far from us was thrown open. We could hear yelling. They were here already. Morales hadn't hesitated to call his Savior buddies, old friends or not, why couldn't Rick see that he'd chosen his side?
Fuck you, Morales.
Rick and I took off as fast as possible, trying to get out before we got ambushed. It was hard to know how many Saviors were here, but at least they seemed too dumb to keep quiet. We caught where they were just in time. We took cover in doorways opposite each other and shot down the hall. It looked like there were about six of them. I think we took out two before they started shooting back. There was a rapid exchange of fire after that, and it became hard to tell how many were left. All of us ducking in and out of the places we'd sheltered, trying to hit them before they hit us. A demented game of Whack-A-Mole.
I squeezed the trigger, and nothing happened.
"Hey! Hey!" I yelled over the gunfire. It took two attempts for Rick to hear me. He looked over. "I'm out!"
Rick nodded to show that he'd heard me. I could see him thinking. We'd been firing for so long that he had to be close to running out too. Without me to cover him with crossfire, it would be harder for him to take out those Saviors, especially if they realized I was out. Rick signaled that two of them were left and gestured to a fire extinguisher on the wall opposite him. I nodded.
He shot one more bullet right into the fire extinguisher. White gas poured out of it, filling the hallway and hiding us from view as we ran at the remaining Saviors. I struggled with one while Rick fought the other, and we pushed them both down the empty elevator shaft we'd climbed up. When the last one stopped screaming, we sank down by the door and tried to catch our breath. Everything from the climb up the elevator shaft to fighting the Saviors that had made it up here had been fucking exhausting.
"Teams of four, sweep the offices," Aaron's voice came to us from somewhere lower in the building.
"Aaron!" Rick called to him.
"Rick!" Aaron yelled back.
"We're by the elevator."
It was a relief to hear their voices. When some of the Saviors had answered Morales's call, part of me had been worried that things had gone wrong in the courtyard, and our people might not have made it. If they'd moved on to sweeping this place, the yard must be clear.
Once I'd caught my breath, I stood up and helped Rick to his feet. We started moving down the building toward the sound of Aaron and the others. I turned a corner and spotted them down the other end of the corridor.
"Aaron!" I yelled to get his attention. He rushed toward us but he wasn't smiling. I pulled him in for a hug, slapped him on the back. "You two alright?"
"Yeah," Rick said as Aaron moved to hug him too.
"No guns, though," I said.
"You think Dwight was lying?" Aaron asked.
Yes.
"Can't know that for sure yet," Rick said. Felt deluded to me because what was the alternative? That the weapons he'd promised would be here had got up and walked out just before we arrived? Before I could say anything else, Rick said, "What about you? Things okay out there?"
"They..." Aaron stopped. He didn't really have the words. "...they put up a hell of a fight. We won, but... we lost a lot... Eric, he-"
Aaron stopped and looked down at the floor. He cleared his throat. I could see he was choking back tears. I got this horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I put a hand on Aaron's shoulder, trying to pull him back from whatever he was on the brink of.
"He's hurt," Aaron managed to finish his sentence. I breathed in a tiny amount of relief. Hurt wasn't dead. Injury, we could work with. Aaron's hands shook a little when he raised them to wipe his eyes. "I couldn't do anything. I had to... I had to just get him somewhere safe and leave him. I couldn't-"
"Hey, that's okay, man," I said. "We'll find him. We'll get him help."
Aaron nodded, doing his best to hold himself together.
"I'll help you find him," Rick said. He glanced up at me. "Daryl, help with clean-up?"
"Sure thing," I said, and then I looked back at Aaron. "You just holler if you need anything, you hear me?"
"Yeah," Aaron nodded again. "Thanks, Daryl."
Outside of the office building, the place was a mess. It was a pile of bodies. Most were Saviors, but more than I'd have liked were ours. I walked around, checking them all for survivors. Didn't find a single one. I put a knife through the skull of anyone who hadn't been taken out by a headshot. We had another herd coming here soon, but we couldn't deal with any of these people turning early and attacking our survivors.
We covered the bodies of those we cared about. We dragged the Saviors off to rot somewhere else.
