"There are moments of frustration in life. You must build good relations to support you in these moments. You must also learn to courage yourself and decide to stay determined in life."
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Since I wasn't able to be with Beth anymore I ended up spending the night with Daryl. During dinner my mum did smile at me but I wasn't ready to sleep in the same tent with her. We hadn't talked since we found Sophia in the barn and we hadn't even talked much before that.
When I woke up this morning Daryl had already left. I put on my pair of jeans and a clean shirt very quickly in case Daryl could come back. I also put on a belt because my jeans were so loose they fell from me. I guess I needed to gain some weight back.
When I walked out of the tent and walked to where they had set camp, I saw Lori, Carl, Andrea, Glenn, my mother, Shane, Sean, Rick, Dale, Maggie, Teresa and Oliver. Daryl had just approached them a few seconds before I did. He had his crossbow over his shoulder and had his hand over the strap, I noticed his knuckles were bloody. He noticed I was looking at his hand so he just lowered it, got it out of my sight.
"Boy there's got a gang, thirty men," Daryl informed. "They have heavy artillery and they ain't looking to make friends. They roll through here, our boys are dead and our women, they're gonna –" he made a brief pause to look at me. "They're gonna wish they were."
"No one goes near this guy!" Rick ordered.
"Rick, what are you going to do?" Lori asked him.
"We have no choice. He's a threat. We have to eliminate the threat."
"You're just going to kill him?" Dale said, looking straight at Rick in disbelief.
"It's settled. I'll do it today," Rick said, walking away. Dale went after him.
Daryl walked away too but towards his tent, in the opposite direction. I followed him. He said nothing and he looked a little bit uncomfortable, probably because he knew what I wanted to talk about.
"How did you get that information out of him?" I asked once we were out of everyone's earshot.
"Why do you want to know? All you need to know is that his people is dangerous!" he said sternly as he kept walking, he even quickened his pace.
"I just need to know."
"Does it make a difference?" I just gave him a look, making him sigh. "I beat him, alright? But I don't regret it because I wouldn't have found out otherwise!"
"You are not a bad guy, Daryl. Why didn't they send Shane?"
"Look, it doesn't matter, I did it and I can't change it. All you need to know is that these people will kill us all if they find us, you have no idea what he said to me!" he said, raising his voice. "They are rapists, alright? If they come here... I'm just trying to protect you, okay? If we have to kill him to be safe then that's what we have to do."
"I don't even care if they kill him or not," I said, it came out harsher than I intended, though. "I just don't like that you are always sent to do the dirty job."
"Someone has to do it," he said simply.
Once we reached his camp site again, he showed me a few arrows he had made himself and was showing me how to do one when we saw Dale coming our way. Daryl grunted.
"The whole point of me coming up here is - to get away from you people," he said as Dale got close enough to hear him.
"Gonna take more than that," Dale told him. "Many of us are concerned about you, your new role in the group."
"Oh, man, I don't need my head shrunk," Daryl exclaimed. "This group's broken. I'm better off fending for myself."
"You act like you don't care."
"Yeah, it's 'cause I don't," Daryl said harshly, putting on a long sleeved blue shirt and his leather winged-vest on top of it.
"It doesn't look like that to me," he said nodding in my direction. "Anyway, so live or die, you don't care what happens to Randall?"
"Nope," Daryl said as it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Then why not stand with me, try to save the kid's life, if it really doesn't matter one way or the other?"
"Didn't peg you for a desperate son of a bitch."
"Your opinion makes a difference," Dale told him.
"Man, ain't nobody looking at me for nothing!"
"Cici obviously is and I am, right now. And Rick listens to you."
"Rick just looks to Shane. Let him."
"You cared about what happened to Sophia," Dale said, and I stiffened when I heard her name, Dale didn't notice but Daryl did. "Cared what it meant to the group. Torturing people? That isn't you. You're a decent man." I agreed with Dale on that. "So is Rick. Shane... He's different."
"Why's that? 'Cause he killed Otis?" Hmm, so Daryl also believed he did it.
"He told you that?" Dale asked him with a surprised look on his face and took a few steps towards Daryl.
"He told some story... How Otis covered him, saved his ass," Daryl said. "He showed up with the dead guy's gun. Rick ain't stupid. If he didn't figure that out, it's 'cause he didn't wanna. It's like I said, group's broken."
