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Bucket Hat: What's TWD without a little drama XD

Tick—

Tock—

The clock on the wall of the infirmary was driving him crazy.

Tick—

Tock—

Mikey listened to the hand snap from each second to the next.

Tick—

Tock—

He realised the minute hand made a different sound to the second hand. The hour hand a different sound again.

Tick—

Tock—

That's the kind of thing you notice when you spend enough time with nothing to do except burn time. You listen to it. You wait on it. You anticipate it.

Tick—

Tock—

Tick—

Tock—

Dante's hands were bound behind his back. He'd been awake for a while; sat up on one of the infirmary beds that had all been lined together in rows to account for the people he'd gotten sick.

Gabriel stood at the bed's edge to Dante's right, hands on his hips as he stared the man down with a watchful eye. Carol and Daryl were sat on the bed a few rows in front of Dante. Rosita paced the room behind him, furiously guarding the exit even if it wasn't necessary. Mikey sat on the edge of Jenny's bed in the corner of the room— most of the sick patients had gotten well enough to go home with their new treatment Siddiq prescribed, but after last night, Jenny was recovering a little slower.

Daryl suddenly leapt to his feet, making everyone jump. He stormed around the beds and cracking Dante across the jaw.

Must have looked at him wrong.

Mikey assumed that's what crossed everyone's mind.

Because no one said anything.

"Hope that hurt," Daryl growled.

Dante giggled, spitting blood on the floor by his boots.

They all waited.

"Doesn't matter," he sighed, pointing to the stab wound in his shoulder, then down to the one in his side, then to his thigh. "None of this matters. Watch enough people get incinerated, devoured alive... you see how ridiculous it is getting attached to ourselves. But knowing that sets you free."

"Is that what you were doing here?" Carol scoffed. "Setting us free?"

"If you learn that lesson, it'll only help you."

Daryl ran a cigarette back and forth between his lips before lighting it and asking, "What, so we can be more like you?"

"Accept the future," Dante told him.

"Siddiq depended on you," Gabriel told him. "Why put him through all that hell in the barn just to kill him months later?"

Dante's face twisted into a sweaty frown.

"Siddiq worked out who he was," Mikey told them. "He didn't plan on it. Just like he didn't plan on me being there."

Dante sighed. "I liked Siddiq..."

Rosita scoffed. "Oh, you liked him?"

Dante hung his head, and Mikey got the sense he was trying to feign shame to them. "Mikey's right... he wasn't part of the plan."

"What plan?" Carol asked, her lips curled in disgust.

"Encourage your paranoia about us... which will push you into bad decisions."

He giggled again, suddenly, like he couldn't help how funny it was. He pointed at them.

"Places like this are cruel promises to their people, and they crumble at the smallest nick."

"That's ridiculous," Mikey hissed. "This place has existed for years! Hilltop and Oceanside have existed for years!"

Dante scoffed. "You think you're civilised? Civilization? You're gonna rip each other apart just trying to figure out what to do with me. Just like with Negan."

"You're insane," Mikey muttered at him. "You're just like her."

"At least I'm free, little fish."

Mikey's face dropped as he remembered what Dante had said to him in the mess hall a few days ago. Signs he maybe should have seen.

"So smooth," Dante hummed longingly, an eerily high pitch towing the words from his throat. "I wanted it."

Mikey's skin crawled from the way Dante studied him.

"Wanted what?" Daryl grunted.

Dante giggled.

"My face," Mikey said, swallowing. "He wanted to take my face. Said it would be a good prize for Alpha."

Dante looked offended.

"Oh, no," he cooed. "I mean, that wasn't all of it. Your face is one of a kind, Mikey. See, most folks got weathered cheeks or tired lids from all this running and hiding... but you? With your freckled cheeks and your button nose. You're a rare catch, little fish."

Daryl hit him again.

"So that's what you want?" Gabriel asked him calmly. "A public reckoning? A chance to be heard?"

"That's what you'll give me," Dante hissed, scrambling along the bed to get as close as he could to the priest. "Because it's right."

"Screw what's right," Rosita growled at him from behind.

Dante grinned over his shoulder at her, like she'd said exactly what he was banking on.

