Chapter Text
“What Abraham said back at the barn. What Maggie said. What Carol told me earlier… They were talking about this, right? What I read in your book tonight?”
(Y/N) continued aimlessly running her fingers between Daryl’s, to stroke them with her thumb as one of each of their hands lay on his bare chest. She watched her movements tenderly, answering his question with a nod without looking away.
So, (Y/N) could speak. Not well, not strongly, but she could. She just didn’t want to… because Daryl reminded her of her dead husband. A man (Y/N) used to love, maybe still loved, and lost. She didn’t want to speak because that’d mean there was someone else worth relearning to speak for, worth loving and trusting, worth further heartbreak should they be lost too, and she was afraid. (Y/N) was afraid like Daryl was afraid. Afraid of his feelings. Afraid of losing someone he— Afraid of losing her.
“I meant what I said,” he murmured, continuing to stare up at the ceiling. “You ain’t gotta tell me shit, and I ain’t goin’ nowhere when ya do.”
Daryl adjusted his arm that’d been around (Y/N)’s body, holding her to him. His fingers brushed against the raised skin along the side of her upper arm, the scar from when (Y/N) had been shot by Terminus after Daryl had left her behind to go to Atlanta with Carol. As he’d adjusted, so too did (Y/N). Momentarily, she pulled her hand out of Daryl’s, for the other was pinned between them, flattened under the shoulder blade of his arm around her. With her now free hand, (Y/N) hummed warmly and bade a lazy but meaningful Shaka sign. Same. As Daryl sighed contentedly, (Y/N) returned her hand in his over his chest.
“Why would I wanna leave anyway?” Daryl went on, his tone taking a surprising though very light and playful turn. “You’d track me down and I’d end up like Aiden or worse if I did. Plus, that’d also mean givin’ up more nights like this.”
For a moment (Y/N) stilled, then she slowly leaned up to peer at Daryl. Her gaze was inquisitive, her brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, and lips pursed in skeptic amusement.
“Ya know what I mean,” he declared, and he knew (Y/N) knew that he’d meant by his words to bring a moment of levity to an otherwise serious and intimate moment. “But, if ya didn’t, we could go again. Give me ‘nother reason to stay.”
(Y/N) scoffed incredulously, amusedly, a tender light gleaming in her half-lidded contented gaze. Though she smiled warmly, she shook her head side to side before resting it on Daryl’s shoulder once more and repeatedly drawing ‘Z’s on his chest.
Daryl smirked, pulling his arm and (Y/N) tighter against him. “Yeah, a’ight. Sleep,” he murmured down into her hair. His smile deepened. “I’ll wake ya up right in the mornin’.”
He felt (Y/N) sharply exhale a scoff against his bare chest. He felt her lips kiss his shoulder softly, her hand holding his leaving Daryl’s grip. As her lips remained on him, (Y/N) slowly trailed her hand downward, fingertips ghosting over the skin of his abdomen. Lower and lower, as Daryl’s anticipation grew higher and higher. But (Y/N)’s hand stopped at his pelvis, her fingers extending just enough to run in the crease of the inguinal groove between abdomen and inner thigh, before pressing firmly against the bone there.
Daryl groaned pleasurably yet frustratedly. “If I even make it to morning.”
When (Y/N) chuckled deeply, almost challengingly, Daryl knew, despite her reply mere seconds prior, her intention was to make sure he didn’t, in the best possible way.
It’d been three days since that night with Daryl, what you’d confessed to one another, the words and your bodies you shared with one another. Well, at least Daryl’s words. You’d left your notebook downstairs, and after Daryl threw on his pants to go get it so you both could converse, he’d returned emptyhanded. You’d panicked until Daryl’s words and arms comforted you to sleep. You’d worried until the next morning, when Carol had greeted you both with a snarky grin and cheeky comment about how she overheard part of your bedroom tryst, before handing over your notebook, which you took hastily with rosy cheeks.
