-A few days ago-
-Sasha-
There was a slight smear of blood or grease on Sasha's rifle scope. It shouldn't have bothered her as much as it did, but still, she scratched at it as the wagon rattled its way down Pierson Lane.
Luke was whistling Rachmaninoff to her left.
Michonne kept sighing deeply in the driver's seat, but he didn't appear to get the memo. Judith snickered, scribbling in her notebook from the passenger seat.
"Woah, woah, woah," Michonne coaxed the horses into a sudden stop.
Sasha looked up, seeing Scott, who'd been riding ahead of the caravan. He had dismounted his horse and crouched on the road to inspect something.
"What've we got?" Sasha called out, putting her rifle to one side and standing up in the back to get a better look.
Scott stood and came over to them, shaking his head. "I'm not as good a tracker as Daryl, but those prints look recent and clean... not dragging like a walker."
Sasha hopped out of the wagon, marching over to take a look.
"Whisperers don't travel alone," Michonne called after her. "So it's gotta be somebody else."
"Could be one of their scouts," Scott said.
"The longer we spend out here, the more likely we are to bump into them," Michonne warned.
"That's the hope," Sasha said under her breath, studying the heavy boot print in the thick mud, a courtesy of last night's rain.
"One scout," Michonne sighed. "Not worth it."
"Unless it is," Sasha said, standing up and staring off into the trees where the print led. "This is fresh... and it's one big foot."
Michonne narrowed her eyes at Sasha. She was well aware of how badly she wanted to get even with the biggest Whisperer they knew since he got the jump on them during the fair.
"Everything good?" Marco called out from the wagon behind theirs.
Judith poked her thumbs up from the passenger seat before returning to her notebook.
"C'mon," Michonne said, her face stern. "Oceanside might actually need us."
Sasha rolled her eyes before climbing back into the wagon, slapping the side for them to move out.
"All things considered, we will have to be as quiet as possible," Michonne said, head rolling back to glare at Luke, who had resumed whistling.
"Yup, that was meant for me," he said, leaning back as the wagon started to roll down the road again. "I take no offence. I am here as a representative of Hilltop... as a soldier of peace and justice!"
Sasha raised a very doubtful eyebrow.
Luke gulped. "Or that's totally your job, and I'm just here to look pretty."
"Or you're here to see Jules," Judith commented.
Luke's grin was unconcealable. "What? Stop it."
Sasha saw Michonne's cheek tense to conceal a small smile.
Judith pivoted in her seat to look at him. "What were you whistling before?"
"I'm glad you asked me that," Luke said all serious in the least serious way Sasha had ever seen as he sat upright and leaned towards Judith. "I'm whistling one of the most whistle-able— is that even a word? It is now. Whistleable sections of Rachmaninoff's variations on a theme of Paganini. It's like one of the greatest pieces of music ever... it's my favourite. And I can only hear it in my head nowadays."
"Maybe keep it there," Sasha warned him.
" Ohh," Luke groaned. "Look out, Jude! The whistle police have arrived. It's culture, Sash."
"I know who Rachmaninoff is," she told him, an unimpressed smirk lifting her cheeks.
"Like hell," he laughed.
"Language," Judith told him.
"What she said," Michonne repeated but with a nervewracking stare.
"I've got a little brother obsessed with funk and soul," Sasha snorted. "I take classics where I can get them."
"Wait, sorry, wait... hold on— wait," Luke stuttered, gripping her shoulder tightly. "You've got Rachmaninoff on record?"
"Mm-hmm," she hummed.
"Can I—"
"No."
An argument between Sasha and Luke somehow ended up in him convincing Judith to convince Michonne to let them stop in the next town to scope out a library en route to the coast.
The library, unlike the rest of the town, was almost untouched. A bookcase had been knocked down by the entrance, and the cash register had been thrown to the ground and plundered of return change, but apart from that, the place was something historical.
"Waterford is a shithole," Sasha sighed at Michonne, checking behind the front desk for any surprise walkers.