"Hey," I looked up to see Rick standing over me. I pulled my knife out of the skull of some Savior asshole. It was easier to stab those corpses -even a little therapeutic. I could pretend each one was Negan since that was what they all called themselves anyway.
"Hey," I said. I could tell he had bad news. It was written all over his face.
"Eric didn't make it."
Fuck.
I felt the sting of it. Eric was one of the first people in Alexandria to be any kind of decent to me. He'd taken in Mia and Naomi no problem, too. I wasn't as close to him as Aaron, but Eric was one of the good ones. Funny. Warm. He had this easy kind of charm with everyone that made him almost impossible not to like.
"Where's Aaron?" I asked. They'd been in this from the start, together for even longer. I couldn't imagine the kind of pain he was in. I looked for him behind Rick but couldn't see him.
"He's taking a minute," Rick said. "He'll join us again soon."
I nodded. Aaron could take more than a minute if he needed it. Hell, he could take the whole day after that kind of loss. I couldn't imagine how he was still standing.
"We need to move out," Rick said. "Herd'll be here soon. I'm gonna sweep the rest of these buildings, check there aren't any Saviors hiding out somewhere, see if I can find those guns."
I nodded again, but I was starting to think that Dwight was a lying son of a bitch. I'd never really thought otherwise, but now I was pretty damn sure.
I finished clearing up the dead. People were standing to head home -clustering in groups ready to depart. Rick came out of one of the buildings with a tiny bundle in his arms. A baby girl.
"She was inside?" Tobin asked.
"She was," Rick said. "I have a stop to make, and Daryl's got his bike… Maybe she can go back with you or Scott…"
"She can go with me," a voice from behind us said. It was Aaron. His voice was shaky but determined. "I can, uh, take her to the Hilltop. She'll be safe there."
"Aaron," Rick's voice was brimming with concern. "You sure?"
"Eric and I were gonna go up," Aaron said. What he didn't say was that he and Eric had been talking about raising kids together. About taking one in if they found them. I felt a pang of something deep inside me. It was so unfair that a kid would come along like this on the day Eric died. Aaron reached out to take the bundle from Rick's arms. "We were gonna go there after and update Maggie. So… That's what I'm gonna do. Please. I have to."
His eyes were desperately sad, but he still reached out for this tiny kid like she was the only thing in the world that could make any of this okay.
"Yeah," Rick said, passing her over. "Her name's Gracie."
Aaron looked down at her. I put an arm around his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, man," I said quietly. "You know I'm here, right?"
Aaron couldn't speak, but that was okay. He'd talk when he was ready to. Ain't no sense in pushing someone before that.
Rick signaled that it was time for us all to move on to the next part of the plan. I gave Aaron one last hug before he got in the car with little Gracie. Tobin and the others headed back to Alexandria. The last two to leave, I went to get my bike, and Rick headed for the car.
"See you back home. Sure you wanna talk to them assholes alone?" I asked. I didn't see much point in trying to appeal to the Scavengers, not after they'd betrayed us. But Rick was adamant about it.
"Yeah," he said. "That's how it gets done."
"Alright. If you're gone too long, I'm gonna come lookin' for you," I said. I didn't trust Jadis not to shoot him and dump his body in with all of her beloved garbage.
Before Rick could say anything else, two shots came cracking out of a small cluster of trees. We ducked out of the way on instinct and took cover where we could. I trained my gun on where I thought the bullets had come from, but there were no more shots.
"Hey! You're alone. You got to be. There's not enough room for two of you behind that tree, "Rick yelled to them. "And there's a herd coming. I'm just sayin'."
More silence. Like we'd imagined the gunshots.
"Hey, I tell you what…" Rick tried again. "We'll make you a deal. You drop your gun and come on out - you tell us what we need to know. You do that, you can take the car. You go. You live. How about it?"
I looked back at where he was sheltering behind a car. Was he serious? This guy had just shot at us! Or was he just trying to get him to come out?
"Why should I trust you?" the Savior called back.
"Because I'm giving you my word," Rick said. "There's not a lot that's worth much these days… but a man's word. That's got to mean something, right?"
"Okay," the Savior replied after a slight hesitation. He came out from behind the tree with his arms raised in surrender. He looked at the two of us, his hands shaking a little. "What do you want to know?"
