Reviews:

Futago no Akuma Shimai — Holy cow, you reviewed way back in the beginning, right?! Awesome to know you're still reading! I'm sorry for the heart damage, eek! It's definitely harder when you write about the character, Carl's stuff in later seasons of the show messed me up more after I'd written for him. I'm very happy you got emotional over Abraham! The man really deserves it. We will visit Rhys next chapter! So you can see how he is doing with mental state and his brand-new environment, I must say the last few chapters burned me out a little to write, but next chapter was so fun and silly and reminds me of some of the prison era chapters! That's a very interesting take on Mikey, but I shan't tell you my plans, muhahaha! Thank you for all your kind words! Very interesting that you stopped after s6... are you planning to keep reading this? Am I writing for someone that's never seen future seasons? Oh, the pressure!

Chapter 101- The Day Will Come When You Won't Be: Not Today, Not Tomorrow.

While Negan's gone, we're not allowed to speak. We're not allowed to move. A long while later, by the time daylight breaks through the trees and hits the clearing, I realise I've been staring at what's left of Glenn beside me for hours. My face is crusty and hot with his blood. Maggie's sobbing. I'm still crying. We all are. My knees are aching from the stones digging through my jeans. I try moving at some point, but a scary looking Savior smacks the back of my head, a gun pressing against it soon after. I don't try moving again.

The RV gets back hours later. The door swings open and Rick flies out, crashing to the floor, covered in blood, sweat, and dust. He's got his hatchet in hand, but he's not fighting. Not even when Negan steps out after him, grabbing the collar of Rick's jacket and dragging him closer until he's dumped in front of us.

At the other end of the line, Carl's staring at his father like he doesn't know the man.

"Here we are," Negan says, holding his arms out, Lucille in his hand, still bloody with Glenn and Abraham's brains. "Let me ask you something, Rick— do you even know what that little trip was about?"

We're all looking at Rick. He stares back, no answers on his tongue as his face twists in spite.

"Speak when you're spoken to, prick."

When Negan's voice raises I flinch, terrified over who's next.

Who has to die next?

"Okay," Rick mutters. "Okay."

"That trip was about the way that you looked at me," Negan explains. "I wanted to change that. I wanted you to understand. But you are still looking at me the same fucking way... like I shit in your scrambled eggs, and that's not gonna fuckin' work."

Rick grimaces up at him.

Negan crouches down until the two are eye to eye.

"So, do I give you another chance?"

"Y— yeah," Rick nods, eyes quick to meet the floor. "Yes."

Negan pats his back hard, looking proud and grinning before standing up. "Fucking all right! And here it is... the grand-prize game. What you do next will decide whether your shit-storm of a day becomes everyone's last shit-storm of a day or just another shitty fucking shit-storm of a fuckin' day."

Negan flicks his leather fingers towards the rest of us, nodding to his horde of Saviors.

"Get some guns to the back of their heads."

I feel a barrel press the back of my skull. I shiver, watching the same happen to everyone else.

"Good," Negan says, raising Lucille to his men and pointing. "Make sure you're level with their noses, so if you have to fire — pow... it'll be a real mess. I mean... fuck."

"Kid," Negan says, grinning at Carl, raising a finger and beckoning him forward. "Right here."

Carl glares the same way his dad had.

"Kid," Negan says again, rolling his eyes, "fuckin' now."

Carl stands, edging closer to Negan and his dad.

Negan starts unbuckling and taking off his belt, asking Carl — "You a southpaw?"

I remember that Aiden used to pitch in high school. Mom always called him the best Southpaw in Ohio because he threw with his left. My stomach plummets as I realise what Negan's planning.

"Am I a what?" Carl squints up at him, Negan being a tower of a man even when we're not kneeling.

"You a lefty?" Negan specifies, seeming to find it funny that Carl doesn't get it.

"No."

Negan grins at him, tongue between his teeth. "Good."

He ties his belt around Carl's bicep. I hear a gasp or two as others start to realise why.

Michonne and Rick look horrified.

"That hurt?" Negan asks Carl.

"No."

"It should. It's supposed to." He finishes the tourniquet. "All righty." He points to Rick next. "Get down on the ground, kid, next to Daddy. Spread them wings." He tosses Carl's hat on the ground.

Carl does what he's told, Negan pressing a hand on his back until he's flat against the stony earth.

"Simon..." Negan says as he checks his pockets and frowns, "you got a pen?"

"Yeah." Simon tosses him a marker.

Negan bites the cap off and squats down to Carl lying flat on his stomach. He rolls up Carl's sleeve and kisses the nose of the pen against the pale skin below his elbow.