Word spread fast among your group, if not about the coupling, then at the very least acknowledging that you and Daryl were now a couple. In fact, that first day, you’d gotten so sick of people telling you it was about damn time, that you simply wrote it in your notepad and flashed the words to the amused and well-intended group members. By the end of the day, it’d appeared Daryl had gotten just as much flack as you had, if the odd mixture of amusement and bitterness in the scoff he gave you after showing him the words in your notebook were anything to go by. That, and the scoff Daryl gave Carol when she teasingly wished you both a good night as you headed up to bed, she, Glenn and Maggie having difficultly stifling their mirth.
The ribbing eased as the days went on, especially when it came to light that Daryl and Aaron would be leaving on a recruiting mission soon, and that Deanna had assigned you to supply run detail with Aiden and Glenn. The decision, Deanna explained, was made because she understood that you, like Daryl, needed to get out once and awhile. That, and the fact that you could handle yourself, and keep her son in check. So, on the morning of that third day, you wished Daryl and Aaron luck, and a safe return, before heading out on a supply run with your own group. Not for food, but for solar panel microinverters. You didn’t know what the Hell they were, but Eugene did, hence why the selfish coward was forced to join the crew. He would ensure you all found and brought back the right shit in order to get Alexandria’s power grid back up and running.
But things had gone sideways. So incredibly sideways. Scenes from what’d happened played over in your mind as Glenn drove what was left of the group back to Alexandria in silence, not an ominous lyric of Dubstep music to be played. The grenade blast. The Walkers. Tara’s head wound. Your wound. Aiden, impaled against the overhead door and thought dead by that sniveling weasel Nicholas, calling out for help. Assisting Eugene get Tara out, then trying to find the secondary exit Glenn, Noah and Nicholas must’ve had to use. Nicholas running by, to the van where you’d left Tara and Eugene, without Glenn and Noah. Finding Glenn trapped in a revolving door, seated on the ground, deep in traumatic shock. Not finding Noah, or at least not finding his body; you were certain the copious blood on the pane in front of Glenn had been his. That meant Glenn had watched Noah’s death, front and center, up close and personal.
You couldn’t imagine how Glenn must’ve been feeling, and what he felt now. Glenn had lost people out on runs before, probably more than anyone else in the group. That burden must’ve weighed heavily on him. But this… this might’ve been the first time he’d seen it up close. The trauma of it, the shock of seeing Noah, someone he cared about, die horrifically before his eyes, was evident on Glenn’s face at the warehouse. Now, peering over, catching but a fraction of Glenn’s expression in the rearview mirror, the trauma and shock had yielded their outward appearance to a state of numbness. His words to Aiden from the other day echoed in your mind at that moment. As screwed as the last run crew, huh? Glenn couldn’t have said it any better.
That’s what you thought as your gaze panned back to Tara. She and Nicholas had been unconscious since you all loaded them into the van, but that didn’t give you reason to slack off. Your pistol you’d cocked and trained on Nicholas hadn’t wavered from the moment you took aim, and while the weapon hadn’t wavered, your eyes did, eventually landing on a notepad between Eugene and Tara. You’d noticed Noah carrying it earlier. As the van bumped along, the notepad’s front cover opened to reveal the first page. Written there were four simple words with a complex meaning. ‘This is the beginning’. But to what? What had Noah been thinking? What had he been dreaming of that it was the beginning for? A new life? The end? What future, idealized or reality, would he now never get to see?
Before the sun had set low on the horizon, Alexandria came into view and you were all waiting at the gates. Glenn became visibly antsy, strumming the steering wheel impatiently and repeatedly glancing back at Tara as the shift’s gatekeeper took their sweet time. Once the gates were opened enough to squeeze by, Glenn hastily drove through, baffling the gatekeeper. Glenn quickly maneuvered the vehicle through the empty streets, parking outside the infirmary, a few doors down from the Monroes’ house.
“Help! I need help!” Glenn called out the instant he jumped from the driver’s seat, rushing around to the back with Eugene to grab Tara.
Olivia had been the first to answer Glenn’s call, appearing on the street from the nearby pantry and armory. “Oh, my God, what happened?!” she exclaimed upon seeing the state Tara was in as Glenn and Eugene carried her out.