"You ever have any M2 Browning .50-caliber guns here?" Rick asked.
"We did. For a while."
"What happened to 'em?" I asked.
"They got sent to another outpost yesterday," he replied.
"Which one?" Rick asked.
"It was Gavin's - it's west of here," he said, nodding his head in the general direction. "Can I, uh… Can I go?"
No.
I shot him in the head. Doubt he even knew it was coming. I looked back at Rick, "Which team's a Gavin's?"
He didn't answer right away. Just looked at me like I'd done something wrong. It was the same look he'd given me after I'd shot Morales.
"What?" I said. "I didn't give him my word."
Rick shook his head. I could tell he was battling with himself about whether or not to tell me off. But eventually, he said. "The King's at Gavin's."
Shit.
That meant Carol was there too.
Rick turned away from me and got in the car without saying another word. I got on my bike and followed him West.
I knew he was mad, but I was starting to get a little annoyed myself. Rick didn't get it. He hadn't been there. All of these brainless twerps called themselves Negan and did everything that he told them to. They were as guilty in all of this as he was. They knew what they signed on for. They'd known it during this fight. They'd known it when they locked me up and when they beat Naomi unconscious. They'd known it out in that clearing where Abraham died. Might not have been these exact people, but they'd have all done the same.
Just before we got to Gavin's Outpost, a car pulled out onto the road in front of us. That ain't a usual sight these days, so we took off after it. They were Saviors for sure; they had to be.
Without saying a word to each other, we gave chase. I overtook Rick and started shooting one of them who was sitting in the back of the truck. He opened it up. They'd mounted a machine gun onto some kind of tripod. I swerved to dodge a round of rapid-fire. My bike skidded on the ground, and I lost control. I felt the whole thing shift beneath me and braced myself for a fall. I aimed for the grass, skidding across it with my arms up to protect my head.
The sound of engines faded as the Saviors kept going, with Rick in pursuit. I lifted my head from the ground, stretched out each of my arms and legs to check that everything was where it was supposed to be before I got up and got back on my bike.
I could go faster than they could; it didn't take me long to catch up. I kept close behind Rick, so they wouldn't see me coming. He swerved out of the way so that I could take a good shot at the asshole with his mounted machine gun. Took a few tries, but I got him.
Rick had pulled his car up alongside the truck. Real close to it. Before I realized what he was doing, he was hanging out of the side of his vehicle and reaching into the Savior's truck. I saw him jump in, and then I had to slow down to dodge out of the way of the car Rick had abandoned, which was veering out of the way and coming to a stop. The Savior's car disappeared around a bend in the road.
When I turned the same bend, the road ahead was empty. They'd been going fast, but not fast enough to be out of my sight yet. I slowed down a little, scanned the roads and grassy verges around me. I came up on a body, couldn't tell if it was alive or not, but it wasn't Rick. A little farther along, there was a big dent in the undergrowth. Fresh tire tracks too. I stopped, peering into the ditch, where the car we'd been chasing lay upturned.
"Hey," Rick called up to me. I looked down. He was climbing back up the verge. Sweaty and out of breath. Some blood drying on his clothes that probably wasn't his. I held out a hand to help him up. He took it, and I pulled him back onto the road. "We got the guns."
"You look like shit," I told him. But I guess this whole thing had been worth it now that we had what we came for.
"Let's go see if this asshole's alive," Rick nodded at the body I'd passed before. We walked back up the road to where he was lying. Heard him groan as we got close, and I think he was trying to move somewhere, but there was no getting up. Not for him. He had a big wound right in his stomach. Rick pointed his pistol at him.
"Your people back in the chemical plant… did you win?" Rick asked. We hadn't been able to check on Carol and Kingdom fighters before chasing these assholes.
"No one did," the Savior replied.
"The hell's that supposed to mean?" I asked. The Savior coughed a lot; there was probably blood in his lungs. I took my gun and pointed it right in his face. I asked again, "The hell's that supposed to mean?"
"Everyone's dead," he said.
"Bullshit." I refused to believe it. Not Carol. She couldn't be.
"There's no one else," Rick said. "You're the only one?"
"Me. The King. The Axe Man. And that short-haired psycho lady," he responded.