"Sorry, kid. This is gonna be as cold as a warlock's ballsack, just like he was hanging his ballsack above you and draggin' it right across the forearm."

Negan draws a thick, black line.

"There ya go. Gives you a little leverage."

Dust dances into the air against Carl's short breaths as he pants into the ground.

Rick's muttering. "Please— please no— please don't... please don't."

"Me?" Negan caps the pen and looks at Rick with his mouth agape. "I ain't doin' shit."

He stands up, holding Lucille above Rick.

"Rick," Negan sighs, speaking calmly and to the point, "I want you to take your axe and cut your son's left arm off, right on that fuckin' line. Now, I know— I know. You're gonna have to process that for a second. That makes sense. Still though, I'm gonna need you to do it or all these people are going to fucking die. Then Carl dies. Then the people back home... they all die. And then you, eventually. I'm gonna keep you breathin' for a few years, just so you can stew on that shit."

Michonne pipes up. "You— you don't have to do this! We understand. We understand! We—"

"You understand!" Negan barks at her. "...Yeah. I'm not sure that Rick does."

Michonne's panting and twisting on the spot, unable to help Carl, who has his eye clamped shut against the ground.

"I'm gonna need a clean cut," Negan says, pointing back to Carl in the dirt, "right there on that line. Now I know this is a screwed-up thing to ask, but it's gonna have to be like erm... a salami slice... y'know, nothing mess. Clean. Forty-five degrees. Give us something to fold over. We got a great doctor. The kid will be fine... probably."

Rick doesn't make a move, his swollen eyes watching Carl wriggle against the floor before they dart to the rest of us. Then back to Carl. Then to Negan. It looks like his head is cracking like porcelain; not able to keep all this together.

"Rick," Negan murmurs, sinking back down to his level. "This needs to happen now. Chop, chop. Or I will crush the little fella's skull myself."

"It can— It can— it can be me," Rick stutters. "W— We— You can do it to me. I c— I can go with— with you."

"No," Negan says sincerely. "This is the only way. Rick... pick up the axe."

Rick doesn't move.

"Not making a decision is a big fucking decision," Negan bellows. "You really want to see all these people die? You will! You will see every ugly thing."

The cold gun barrels against the back of our heads suddenly start to feel a lot realer.

Rick starts crying, his voice breaking as he tries to beg for his son's arm.

"Oh, my god," Negan groans, hanging his head back. "Are you gonna make me count? Okay, Rick. You win... I. Am. Counting. Three!"

"Please!" Rick whimpers, snot and tears across his face. "It can be me. Please!"

"Two!" Negan slaps Rick across the face, grabbing his chin and squeezing, forcing eye contact between them. "This is it."

Rick holds Carl's hand, wailing and screaming as he fumbles the axe into the air, raising it above his head between trembling fingers.

"Dad... just do it. Just do it."

Rick shrieks, finally broken as he raises the axe higher, and Negan yells...

"One!"

I close my eyes, all my insides already outside. I cover my ears and wish it all away. Rick's broken. Broken as the walls that killed my mom or the man that slit my father's throat.

I wait for the sound.

"You answer to me," Negan says very low.

I open my eyes just a crack.

"You provide for me."

Carl's arm is still there, but Rick is gone. The man kneeling where he used to be is nodding along to every word Negan hisses at him.

"You belong to me, right?"

Rick nods, panting.

Negan grabs Rick's face in a vice-like grip.

"Speak when you're fucking spoken to! You answer to me! You provide for me!"

"Provide for you!"

"You belong to me! Right?"

"Right!"

"Right," Negan laughs, patting Rick's cheek. "That... is the fucking look! The look I wanted to see."

It's a look as new to us as it is to Negan.

Negan takes the hatchet and springs to his feet, beaming as he steps back to look on his destruction.

"We fucking did it... all of us, together. Even the dead guys on the ground. Fuck me — they get the spirit award, for sure!"

He points at Abraham and Glenn.

"Today was a productive fucking day!"

Every part of me is trembling, vibrating into atoms, into nothing. Negan grins at us, and my body dies when his eyes see how pathetic I am.

"Now, I hope for all your sake... that you get it now... that you understand how things work. Things have changed. Whatever the fuck you had going for you... that is over now."

Negan lets out this wheezy laugh at us.

"Dwight, load him up," he says, pointing to Daryl.

Maggie shrieks and reaches, but a Savior pushes her down.

Daryl's thrown into the back of the van that we arrived in. He moves around on all fours like some wild cat, shrinking into the back when Dwight aims his own crossbow at him.

"He's got guts," Negan tells us, glancing down at Rick. "Not a little fucking bitch like someone I know."