Michonne did the same for the toppled bookcase, keeping her eye on Judith as she ran off towards the history section, stopping along the way to grab a Russian-English dictionary for Eugene's satellite parts.
"Shithole indeed," Michonne agreed.
"Reminds me of that town," Sasha said, brushing the dust off the cover of a book sat on the desk with her thumb, considering how it had probably been sitting there for the last decade. "Remember Eugene's bullet shop?"
"The one that burnt down?" Michonne asked. "Oh, I remember."
They walked the aisles of bookshelves together. Michonne caught Sasha frowning at a children's book sitting in the wrong section. Sasha waved a hand in front of her face dismissively when she noticed.
"Tyreese and I used to read that one," Sasha said.
Michonne picked it up, dusting off the cover. "Under the Sunday Tree?" She laughed, mumbling to herself as she recognised it, "Damn, my dad used to read this one to me."
Sasha smirked. "I was always the boss when we were kids, but when Ty used to read this to me I'd feel like the little sister again. He loved poetry."
"I never would have guessed," Michonne said.
Sasha just made an amused little hmph sound.
Michonne smiled at Sasha, offering it to her.
"Take it for RJ," Sasha said, shaking her head.
Michonne grinned at the cover, clearly debating it in her head as she tapped the spine before stuffing it in her bag.
When Sasha went back to browsing, Michonne walked around the far side, looking at her through a gap in the books.
"Ever thought about kids?"
Sasha laughed. "Rhys is enough."
Michonne smiled. "He ain't so much of a kid anymore."
Sasha's eyebrows went up. "Oh, so you're telling me Carl's all grown up?"
Michonne dipped her head, laughing at the idea and nodding. "A fair point."
Sasha took her rifle off her shoulder and leaned it against the bookcase as she inspected a book on sewing before tossing it in her pack.
"Still," Michonne pressed, sounding like a lawyer again as she followed Sasha with her hands held behind her as she started to drift down the shelves. "Kids."
Sasha frowned at her, amused. "Not really my thing."
"Why not?"
Sasha took the time to straighten a book that had been knocked down on its shelf, blocking Michonne's face. Michonne pulled it out and tossed it on the floor, awaiting her answer.
"They're fine," Sasha grunted. "I don't know. Abraham and I talked about it a lifetime ago."
Michonne smiled at her with a pained sadness in her eyes. "I know that feeling."
"Sorry," Sasha said suddenly. "I never did tell you that... after Rick, I mean."
Michonne shrugged. "Got tired of hearing it."
The radio on Sasha's pack suddenly hissed to life.
"Hilltop to Williams— you there?"
Sasha unclipped the walkie from where it hung on her backpack.
"Go for Sasha and Michonne."
"It's Yumiko... I've got a message from Carl and Rhys at Alexandria."
"Alexandria?" Sasha hissed, glaring at Michonne. "I swear to god I told him to—"
"Siddiq is dead."
Michonne snatched the radio from between the shelves. "What the hell do you mean? How?"
"Dante was spying on Alexandria for Alpha. Siddiq worked it out but..."
She didn't say anymore.
Sasha watched Michonne's face contort and tighten with a blinding white rage.
"He almost killed Mikey, too..." Yumiko sounded like she couldn't believe it either. "Him, Jenny, and Rosita apprehended Dante."
"You mean he's alive?" Michonne growled in the receiver.
"Sounds that way."
Sasha tossed the books she'd collected out of her bag, pulling it on. "I'm gonna cleave his goddamn head off."
"You're going back?" Michonne asked. "We're thirty minutes from Oceanside."
"I can be back by morning if I leave now, and we came out here to find whisperers..." Sasha snatched up her rifle. "One's been under our roof this whole time."
She grabbed back the walkie, holding down the button. "Is Rhys staying put?"
Sasha could hear the nervous pause Yumiko took. "He's headed out with some of the Alexandrians. He's asked Hilltop for reinforcements to meet him at the border. They think they know where to find the horde."
"Tell Alexandria I'm on my way."