“She needs help!” Glenn insisted urgently, ignoring the inquiry.
“Get her inside,” Olivia declared bewilderedly as she hurried with them towards the infirmary, hanging in the doorway as the trio went inside. “I’ll get Pete!”
As the woman rushed off, you turned your gaze slowly from the open back doors of the van to Nicholas, who’d waken up just before Glenn pulled into Alexandria. Nicholas was peering at you wide-eyed, terrified yet still dazed from his semi-extended state of unconsciousness. More than that, he peered at the gun you still had trained on him, and the deadened expression on your face. Like the other day at the gate with Aiden, you were now begging Nicholas to give you another reason to pull the trigger. He’d already had, repeatedly, but now, if he gave you another reason at that very second, you wouldn’t hesitate. Your look and the subtle changes in your expression and body language said all that needed saying. The gun was just for emphasis. Then, upon hearing footsteps rushing towards the van, it became a liability. Quickly, you let your wrist go limp, the barrel of the gun tilting down to the floor between your knees, just as Deanna and Maggie came into view at the back of the van.
“What happened?” Deanna fretted.
Maggie looked to you with wide eyes. “(Y/N), your arm.”
You glanced down at the wound in question. The grenade blast had knocked you against metal scaffolding, giving you a minor concussion, but the visible trauma was a triangular piece of shrapnel, slightly bigger than your average Megalodon tooth, embedded in the outermost part of the deltoid muscle of your left arm. And, honestly, you preferred the tooth. At least then you could say you’d been bit by and survived an attack by a once-thought-extinct Megalodon. Regardless of the origin of your injury, you wordlessly got to your feet and slowly exited the vehicle. Once on the asphalt, Deanna and Maggie assaulted you with questions and concerns.
“What happened?” “Where’s Glenn?” “Where is everyone?” “Where’s my son?”
With a heavy sigh, you jerked your head toward the infirmary. Deanna rushed in first. Maggie lingered a moment, concerned but evidently not as much as you’d expected. She must’ve heard Glenn call out earlier, and knew he had at least returned. The expression on her face was still one of inquiry and worry.
“What happened?” she asked you again.
Still, you wouldn’t yield. Instead, you turned, looking back into the van where Nicholas remained sitting in the shadows. The hard look you gave him went unchanged as you brought it back to Maggie, and it told her enough. It told her what the incident at the gate the other day told her, and revealed an outcome you all saw coming, thanks to that cowardly, sniveling weasel.
“Come on,” Maggie said, looking from Nicholas back to you, gently placing her hand featherlight on your arm to guide you away from the van. “Let’s get you patched up.”
So, the two of you left Nicholas, his weapons you’d confiscated slung along your back and tucked into your waistband. You’d check them back into the armory later. For now, Maggie guided you into the infirmary, towards the sound of voices.
“I’m so sorry, Deanna.”
Glenn had told her, then. Maybe not the manner or circumstances of her son’s death, but at least about the bottom line of it. Aiden wasn’t there, and to Maggie’s distress, neither was Noah, and Tara was lying supine on one of the tables. Maggie rushed to Glenn’s side, the two embracing with evident relief. Eugene regarded the reunion fleetingly before returning his attention to Tara. You continued forward slowly, drawing closer in measured steps. When you finally joined the group, you’d positioned yourself directly next to Deanna. After a moment’s more in shock and denial, she turned to you, her gaze instantly meeting the shrapnel yet embedded in your arm due to your height difference. It eventually lifted to your face, and you looked down at her, eyes sympathetic yet dead. Like Aiden. Like Noah. Like Tara, if Olivia and Pete didn’t hurry their assess up. The other doctor, Denise, was pussyfooting around Tara’s bandage, so evidently out of place from her usual psychiatry discipline.
