(TW!! Small mentions of abuse and drug usage!!)
"Rick stop!" I scream, desperately trying to get Rick to get the fuck off of Pete.
It's been a day since Noah and Aiden died. Tara's being nursed back to health and my hand is wrapped up. Apparently, the bones all the way up to the middle of my forearm are totally shattered, but who's surprised?
Rick randomly launched on Pete, tackling him to the ground and beginning to beat the ever-loving crap out of him. All I can see is Negan and Kato on top of Nick when they walked into the apartment and saw me with a gash on my head and Nick holding a bloody, broken beer bottle.
"Rick!" I yell, wrapping my arms around his neck to try and pry him off after he shoves Carl off of him.
Would you care if it was Nick?
Yes, I'd want to do it myself.
"Rick-" Rick turns quickly and shoves me off, I slam my head onto the pavement and the wind gets knocked out of me.
Alyssa and Carl quickly run to me and help me up, I feel the back of my head and when I pull my fingers away, I see a small amount of red liquid dripping down my fingers.
"Asshole!" I mutter as my head throbs. I quickly turn to Carl, "Are you okay?"
He nods, breathing heavily, "Are you?"
I nod and stand in front of both of them, blocking them from anything that might possibly happen.
"Stop it!" Deanna yells, running to the fight. "Stop it, right now."
Rick whispers something to Pete and that just visibly pisses Deanna off more. "Damn it, Rick! I said stop!"
Rick quickly gets up into a kneeling position and aims his gun at Tobin and Nicholas as they try to run to the rescue. "Or what?" Tobin and Nicholas immediately stop in their tracks.
Blood is seeping down his face, his hair is dripping from sweat and his hands are bloody and swollen.
"Carl," I whisper, turning to both Carl and Alyssa. "Both of you, find Inej and go back to the house."
"No-" Carl tries to protest.
"Go before you see something you don't want to." I turn them by the shoulders to face the other way and practically shove them away.
"You gonna kick me out?" Rick asks.
"Put that gun down, Rick." Deanna says calmly.
"You still don't get it." Rick pants loudly.
My brain whirrs with the possibility of Rick being kicked out or even executed, what does that mean for the rest of us?
Rick drops his hand to his side, "None of you do!" He yells, turning to look at the circle that's formed around the two enemies.
"We know what needs to be done and we do it. We're the ones who live. You," He yells and points to Deanna and Reg. "You just sit and plan and hesitate. You pretend like you know when you don't."
Rick looks absolutely insane right now, I have no doubt or wonder why anyone is afraid of him right now.
Rick continues, "You wish things weren't what they are. Well, you wanna live? You want this place to stay standing? Your way of doin' things is done." He says to Deanna. "Things don't get better because you-you want them to. Starting right now, we have to live in the real world. We have to control who lives here."
"That's never been more clear to me than it is right now." Deanna spits.
Fuck.
"M-me? Me? You-" Rick laughs like Deanna is saying the most insane thing ever right now. "You mean-you mean me? Your way is gonna destroy this place. It's gonna get people killed." Rick's voice is full of ice and malice, it's like he's trying to stab Deanna with his words, and it's working.
"It's already gotten people killed. And I'm not gonna stand by and just let it happen. If you don't fight, you die. I'm not gonna stand by-"
Rick's words are cut off by a sucker punch to the back of the head by Michonne, causing him to collapse to the ground.
Glenn, Carol, Abraham, and I all walk into the house they're holding Rick just as Michonne asks him, "Where'd you get the gun?"
It's been almost a day, Rosita fixed Rick's wounds and we put him and Pete in separate holding houses.
Rick scans all four of us and locks his eyes on me. "How's your head?" He asks.
"It's throbbing." I sass. No, it's not. "Pretty sure my brain is about to spill out of my ears."
"You took it, right? From the armory?" Carol asks Rick. "That was stupid. Why'd you do it?"
Rick pauses before saying, "Just in case."
"Deana's planning to have a meeting tonight." Glenn mentions. "For anyone who wants to."
"To kick Rick out?" Abraham asks.
