Chapter Text
Saturday, June 17th; King County, Georgia
Rick Grimes, former sheriff’s deputy turned post-apocalyptic group leader, was confused. He had gone to bed in Alexandria and woke up in his home in King County.
Rick had turned his head expecting a silk bonnet and warm brown skin; instead, Rick found long dark hair in his mouth, and Lori’s pale arm stretched across his chest. For a moment, Rick could not breathe.
Judith sniffled a sound that often predicated the rare loud echoing sobs that Judith was capable of, and Rick rushed to her. His beautiful daughter was so small. The baby Rick remembered was giggly, almost-two-year-old, but the baby in his arms was tiny, closer to a newborn than the toddler she had been before. Rick looked from his daughter to his dead wife and felt his head spin. This wasn’t possible.
“Dad?” Rick heard Carl whisper, pushing open the door to Rick and Lori’s bedroom.
“Carl,” Rick called softly, rocking the baby from side to side.
Carl pushed open the door and froze when he saw his father and baby sister. “How?” Carl managed to say before his eyes fell on his mother, still sleeping, just a few feet away.
“I don’t know,” Rick admitted, still whispering, his eyes never leaving his son.
Rick watched Carl’s eyes trail over the master bedroom, remembering the room and the house for the first time in a long time. Rick did the same, his eyes pausing on a stain on the carpet that he could no longer remember the source of and a handmade jewelry box Lori’s grandfather had hand-carved and given her at her high school graduation; Lori loved that box. But like with his son, his eyes ended back on his wife, and Rick struggled for a moment to breathe.
Carl took a deep shuddering breath and quietly padded forward, his bare feet not making a sound on the thick carpet Lori had insisted on having in the bedroom. Rick felt his eyes burn as tears filled his son’s eyes and slipped down his round childish cheeks. He turned, walked out of the open door, and listened as Carl climbed into Rick and Lori’s bed, sobbing softly.
“Carl, baby, what’s wrong?” Rick heard Lori ask sleepily.
“I had a bad dream,” Carl whispered hoarsely. “Can I stay here with you?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” Lori said, her voice heavy with sleep but warm for her son. Rick could picture her running a hand through Carl’s soft hair and pulling him close, ready to chase away the nightmare. Rick closed his eyes and kissed Judith’s soft forehead as he stood in front of the bedroom door.
The climate-controlled room felt too cold, and the baby in his arms felt too light. Rick stumbled into the living room and carefully tucked Judith into the deep plush cushions of the couch Rick remembered saying was uncomfortable. Now it felt softer than a cloud to Rick's poor, confused mind and body.
How was he here? The thought echoed through Rick’s mind. Fragmented and foggy memories of a life lived and the more vibrant, frantic memories of a life lived on the edge battled for space in Rick’s battered brain.
The walkers, the quarry, the farm, the prison, Alexandria, everything they had gone through wasn’t a dream. It had been real. Rick knew it like he knew his name. The only question was what was he going to do about it.
Rick went through his morning like it was a dream. The sun began its slow crawl across the sky, but the beautiful blue sky held no answers for the man. Rick managed to stumble through mostly forgotten chores needed to make the house run in the morning.
A glance at the calendar Lori kept stuck on the kitchen wall told Rick it was Saturday and that Rick was off work. A small fish sticker on the day box gave Rick a hint as to why he had a rare Saturday off work. Rick and Carl were going fishing. Perfect.
Around nine-thirty, Carl and Lori wandered into the kitchen. Carl looked impossibly young next to Lori with his tussled bedhead and sleep still clinging to his eyes. Lori’s gaze immediately fell onto the small breakfast spread Rick and Judy had managed to cook up. It wasn’t much. The rumbling in Rick’s belly had stopped him from cooking more. The draw of plentiful food was just too good to wait.
“You made breakfast?” Lori asked, surprised, looking at the food on the table. Rick was known for his pancakes and not much else. Lori was the cook in the household, and she even booted Rick away from the grill more than once at the station's annual summer cookout.
“Well, yeah,” Rick said, scratching his chin; his bare chin felt strange after having a beard for so long. He guessed it had been a while since Lori had seen Rick cook breakfast. He had grown used to cooking, mostly over a hot bed of coals or fire, but Alexandria had given him some time in front of the stove.
“You cooked, and you fed Judy?” Lori asked, spotting the empty bottle drying on the counter next to the skillet in which he had cooked the eggs.
“She was hungry,” Rick said, letting his eyes fall on the now happily sleeping baby in her carrier.