Pete arrived not a minute later, Olivia several moments after. Despite the mildly irate look in his eye, he triaged and treated Tara promptly, stabilizing her the best as possible before turning his attention to you. He’d made you sit atop another table as he slowly, steadily, pulled the shrapnel from your swollen, painfully throbbing muscle. The metallic sliver had fortunately been in one piece, and didn’t cause nearly as much damage coming out as it did going in. Pete then flushed the wound with antiseptic and stitched it together without so much as a splash of lidocaine. At least he prescribed antibiotics and a short course of analgesics for the aftermath.
By the time Pete was done and gone, you, Eugene, Tara, Glenn and Maggie were the only ones left in the room. Nicholas had appeared briefly, but was quickly whisked away by Deanna. Denise had been dismissed by Pete early on, the latter outright insulting and questioning the validity of the former’s doctorate if she couldn’t be of any use in situations such as the present one. It’d pissed you off, but what could be done? You needed the shrapnel out and wound tended to, and, as much as you hated to admit it, Pete was the best guy for the job. Probably. At least, until someone better, more sober, and less controlling came along.
“You should all go.”
Everyone looked over to Eugene, still sitting beside Tara’s head.
“I’ll stay with her,” he declared solemnly. “I promise to look after her until she wakes up.”
Glenn sighed dismally, hating to be the guy to say it. “What if she doesn’t?”
“She will.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” he repeated. “Could you kill her, before she Turns?”
Eugene appeared terrified, whether because the possibility hadn’t crossed his mind, so deep in denial as he was, or because he refused to believe Tara would die, was hard to say.
“She’d do it for me,” Eugene eventually said, looking back to his patient. “And when push came to shove, I ignored all instinct and got her back here safely, didn’t I? So yes, I could.”
There was an odd, contemplative silence among the group, specifically you, Maggie and Glenn. The three of you eyed one another momentarily, then decided Eugene was right. He’d kept Tara safe out there, and would keep her safe now. The selfish, cowardly man who’d used Abraham and his group, who used you and your group, to get to D.C. for his own safety, had cared for the safety of another. He cared for Tara, because she’d stuck her neck out for him. At the bookstore. On the road. Whatever was said and done, Eugene had resolved to do whatever it took to save someone else’s skin for once. And that someone was Tara. So why not let him tend to her now still? It’d be easier, back within the walls. Besides, the group, everyone else, needed to know what happened. They needed to know how dangerous the Alexandrians were, by virtue of their inexperience and delusion for what the world was like outside their walls.
So, you, Maggie, and Glenn walked back to the group’s two houses, but when you got there, you and Glenn still found yourselves unable to articulate what’d happened. Glenn was still traumatized. As soon as the three of you reached the stoop, Glenn said he needed some time and went to sit along the side of the porch. You were numb, worried about him, and didn’t know exactly what’d happened. It was up to Glenn to disclose the truth. You’d only had your speculations, no matter how accurate they seemed. Sharing a look with Maggie, you pointed at yourself then Glenn. She nodded with a small, pained smile, gently touching your forearm appreciatively before going into the house.
You went over and sat beside Glenn. He didn’t regard you as you lowered yourself, and neither of you said or wrote a word. Some of the group had come up the front stairs, maybe even spotted you two off to the side, but they likewise didn’t say anything. They let you be, as you let Glenn be, sharing in the voiceless space as you shared in his trauma the best you could, to support him through it. The sun had long set and the porchlights had been lit when Glenn at last broke down. He sobbed quietly, hand to his eyes. One of your hands held his opposite, squeezing comfortingly, Glenn’s grip tightening in response.
“I let go,” he wept. “I-I couldn’t hold on. I let him go.”
With a deep, shuddering breath, you realized your own tears had been welling up, and now spilt over your eyelids. Glenn’s pain, being this close to it, hurt far beyond any wound by shrapnel, bullet or blade had ever done to you. This would leave a scar one couldn’t see, but neither could it be so easily buried. It was a pain you knew well, one that’d debilitated you for more than your one lifetime cared to experience. But you’d pulled through, with help, and so would Glenn. You’d had your husband and sister. Glenn had Maggie and you, a friend who was there at the warehouse when it happened. It’d bond you, help provide support and understanding through his grief. Through the aftermath, whatever that might look like.