"Oh, you see?" he purred. "The smallest nick." He whistled— a long droning pitch that sounded like a plane falling from the sky. "It all comes tumbling down. You're all weak."

"Yet I almost took your ass out," Jenny laughed from her bed. "Sick and dying me, and there you are with three holes that would have drained you dead if it wasn't for our civilisation."

The door suddenly flew open, a breathless Teddy stumbling through with a spear in hand, Carl and Rhys in tow.

"Councilman Stokes, Councilman Monroe," Teddy gasped, clearly having worked hard just to stay ahead of them. "Rhys Rhee of Hilltop and Councilman Gri—"

Teddy was pushed aside by Carl, stumbling into the wall where he caught himself on a gurney piled with blanket and pillows.

Carl barged past Rosita next, Daryl stepping aside just in time to avoid the same. Carl didn't make a sound. Not a word uttered or a breath wasted. He grabbed Dante by the hem of his shirt and struck him across the face, hauling him upright to strike again.

Daryl caught his arm before the fourth punch. Carl shrugged him off.

"Why?" Carl roared in Dante's face, pulling him closer until they were nose to nose.

"This is hot," Dante leered. "Look away, Rhys... I think we might just kiss."

Carl stepped back and punched him again.

A tooth flew across the room, clattering across the wooden floor and skidding under a bed.

"Why?!" Carl screamed. "After everything— everything he did for you!"

Daryl placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, but again, Carl shrugged it off.

"Don't act like he actually did it out of kindness— like any of you brought me in out of kindness!" Dante laughed like a madman, blood drooling from his busted lip. "We are selfish, and we are brutal. Come on! Even seeing all those heads on spikes didn't teach you what people are?"

Carl drew his long bowie knife, pushing the razer point into Dante's eyelid until his skin split and blood ran down the blade to his white-knuckled fingers.

"Wanna see how brutal I can be?" Carl growled.

Rhys' hand was the one to take Carl's shoulder then, gently running its way down his arm and resting on his wrist, where he gently pulled the knife away.

Carl released his grip on the knife, letting Rhys take it before storming to the back of the room, where he sat beside Carol and flexed his punching hand.

"Why thank you—" Dante started, blinking the blood out of his vision from the weeping slit in his eyelid.

Rhys calmly pressed the point of Carl's knife to Dante's throat before he could finish. Dante swallowed against the steel. They stared at each other. Everyone watched. Not a sound was made.

Rhys lowered the blade, not sparing the monster a second glance as he went and sat beside Mikey.

Rosita asked Dante another question, but Mikey didn't listen.

Rhys was staring at him.

Staring at the bruises along his jaw.

Staring at the cut above his eyebrow.

Rhys reached out and touched his cheek.

"You're okay?" he asked quietly.

Mikey lifted his hand and cupped it over Rhys', swallowing his guilt, his anger, his pain.

He still couldn't manage the lie, though.

"No," Mikey whispered.

Aaron burst through the door then.

Teddy jumped to his feet, a small expression of defeat plaguing his face.

"And Aaron— Aaron's here too," he sighed.

-Rhys-

"We helped him," Rosita snapped at the room.

Rhys sat with her and a few of the others in the infirmary while Aaron was being filled in by Carol and Daryl over at the Brownstones.

Dante had been taken to Negan's basement cell since it was still empty. In all honestly, Rhys had almost forgotten about Negan's escape.

Almost.

Rosita was dabbing at the wound on Mikey's forehead with some disinfectant-soaked wool— apparently, he'd refused her offer to do it earlier.

"He did checkups on Judith," Carl said with a scowl, staring out the window, cradling his swollen fist. Teddy was still standing by the door, since apparently all council members were to remain under increased security until they could be sure Dante was alone inside Alexandria's walls. "On RJ."

"Gracie, too," Mikey said quietly, his face dark and gloomy.

"I want to be in there when we talk to him," Rhys said.

Mikey nodded, flinching as Rosita finished up on his face with rough hands.

"Me, too," Jenny groaned from her bed that Rhys had almost forgotten she was lying in, hidden behind Mikey and Rosita.