"To try." Carol answers.
"We don't know that." Glenn says. "Maggie's with Deanna right now. She's gonna find out what it is."
"At the meeting, you say you were worried about someone being abused and no one was doing anything about it. You say you took a gun just to be sure that Jessie was safe from a man who wound up attacking you. You say you'll do whatever you want them to." Carol tells Rick. "Just tell them a story that they want to hear. It's what I've been doing since I got here."
"Why?" Michonne asks from sitting on a chair in the corner of the room.
"Because these people are children and children like stories."
"What happens after all the nice words and they still try to kick him out?" Abraham asks.
"They're guarding the armory now." Glenn says.
"We still have knives. That's all we'll need against them." Carol speaks.
Rick plots, "Well, tonight at the meeting, if it looks like it's goin' bad, I whistle. Carol grabs Deanna, I take Reg, Adrian grabs Spencer-"
I roll my eyes, "He'd be thrilled."
"Then you take Reg and I'll take Spencer. Michonne, Glenn, and Abraham cover us, watch the crowd."
"We can talk to them." Michonne expresses.
"Yeah, we will." Says Rick. "If we can't get through, we take the three of them and say we'll slit their throats."
"Like at Terminus?" Glenn sasses.
"No, we just tell 'em. They give us the armory and it's over."
Nobody says anything for a few seconds before Glenn asks "Did you want this?"
"No." Rick denies. "I hit my limit. I-I screwed up." He admits. He doesn't sound remorseful, at all. I can't exactly read his expressions but I know it isn't remorse. He sighs, "And here we are."
He exhales and turns over, "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just gonna sleep some more."
Glenn's the first to leave, Carol and I follow behind him, as does the rest of the group.
I groan in frustration after the door closes, "God, I thought his sass was funny but now that it's directed at us it's pissing me off!" I storm off angrily, my head actually starting to throb.
Alyssa comes into the room, "You comin'?" She asks.
"Yeah," I sigh, standing up after re-wrapping my hand. My hand keeps bleeding and I can't figure out how to get it to stop.
"So," Alyssa starts, opening the door for me and then closing it behind her once we both are out of the house.
"So?" I ask.
"I see you and Glenn are almost back to...you and Glenn."
I sigh and nod, "Yeah."
"What changed? You could barely look at him for a while." She looks at me with genuine curiosity in her eyes, the curious eyes that are keeping me from blowing my brains out every second of every day.
I think for a moment before shrugging, "I had a flashback about Nick. A vivid one...it just-" I pause. "It reminded me of how Glenn was the first person I opened up to...and he never brought it up again." I look at Alyssa, "The way I like it."
She smiles and nods, looking away from me and watching the road ahead. "He's a good guy. One of the best ones you've been close with. I'm glad you and him didn't work out."
I don't even say anything for her to quickly rebuttal with, "No! I'm glad because you and Daryl are super cute and him-no offense, and Maggie are super cute."
I scoff and nod, it takes me a minute to say, "Me too." Which really catches Alyssa's attention but by the time she's able to reply, we're at the meeting.
Everyone is standing or sitting in front of Deanna's house around a small fire, the only warmth as the world slowly seeps into the winter months. The air is chilly and thick with tension as we await Rick to show up.
Damien scoots closer to me, "How's your head?"
I smirk, "Ask Daryl."
Abraham quickly looks back and both Damien and I laugh at his surprised expression.
Deanna's "We're going to start" causes all of us to go quiet.
"Can we wait?" Maggie asks. "There's still people comin'. Glenn, Rick."
"We're going to start. It's already dark." Deanna says, more firmly.
"We're going to talk about what happened. Not the fight. Not what precipitated it. We're dealing with that. We're going to talk about one of our constables, Rick Grimes."
Can you just say police officers? Jesus, you sound like a dork.
"We're going to talk about how he had a pistol he stole from the armory, about how he pointed it at people. And we're going to talk about what he said. I was hoping he'd be here."
"She said he's coming." Michonne speaks.
"I'm sure he'll be here. And I'm sure we can work this all out." Carol adds with a fake smile.