“You are a good husband,” Lori said. The woman brushed her long hair back from her face and pressed a soft kiss to Rick’s cheek. “And an even better daddy.”
Rick tried to ignore the flash of warmth that flooded his chest. Lori hadn’t spoken to him like that in years, at least as far as Rick could remember. Foggy memories of Lori’s pregnancy with Judy in this new life had him reevaluating. Lori was softer than Rick remembered.
“This is great, Dad!” Carl interrupted, shoveling the scrambled eggs into his mouth. The boy hadn’t waited for his parents. Instead, the youngster had dived right into the food. His plate was loaded with pancakes and eggs, with a large glass of milk and orange juice in front of him. Rick smiled a little at Carl’s enthusiasm.
“I thought you didn’t like scrambled eggs, Carl,” Lori said, watching her son eat what had previously been his least favorite food. Carl had smothered the eggs in ketchup that he had snagged from the fridge, and the sight of him shoving them into his mouth made Lori grimace. “What did you do to those eggs? Ketchup, really?”
“My friend Sophia showed me! I like eggs with ketchup,” Carl said, eagerly eating more. Dozens of memories of life on the road came to Carl’s mind where food was scarce and of eating worse things than scrambled eggs flooded the boy’s mind, and the eggy taste was easily hidden behind the tomato-based condiment.
Rick ignored the flash of hurt of Carol’s lost daughter in his mind. Rick did remember Sophia giving Carl a single packet of ketchup she had found to help her friend eat the one food he hated. Carl later told Rick that Carl had carried around a single packet of ketchup for months after they lost Sophia. The loss of his first real friend had affected Carl much more than he had let on; Rick hoped that they would have the chance to save the soft-spoken little girl who deserved better than she had gotten.
Lori gave her son and husband a look but sat down and started filling her plate. The family ate mostly in silence. Rick was shocked when Lori mentioned going back to work on Monday. It was supposed to be her first day back from maternity leave. He had forgotten that Lori had worked at the small local library four days a week. A brief moment of panic overcame Rick when he thought for a moment that he would have to send Carl to school. He couldn’t imagine letting his son out of sight for that long. Thankfully the big, bold print from the calendar with Rick and Carl’s fishing trip on it had “JUNE” printed across the top of the calendar page. It was summertime. No school.
Rick tried to follow along with the conversation as Lori turned it to her taking Judy out shopping with two of her mom-group friends. Lori was an active police wife and maintained a busy social life. “But you boys will be too busy fishing,” Lori said. Rick had completely missed most of what she had said, but thankfully Carl pipped up, buying his floundering father’ a few minutes to compose himself.
“We’re gunna have fish for dinner, right?” Carl asked. His voice was painfully young, and his question was innocently childish, perfect for the 12-year-old he looked like he was.
“If you and your daddy manage to catch something, I’ll cook it up,” Lori teased. “If you don’t catch something, I guess we’ll go to bed hungry!”
Rick remembered mornings like this, minus Judy asleep in the corner. His little daughter hadn’t existed at this time before. Part of him, who had killed Shane, said that Shane and Lori’s affair had started earlier here. Rick did his best to shove that part of him away. He didn’t want to ruin this peace, not now.
Before long, Rick soon found himself telling Lori goodbye after cleaning up breakfast just as easily as he had cooked it. He didn’t even think to pull away when Lori tugged him close and kissed him. It had been years since Rick had felt Lori’s lips on his own. The kiss was familiar in all the right ways but wrong as well. Lori wasn’t Michonne, even if the kiss did make his chest burn and a familiar warm radiate from his chest. Rick said goodbye, anxiety ever so slightly creeping in when he realized that Judy would no longer be in his eyesight. What if whatever had brought them back in time took his daughter away? What if the walkers started eating people today?
It was only by sheer will that Rick didn’t call Lori back as she left for her shopping trip.
Father and son were silent as they packed their minimal fishing gear. The Grimes men had gone on many fishing trips in the world before, but Rick could count on one hand how many times they actually caught fish. The gear was Rick’s granddaddy’s old tacklebox and some poles that Rick and Shane had bought two summers ago for a river trip that ended with everyone getting a rash and Rick needing four stitches after getting slapped in the face by an angry tree. Rick exhaled deeply as the wave of memories flooded him.
Out of habit, Rick picked up his backup weapon and handed it to his son. Carl checked the gun expertly and tucked it away. Streams of memories crossed, and Rick’s head pounded as he tried to separate the memories from the here and now. Rick barely remembered to grab his wallet on the way out.
