Time for After.

-Rhys-

Maggie tries her best to make me lie down in the infirmary, but I point out that there are people worse off than me, and she reluctantly concedes to the truth.

"Why'd you give me Glenn's watch back?" she asks, helping me move to the window where we're not in the way.

Even if I don't need her to help me — I think she does.

"Hoped he would help you," I say.

The corners of her mouth curl up. "How did you know that he would?"

"Glenn saved Rick in Atlanta, right?" I ask, my throat whistling with each breath. "That was right at the start. He taught me that you have to fight for your family and keep your word no matter what."

"He did..." Maggie smiles, touching my chin with her thumb. "That was the decision that changed everything. It started with Rick and Glenn, and it just grew to all of us. To sacrifice for each other. To suffer and stand. To grieve, give, to love, to live to fight for each other."

"I'm glad you decided to come."

"You know I didn't decide," Maggie says, kissing the cut across my right eyebrow. "Glenn made the decision, Rhys. I was just following his lead."

Maggie goes to find Jesus outside, and I find a seat inside the crowded infirmary.

Carl and Rick are sitting with Michonne, a bed over from the one I'm sitting beside. I'm with Rosita, who took a bullet in the shoulder when the fighting started. Sasha's sat on her other side.

"What happened?" I ask Sasha as she watches Rosita. "I didn't see how it started."

"Mikey did it." She smiles. "I had a plan that was more..." she trails off because she knows I can guess. I do, and it makes the pain in my gut tighten. "He said we should fight. He didn't want to, but he did."

"What was the plan?" I ask.

Sasha shrugs. "Negan thought I was falling in line because we lied about something. He thought Mikey was weak for the same reason. He was wrong about the both of us. We didn't know what we were gonna do when I got out of that box... we just knew we'd do it together." She chuckles. "Mikey just gave us the chance to fight."

Rosita laughs then, and we both stare at her because we thought she was passed out. "You both did," she scoffs. "You're alright."

Sasha stays with Rosita, and the two seem more agreeable than ever. I try to go for the door, but Carl stops me before I can get much further. His eye is big, wet and round, and impossibly blue. He can't stop looking at where my finger should be.

"Shit," I hiss, my voice raspy and sore. "Now we can never get married."

Carl laughs at me, crying a little still.

"You should have said yes when I asked you."

He sniffles, nodding. "I should have."

"When we're older," I tell him.

Tara approaches us from the kitchen after giving a handful of painkillers to Jerry. "You okay, nerd?" she asks, sounding more worried than her words suggest as she slaps my shoulder.

"Yeah," I nod, only wincing a little. "At least it wasn't my middle finger."

"Why?" Tara looks at me funny, but then she realises. "Oh, because—"

I flip her off.

"Yeah," she nods. "Okay, yeah, should have seen that coming. I deserved that."

I hug them both before I leave to find Benjamin and Jenny to hug next, but Carol finds me first. We don't hug. Instead, she's got a first aid kit in her hand and points to a chair by the front door.

"Can I?" she asks quietly.

I nod, sitting where she asked.

Carol motions for me to lift up the shirt that sticks to my torso with dried blood like a second layer of skin. She rolls her eyes at the patchy job I did covering myself up. She untangles the gauze I wrapped around my stomach and dabs antiseptic on the deep bite marks from Lucille's fangs. I groan and clench my teeth, and she apologises.

"I'm glad you came," I mumble under my breath. Maybe hoping she didn't hear me.

She gives me the smallest of nods. "Me, too."

The holes in my stomach are still weeping blood, so Carol covers them with clean bandages and tells me that I can lower my shirt again. She asks if she can take my hand, and I nod, so she does. She hesitates before dressing the stump where my finger was. But I don't complain or pull away.

"I saw Morgan killing people," I whisper.

Carol nods her head.

"Did something happen?"

Carol takes her time to finish, then looks up at me.

"Talk to Ezekiel, Rhys. Okay?"

I nod, and then I leave.

When I find The King, he's outside watching as a handful of people from each community start setting up a stage that the three community leaders will give a speech from later.

Shiva mews at my approach, alerting him.

I look at the big cat funny. "Why're you being so friendl—"

The King scoops me up in his arms before I can finish my sentence, lifting me off my feet and squeezing a surprised squeak out of me. It feels good to be lifted sometimes. It happens less and less as you grow older. Either you get too big or too scary. I'm glad that I'm not too much of either yet, even if my whole body aches at the moment.

I start to worry when the King puts me on the ground. I worry because his eyes are teary, and he wipes them away before anyone can see besides me.

"Your Majesty?" I speak slowly. "Who—?"

"Benjamin..." he says, his voice cracking like parched earth in the heat of summer.

The world gets a little smaller then.

"He fought bravely..."

Not the actual world. No, that gets bigger and emptier.

"He held on for as long as the day permitted..."

But my world... all the people that keep the lights on inside it.

"But he could not fight forever, and when he went... it was with a courageous smile in the face of these wicked bandits."

That world gets smaller.

"So it was Saviors?" I ask quietly.

"It was," Ezekiel says, smiling.

I ask him why he smiles.

"Because, Young Rhys, his death made this choice for us. He drove us forward to help you. To save the lives of your comrades. I can't think of an end more befitting of Benjamin's character."

"Living suited him better," I say.

Then Ezekiel tells me how and why it happened. Every detail because I ask. He tells me that Jared did it. I'm told that Richard died, too — how he tried to make it about him. How Benjamin died over a single cantaloupe because of it.

He died for a fucking cantaloupe.

It makes me hate the Saviors.

It makes me hate Richard's ghost.