Michonne raced around the shelves and caught Sasha's arm before she made for the door. "Before you take his head off... break his jaw for me."
They hugged.
"Tell the others I said bye."
On foot, it took Sasha most of the day just to return to where they'd seen those tracks. She kept her leather jacket zipped to her chin to keep the bugs off her hot and itchy neck as she kept a fast pace back down the road they came on, but when she did reach those tracks from earlier, she couldn't help but stop.
She stared down at the boot print, cautiously placing her own foot in its crater to see it was double her size.
"Dante's not going anywhere," she grumbled to herself.
Sasha tracked the prints for the rest of the day. It took her miles in roughly the same direction she would have gone to Alexandria, trudging through a forest that looked like it hadn't been disturbed in years. She even came across a walker that had merged with a tree over the years— merged like the whole thing grew while he stood there waiting for it. The bark was fused with his flesh, and his arm pointed out in the opposite direction of where his pale white eyes were looking. He couldn't snap at her because his mouth was stuffed with ivy and moss. A family of birds nested in his hollow ribcage.
When darkness came over the forest, Sasha spent the night under a star-littered sky, praying for no rain that might wash away the tracks. She pulled out her radio when she got bored of flicking leaves into the small fire she'd lit.
"Michonne, you copy?"
It took a moment.
"Sasha?"
"Made it to Oceanside okay?"
"We did... didn't exactly go as we expected. You back at Alexandria yet."
"Ha," Sasha murmured into the walkie. "That didn't go exactly to plan, either."
"We came across this guy."
"Whisperer?"
"I don't know. He rescued Luke from a walker after you left the library— ran away before we could talk to him. The next time we saw him he tried stealing a boat from Oceanside. We're holding him. I spoke with him. Turns out the man's from an island... a naval base. Could be weapons there big enough to take out Alpha's horde... if he's telling the truth."
Sasha's eyebrows shot up with surprise. "Oh, so when you say the day didn't go to plan..."
"Yeah."
Sasha didn't need to ask if Michonne was going to check it out. She'd known her far too long for a question like that.
"You going alone."
"Have to. It's too dangerous, and too risky to ask anyone else to put their necks on the line."
Sasha smirked. "Bet you're pissed I left."
"Wouldn't have hated the company... someone I could rely on handling shit."
"Guess that's something to miss about the old days," Sasha told the radio, squeezing her free hand into a fist. "That group we had back at the start. That was the kinda group that could handle shit."
"It was definitely more simple."
"I'm sorry we got so far apart, Michonne," Sasha sighed. "There's only a handful of us left now that can still handle shit like the old days."
"We're not all that different."
"Like hell aren't we. People settled down. They had kids. Got safe."
"I had kids."
"And yet there you are... still the first one through the door."
"Yeah, right behind you."
Sasha chuckled to herself, poking the fire with a stick she'd found by her boot.
"I'm sending Jude home with the others," Michonne said. "Should be there just after you."
"Nah, they'll be there first. I've got something I have to check out first."
"Copy that. Stay safe, Sasha."
Sasha was up before the sun, but it took until late afternoon before she was led by the muddy prints and trodden thickets to an open hillside. There, hidden amongst the tall grass and wild bracken at the foot of the hill, she spotted an ancient RV.
Sasha crouched by one of the last footprints before it led her out into the open. She pressed two fingers into the wet mud feeling the consistency between them.
"This'll do," she whispered to herself.
She smeared her face, then the white hem of her t-shirt sticking out the bottom of her jacket, next finding a tree with a good view of the field, slinging her rifle over her back and clambering to the top branches, settled amongst a bush of leaves that kept her hidden.
She nestled her rifle, tightening the suppressor before pressing her eye to the cold metal of the scope as she fiddled with the dial, sliding her chin back down the stock once she could see the RV in focus.
A walker was standing outside. Only, it wasn't moving. She could tell by the hands it was a whisperer— taking a leak.
She took a deep breath and—
Chook!
The body thudded against the RV before crumbling into the long grass and out of sight.