The ride in the police cruiser out to the river where all the deputies took their kids on their days off wasn’t long. It looked just the same as Rick remembered. The father-son duo easily set up their fishing spot, Carl baited his hook easily, if not somewhat clumsily, and Rick felt a flash of melancholy because the last time they did this, Rick had to bait Carl’s hook.
“Dad, what are we going to do?” Carl asked, fiddling with the fishing pole in his hands. Rick had insisted on at least trying to catch fish to bring back, but Lori wouldn’t be shocked if they returned empty-handed. Rick had never been good at fishing.
Rick rubbed his face and shook his head. The weight of everything was slowly creeping in no matter how much he tried to outthink it. As their fishing trip continued, Rick and Carl went back and forth, trying to figure out how they ended up back here.
“How are we going to find out family?” Carl asked. “Do you think they remember us? Do you think Michonne remembers us?”
Rick swallowed hard and raked his blunt nails across his scalp. Michonne. The woman’s name had bounced around his head and lived on the tip of his tongue since he had woken up. It was only through sheer will that Rick hadn’t slipped and used her name instead of Lori’s name.
“I don’t know, Carl,” Rick said reluctantly. “I hope we aren’t the only ones. I hope that our family remembers us.”
“I don’t even know how this mess all started,” Rick admitted. “The world could end tomorrow, and I’d not know to expect it.”
“Well, I guess there might be one sign,” Rick said grimly as a thought came to him. “I haven’t been shot yet. Assumin’ that’s the same as last time. But with Jude being early, we can’t count on that.”
“Two or three months from now,” Carl said, thinking hard about those early days of the outbreak. His mother and Shane had done their best to protect him from the truth initially, and his grief from Rick being shot had painted everything, making it hard to remember. “You got shot a few weeks after Shane returned from vacation, and it was a month, maybe a month and a half after that when they bombed Atlanta.”
“You sure?” Rick asked, having to trust his son since he had been in a coma when everything began.
“As sure as I can be,” Carl said reluctantly. This world wasn’t exactly the same; Judith was proof of that.
“Dad, what will we do about Mom? About Shane? The group?” Carl asked questions bubbling up from within him. “Where are we going to go? The prison? It’ll be too early.”
Rick touched his son’s head and stroked his short hair. “We’ll figure it out, son,” he promised. Rick wasn’t sure how just yet, but he would figure it out. One way or another, they had no other choice.
Saturday, June 17th; Peach Creek, Georgia
Someone was breathing next to her; that was the first thing Carol registered as she crawled out of the heavy blanket of sleep that covered her. Terror quickly washed that sleep away, and it was only through years of practice that Carol didn’t jerk upright.
Her eyes popped open, and Carol barely bit back a gasp at what she saw. This wasn’t where she had gone to sleep. She forced herself to sit up slowly and looked around the room. Her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open in shock. This was Ed’s house. This was Carol’s house. A loud snore got her moving.
“This isn’t possible,” Carol muttered, throwing the blankets off and sliding her legs off the bed. Carol’s lip curled in disgust as she saw Ed’s sleeping form. Somehow, Ed, her abusive waste of space husband, was lying there alive and well. Carol’s head pounded with her heartbeat as she stared at him. Ed was alive.
I can fix that, Carol thought easily. Ed would never know. He wouldn’t wake up; it was a kinder death than deserved. Immediately Carol felt a rush of self-disgust at how quickly she had turned to murder. Ed was an awful human, but he didn’t deserve to be slaughtered in his bed, not when Sophia was just down the hall.
Sophia … Carol gasped, unable to stop herself. She stood quickly and rushed to the doorway, her body moving almost outside her control. Carol stumbled down the hall in a hobbled run. Her excitement and her desperation to see Sophia override even her ability to walk.
Carol was crying as she pushed the door open. Sophia's room was just as she remembered it, littered with stuffed animals and posters. The ugly purple shag rug that Sophia had demanded after she saw it at the Goodwill was at the foot of the bed with Sophia’s comforter piled on top.
Eventually, it was too hard not to look, Carol let her eyes fall onto the bed, and she saw her. There curled up against the cold was the daughter Carol had lost on the highway. Sophia.
Her hair was clean and soft in the gentle light from the hallway. Carol stumbled forward. Her face was clear of dirt and scrapes. Carol reached out a shaking hand. Her shoulders moved with every breath she took, and Carol sobbed.
“Momma?” Sophia asked sleepily.
“It’s okay, baby,” Carol said softly, her voice choked with tears. “Go back to sleep. Mommy’s here.”
“Momma, are you okay?” Sophia asked. The sound of her mother crying woke the girl up. “Why are you crying?”