Don’t blame yourself. You and I both know whose fault this is
You’d written the sentence on your pocket notepad after Glenn had let go of your hand. He read your words with an unchanged expression at first, but then it grew frustrated, and confused.
“We can’t lose this place,” he said out of nowhere. “No matter how messed up they are, we can’t. We gotta—”
“Glenn.”
You and Glenn looked up, back towards the front of the porch. Rick stood there, his constable jacket reflecting the porchlight mutely.
“(Y/N).” Rick slowly approached you both, squatting against a post. “What happened?”
You and Glenn turned to one another. Your eyes were questioning, encouraging, supportive. Glenn swallowed and nodded. Shifting, you scooted back further onto the porch while Glenn turned to face Rick head-on, pulling his knees up and leaning back against his own post. After a moment, Glenn began iterating how it’d gone down. Aiden ignoring his warning not to shoot a grenade-armed Walker. Tara’s incapacitating injury and your much milder ones, for all comparative intents and purposes. Nicholas attempting to flee almost as soon as they got to Aiden, trying to pull him off the metal bars he’d been impaled on, and Glenn forcing Nicholas to stay. What’d happened at the rotating door, Nicholas panicking, saving his own skin. Noah slipping from Glenn’s hands. Watching Noah get gruesomely torn apart in front of him.
The broken, defeated tone of Glenn’s voice as he explained it all. It hurt all over again. You’d met his eyes several times as he spoke, and each time your expression was the same, sympathetic and supportive. Glenn eventually got through it all, and then got defensive, almost pleading like he had earlier, when Rick pointed out the Alexandrians knew nothing outside their walls. That the group was above them and their rules.
“We are them, Rick,” Glenn stressed. “We are now.”
Rick stared at Glenn a moment, then turned his gaze on you. You met it briefly, but turned back to Glenn promptly when he started speaking again.
“Noah, he believed in this place. I’m telling you, we gotta make this work.”
The three of you shared in silence again. Then, Rick looked to you. “What do you think? What’re your thoughts about all this?”
Oh, so Rick was openly asking your opinion now, and willingly taking your word for it? Well, the latter half of that thought had yet to be determined. Still, you jotted your reply.
Most of them are weak. Aiden got himself killed. Nicholas got Noah killed. I don’t think all of them should die because of their weakness, but it shouldn’t stop us from living. Glenn’s right, we’ve gotta make this work, but not by becoming them. I don’t know how to go about doing it, but they have to become like us. Or else all of us are gonna wind up dead
Rick and Glenn regarded your words silently, carefully, the former more stoically than the latter. He lingered at your and Glenn’s level for a moment longer before getting to his feet. Clearly, Rick’s attention was focused inward, though his gaze seemed far and away. Then, without another word, Rick walked off.
“Thank you,” Glenn said after a moment.
When your gaze returned to him, one brow shot up curiously.
“For having my back out there, and in here. For staying with me, and agreeing with me.”
You bade a half-smirk and small nod. Like you told Deanna, we need this place. I just don’t want to lose ourselves or each other in order to keep it
“I know,” he answered understandingly with a heavy sigh. “And like you, I don’t know how we’re gonna go about bringing them up to our speed so that doesn’t happen.”
Rick’ll think of something. It might not be right, but he will. He always does
After a moment, Glenn nodded.
You did the same. I’m going in. Want me to send Maggie out?
“Yeah, that’d be great,” he replied with a kind smile. “Thanks again, (Y/N/N).”
So away you went, around the porch and into the living room. Maggie rose instantly from her seat upon seeing you. Ticking your head sideways back towards the front door, she understood and went outside. You, meanwhile, looked amongst the others. Michonne, Carl and Judith. Rick was still outside, talking with Carol on the porch on the side overlooking the Anderson home.
“You alright?” Michonne asked after a moment.
It took that long for you to realize you’d still been standing there, silent and unmoving until she’d spoken. When her words broke your reverie, you turned your gaze to Michonne and smiled, nodding reassuringly. But, as you climbed the stairs and crawled into bed, alone, you wondered whether it was you or Michonne you were trying more to convince.