Negan points at the van.

"I like him. He's mine now. But if you still want to try something? 'Not today, not tomorrow'... not today, not tomorrow... I will cut pieces off of..." He looks up. "Hell's his name?"

"Daryl," Simon says, nodding, hands planted on his hips.

"Wow," Negan snickers. "That actually sounds fuckin' right! I will cut pieces off of Daryl and put 'em on your doorstep... or, better yet, I will bring him to you and have you do it the fuck for me."

Negan spreads his grin wide at us, stepping off his stage backing up towards the Savior's trucks.

"Welcome to a brand-new beginning, you sorry shits! I'm gonna leave you a truck. Keep it. Use it to cart all the good shit you're gonna find me. We'll be back for our first offering in one week. Until then... ta-ta."

He spins on the spot and tosses Rick's hatchet over his shoulder, it thuds heavily against the gravel, and then they're leaving.

I flinch as a camera flashes to my side, someone's taking a photo of Glenn's body, another of what's left of Abraham.

We sit there for a long time after they're gone, some of us in silence, others crying. I don't move from beside Glenn's body. I don't dare touch it in case I wake him up to all that pain again. I just sit, even when the stench of his death starts to make me feel ill.

Maggie forces herself to her feet and some watch her.

"Maggie," Rick says. "Maggie."

She picks up the truck keys they left us.

"Maggie," Rick tries, standing too, "you need to sit down."

She's staring at her husband's body.

"Maggie—"

"No," she grunts at him.

"We need to get you to the Hilltop."

"You need to go get ready."

"For what?" Rick asks.

"To fight them..."

Rosita, Carl, and Sasha look up at her.

Eugene's hiding in his hands.

Aaron gets up, trying to help Maggie.

Michonne looks at me.

I'm still looking at Glenn.

"They have Daryl," Rick tells her. "They have an army. We would die... all of us."

"Go home," Maggie bites, her voice breaking as she cries without tears. "Take everybody with you. I can get there by myself."

"You can barely stand—"

"I need to go. You need to go to Alexandria. You were out— out here... for me."

"We still are," Rick tells her.

She starts sobbing. Her back is to everyone but me and Glenn's body.

"I can make it now!" she cries desperately. "I need you to go back. I can't have you out here. I can't have you all out here anymore. I need you to go back."

Everyone's up now. Except for me. I don't have anything I can do. Nothing I can offer.

"Maggie," Michonne reaches out, "we're not letting you go. Okay?"

"You have to," Maggie hiccups.

Rick's voice is hoarse when he speaks to her.

"It's not gonna happen."

Sasha steps forward, wiping her damp cheeks and clearing her throat. "I'm taking her. I'm gonna get her there... I'm gonna keep her safe."

Maggie puts her hands against her knees, trying to stay up.

"I'm not giving you a choice," Sasha whispers to her gently.

"Me... me too," I say quickly, standing up.

"No," Rick says, shaking his head.

"Me too," I repeat, biting my cheek so as not to cry.

Sasha watches me awhile, then she nods.

Maggie looks at Glenn. "I'm— I am taking him w— with me..."

Sasha and Rosita lift Abraham gently with Eugene, putting him in the back of the truck.

Maggie falls next to Glenn's body, her hands flat against his back.

We all stand around to help, but she begs us not to.

"I need to do this," she gasps. "Please..."

"We need to help you," Aaron says, touching her shoulder.

Carl puts his hands on her back, pulling her away softly. "I got it. I got it..."

Maggie holds tightly to Glenn's shirt.

"Please let us," Rick asks with welling eyes. "He's— he's our family, too."

Carl pulls her back, and she holds him and sobs. After, we all move Glenn as gentle as we can. Lifting him up and placing him in the truck with Abraham.

It's not the way my mom told me. What she wanted. She described it to me once, and I could see it before. A set table would stand in the long grass inside Alexandria. Sunday dinner by the lake back home. We'd be a family. Enid would pass me the bread and smile across the table to Carl and Rhys who would be sitting together, the two holding hands on the table and happy, Judith laughing in Carl's lap. Glenn would have a son to hold, just like he told me thought he would in the forest. A son he would raise to love and to be kind like he was. When she would ask, Spencer would tell Rosita about memories of mom, dad, and our brother. A mix of memories I would listen to like they were new because that's what memories are when you tell them to someone for the first time. Sasha would have a bump on her tummy, and Abraham would put his hand against it and smile.

In reality, it's dirt and blood, and we're all here in it. The others leave in the RV, and I climb in the truck with Sasha and Maggie. And when I look back, all I see are bodies.

A/N

Next Time: Chapter 102- The Well: The Gates.