“Mommy, had a bad dream, baby, but it’s okay now,” Carol said with a small smile and shook out sobbing breath. “It’s okay, we’ll be okay.”
Saturday, June 17th; Macon, Georgia
“Damn it,” Glenn swore and stomped back into his apartment. He had forgotten his keys. Nearly ten minutes before, the Korean man had forgotten his phone and had to return to get the soon-to-be useless lump of plastic and glass. Since waking up earlier that morning, Glenn hadn’t been at the top of his game.
Glenn felt sick, and his head throbbed horrifically. Dying was harder than Glenn had imagined; the thought made his stomach lurch, and Glenn stumbled into his kitchen. The meager breakfast he had managed to eat quickly found itself in his sink.
Glenn fell onto the cheap linoleum that covered his kitchen floor. His mouth tasted like shit, and the pain in his head made breathing hard.
“It’s not real,” Glenn muttered. “Not dead. Not dead.”
Glenn wasn’t sure when he had fallen asleep slumped against his cabinets
After several hours of sleep, Glenn felt more human and less like a dying man. Questions raced through his mind. Where was Maggie? Where was his family? Where was Maggie?
The questions always came back to Maggie. Where was his wife?
The pounding in his head had receded, and Glenn made it to his feet much more steady than before. The fog in his mind from before had faded, and Glenn easily gathered his needed items, keys, wallet, and phone. How did he keep forgetting before? Glenn ignored that, though, and marched out to his car. He quickly removed the pizza delivery sign from the top that he had forgotten to remove the night before and slipped into the driver's seat.
Glenn only had one thing on his mind. The rumble of the car seemed impossibly loud, but he ignored it. Glenn had to find Maggie, no matter what.
Saturday, June 17th; Greene Family Farm
“- And all the harm that e'er I've done,” A soft voice crooned. “Alas, it was to none but me.”
Maggie let the next verse drift over her. She loved this dream. Her bed was warm and felt more familiar than the mattress she often cried herself to sleep on since losing Glenn. Maggie let herself have this moment. This dream.
“So fill to me the parting glass. Good night and joy be with you all…”
Memory so strong flooded Maggie she was sure that at that moment she was back home on her daddy’s farm and Bethie was singing as she got ready the same way she always did. Maggie wished that was the case. Tears pooled under closed eyelids and slowly slipped down Maggie’s face.
This was a dream. A beautiful, painful dream. She was in her childhood bedroom on her daddy’s farm, with Beth’s soft voice floating through the thin wall separating their rooms. She could even hear her stepmother in the kitchen if she listened hard.
Maggie didn’t notice when the singing had stopped or when her crying had stopped being a silent soft thing and turned into loud, messy sobs. Maggie screamed into her pillow, and it smelled like the laundry soap that Annette loved. Maggie’s shoulders shook with the force of her crying, and she missed the sound of her bedroom door opening.
“Maggie?” Beth called softly.
“Beth,” Maggie’s eyes snapped open, and her voice broke. She scrambled to get to her feet. Beth pushed the door open and moved to her sister. They came together in a tight hug. “Beth!”
“You remember,” Beth sobbed into Maggie’s shoulder. “I thought it was just me. I thought I was alone.”
“Never!” Maggie swore fiercely. Her hand fisted tightly in Beth’s shirt; she could feel her sister shaking as hard as she was. “Never again.”
The sisters embraced for a long time.
“Maggie!” Annette's voice rang through the house. “Come down! Someone is at the door for you!”
Maggie pulled away from her sister, and the blond shrugged. Neither sister had left their bedrooms yet this morning, so the guest was a complete unknown. Still dressed in a pair of soft sleep pants and an old T-shirt she had stolen from Shawn, Maggie left to answer the door, Beth beside her.
“Who is it?” Maggie asked her stepmother when she made it downstairs. The blond woman shook her head and scolded Maggie for not yet getting dressed. It was getting on in the day, and her daughters were still lazing around. Annette wasn’t a woman to suffer idleness.
“I don’t know, but he insisted that he see you,” Annette said thoughtfully.
He, Maggie thought. Her heart began to race, and she moved without saying anything and felt her breath catch when she saw him standing beside the door. Annette had been too polite to make him stand out on the porch. “Glenn!” Maggie shrieked, throwing herself at the Korean man.
Glenn caught her and pulled her close. Faintly, Maggie could hear Annette asking Beth how Maggie knew him, but the woman could not find it in her to answer. Maggie brought shaking hands to Glenn’s face and wiped the tears from his eyes as she felt him doing to her.