Daryl then turned to me, grabbed my hand and pulled me up and made me go with him while he had his crossbow in his other hand as he walked away from Dale, who wasn't going to take a no as an answer.
"Daryl just.."
"No, Dale!" Daryl exclaimed, turning around to face the old man and letting go of my hand as he walked towards Dale. "The boy said his group made a father watch his teenage daughters getting raped! I won't let that happen to Cecilia or any of the other women in this group, so no I won't change my mind, just leave me alone!"
Once again Daryl grabbed my hand and dragged me away from there, leaving a shocked Dale behind. I didn't say anything because a part of me didn't want my group to become murderers and the other part of me just wanted the boy to be far away from us, I war torn and I couldn't make up my mind.
"Where are we going?" I asked him.
"Hunting," he said simply.
Before all of this happened I was against animal abuse and hunting but now you had to do that to survive. At least now that need wasn't that big because we had crops and food at the farm but before that we mostly had canned food and the squirrels Daryl brought as our meals.
"Sounds exciting," I told him with a small smile.
"Just don't make too much noise so I can actually catch something." He chuckled.
Later that day almost by sunset we had to gather to discuss Randall's fate. Jimmy, Beth and Carl weren't present because they were still under eighteen and a part of me wished I didn't have to be there either. I didn't want to have his death on my conscience.
We all went to the living room of Hershel's house, some were sat on the couches and love seats while the others were on their feet, some of them leaned against the walls. I ended up in between Andrea and Sean, the three of us were on our feet.
"So how do we do this? Just take a vote?" Glenn asked, being the one to break the silence.
"Does it have to be unanimous?" Andrea asked.
"Well, let's... let's just see where everybody stands, then we can talk through the options," Rick said, his voice was very calmed and steady, but he was anxious about this.
"Well, where I sit, there's only one way to move forward," Shane said, obviously it had to be him to say that.
"Killing him, right?" Dale snapped. "I mean, why even bother to even take a vote? It's clear which way the wind's blowing."
"Well, if people believe we should spare him, I wanna know," Rick said, looking at all of us.
"Well, I can tell you it's a small group, maybe just me and Glenn."
Glenn said nothing he just looked at Dale in an apologetically way, it was obvious he didn't stand with Dale this time.
"Look, I – I think you're pretty much right about everything, all the time, but this..." Glenn told him.
"They've got you scared!" Dale shouted.
"He's not one of us," Glenn exclaimed. "And we've – we've lost too many people already."
"How about you?" Dale asked Maggie, who was next to her father. "Do you agree with this?" "Couldn't we continue keeping him prisoner?"
"Just another mouth to feed," Daryl said disagreeing with her, he was behind Rick, leaning on a wall.
"It may be a lean winter," Hershel muttered.
"Well, he could be an asset. Give him a chance to prove himself!" Dale said, not keeping his voice down.
"Put him to work?" Teresa asked.
"We're not letting him walk around," Rick said with authority, meaning that wasn't negotiable.
"We could put an escort on him," Maggie suggested.
"Who wants to volunteer for that duty?" Shane asked.
"I don't think any of us should be walking around with this guy," Rick said, raising his hand for emphasis.
"He's right. I wouldn't feel safe unless he was tied up," Lori said.
"Look, say we let him join us, right? Maybe he's helpful, maybe he's nice," Shane started. "We let our guard down and maybe he runs off, brings back his thirty men."
"So, the answer is to kill him to prevent a crime that he may never even attempt? If we do this, we're saying there's no hope," Dale exclaimed. "Rule of law is dead. There is no civilization."
"Oh, my God," Shane muttered in disbelief.
"Could you drive him further out? Leave him like you planned?" Hershel asked.
"You barely came back this time," Lori said quickly.
"We should not put our own people at risk," I said, speaking for the first time.
"If you go through with it, how would you do it? Would he suffer?" Patricia asked.
"I thought about that," Rick told her. "Shooting may be more humane."
"And what about the body? Do we bury him?" Sean muttered.
"Woah, hold on, hold on! You're talking about this like it's already decided!" Dale exclaimed.
"You've been talking all day, going around in circles," Daryl told him. "You just wanna go around in circles again?"
"This is a young man's life, and it is worth more than a five-minute conversation! Is this what it's come to? We kill someone because we can't decide what else to do with him? You saved him and now look at us," Dale exclaimed, raising his voice even more. "He's been tortured. He's going to be executed. How are we any better than those people that we're so afraid of?"
