- Nine Days, ASZ -

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Enid snarled, pushing her way in front of Rick and getting between him and Sasha. Rick had just returned with Carl when the woman came busting in, screaming at Rick about Abe, Negan, even something about letting Carol back in the group which Enid didn't understand but also didn't really give a fuck about either. But screaming that it was Rick's fault that Negan clocked Abe? That wasn't right. If she thought that this was anything but an unstoppable juggernaut bearing down on them, she was kidding herself. "You have NO idea who you're dealing with. There are a lot of reasons NOT to go after Carol, but this? This isn't one of them. Abe should already be DEAD!"

"Now c'mon, calm down," Rick said, trying to manage her just like he'd been trying to soothe Sasha moments before. It was so infuriating how he constantly tried to placate them, treating them like bombs needing to be disarmed. Sure she was still a teenager, but she'd survived in this hellscape all on her own, for a long damn time, and that deserved some goddamn recognition. Age didn't matter anymore. Negan got that, why couldn't Rick?

She swung around, her cheeks burning so hot she thought she'd be going full-on Ghost Rider any second, giving Michonne a heads up that he was five seconds away from a knife to the kidney again. Michonne looked back at her with a shrug, she'd handled him about as much as she was planning to already. Enid turned on Rick again, spitting "Back the fuck off, Rick. I'm not your fucking kid. Don't fucking tell me to calm down, I'm the only one here who knows what we're up against." She deliberately turned away from him, talking only to Sasha and Michonne now. "Negan was ready to kill two of you that night on the road. TWO. Abe was the biggest threat once Dwight shot Daryl, and he was looking for the one that would HURT the most. I took on a debt I may never be able to pay off, but CARL was the only one of you who was safe. The only one. I think…" her fury drained away, leaving her hollow. "I think he would have killed Maggie if he hadn't figured out Carol, if she hadn't gone with him."

To her credit, Sasha's rage cooled quickly, replaced with a sick kind of despair. Enid knew that feeling. Her big, soft eyes looked intently at Enid, looking to figure her out, and after a time Sasha nodded, grimacing. "She saved us again," she said ruefully, collapsing into one of the armchairs and resting her forehead in one hand. "GOD I want to HATE that woman," she mumbled into her hand, "but she keeps doing this shit."

Enid was only marginally curious where all the bad blood came from between her and Carol, but at least Sasha wasn't blinded by inconsequential things like age, or that she'd been spying on them on behalf of the enemy. "She might not have wanted to go, but she's fine where she is, safe and sound. No one inside these walls can say the same. I don't know why Negan killed Tobin, he wasn't with you at the radio tower so it doesn't make any sense to me, and he was a good man. He shouldn't have went like that," she said, shaking her head, "but killing him was just the start."

It was Enid's turn to sit down heavily, an Atlas bearing truths invisible to the rest of them. Her eyes darted from face to face, willing them to get it, to understand how much danger they were all in, but Rick was a problem. He lived in a perpetual state of denial, even with Michonne acting as his tour guide to reality. He was worse than the most sheltered Alexandrian when it came down to it, at least they had excuses for being so obstinately blind to their own ignorance.

She latched onto an idea, an alternative approach maybe more relatable to some of them other than Rick, because she'd pretty much given up on him. She was already resigning herself that when Negan came for ASZ, she'd make sure Carl and Judith got out and just hope the rest could take care of themselves. She couldn't save all of them. Not for the first time that day, she wished Glenn and Maggie were there. Guaranteed that he'd get it. She had no idea what any of the rest of them were like before, what they did for fun, but then again she never expected to bond with Negan over video games either.

"Any of you ever played any of the Civ games? PC or console?" Only Carl nodded, and she almost gave up entirely. She raised one eyebrow at Daryl, but he shrugged and curled his lip up, which she translated as "bitch, nobody got time for that shit!" then really kinda wished he'd actually say that. She'd pay cash money and two cans of Dinty Moore to hear those words come out of Daryl. After a moment or two, Michonne squinted at her, sat down across from her again and nodded reluctantly and Enid sighed in relief. "You know how to win?"

Michonne nodded again, slowly, her brow wrinkling. "I mostly played Civ Rev. You do a land grab in the beginning, try to get all the resources you can, then hunker down and build up defenses. Concentrate on developing tech, then start building units. Easiest win is domination."

Enid nodded. "You ever win through Culture?"