“I told you I’d find you,” Glenn whispered. Maggie sobbed and buried her face in his neck. “I’ll always find you.”
Saturday, June 17th; Blackburn County
A hard life before and after the fall had made sure that the man could wake in an instant, so the minute he had heard someone scream out, Daryl had jumped to attention. It took far longer for him to remember where he was than the hunter would ever admit. The dark paneling and dirty brown carpet were familiar in a painful way. The mattress sat on the ground without a box spring or frame. Daryl knew that if he pulled the thin sheets away, the mattress would be stained and look as uncomfortable as it felt.
This wasn’t where he had fallen asleep. A mostly broken alarm clock that Merle had swiped from a motel suddenly burst into noise. The alarm that Daryl had set the night before rang out into the world. Loud static, followed by music, poured out of the clock, and Daryl went cold.
“We're on easy street,” the radio blasted. “And it feels so sweet, 'cause the world is but a treat. When you're on easy street!”
Daryl felt like his feet had been trapped in cement. Shivers and shakes wracked his body. That song…
“And we're breakin' out the good champagne,” the radio crooned.
“Turn it off,” Daryl muttered. He raised his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help. He could still hear the song. Daryl forgot about the scream in the face of the song that Negan had tortured him with. “Turn it off!”
“We're sittin' pretty on the gravy train…”
Merle didn’t bother knocking and burst through the door. When Daryl didn’t scream at Merle for busting in, Merle knew something was wrong. Daryl was on his bed with his hands over his ears in a way that Merle hadn’t seen Daryl do in years. Merle could hear his little brother shouting to turn it off, so Merle took several long steps forward and yanked the alarm off the nightstand and off the wall plug where it was plugged in.
“Daryl!” Daryl jerked in surprise, and a wave of pain hit him in the chest. That voice … Daryl hadn’t heard that voice since the prison. “God damn it, Daryl, settle down, boy!”
Daryl stopped shouting and let his hands fall to his sides. “Merle?” Daryl rasped.
The older man looked like he always had, rough, but the look in his eyes showed something that Daryl couldn’t rightly place. Deep, painful grief rose up inside Daryl, and before he could stop himself, the younger brother jerked forward and slammed into his brother.
“The fuck!” Merle swore, stumbling back. Daryl didn’t respond. Instead, he just grabbed tightly to his brother’s broad shoulders. The warmth of his living body made Daryl shake again.
“Yer alive,” Daryl muttered. “You’re alive, and I ain't there. I ain't there.”
“Ain't where little brother?” Merle demanded. Concern was evident in Merle’s voice. There had been a time when enough overstimulation could send the youngest Dixon boy into a similar state, but Merle hadn’t seen it since they were children.
Daryl just shook his head and held his brother tighter before finally finding the strength to pull back. “Sanctuary,” Daryl forced out. “Governor, weren’t the only asshole out there.”
Merle swore, grabbed his brother by the shoulders, and gave him a hard shake. “Cain’t trust you to mind yourself for nothing,” Merle complained. “Done got yourself all caught up like one of them P.O.W.s, right, ain't ya?”
Daryl nodded once. “Fucked up,” Daryl whispered. “Got Glenn killed and got taken. Fucked up real bad.”
“Fucks up are what us Dixons are good at,” Merle muttered. He moved to sit on the foot of Daryl's bed and let his head fall into his hands. Merle took a moment to lift his head and flex his formerly missing hand.
“Well, ain't that just a trip,” Merle said, marveling at the complete hand he hadn’t seen in almost a year. “Shit, little brother, what kind of joke decided two worthless Dixons got a second chance.”
“Dunno,” Daryl rasped. The harsh light of the day filtered through the shitty curtain covering the only window in Daryl's little back room. “Do ya think anyone else remembers?”
“If anyone does, it’ll be your buddy officer-friendly,” Merle growled out. “The man’s got the devil’s own luck. Maybe that Chine - Korean, maybe that Korean kid. He had balls of steel.”
Daryl had shot his brother a nasty look that had him quickly correcting himself but let the anger fade away in a way that had been harder and harder to do since his capture. “Gotta find ‘em,” Daryl told his brother. “Gotta find my people.”
Merle’s eyes turned stormy, but he nodded slowly. “We’ll find ‘em,” Merle promised. “Find ‘em and rock this end-of-the-world bullshit. Gunna hunt me some dumb fucks and bring down some hellfire and brimstone.”
Daryl could feel the dark promise in Merle’s words but couldn’t find it in himself to speak out. Daryl knew better than most that some men just deserved to die.