You're pushin' it, woman.
"He ain't got nowhere to go so why wouldn't he be here?" I say.
Almost an hour, if not a little more, goes by of everyone saying their piece about Rick. How he's helped them, how he's a good guy, all around good things about him.
I assume it's my turn because when Maggie steps back, almost everyone turns to look at me. I roll my eyes and step forward, "I'm not sugarcoating this shit, y'all know Ima' tell the truth. And the truth is, Rick is a good guy."
"I've known him for what, twenty-two, twenty-three years? Somethin' like that I dunno. Anyway, he's one of the most protective people I know. He will do anything for anyone just to keep them alive."
"You guys...y'all don't have the slightest clue as to what's out there...none of y'all do. You think that it's just like the old world...the occasional murderer or kidnapper or whatever...nah. Hell, fuc-fricken nah. Rick, yesterday, if he scared y'all, you ain't goin' nowhere without him. Because that was the nicest I've seen someone try to be intimidating."
"Rick is one of the only people who can get Alexandria past the five-year mark of the apocalypse, whenever the hell that is."
I scan the crowd, my fingers tingle with anticipation as I try to read the crowd, trying to figure out what they could possibly be thinking.
I bite my tongue to refrain from saying something snarky to Deanna and take a step back, symbolizing that I've finished speaking.
Around ten minutes later, when Maggie is finished talking, Deanna steps up. "Before we hear from anyone else, I-I would like to share something in the spirit of transparency."
"Father Gabriel came to see me the day before yesterday,"
Inejra stiffens immediately. "And he said our new arrivals, apparently minus Inejra and Alyssa,"
Hmm, specific.
"Can't be trusted, that they were dangerous, that they would put themselves before this community." Inejra clenches both her jaw and her fists, turning her knuckles white.
Aw shit.
"And not one day later, Rick seemed to demonstrate all the things Father Gabriel said."
"But he was doing it for the community!" I exclaim.
Deanna puts a hand up, "I'm not done."
"Excuse-" Alyssa puts her hand on my arm to tell me to be quiet and I listen.
Deanna finishes, "I had hoped Gabriel would be here tonight."
That's what she had to finish? That was so important that she had to put her hand up?!
"I don't see him here, Deanna." Jessie speaks up. "So you're just saying what someone said."
I smirk.
God, I love you, Jessie. Why have we never said more than three words to each other?
"Did you tape him?" Jessie asks.
"He's not here." Maggie agrees.
"Neither is Rick." Deanna rebuttals.
Ooh, good point, Let's all exile Rick, amazing. Fully convinced everyone here.
Nobody says anything until Maggie turns, "Excuse me." She says, walking away.
The silence very obviously makes Alyssa uncomfortable. She rocks on her heels uncomfortably and picks at her fingernails.
"So...what'd everyone have for dinner tonight?" Without a word, everyone slowly looks at Alyssa and she just nods.
Inejra looks like she just got punched in the gut, she's too...shocked, angry, and feeling too much to say something mean to Alyssa. She keeps staring at Deanna with an open mouth and glossy eyes.
A few people go and while Tobin is talking, Rick comes in. He's covered in blood and is carrying a corpse on his shoulder. His eyes are wide and he throws a walker corpse on the ground, right in front of the fire.
Lots of people gasp and everyone stands up and backs up like Rick has a plague.
He breathes heavily and looks around at everyone. He's covered in sweat and Walker's blood mixed with dirt and grime.
"There wasn't a guard on the gate. It was open." Rick's voice is a deep rasp.
"I asked Gabriel to close it." Spencer admits to Deanna.
"Go!" She says angrily.
Rick continues to breathe heavily, "I didn't bring it in. It got inside on its own. They always will-the dead and the living. Because we're in here. And the ones out there, they'll hunt us. They'll find us. They'll try to use us. They'll try to kill us."
He continues, "But we'll kill them. We'll survive. I'll show you how. You know, I was thinking- I was thinking how many of you do I have to kill to save your lives? But I'm not gonna do that. You're gonna change. I'm not sorry for what I said last night. I'm sorry for not saying it sooner. You're not ready, but you have to be. Right now, you have to be. Luck runs out."