Michonne snorted. "Sure, I've done it to get the achievements, but only as the Greeks or Romans. You just can't win at high difficulties with the traditional Culture leaders because the AI is too smart and puts you up against Catherine the Great or Genghis Khan. A free cathedral can't do shit against aggressive military leaders."

Enid nodded at her. "In the old world, Negan was a history teacher and coach and he loved playing Civ, all versions, but Civ Rev was the one I knew. We talk about it all the time, we've both played all the leaders and all the difficulties." She smiled a little, as if chatting with Negan about video games was a fond memory for her. "He even used mods for four in his classes, letting his kids play through actual events. Told me once that we'd all be speaking Aztec right now if it wasn't for chickenpox. Before that he was a football coach at some college in Florida, and what he cares about is his team and winning but- "

She started to say more but Sasha fell back with a strangled gurgle, looking at Enid like she'd just punched a kitten. "NEGAN," she whispered. "He was Ty's coach. Ty loved him."

"Well where's this Ty? Negan would kill his whole army for one of his players or students. Oh. Yeah. We're in the goddamn apocalypse so if this Ty is dead then it's all meaningless. You might not get tortured before he kills you if you can get him a memo in advance. Now can I finish? Thanks..." She paused, turning back to Michonne. "His favorite leader in Civ Rev is Genghis Khan...do you remember what Khan's advantage is?"

"Any barbarian village you conquer becomes one of your cities."

Enid nodded at her, letting her think on that for a moment.

"Shiiiiit," Michonne said suddenly, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling. "Costs too much to build cities, cuts into production and you get stretched too thin if you use your own resources to expand, but as Khan you can spread out over the entire fucking map, get a toehold in everywhere at no cost to you. That's what he's doing, isn't it? He's exploring the map and turning every settlement into a real-life converted barbarian village until no one is independent anymore, everyone's production supports his conquests."

Enid nodded again, with a sigh of relief.

Rick's head was bouncing back and forth between the two of them, frustration making him snap. "Negan's playing a damn game?"

Enid sighed. "Of course he is. You think any of this shit is real? You're all just pieces moving around a map, X's and O's on a whiteboard, and right now, you hold a resource that he wants. This place? Alexandria? This is where a fucking king would live, and all he has to do to take it in one piece is break you down then kill you off. One by one. By this time next year, every single one of you will be dead and Judith will be calling him Daddy." That was low, but it worked. Rick looked sick, he looked sick and dangerous. Threatening his kids was the only reliable way to motivate the man.

He started laying out a change in their plans, and she was pleased to hear that he was listening to at least some of what she had to say. Daryl and then Aaron both tried interrupting him, tried to bring him back, but he wasn't having any of it. She waited, letting them argue, letting it sink in that in the grand scheme of things that not a single fucking one of them mattered to Negan, he had no use for anyone that wouldn't take a knee, first time, every time. He'd win through domination, through strategically removing anyone that wouldn't follow the rules or wouldn't follow him, and he wouldn't think twice about it. Going in now would just get them killed that much quicker, and in payback he'd kill every other person in Alexandria along with them. Probably Hilltop too. Right now he was trying to convert them, keep them working for him while he systematically takes out the threats, but he has enough loyal followers to hold Sanctuary if he has to move on ASZ early, could even put his own up at Hilltop if he needed to. That would thin his population out, cost him some growth, and there aren't enough rabid loyalists to fill all three so it wouldn't be his first choice, but anyone he can't convert or that puts up a fight is as good as dead. Anyone involved with the massacre at the radio tower was already marked, but push him too far and he'd raze the entire compound and repopulate it with his own.

That's how you win as Ghengis Khan.

None of them were getting anywhere, they just kept going round and round until Daryl'd had enough. He raised one hand up, silencing Rick, and turned to her. "What do you think we should do, Enid?" Daryl said, looking at her as if what she had to say was vitally important to these proceedings, and all of a sudden she figured it out. Sure, some girls might like the motorcycle and attitude but he never really did much for her until that moment, not until he looked at her like what she had to say mattered. She never really got the fuss before.

She found herself blushing, which just embarrassed her, and that made her flush even redder. "You need to wait. Let Dwight and me go back to Sanctuary and wait for us to figure out who we can rally on the inside. You need to show him you can follow the rules and maybe, maybe some of you will survive. Raising an army and going in for Carol? He'll make an example out of Alexandria. He'll kill everyone here and not just the troublemakers." She looked around at all of them, avoiding looking at Daryl. "You've got time right now, he won't come back here himself for a few weeks. If you seem to be toeing the line then, he might not kill any of you right away. He wants you to be happy little worker bees up until he's ready to move in, and we'll be in a better position to strike at him. Dwight and me, we're on the inside. We're the reason this will WORK."