"Damn freak," Sasha whispered to herself.
The RV door burst open, and another leapt out with their knife drawn, searching around for the body they must have heard drop.
Chook!
"That's two," Sasha mumbled.
She waited.
She saw movement behind the blinds.
Chook!
"Really need to clean this scope."
And she waited.
Nothing happened.
She slid out of the tree, tip-toeing out of the tree line and closer to the RV with her gun up. The door was still open. She stepped over the bodies.
She listened.
Quiet.
Sasha burst through, clearing both ends and finding nothing. The RV windows were covered in newspapers where their blinds were missing. A crack in the window where her bullet entered; a body on the floor where it landed. There were a few sofas and a bed in the back— besides the smell and the body, it was fairly clean. No dust.
She searched the RV high and low for any reason why they were there but found nothing besides half a packet of mints in the glove compartment. She searched their bodies and found nothing there either. She kicked one of their feet, realising neither of them made the prints she'd followed. Back inside, Sasha grimaced at the puzzle of a room, sitting on one of the sofas by the door to think.
Creek.
She frowned, standing up slowly and sitting back down.
Creeek.
Sasha grabbed pillows, flinging them to the floor only to find nothing again. It wasn't until she dragged away the whole damn settee that she found it.
A trapdoor.
She hauled it open.
It was a hole.
A hole in the floor that led straight through into the dirt below. A few flies rose up from the earth. The hole was wide— maybe the width size of a grave. She couldn't see the bottom. She grabbed the flashlight from her pack, clicked it on and shone it down there.
Pitch-blackness leaked from this hole. Her light barely broke its murk. She could make out a tunnel leading further underground.
She grabbed a roll of tape she'd found in one of the cupboards while searching, binding the light to the barrel of her gun.
She dropped down into the earth.
The walls were uneven and crumbled whenever her jacket rubbed against them, the ceiling just high enough to stay on her feet. Sasha pushed through, eventually losing track of how long she'd been walking— maybe hours. At least... that's how long she'd been walking— eventually, it turned to crawling. The air felt thin. She wasn't sure if she'd gone further down.
Ahead she saw a gradual rise in the ceiling where she spotted moonlight. Below it was something heavy— a body, wrapped in bedsheets. She crawled over it, pushing her hand up toward the light, feeling the cool air hit her fingers. She hauled herself out, spitting out the dirt caught between her lips as she sat up from the crumbly earth and gasped at the striking chill from the outside air. She bumped her head on something behind her.
There was a cross.
She was in a grave.
She looked around, realising where she was as she saw the white-washed houses, a towering windmill slowly turning in the distance, and tall steel walls— 'silence the whisperers' painted over them, scrubbed down to a faded grey.
Alexandria.
They'd come to break Dante out. She realised that must have been the reason.
Sasha undug herself with rabid hands, scrambling out of the grave and sprinting from Alexandria's cemetery onto the empty street. She spun on the spot, looking for anyone, but the lights were out in every window. Porches sat barren and empty.
She heard yelling coming from Morgan Street but ran the opposite way, desperate to reach the cell she'd never had the discipline to visit— the last patron she'd dreamed of gutting for years.
She thought she saw people as she skidded around the corner of the Brownstones' street— but when she reached them and grabbed their shoulders, walkers turned and snarled at her in greeting.
Sasha staggered a few steps backwards, shaken at the sight of walkers on Alexandria's streets. She aimed her rifle, but—
Click.
She was out.
Sasha slung her rifle over her shoulder to draw one of her axes in its place. The corpses were fresh— Alexandrians who had most likely been alive only hours ago. It took more force to break through their skulls.
Sasha didn't stop to try and identify the bodies, running down the steps to the basement under Michonne's home instead, crashing through the door.
But she was too late.
She saw the blood first...
It ran to the door and kissed her boots, all the way from the body of the blonde woman crumpled up inside the open cell. Sasha rushed to check her pulse, but Laura was dead. Her neck was purple from where it had been snapped.
