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BETWEEN ALL THIS LOVE AND HATE
↳ chapter seventeen
"Alright, they're here."
Daryl announced as he entered the dark room, drawing the attention of the chatting teens, who'd been quietly discussing their upcoming plan. Forseeably, Madi was the first to react to the Dixon's sudden appearance as she smoothly slid off of the tabletop, pulling out her pistol to check her ammunition; just in case.
Following her, Lydia anxiously stood up, eyeing the loaded weapon as Madi simply tucked it into the back of her elastic waistband, her signature knife still strapped to the holster on her thigh. Lydia had already made it clear that she wouldn't fight her own people, and, in Daryl's words, that meant she would be 'in the way'.
Already, they could hear the loud rattling of their barricades collapsing. The mountain of furniture that had once blocked the main staircase had audibly fallen to the ground as a large herd of walkers forced through it.
Of course, Daryl had expected this. They'd been awaiting The Whisperers' attack, as the flesh-wearing group wanted Lydia back.
That had been the plan all along; to wait for their arrival, and to prepare while they stood by. Obviously, the group would inevitably follow them here. While Madi and Connie held the rest of The Whisperers back, Daryl would kill Beta. That was the plan.
Instinctively, Madi looked up to see Lydia's wide, brown eyes staring back at her. The taller teen appeared to be bewildered, her eyebrows raised in surprise as she studied the other girl's every movement. Of course, Madi immediately noticed her unsettled expression, "You said you were okay with this." She reminded her in a hushed tone, as to not alert Daryl.
"I am, I just.." Lydia tripped over her own words, her tongue seemingly tied as she struggled to fully express herself to the stubborn brunette.
Not that her lack of response really mattered when a flashlight abruptly lit up her face, making her pretty feautures clearer within the dark room, which was utterly void of much light, given the boarded windows. "You're with me." Daryl spoke to the girl he just hardly knew, suspiciously eyeing the two quiet teens, remaining curious of the noticable, suffocating tension between them.
Lydia squinted at the bright light the Dixon man shone in her eyes, before nervously looking back at Madi with her lips pursed. To each girls' surprise, Lydia pressed a quick kiss to Madi's cheek without much thought or hesitation. And, leaving the blue-orbed girl with parted lips and criminally flushed cheeks, Lydia obediently followed after Daryl, her steps quick as she subconsciously refused to glance back.
When the two were gone, Madi noticed Connie expectantly staring at her, a small smirk etched across the woman's attractive feautures. Like the Walsh that she was, Madi snapped out of her trance and nervously pulled her knife out, as though she needed to do something with it.
Yet, instead of further preparation, she used her thumb to simply trace the initials on the handle with the roughened pad of her fingertip; the 'M' and 'W' that Negan had carved into the surface; the same knife that had killed her father so many years ago.
Connie attempted to smother her proud smile, tapping Madi's arm to catch her attention, then pointing to the hammer on a nearby table. The young brunette followed her silent instructions, grabbing the tool and handing it to the woman. She watched distractedly as Connie flattened the loose nail into the wooden plank; ensuring it stayed against the windowframe, and correcting Madi's minor mistake.
Offering a reassuring nod, Connie handed the construction implement back and Madi replaced it into it's original location. With that, Connie gave the girl a simple, but sweet squeeze on the shoulder before exiting the room to fight her own fight. Madi followed after Daryl and Lydia, using the doorway opposite of the one Connie took, so that they could cover more ground.
The girl trotted up a set of stairs, only to almost immediately run into someone. She pulled her knife, about to stab the person rounding the same corner as her when her forearm was tightly grabbed, and a familiar scent flooded her nostrils. In front of her, Daryl exhaled a hefty breath, dropping her arm and shaking his head.
"Where's Lydia?" Madi asked, glancing around at their surroundings and noting the lack of a certain pretty, unsocialized girl. She wasn't sure what Daryl had planned for Lydia, who wouldn't fight alongside them.
The man sighed softly, momentarily shoving aside his hurt feelings, since he was still upset with Madi. His thumb signaled the dead-end hall behind him, "She's in the closet at the end of this hall. Door's locked, Dog's with 'er." He pointed to a nearby room, "You stay there, alright? I got a feeling a few of them bastards are gonna be coming this way."
Madi nodded in response to his suggestion, knowing that it was more of an order, and hesitantly entered the room that he'd directed her to, lying in wait for one of 'them bastards'.
She'd only been there for a few thought-flooded moments when a few low whisperers caught her attention, causing the brunette to stiffen as she put her back to the wall beside the door, a veiny hand set upon her unsheathed knife's smooth handle.
The second a masked freak stepped over the threshold, Madi plunged her blade into the top of the victim's skull. Of course, another whisperer followed immediately after, and Madi was thrown back against the drywall that she'd just been hiding behind, a hard grunt leaving her lips, only to be cut off by the wind that was knocked from her lungs as her shoulderblades dug directly into the rough surface behind her.