Sudden footsteps appear at the gate behind Rick.
Aw, fuck.
"You're not one of us." The bloodied, injured Pete says through angry, gritted teeth. "You're not one of us!" He's holding a sword.
Reg runs in front of Pete, "Pete, you don't want to do this." He urges.
"Get the hell away from me, Reg." Pete grunts.
"Pete, just stop." Reg continues.
"Get away from me." Pete orders, his eyes never leaving Rick.
"Reg. Reg." Deanna tries to get Reg to move away from Pete before it turns bad.
Reg and Pete continue quarreling about trying to keep Pete away from Rick. Deanna, Pete, and Reg's words all get jumbled into one big jibberish language.
"Get away. Get away!" Pete shoves Reg and when he does that, he slits Reg's throat open.
Abraham immediately jumps into action, tackling Reg to the ground as everyone screams in horror. Deanna holds Reg as he falls to the ground, gurgling and trying to gasp for air.
Damn, he was one of the good guys.
Good guys never last.
Abraham holds Pete to the ground, his arms up and behind his back with his face pressed to the floor. "This is him!" Pete screams. "This is him!"
Deanna slowly turns to Rick, still sobbing. "Rick..." She says quietly.
Damn it, don't kick him out.
"Do it."
Without wasting a second, Rick turns to Pete and shoots him point-blank in the forehead, his face splitting like a blooming flower. A few women scream and a man's voice comes from the gates.
"Rick?"
Aaron, Daryl, and a black man stand at the gates, their eyes wide.
A little over a day later, Rick had called an emergency meeting. According to him and Morgan-the man who was at the gate last night, there's a horde of Walkers down in a small gorge between two cliffs. They're being blocked off by semi-trucks.
Heath, a man who had been out on a run since before we got here, says that he knows about it.
"My team," He starts. "We saw it early on, back when we were on one of those first scouts, findin' what was around here. There was a camp at the bottom. The people, they must've blocked the exits with one of those trucks back when everything started to go bad. They didn't make it, they were all roamers. Maybe a dozen of 'em."
"No one's been back since?" Maggie clarifies.
Heath shakes his head, "DC, every town worth scavenging are all in the other direction. And I never really felt like having a picnic next to the camp that ate itself."
"So, all the while the Walkers have been drawn by the sound and they're making more sound and they're drawing more in." Michonne queries.
"And here we are." Rick says. "Now what I'm proposing, I know it sounds risky but Walkers are already slipping through the exits. One of the trucks keeping the Walkers in could go off the edge at any day now. Maybe after one more hard rain."
"That exit sends them east. All of 'em. Right at us." Rick pauses and scans the room. Almost all of Alexandria is in Deanna's big-ass living room right now.
"This isn't about if it gives, it's when. It's gonna happen. That's why we have to do it soon." Rick finishes.
Carol speaks quietly, "This is...I don't even have another word for it. This is terrifying. All of it. But it doesn't sound like there's any other way."
"Maybe there is." The man next to me-Carter speaks.
Why are all Carter's assholes?
"I mean, couldn't we just build up the weak spots? I could draw the plans, I worked on the wall with Reg. Construction crew-we can try and make it safe."
"Even if we could, the sound of those Walkers is drawin' more and more every day. Buildin' up the exits won't change that." Rick says.
"We're gonna do what Rick says, the plan he's laid out." Deanna orders from facing the window. Her voice made me jump a little, I hadn't even noticed she was there. I just thought she was somehow comfortable with us all being in her house unsupervised.
"I told you all, we're gonna have Daryl leading them away." Rick announces.
"Me, too." Sasha speaks up from the couch. "I'll take a car, ride next to 'im. Can't just be him. I'll keep 'em coming, Daryl keeps 'em from getting sloppy."
"I'll go with her." Abraham offers. "It's a long way to white-knuckle it solo."