"We all know what needs to be done," Shane said simply.
"No, Dale is right, we can't leave any stone unturned here," Rick said.
"You once said that we don't kill the living."
"Well, that was before the living tried to kill us," Rick said to Dale.
"But don't you see? If we do this, the people that we were... The world that we knew is dead. It's... it's survival of the fittest. And that's a world I don't wanna live in, and I don't – And I don't believe that any of you do."
Honestly it has always been the survival of the fittest, but in other ways. Maybe we didn't want to live in a world like the one Dale mentioned but what could we do? We could only adapt to the way of life now and try to survive.
Andrea, Lori, Shane, Dale and Rick started arguing, I could barely keep up with what they were saying until my mum spoke, telling them to just stop.
"You can't ask us to decide something like this," she said and I hated to admit I agreed with her. "Please decide, either of you, both of you but leave me out."
"Not speaking out or killing him yourself... There's no difference," Dale said.
"Oh come on, Dale!" I exclaimed angrily as I took two steps forward so I wasn't leaning on the wall anymore. "Don't you think this is hard enough for us? I lost my sister about a week ago, my mind and thoughts have been all over the place. I wish we had more options and this to be easier but don't ask us to go through this. They brought him here and I think they should be responsible for their actions and decide what to do with him. I don't care anymore what they do with him, I don't care about him, I'm sorry but I don't. I trust Rick to choose the right option."
With that, I crossed the room, feeling everyone's eyes on me and I stormed out of the house. It might be cruel and heartless but it was true. I had too much to deal with right now and I didn't want to carry with the guilt of killing someone so I better not be a part of it.
I didn't need to stay until the end to know what the decision was going to be, only Dale was against killing him. Hershel, my mum and I didn't want to be part of it and the rest believed he was a threat we needed to get rid of.
It's harsh but it's the way things are now.
I got into Daryl's tent to rest a bit, going hunting with Daryl exhausted me and thanks to me we caught nothing, I made way too much noise or so Daryl claimed.
About half an hour later Daryl joined me. He stepped inside and lied next to me. He told me what I already knew, they had decided to kill him tonight.
"Rick, Shane and I will handle it," he told me and I just gave him a look. "You go eat with the rest, I don't want you all the way here on your own. I'll join you after we are done."
"You won't shoot him right?" I asked him. "You will just go in case something goes wrong, promise me you won't shoot him."
He sighed. "I promise. If Rick doesn't do it I'm sure Shane will be pleased to end this."
"Okay."
"I'm sorry if Dale upset you, he didn't have the right to say that to Carol. He should know that the two of you are still... sensible."
"Don't worry about it."
When the time came Daryl walked me to camp and left me with the others, while he, Shane and Rick took Randall to the barn. I stood close to Sean as we waited for the food to be ready. Teresa said nothing when she saw me but she smiled at me and I smiled back but there was no further contact than that.
Minutes later the first to return was Rick, Carl was right next to him. That couldn't mean anything good, when did he even get away?
"We're keeping him in custody... for now," Rick informed us.
"I'm going to find Dale," Andrea said excitedly before running away in search of the old man.
Lori didn't look happy with the information, she ordered Carl to go inside the tent without taking his eyes off of Rick. The rest of us just watched in silence. Rick approached his wife once Carl had gotten inside the tent.
"He followed us," Rick told Lori but all of us could hear him. "He wanted to watch. I couldn't."
"That's okay," she told him as she embraced Rick. "That's okay."
Daryl nor Shane had come back yet so I just went to sit next to Glenn, I couldn't spent more time with Sean because lately he just seemed more like my bodyguard or babysitter than my friend.
"Are you okay?" Glenn asked me.
"Yeah, I'm just a bit cold," I told him, hugging myself and rubbing my arms with my hands. "But the fire feels nice."
Glenn was going to say something to me when we heard screaming in the distance. We all jumped to our feet and grabbed our weapons. Carl ran to his mother, who held him in her arms quite tightly.
"T-dog, get a shotgun now!" Rich shouted.
"I want you to go in the house, I want you to lock the door and I want you to stay inside!" Lori said to Carl, who ran to the house. "Cici!" I turned to look at her. "Please go with him! Please!"
"But..."
"Take care of my son, please!"