BANG!
Sasha's eyes darted to the ceiling where the gunshot came from. To Michonne's house. She heard a door open and slam.
Once she'd returned to the street and climbed the stone steps to the front door, she burst inside. The house was frighteningly dark. Sasha raised her rifle despite its empty chamber. She could hear muffled voices a floor up, creeping up the steps, Rosita's yells becoming recognisable.
She turned the corner at the top of the staircase, and Sasha saw him.
Beta.
It was dark the night of the fair when she had first met him. She hadn't realised the size of the man. Daryl had explained to her how he thought he'd killed him once. How he came back. He was a mountain, standing over a writhing Rosita on Michonne's bedroom floor at the end of the hall, ready to plunge a knife down into her chest.
But a woman with wiry brown hair that Sasha didn't recognise, heaving and panting, stood between Sasha and the other two and screamed for him to stop.
He did stop.
She was holding a blood-covered knife against her own neck.
"Alpha wants me alive," she cried. "If you hurt her that won't happen... step towards me."
"Hey!" Sasha barked at both of them, the woman spinning around. "Lady, I don't know who you are, but move."
She did, looking relieved as she pressed herself to the hallway wall.
Sasha pointed her rifle at Beta's chest, a whole hallway still between them. "On your knees, asshole."
He inched closer, ignoring her, the yellow-stained eyes under the skin he wore catching the moonlight as he entered the hallway.
"Shoot him!" the woman shrieked, retreating halfway up the next flight of steps when he got close.
Sasha hissed through her teeth, lowering her rifle. As much as she wished she had a bullet for this monster, she also knew he had a hand in Tara and Enid's deaths, and for that, she wanted more blood than a bullet would get her.
Beta grinned with a mouthful of golden and yellow teeth that matched his eyes as he raised his knife.
"Your world is dead..."
Sasha dropped her rifle to the floor, silent as she pulled out an old and rusted pair of knuckle dusters instead.
"You're people are dead..."
He inched closer, growling through his rotten mask, his tangled beard that stuck out the bottom ripe with sweat and dirt. Sasha flexed her fists after threading her fingers through the metal holes.
"You will be dead."
"Sasha, don't..." Rosita groaned from the floor behind him.
"C'mon," Sasha growled quietly at him, tugging an axe off her belt before squaring her stance in the narrow hallway. " C'mon, you damn freak."
He charged at Sasha, thrusting his blade toward her gut. She threw herself into the wall to dodge it, pushing back off it, and with not enough room to swing her axe, punched him in the face with her metal-laced fists.
He staggered back, holding his jaw, something close to a look of surprise in his cloudy eyes.
Sasha swung her axe at his head, and he lifted his arm just in time to block it. The steel edge sliced through leather and skin, blood spurting from his wound as Sasha's axe buried itself halfway into his arm. She yanked it out, furiously swinging for his head again. Beta's black trenchcoat flapped around him as he leapt back to dodge her attack. Sasha's axe struck the ground hard, wedging itself between the floorboards.
Sasha heard him bellow.
She looked up, Beta's giant foot connecting with her chest before she could move, sending her flying off her feet and sliding back along the hallway. He charged after her. The old, wooden house shook as he rumbled closer. Sasha kicked wildly at his knee sending him tumbling into her, his knife missing her head by an inch and jabbing into the floorboard behind her. On top of her, Beta grabbed each side of Sasha's head, lifting it and trying to slam it down against the floor, but her knuckle duster flew up between them and connected with his chin, giving her enough space to pull her knife out and slice into his belly.
Beta roared in pain, striking her across the face before staggering back.
Sasha jumped up two, spitting out the blood his one blow had brought to her mouth.
Her hog hunter blade was as big as the one he'd dropped. Beta clutched his slashed gut and heaved as he watched Sasha reach her foot behind her until it found his knife, kicking it his way.
He watched her with confused and narrow eyes as he slowly crouched to retrieve his blade.