Rick says, "We'll have two teams. One on each side of the forest helping manage this thing. We're gonna have a few people on watch from now on. Rosita, Spencer, and Holly. So they're out. So who's in?"
I don't even raise my hand, I just say "Y'all already know." and Rick gets the memo. He nods and looks around for anyone else.
"Me." Michonne says.
Glenn and Maggie whisper to each other as others contemplate if they want to help. "I'm in." Glenn finally says.
"I'd like to help as well." Gabriel says, putting his hand up.
"No. Who else?" Rick quickly replies. "We need more."
"There's gotta be another play. We can't just control that many." Carter says again.
I groan loudly, "God take your dick out of your ass and admit you're a pussy." I sigh irritatedly and everyone looks at me, "What?" I ask. "I know you all were thinkin' it."
Rick tries to convince Carter by saying, "I said it before, Walkers herd up. They'll follow a path if somethin's drawin' 'em. That's how we can get 'em all at once."
Carter looks at me then back to Rick, "So, what? We're supposed to just take your word for it? We're all supposed to just fall in line behind you after..." His voice trails off and the air goes thick.
I inhale quickly, "I gotta walk away before I feed him his own large intestine." I grunt, walking over and sitting next to Daryl on the windowsill.
"After what?" Rick warns.
"After you wave a gun around, screaming, pointing it at people. After you shoot a man in the face. After you-"
"Enough!" Deanna yells, turning around from the window.
"I'll do it." Heath speaks up.
"Me too." Francine agrees.
"Whatever you need, I'm in." Tobin tells Rick.
"Now who else?" Deanna asks.
It's silent before Nicholas raises his hand, "I'll go."
"Oh, great, so we're all gonna die." I mumble, causing Daryl to scoff quietly though nobody else heard.
"We have to do this. I have to help." Nicholas tells Glenn and me.
"You sure you can handle it?" Rick asks.
"You need people." Nicholas says.
"I'm not sitting on my ass all day. I'll go." Damien speaks up as well.
Rick nods to Damien and then turns to the rest of the group, "We'll make this work. We'll keep this place safe. Keep our families safe- we will."
"The plan. Go through it again." Carter requests.
"Man, he just said it." Rasps Daryl, very obviously starting to get irritated with Carter.
"Every part...again." Carter continues. "The exact plan."
"Of how I'm going to waterboard you with your own blood or the Walkers? Because I can recite both." I glare at Carter and he just stiffens at my words.
A little over an hour later, Carter, Heath, Deanna, Michonne, Morgan, Rick, and I are all going over plans.
"Marshall and Redding." Rick says as he points to two intersecting roads on a map. "We force them west here."
"How?" Asks Deanna.
"We block it off so they can only go one way, west, away from the community."
"We block it off with what?" Carter asks cautiously.
"Cars." Rick answers. "We'll use the RVs, some of the bigger trucks, park them end to end."
"We'll be drawing them away." Michonne adds. "They're gonna keep moving."
"Yeah, but that many? Just bouncing off some sedans?" Carter asks.
God shut the fuck up.
"And then when they start slipping through and the ones that walk away start distracting the rest and you stop drawing them away?" Carter says.
"Man's got a point." Heath agrees.
I don't know how I feel about Heath, he keeps staring at me but he seems nice enough.
"We got plates." Eugene appears out of almost nowhere. "The big-ass metal ones from the construction site. We can use 'em to fortify the whip wall. It'd help disperse the force of impact and direct the Walkers clean. Like a pool table. Eight ball, corner pocket."
I look around, "I think for the first time ever, I actually understood what the fuck he just said-"
Carter talks over me, "That's an army out there."
"You just interrupted me..." I warn.
"Adrian." Michonne whispers.
I grunt and relax slightly, allowing Carter to spill his nonsense. "What happens when this doesn't hold?" He asks, pointing to the spot on the map that Rick pointed to.
"And they push on through. The curve in this hillside is gonna send them right back east." He drags his finger down the map. "Right back-right back here." He slams his finger down on the map at the spot where Alexandria would be located.
"You seriously wanna risk that?" He questions though it's more of a statement than a question.