Reluctantly I ran after Carl, he was running to the house but then I saw him stop and turn around and running to where the screams came from, this boy I swear...
"Carl!" I shouted, he stopped and turned to look at me.
"We need to go!"
"Your mum trusted me to take care of you!" I told him. "If something happens to you I wouldn't be able to forgive myself and your mum would kill me!"
"But we can't just stay here!"
At that moment Andrea came shouting for Hershel, that could only mean that someone was badly hurt but still alive. We saw how Hershel and Andrea ran to where everybody was.
"Please, Cici! We have to go! I promise I won't walk out of your sight!" he exclaimed. "You can even grab my hand to make sure of that."
I sighed in defeat, grabbing his hand, truth was that I wanted to go as well. "Fine, but you let go and I promise we'll get back to the house."
I held his hand tightly as we ran to where everyone else was. I could see them all gathered in a circle, preventing us from seeing who was injured. We stopped running and approached the group slowly. I stepped behind Glenn and my mother and through a little space between them I looked down and at first all I saw was blood, the amount of it was sickening. For just a second I let go of Carl's hand to cover my mouth as I gasped at the sight, then I finally realized who was the person lying on the floor, it was Dale.
It took me a while to recover but when I did I noticed Carl had walked away from me and looked as startled and shocked as me but he wasn't looking at Dale, he was looking at the dead-dead walker that was almost next to Dale.
"What did I tell you?" I exclaimed at him, grabbing his arm and turning him around to face me.
Carl said nothing to me, he looked astonished. He just wrapped his arms around my waist and cried against my chest. He was even shaking. I ran my hands up and down his back, trying to comfort him.
"He's suffering," I heard Andrea saying. "Do something!"
I raised my gaze to see Rick grabbing his gun and pointing it at Dale. I felt like my breathing hitched in my throat but I couldn't let that happen, instead I held Carl more tightly and kissed the top of his head.
Rick stayed frozen for a very long time, only looking down as he pointed his gun at Dale, who kept grunting in pain. Daryl slowly approached him and took the gun from Rick. Daryl knelt next to Dale, pointing the gun right at his forehead.
"I'm sorry, brother," he said and seconds later we heard the shot.
I felt how Carl gripped the back of my shirt more tightly and felt how his body shook as he sobbed. I was crying too but mostly silently.
Everyone around us was crying so hard, even Hershel and Patricia, who didn't know him as much as we did.
I spotted Lori on her knees crying. I started to walk, my grip around Carl didn't even loosen a bit as I made my way towards her. The two of us collapsed to the floor and Lori wrapped us both in her arms, by now I had an arm around around Carl and the other around Lori.
We stayed like that for a very long time, eventually Rick came and joined us as well, hugging us all. But he let go quickly and pulled us up with the help of Sean and Daryl. Sean was the one to help me get up but it was Daryl who embraced me once he could let go of Lori.
Now that Carl was with his parents I could finally just break down. He no longer needed me, at least for now. I didn't have to be strong for him anymore. I hugged Daryl as tightly as I could, much like Carl did to me, and just cried into his chest. I didn't know if he was crying as well or if he was being strong for me.
None of us moved all night. As soon as the sun started to shine some people started to dig the grave, it was going to be right next to Sophia's. Other people got a blanket and covered the body and once the grave was done they carried the body to the grave to bury it.
A few minutes later all of us, the eighteen of us gathered in front of his grave to say our last good-bye to him. Daryl stood a bit separated from the group, while I was next to Carl, who would bury his head on my chest every once in a while as he cried. This time Hershel didn't talk like the last time, it was Rick.
"Dale could get into your skin. He sure got under mine, because he wasn't afraid to say exactly what he thought, how he felt. That kind of honesty is rare and brave. Whenever I'd make a decision, I'd look at Dale, he'd be looking back at me with that look he had, we've all seen it one time or another. I couldn't always read him, but he could read us. He saw people for who they were. He knew things about us – The truth. Who we really are. In the end, he was talking about losing our humanity. He said this group was broken. The best way to honour him is to unbreak it. Set aside our differences and pull together, stop feeling sorry for ourselves and take control of our lives, our safety, our future. We're not broken. We're going to prove him wrong. From now on we're going do it his way. That is how we honour Dale."
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I came back :D I was away and couldn't update but happy new year everyone!!
QOTD: Did you like Dale?