"I'm so sorry I asked you to come here," Carl told her with a guilt-ridden face, stepping a few paces closer to her bed. "If I'd known—"

"What?" Jenny asked with a small and effortful laugh. "If you'd known one of the doc's was a skin-freak?"

Jenny reached out her hand, and he took it tightly.

"You were right about me needing a purpose," she told him, squeezing his hand before letting go. "I was here to help Rosita and Mikey. That means something."

"And Coco," Rosita told her, turning to give her a firm nod — Rosita's substitute for a grateful hug. "It means everything that you were here."

"Hey, erm, Rhys," Teddy cleared his throat from the front door, leaning against his spear and smiling all lopsided under his long blonde fringe.

Rhys tilted his head. "What's up?"

"Sorry about calling you Rhee earlier..."

Rhys couldn't help but chuckle a little at that. It was breathy and didn't feel great— but it was something.

"We need to know why Lydia didn't recognise him," Rhys told the room.

"You're right," Mikey started, sharing an uncomfortable glance with Rosita. "But..."

"But?"

"Were you planning on telling me?!"

Daryl and Carol jumped up from their seats at Michonne's kitchen table when Rhys barged through the patio door in a fit of rage and righteousness. Aaron poked his head through from the kitchen at the ruckus.

"Rhys..." Carol started.

"Oh, no," he cut her off with a sharply pointed finger in her face. "I will get to you."

Daryl's bottom lip twisted into a guilty pout as Rhys stared him down.

"It only happened last night..." Daryl told him like it was any kind of saving grace. "Of course I was gonna tell you."

"Lydia ran away?!" Rhys exploded at him with sharp gestures and biting punctuation. "Why the hell was she even outside the walls?"

"Rhys—" Carol tried again, only to receive a whole hand in her face to silence her this time.

"Oh, I am well aware it was your fault, Carol," he told her with a spitefully sardonic laugh. "I'm not done yelling at Daryl yet!"

They both stood quietly for him, waiting for the end of his seemingly ceaseless anger.

"Why did you let Carol take her out alone?" Rhys barked.

Daryl wrung his hands together, looking at his feet before meeting Rhys' eyes. "I didn't know... I'm sorry, man."

Rhys nodded a couple of times, pacing the dining room as he did. Carol and Daryl watched him expectantly. Aaron slowly disappeared back into the kitchen, taking cover from the tempest in the dining room.

Rhys finally stopped pacing, turning to Carol.

She swallowed.

"Why?" he asked her calmly.

"We found out from the Whisperer we captured that Alpha's people don't know that Lydia is alive," Carol told him squarely. "I needed to test that theory."

"It worked," Aaron chipped in, his head reappearing from the kitchen. "Mary— the whisperer I've been meeting with, she seemed changed. She told us where to find the horde."

"Well whoop-de-fuckin'-doo!" Rhys yelled at him, prompting his head to very quickly vanish for the second time. "We broke one Whisperer and lost—"

He paused.

He took a sharp breath.

They all took it as a cue that they were also allowed to breathe.

"Did you just say we know where to find Alpha's horde?" Rhys asked.

Aaron found the courage to join them in the dining room then.

"I did," he answered sheepishly. "There's a sunken field on the edge of the national forest. I don't think Mary is lying."

"Their side of the border?" Rhys grimaced to everyone in the room, one by one. "Well, what are we still doing here?"

"My question exactly," Carol sighed, clapping her hands together in agreement. "Once the funeral is done, we should head to the border."

"Carl's on the horn to Hilltop trying to get a message to Michonne and Sasha about Siddiq," Rhys told them. "I'll tell him to ask Hilltop for extra bodies."

"We gonna talk about how this is probably an ambush?" Daryl asked, throwing his hands up like all reason had left the room.

"The baby that Connie rescued at Hilltop," Aaron said with a sceptically raised eyebrow. "Apparently, that's Mary's nephew... she's trading this information for a chance to see him."

He directed that last bit at Rhys, who pouted back.

"Earl is gonna hate that," Rhys groaned.

"I'm very aware. I hate it, too."

"Fine," Daryl grunted. "Call for a group from Hilltop to meet us there... second we're done we're going looking for the girl."