Although they wore a mask of someone else's rotten flesh, given the height of her attacker, and the mass, she figured that it was a man. As his palm wrapped securely around her throat, he was clearly large, and over a foot taller than her on a good day.
Fortunately, she held her bloody, gore-covered knife in her hand, having accidently ripped it from the other whisperer's head while being moved against her will. And so, her breathing raspy and extremely limited, she put all of her remaining force into stabbing the man. Her sharp blade went through his forearm entirely, causing him to release her and cry out; a human cry that didn't correlate with his undead appearance.
When he retracted from both Madi and her blade, her grip caused the knife to fall to the floor, clinking lightly as he cursed, "Fucking bitch!" He hollered, his volume raised above a whisper, though his voice was still just a chilling.
Frantically, her mind running a hundred miles an hour, Madi went to grab her signature weapon off of the hardwood below, only to be tackled to the ground by the stubborn man who was unhealthily determined; as though he literally couldn't stray from his orders, despite the gaping wound in his inner forearm that had just barely missed an essential vein, much to Madi's dismay.
The girl kicked and squirmed and flailed beneath his hold on her, attempting to throw the heavy man off of her. Ultimately, she was defeated when he victoriously came out on top; not that it was a fair fight, anyway. The man straddled her, grabbing her thrashing arms and restraining her.
Her jaw clenched as she glared angrily at the man, Madi breathed thickly through flared nostrils, unable to catch the breath that he'd strangled from her as she continued to fight him; though it wasn't visually noticable under his strong grip that totally smothered her efforts.
A sudden sharp pain in her lower thigh caused Madi to loudly yelp. While she couldn't see her own lower body as he enveloped her, she still instantly recognized the lasting feeling of being stabbed; and with her own knife! The one that she'd just dropped moments ago. He didn't even bother to pull the weapon from the new wound, she could still feel it inside of her leg.
Although Madi continued to push against his hands, the two seemingly calmed as the quiet was restored. The man's face drew dangerously close to Madi's, "Now, they said to try not to kill you, but.." He trailed off, his toxically bad breath fanning her face and causing the puckered, disgusted expression that she wore.
"I guess I gave it a try, didn't I?" He chuckled.
The putrid, foul-smelling man spoke with a thick, unsettling accent similar to Daryl's southern one. Peeved and subdued, Madi spit a wad of saliva into his grimy face, catching him off guard before she bit into the first source of flesh available to her; her teeth sinking deep into the side of his neck.
Her grip on him was so tight that when he pulled back, wordlessly exclaiming, his skin tore open. The wound wasn't quite deep enough to kill, not with the location that Madi had thoughtlessly latched onto. But, he was clearly hurt, as he painfully bellowed, a hand latching his bleeding injury as he stood up and lamely stumbled backward.
Madi quickly attempted to scurry to her feet, only to struggle with her stabbed leg. Still, she continued shuffling on the ground until her back collided with a heavy chest filled with contents unknown to her.
"You little bitch!" The bitten man shouted as he charged toward the cowering girl; still far too stubborn to accept defeat. In the heat of that moment, without a clear or coherent thought, Madi tore the knife from her own lower thigh, shooting up onto her knees in order to plunge her blade into the racing man's torso.
And that was it.
Finally, the haunting, masked man froze. Shocked, he looked down at his own stomach, blood rushing to his lungs and throat, causing him to choke on his own vital fluid. Madi crudely flinched as he dropped to his knees in front of her, trying and failing to say something over his choking. She backed herself as far as possible into the box behind her, her bloody leg coming in toward her chest.
Then, the man fell onto his left side, his figure going entirely still and stiff as Madi watched, her entire body shaking with an insane amount of adrenaline, and her breath still held. That is, until the girl coughed, spitting the man's flesh and blood from her mouth now that she had the second to do so, and filling her lungs with the oxygen that they'd been missing.
She clawed at her tight, bruising neck, croaking.
A sudden hand on her shoulder caused the girl to jump out of her own skin, her heart racing in her chest as she looked over at Lydia, who was visibly shocked by the sight in front of her. After a moment of processing, Madi realized that she hadn't answered to the many calls of Lydia, who'd been worriedly exclaiming 'Madi' without any response from the injured girl.
"You're bleeding.." She quickly noticed, her wide brown eyes flickering from the dead man's blood that marked Madi's lips, dripping down her chin, and setting upon the view of Madi's injured leg, red staining her grey joggers.
Her thoughts and mind clearing, Madi peered down at her open wound and fully processed what had happened. She cursed, throwing her head back, exhausted after going through so much physical pain; not only in the last few moments, but the last few weeks, as she was still healing from getting jumped in Hilltop's cells, "You've gotta be shitting me."