Thank fuck.
I walked away. This guy was close to dying, and I had no interest in what else he had to say. Carol was safe, which was the most important part, but it sounded like we'd lost a lot of people. We'd already lost so many. We needed those weapons down there; we needed to end this.
I left Rick to deal with the Savior and headed back to the car, scrambling down the steep hill. The truck was on its side, which was better than it being all the way flipped over, but the boxes had been thrown around the back, and they were hard to get out. I grabbed one at random and pulled. It was heavy. Stuck.
Rick came up behind me. I heard his footsteps in the grass and glanced over at him. He was still looking pissed off, but maybe it was the news about the hit our Kindom fighters had taken. "Hey. Give me a hand with this."
He reached in and grabbed the other end of the box I was trying to get. Together, we managed to get it out of the top of the car and lay it down on the grass. I opened it up to see what kind of shit they'd been carrying. Rows of explosives looked back at me.
Jackpot.
"We can use these now," I said, grabbing as many as I could and filling my backpack with them.
"What?"
"Well, think about it," I said. I knew Rick would take a little convincing, but we couldn't keep losing people like this. We couldn't risk the Saviors finding a way out of Sanctuary before they surrendered. "There ain't no Kingdom no more."
"Yeah…?" Rick said, clearly not following. Maybe he hadn't done the math yet. Maybe he didn't realize that if it came to a fight, we'd lost our numbers.
"We know what we got to do," I said. "We blow open the Sanctuary, let the Walkers flood in. They'll surrender. It'll be done. Hell, we could end this by sundown."
The thought of all of this being over by sundown made me feel lighter again. Since finding out Naomi wasn't back with us, I'd been carrying this huge weight around. It had only been getting heavier the more people we'd lost.
"They have workers in there, right? Families, too," Rick said. I didn't answer right away. So he prompted me, "Are there?"
"We'll hit the south side of the main building," I said. An easy fix to a problem I didn't much care about. "The workers live on the north side. They'll be up the stairs before the Walkers even get in."
"What if they don't? There are people in there who aren't fighters. Doing this could change that," Rick said. "Make them pick up guns and stand by the Saviors. And if the Saviors don't surrender, maybe everyone fights us. And we don't have the Kingdom anymore. We're not doing this."
Anyone who picked up guns to stand by the Saviors deserved what was coming to them. He looked at me like he was warning me off going against him. But I was done with all this shit. I was done with these tiny victories while the Saviors just kept taking from us. From me.
I was getting in there. And I was taking back what was mine.
"Nah," I said. "You ain't doing this."
I turned to walk away, but Rick grabbed my shoulder.
"There's a plan, and everyone's sticking to it," he said.
"Not everyone," I said. "There's a lot of our people that are dead, Rick. Things change, man. Negan and that other group, this is on them. If people die, it's their fault, not ours."
"Daryl, we can't do this."
"Man, we got our own people to look after," I said. It seemed like he'd lost sight of that lately. Trying to get Saviors on our side while those that had been loyal to us died. That Savior he'd tried to talk to back at the Office Outpost could've been the one who'd killed Eric for all we knew.
"We're not doing this," Rick said. I turned away. I was done listening to his shit. "Hey. I'm not letting you do this."
He grabbed my shoulder again. I rounded on him. I swear I was only going to yell at him. But then he said, "Naomi wouldn't want you to do this," and my fist hit his face before I knew what was happening.
He hit the ground. I was immediately sorry but too angry to say so.
"This ain't your choice," I told him. "You don't speak for her. You don't speak about her, you hear me?"
I turned away again. Rick got to his feet and tackled me to the ground.
"Daryl, listen to me," he said, trying to pin me down and get my backpack off me. "I saw her."
"Whaddya mean you saw her?" I pushed him off him. He wasn't fighting as hard anymore, so I managed to pin him down.
"I lied to you. She was at the Sanctuary. Negan brought her out when we-"
I couldn't hear it. I threw another punch. Rick was ready for it this time and moved his head swiftly out of the way. I punched the earth next to it. Hurt like a bitch.
Rick shoved me off and grabbed the backpack before I could do a thing about it. He threw it back toward the car.