"Agreed," Rhys said.

"I'll get Carl to make the call," Aaron said, heading out the door.

Carol got up to follow, but Daryl called after her.

"Hey... why don't you stay here? We'll go."

"Why?" Carol asked him meekly, her eyes barely meeting his.

"You gonna say what really happened out there?"

Rhys dropped into one of the dining room seats, eager to hear this.

Carol looked at both of them. "I told you... Lydia didn't want to come back. I couldn't make her."

"Her being here protects us," Daryl said. "You know that."

"So that's it for her now, to be our shield?" Carol quipped. "Just lock her up again?"

Daryl glared at her, quick to his anger. Rhys was careful, however, remaining studious in how he met her silver eyes. He knew to search for those lies she hid so well.

"I showed one of Alpha's people that their leader lied to them, and that's good for us," Carol told them, staring at Rhys a moment longer than she did with Daryl. "We can push on their wounds, too."

Daryl went to speak, but Rhys stood up. "With Dante locked up, Alpha doesn't need to know we've lost Lydia. The sooner we're out there, the sooner we can find her."

"I remember this passage from my studies..."

Gabriel wore his wide black bolero hat for the funeral.

"It was written by a scholar centuries ago who was trying to understand the impossible."

He wore it because the sun had come out for the funeral, offering them its warmth on the sad, sad day.

"Let me live if life is better for me... and take my life if death is better for me."

Rhys watched the faces lit up by its warm glow. Nora, Minnie, Teddy, Laura, Daryl, Carol, Mikey, Aaron, Carl, and the rest.

"He had surrendered himself to fate because his world defied logic... defied justice."

They all held their emotions tight to their chests, like poor hands in game of bluffs and chance. Tears kept under wraps to defy something much sadder... much scarier. But the warmth kept them all truthful in its golden swell. It kept them connected.

"We created you from it... and return you into it," Gabriel concluded, kneeling to grab a fistful of dirt and dust it over Siddiq's already filled grave. "And from it we will raise you a second time."

Carl stepped forward from the crowd as Gabriel stayed knelt, hands clasped in a silent prayer for his lost friend.

Carl took off his hat, running a hand through his sweaty hair, refusing to hide from the sun like the priest.

"When I first met Siddiq, he asked me for help..." he started, clearing his throat when his voice trembled.

"He told me.. I remember he told me that someone threw a microwave at him."

Carl chuckled to himself, his eye over our heads like an actor trying not to break the illusion from their stage.

"Funny how you remember those things," Carl said sadly. "He told me something that his mom said... and after a while, I helped him."

Carl's lips twitched until he found a soft smile.

"And then he helped— no, he saved... so many people. That's who Siddiq was. He was the traveller that asked for help and repaid it a thousand times over."

Carl crouched to take a handful of dirt, looking down with tears across his cheeks as he spilled it over the grave.

"I'm so very glad you convinced me to spend my good on you, old friend."

After Carl was done, everyone took the time to spill a handful of earth onto Siddiq's grave. After all, he helped all of them. When they were sick. When they were scared. He helped more people than any other could claim. Every hand that gave back now owed him so very much more then they could offer, but of course they offered anyway, because he would never have asked.

Rosita sat beside his grave when the rest had gone. Rhys stayed standing beside her, hands crossed in front of him.

She glance up at him over her shoulder after a little time had passed.

Rhys studied her beautiful face, streamed with invisible tears you could only see if you knew how she cried — how deep down that she kept it.

"Gabriel will be strong for you now," Rhys told her quietly. "But, Rosita, if Socorro ever needs anything... anything—"

"I know," she told him softly. "I know."

"You and her have the biggest family in the world."

There was so much sorrow on the streets of Alexandria.

It flooded their roads like a typhoon. Overfilling storm drains, and rushing through homes in waves.

Rhys saw Carol and Ezekiel talking quietly under a maple tree— neither comfortable in each other's company anymore.

Gabriel was going over council security measures with a heartbroken-faced Aaron outside the town hall.

It was under Alexandria's streets that Rhys found something other than sadness— something that created all this pain.

Carl was leaning against the wall at the bottom of the brownstone steps, waiting on him.