Again he charged for her. Their fight was like a dance. Heavy slices dodged in single movements that led to the next attack. She caught his leg. He sliced through her leather jacket and into her arm. She was confident he broke her nose when he got lucky with another hit. Each hit from this mountain was so much more devastating than from a regular person. A tooth flew from her jaw. Blood splattered the walls from his wrist.
It wasn't until Sasha caught his face with her knuckle duster and tore his mask that she felt fear for the first time that night. It was barely a nick, but he was hysterical— like a wild bear with a taste for blood. Swinging for her, knocking pictures off the walls and breaking a bar in the bannisters.
As she dodged his flailing attacks, Sasha heard the front door burst open— multiple voices yelling from the bottom of the stairs.
Beta sprinted for the hallway window, leaping into an explosion of glass and falling to the street below.
Sasha staggered towards the window to look out, but the street below was empty.
"He's gone," she hissed at Scott as he came racing down the hallway.
It took until morning to be sure there were no more walkers inside the walls. Beta had slit the throats of several families and waited for them to turn.
Sasha felt like whenever they were ready to fight the whisperers they thought of a new way to change the game.
Sasha found Gabriel standing by the grave she had told them about. She'd already arranged for a wagon to leave for Hilltop.
"He held knives to our scouts' throats... forced them to lie about a small pack of walkers closing in and lure the bulk of our forces away from Alexandria." Gabriel's face was furious. "Dante dug this."
Sasha grimaced. "I'm assuming he's dead."
"Carl killed him."
"Good. And this woman I saved... she's the defector? The one that said the others got stuck in a cave?"
"Mary. That's correct."
Sasha saw Aaron over Gabriel's shoulder, stumbling towards them from the direction of the gate. Gabriel looked when he saw her staring.
"Aaron!" he gasped.
The two hugged. Sasha doing the same after.
His beard was full of dust, and his face was scratched up badly.
"You're alright," Gabriel sighed in relief.
"Yeah," Aaron groaned, holding his arm like it hurt. "We, uh..."
"The others," Sasha urged. "What about the others?"
He was staring at the grave dug up, the fresh ones beside it.
"What happened?"
"Aaron!" Sasha hissed.
"Rhys is okay," he said, snapping out of it. "Everyone was... but Connie, Magna, and Mikey... they didn't get out in time."
"Where are they?" Gabriel asked, his voice betraying that he'd already taken a guess.
"I'm sorry."
"Room for three more!" Judith yelled from the back of the wagon Sasha had commissioned to head for Hilltop the same day.
Sasha had planned to go back alone, and only wanted a horse, but when people heard she was headed there, her retinue quickly expanded.
RJ and Judith were both ready and raring to go. With Michonne gone and Carol missing after the cave-in, it made the most sense for them to join Carl at the Hilltop. Jenny sat with them in the back, bow in hand, apparently feeling less sick after the few days she had to recover and ready to return to her people at Hilltop. Rosita needed a doctor after Beta's attack left her pretty cut up; a deep gash in her bicep that had only ceased bleeding a few hours ago. Alex at Hilltop was most equipped for it without Siddiq or Dante around anymore.
Mary went to climb into one of the three free seats, stopping when she saw Sasha glare at her.
"Please?" Aaron's voice came from Sasha's side, where he climbed into the free shotgun seat beside her after lifting Gracie into the back with the others. "I promised I would try and help her see her nephew."
"Adam," Sasha said. "Earl's son is called Adam."
Aaron grimaced, obviously hating that he was in this position, but too true to his word to back down. "Rhys said he would get us through the gates."
Sasha grumbled but eventually nodded.
Mary climbed into the back, where Rosita reached out her hand.
"Rosita."
Mary shook it.
"Mary."
"I know," Rosita said with a gentle smile.
"All aboard!" Gracie called up front.
"Next stop, Hilltop!" Judith finished.
A/N
I know, I know, this took me a bit. It was an extra long one so it took a while, and I've had not so much time to edit this thoroughly recently. Hopefully, it was a welcome bit of action after last chapter's brutal ending.