Rick shakes his head, "No. So you need to help us to make it hold."
"These walls, you built 'em. So you've already done the impossible." Morgan insists.
"Carter, please," Deanna begs softly.
"Adrian?" Alyssa asks, walking into the room as I'm getting ready to head out to the horde.
"Yeah?" I turn and look at her.
"Why don't you stay back?" She says it more like an order rather than a question.
I scoff and turn back to my backpack, trying to finish putting everything in there. "Why would I do that? I already said I'd go and that's boring as hell."
She sighs and sits next to the backpack on the couch, "When was the last time you've slept?" She interrogates.
I raise an eyebrow. Truthfully, almost three days. Every time I try to fall asleep, I see Noah, my dad, T-Dog, Oscar, Jimmy, and Nick all in the same dream. Nick's trying to beat me while the rest are either trying to eat me because they're Walkers or they're screaming at me for not helping them.
I never talk about Jimmy or T-Dog anymore. But the thought is always there, I thought I was over them. I thought I was better at not blaming myself but after Noah, I'm back at square one.
"Last night. I woke up like twice 'cause Daryl wouldn' shut the fuck up with snoring but," I shrug. "I slept last night."
She sighs and looks at me with narrowed eyes, trying to read my expression.
"You're lying." She decides.
I scoff and roll my eyes, "A, how am I lying? B, how do you know? And C, where is this coming from?"
She rolls her eyes as well, "Well, A," Her voice is dripping with sass. "I know you're lying because you're chewing on your cheeks. You do that when you're angry or lying."
I do?
"B, your 'A' question didn't make sense so I combined A and B. And C, you have eye bags and you're forgetting things."
I cock my head to the side, "What am I forgetting?"
She smirks, "That I'm not Alyssa."
Suddenly, I blink and she's-he's Nick. He stands up and begins approaching me.
Panic courses through my body and I stumble backward, trying to put as much distance between him and I.
I gasp awake, sweating and breathing heavily.
I'm lying on the couch with my open backpack next to me and my clothes on-ready to leave to go to the horde.
I check the time, the digital clock next to me blinks at 11:07.
I fell asleep three minutes ago. My head is against the arm rest, sitting up, I rest my back where my head was.
Quick power nap I guess.
Though, my dream wasn't wrong. Those dreams are the dreams I keep having. I really haven't slept for almost three days but nobody's noticed, yet.
The effects are starting to take place but I'm scared to fall asleep. I can function on no sleep, I used to do it all the time. I used to be high on drugs to keep me awake so...I've just gotta find those.
Or maybe not... I've been doing pretty good with my urges but...we'll see.
To clear my mind, I sit up and go to re-wrap my hand. The bandage Pete gave me sucks and doesn't stay wrapped tightly for long so every few hours I have to re-wrap it.
The front door opens and closes, catching my eye. When I look up, Daryl is walking inside.
"Hey, love." I greet him.
"Hi." He grunts. Other people would be offended by the "hi" but to me, it's more than enough. A greeting from Daryl is a head nod or a grunt.
My hand pain has been really bad recently, considering I've denied all the drugs I've been offered, so wrapping my hand is difficult.
After a few failed wrapping attempts and my hand throbbing so bad my vision is blurred from tears, I angrily throw the bandage down and sigh.
"Woah," Daryl says from behind me. He rounds the couch and sits next to me, putting my legs over his.
"What happened?" He asks.
"Aiden's dumbass shot a grenade on a Walker. I got trapped under two shelves, completely crushed the bones in my hand. Pete said I was lucky to still be able to have it."
Daryl nods and gently grabs my hand. Without saying anything, he lightly lays my hand on my legs and grabs the bandage. With a feather-light touch, he raises my hand and begins wrapping the bandage tight around it, ensuring to be gentle but wrapping the bandage tight enough.
I gaze at Daryl's focused expression, my heart grows at his tenderness.
I never truly noticed how beautiful he is. Others might not see it, but I do.
When he's finished wrapping my hand, he lays it on my legs again and we both just gaze at each other.