They entered Negan's old cell together, and Carl dismissed the guard as they passed him by.

Dante stood up from his perch on the cot as they walked inside. The time of afternoon it was had the cell flooded with sunlight from the small window above the cot. They could see him clear as day.

"Ohhh," he groaned with a smug smirk. "I must have been a real bad boy if the most bitching power couple in all the realms has come to see me!"

"These pills you prescribed me," Carl asked, shaking the bottle of his sleeping meds before tossing them at him through the bars where they hit the wall by Dante's head, the lid popping off and white tablets scattering everywhere. "Homemade, right?"

Dante grinned. "Ding-ding-ding!"

"Are they the reason the nightmares got so bad?" Carl asked. "For Siddiq, too?"

"That was the idea..."

"Screw you," Carl hissed. "You're plan failed. Siddiq saw through you."

"Maybe," Dante sighed, stepping on one of the pills; turning it to powder under his boot. "But the comedown? Phew, now that... that is gonna the real party."

Carl stepped back, gritting his teeth.

"I wouldn't be so smug," Rhys said, stepping closer and raising his arms up above his head to lean against the cold bars. "You've not got long..."

"What does that mean?" Dante frowned at him. "You people ain't gonna off me without a fair trial."

Rhys laughed.

It seemed to annoy Dante.

That stirred a deep, sickly joy in Rhys' gut.

"Ever met my sister?"

Dante winced, looking confused. "Sure... fine as hell, and halfway to Oceanside right about now."

"Oh, more than halfway," Carl pitched in, sporting a cocky smirk. "I managed to get word to Michonne and Sasha about what happened... what you did. She's on her way back now. Won't take her nearly as long to get here on her own."

Dante shook his head, stepping closer to the bars. "And?"

Rhys sighed, pressing his forehead against the bars and grinning through at him.

"See, I know Sasha better than anyone else alive. She said she was going to Oceanside for a bunch of reasons... trade, support, yada-yada-yada. But, truth is, she's just itchin' to get her hands on a Whisperer. Even the field... I believe that's how she put it. Now she hears we've got one gift wrapped down here."

Rhys chuckled, glaring Dante into the ground.

"I don't think anything could stop her and her axe getting down here..."

"I told you people before," Dante growled. "I ain't scared of dying. It's natural."

"Not the way she'll do it," Carl told him. "Death isn't meant to take days. Ain't natural to scream and beg."

"I promise you she'll take her time," Rhys added.

"Death doesn't take days," Carl repeated.

"She'll take days, though," Rhys said.

The smallest trace of fear crept into Dante's eyes then. Rhys found himself revelling in it.

"And let me guess..." Dante croaked. "You want something from me, and in return, you're the one person who can talk her down?"

Rhys pushed back from the bars then, the moment he knew he had Dante at the negotiation table, he stepped away from it.

"Oh," Rhys said coldly. "You killed my goddaughter's father... I'll be here to hold the door for her."

Carl and Rhys turned to leave.

"Wait!" Dante called after them, throwing himself against the bars with a ringing clang of steel.

They both stopped.

They waited.

But Dante had nothing more to say.

He'd revealed that now.

Cards on the table, finally.

Rhys watched as Carl stepped back towards the bars, light pouring over him.

Dante opened his mouth to speak.

Only, Dante wasn't one of the sounds that followed—

Metal dragged against tired leather...

The slow clicking of a hammer pulling back...

The heavy spin of the cylinder in his father's revolver...

The earth-shattering clap of thunder that lit up the room for a second, and left no corner hidden in shadow as Dante's brain exited the back of his head.

Dante's body was thrown back in a violent collision with the cot behind him before crumpling to the floor dead.

The wall was painted with chunks of trickling brain matter.

Rhys winced, glancing at Carl as he re-holstered his revolver and tilted his head to watch the blood leak from the hole in Dante's head to the surprised look captured in his glazed eyes.

"Could have warned me to plug my ears," Rhys said casually, rubbing a palm against the side of his head that still had one.

Carl's face scrunched up like he hadn't thought about that.

"Sorry."

"No worries."

"We need to kill that horde."

Rhys nodded. "Then we find Lydia."