I find a spot on my own in the graveyard, sitting at the foot of Ron's grave with my knees pulled to my chest and my face buried so deep into them that I can scream and wail until the pain of it all starts to feel balanced inside and out. Jenny finds me. Probably sent by The King. She holds my shoulders and strokes my back and whispers that she knows. I choke on the fact that he's gone... the cold, honest fact that when people die they seem to take their breaths with them. Every breath they ever took, and every breath they were ever going to take. All of it gets sucked away with them... away from us. And it makes it hard to breathe for a while.

Rick, Maggie, and Ezekiel give a speech about how if we fight together we can win this war against the Saviors. A long speech about hope and honouring the dead. At least, that's what I imagine it's about. I don't really feel like listening to it. Hope is relative, and the dead are dead.

I lie on the bench that wraps around the inside of our gazebo, facing up at the waterdamaged roof with my head resting comfortably on Carl's lap. Enid and Mikey are sitting with us. Even Jenny accepted the invitation Carl gave her. Mikey only just got here because he wanted to listen to the speech, but he doesn't say much about it when he sits down.

"Thanks for the house, by the way." Jenny smiles at me, her bow leaning against her knee. "I think you might be everyone's favourite person after that."

She's talking about earlier when the three leaders decided it was too late and too dangerous for anyone to head home until morning. Jerry and Bertie were working hard with Aaron to organise sleeping arrangements for all the new people. I hadn't really thought about it as kind when I said they could have 99. I just knew that Maggie and I would prefer not to go near that house, and it would be nice to see people in it again.

I shrug.

"Where are you going to live?" Enid asks me suddenly.

I look at her with confused and exhausted eyes that sting if I keep them open for too long.

"Good question," Mikey agrees. "I mean, you do have somewhere to live in all three communities."

"Not at the Kingdom," I say.

"Actually," Jenny says somberly, "since Ben's gone now, Henry's going to live with Ezekiel and I'm gonna move into their old apartment and take care of Pumpkin. You can have your old room when you need it."

"You're not worried about your dad being on his own?" I ask.

"Nah," Jenny says, "I'll only be down the road. You try getting that cat out of that apartment."

I wait for Carl to add something, but he just holds my head that he's been cradling tighter, running a hand through my hair and making me feel safe in that way only he can.

"I'll stay here," I say. "Since I don't need to hide anymore. How about you guys?"

"Staying at the Kingdom," Jenny says.

"Hilltop," Enid says. "Maggie still needs help. You should think about coming back."

"I'll visit," I say. "Daryl told me we'll need people to relay messages between Hilltop, Kingdom, and here. At least until we get enough radio range to reach each other. I might do that."

Carl makes a funny grumbling sound. "Maybe."

"How about you, Mikey?" Carl asks him.

Mikey's been staring off into the ether for a while now, watching the misty sands below the lake.

"I want to help," he says to himself more so than us.

"Kingdom can always use fighters," Jenny tells him.

He shakes his head. "I think I want to help in the other ways. Rick will be planning the next attack from here. We also need to think about how we're going to feed everyone. Rations, beds, bullet distribution. I could help with that."

"I wish we had something to drink," Jenny says then. "I want to make a toast."

"You want to make toast?" Enid asks, clearly having checked out a little.

"A toast." Jenny frowns. "I want to make a toast."

"You can still toast," Enid tells her.

"Feels weird without something to hold."

Enid stands suddenly, taking off her boot and clambering down the steep bank by the lakeside. She fills it and comes back, handing it to Jenny.

Jenny chuckles at it but shrugs, raising the dripping boot as water leaks from the bottom. "To the Alliance. Freedom. And Benjamin; he read every book in the Kingdom twice, and he deserved to read all the ones from Alexandria and Hilltop, too."

Mikey smiles at her in this way that makes his whole face charge to the sky. He reaches out and takes Enid's boot from Jenny.

"To my family," he says, lifting the boot high, a little water landing on his head. "They built this place so that we could have something to fight for. And, actually... to everyone else, too. Ron, Jesse, Sam, Holly. Everyone that died here."

He passes it to Enid. She smirks and looks like she doesn't want to, but she takes it. Holding it between two hands on her lap.

"Erm, to my parents, too, I guess. Also, like, Maggie and her baby."

She quickly passes it to me. I sit up from Carl's lap, taking the now half empty boot. I was thinking the whole time it was being passed around. Only when I hold it do I know what to say.

"To everyone that didn't get here. Everyone that helped us along the way."

I hand it to Carl.

"To the living," he says simply. "All of us."

"I would drink to that," Jenny says, looking at the boot. "But you know, I've always been a tequila gal. Swamp water's not really my flavour."

We all laugh at that.

I watch as Enid empties her boot — as Mikey and Jenny start talking about Downy Beardy — as Carl takes my hand.

I realise that it's started.

The first day of the rest of our lives.

A/N

There's the end of season seven! So much has happened. Firstly... the elephant in the room — Sasha is alive! I genuinely couldn't kill her. I love her too much, and no one can take her from me, so hahaha I guess. Don't worry... there's still plenty of heartbreak and death in the boys' future... but I feel like Rhys needs a break.

Also, I wanted to touch on why I've been posting a little more irregularly recently. So, yeah, I started uni this September! Doing a scriptwriting course which has been crazy fun thus far. I'm doing my best to manage my time better at the moment. I will keep doing this because writing about Rhys and Carl's adventures is what gives me joy. But yeah, also, thanks to everyone that's been reading! people's comments and commitment to reading this are what gave me the confidence to submit to a writing-heavy course, and being accepted was really humbling. I'm super grateful for that.

(Can't believe we're coming up on the two year anniversary of this story next month!)

Anyways, for old-time's sake...

Thanks for reading.

Reviews and Feedback are always welcome!

:)