I was so angry I'd stopped caring about it. I grabbed Rick, got him in a chokehold. He'd lied to me. Or maybe he was lying now to distract me. He grabbed my arm, trying to pull it away from around his neck. Then he reached up and grabbed my head. I didn't get what he was trying to do at first until he turned it, forcing me to look back at the car.
Smoke was rising from it. I could see flames. And he'd just thrown a bunch of explosives into it.
"Get up!" I yelled at him, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to his feet. We ran as the flames grew higher. An explosion knocked us to our feet. Secondary, smaller explosions went off as the fire reached other weapons in there.
Rick got his breath back. We sat side by side in silence and watched the car burn, all the weapons we could've had going up in smoke before our eyes. And all I could feel was this empty rage gnawing at my stomach.
"Why'd you lie?" I asked. Staring into the flames felt like the only place I could look. I was too mad to look at Rick, and the fire was the only thing that was nearly as strong as my anger.
"I thought if you knew, it would jeopardize the plan," he said. "That you'd try to find a way in there or get the Walkers away. But she was okay with it, Daryl. She told me it was okay to-"
"Don't," I warned him. "Don't tell me any of that shit."
I knew what she'd have told him. I knew she'd be more worried about all of them than they were about her. I didn't want to be mad at her, but I needed her to be more selfish for once. To put her survival first. But she wasn't wired that way.
"She's alive in there?" I asked.
"She was," Rick said. He sounded uncertain, and it made me sick to my stomach.
"The hell do you mean was?"
"Negan brought her out," Rick said. His voice was solemn, serious. "He beat her. It looked... bad."
"Did he use Lucille on her?" I asked. All of this beating around the bush was making things worse. If he knew that she was dead, I wished he'd just come out and say it.
"No," Rick said. "He never got a chance to. We opened fire before he could."
It took me a second to get what he meant. He phrased it like that was saving her somehow, but I knew it wasn't.
"You shot at her?" I was ready to punch him again.
"We shot at Negan and his men," Rick said.
"But she was there? With them?"
"Yes," he admitted. I was speechless. Struck dumb with anger and betrayal. "I didn't see what happened to her after that. She might have taken cover somewhere, found one of our group... I don't know."
Or she might've gotten shot. She might have been torn apart by Walkers I brought there.
"If she got out, Rick," I said. I really had to fight to keep my voice level. "Then where is she? Why ain't someone radioed to say they found her? Why hasn't she?"
"I don't know," Rick said.
But I knew.
I knew my girl. I knew if she got out, she'd find some way to let me know. She'd have gone back to Alexandria or the Hilltop or wherever she thought Mia would be, and she'd have made them radio me. I knew it. I knew her.
She's dead.
Once I'd thought it, I couldn't stop.
"You're my brother, Rick," I said to him, but I stared at the ground. I didn't think I'd be able to get the words out if I knew someone was looking at me. "But she's my whole world, man. Always has been."
In the silence, I heard him sigh.
"I know," Rick said. He paused. I wondered if he was about to try and tell me again that this was what Naomi had wanted. That I was the only asshole not looking at the bigger picture in all this. I knew I'd punch him in the mouth again if he did. But he didn't. He just said, "I'm sorry things have to be this way."
They don't, though.
I stood up.
"If she's dead, I won't forgive you for it."
That 'if' was looking more and more likely.
"I know."
"Nah," I said. "You don't."
At that moment, it felt like the world was divided in the way it had been before. Split into guys like Rick, who got to have their girl, their family... love. And guys like me who didn't. I knew Rick had lost a lot in all of this. He'd lost Lori, but he'd found a second chance with Michonne. Two kids who thought he was the goddamn heor. And what did I have? The only girl I'd ever really loved was dead because I hadn't done enough.
Because I'd listened to him.
I started walking back to where I'd dumped my bike. Everything hurt in new ways. Deep in my pocket, I could feel the figurine Dwight had carved. The one I'd been carrying around since I'd got it, ready to pull out whenever I needed a reminder of why I was doing all this. The one that said, 'She's alive.'
Felt like a lie now.
Only it hadn't been Dwight who'd lied to me; it was Rick. I had to know, one way or the other. I needed the truth; I needed to get in there. And I didn't need no damn dynamite to do it.