Daryl eyed her, silently, right up until she was about to start squirming, then said quietly, calmly, almost kindly: "The problem with your plan is that I don't trust you. I sure as shit don't trust Dwight." He turned from her as his voice began to rise, becoming rougher, angrier, but desperate too, always on the edge of begging as he focused on Rick. "And Carol won't last. She ain't gonna last a few days let alone a few weeks. We need to go in NOW. We've got Jesus and Ezekiel rallying everyone up, gettin' people in place. We can do this!"

She was so close to convincing them. So. Fucking. Close. But then Daryl had to interfere and now Rick was nodding and she was losing him. "FUCK CAROL," Enid shrieked, her moment of weakness for the man passing. She was on her feet and up in his face, jabbing a finger at him. "SHE'S NOT WORTH ALL YOUR LIVES. SHE'S WITH HIM NOW."

Daryl didn't blink, didn't move a muscle, didn't even flinch when she got too close. He shook his head at her, and in the last five seconds she'd lost all the ground she'd gained. "That's where you're wrong. You don't get it. She ain't with him," he said flatly, an edge to his voice, "and she is worth it because every one of us owes her. We. Owe. HER. She don't deserve what he's doing to her. What we did to her. And there's no fuckin' way that I'm gonna let her suffer because the fuckhead that killed Dr. Denise might have a better plan. Decision's been made," he said, looking at Rick coldly, "and you ain't changin' the plan." He turned and stormed out of the room, heading for the garage and Dwight, the others rushing after him yelling at him not to kill the man, at least not yet.

Enid burst into the garage behind the rest, convinced he was going to go all methed-out-redneck on Dwight and she'd be fucked, but he had pulled the man out of the freezer and had both hands wringing up in the collar of Dwight's shirt. He was squeezing just enough to start cutting into his neck and his air supply, bending the man back over the chest freezer, but not enough to kill him. Yet. "New plan, fuckhead," he growled, right up in Dwight's face, enraged, with spittle flying. "You're gonna run back home and deliver a message to Carol, then you're going to shut your fucking mouth and wait until we show up. If you help us take Negan down, we might let you live. You don't help us? You betray us to him? You'll die slow an' ugly, legs and arms broken and staked to the ground, screaming as walkers eat your guts out of your body. You get me?" He shook the man, slamming him back against the freezer over and over until Dwight managed to get out a sound that was as close as they'd get to an agreement. "Good answer," he said, dropping him but not stepping back. He reached over to where his crossbow was sitting, where Dwight had set it down when Carl had forced him at gunpoint to stand still and get tied up, and he yanked a bolt out of the attached quiver, handing it to Dwight. "You give her this. Tell her it's from me. She'll know what it means." Dwight nodded dumbly, then Daryl reared back and punched him in the face. "That's for my shoulder, fuckhead." He cocked his arm back and slammed his fist into Dwight's face again, and then again, his head rocking back to strike the freezer door. "And that's for Denise. We're gonna tell her girlfriend that Negan killed her, otherwise Tara would rip you to PIECES, you piece of shit. You better hope she never finds out differently." Dwight nodded again, blood streaming from his broken nose, and Daryl turned away, scooping up his crossbow and stalking toward the door. "I'm goin' to talk to Ezekiel, make sure they're ready," he tossed over his shoulder as he went for his pack. "Somebody get that fuck close to Sanctuary and then drop his bitch ass off to walk."

- Nine Days, Sanctuary -

She'd hoped he was dead, the blonde man. When he wasn't with Negan, Carol had hoped that meant he was dead too. But he wasn't.

He came ambling up to the gates as the sun was going down, his face a mess of bruises and the break in his nose causing it to swell up all potato-like. Negan made her go out to the courtyard with him to greet the man and hear his explanation, and for a second she thought maybe Negan would kill him with how suspicious he seemed to be about the blonde man's whereabouts. But then the man told him a convincing story about getting knocked off the truck on the way back, falling into a drainage ditch and getting knocked out cold hitting a culvert, and barely making it out alive before the geeks found him. Negan welcomed him back and put him right back on duty guarding her. Told him he could go see the doctor later, after she was in bed for the night. The man just nodded, and circled around to stand behind her.

Negan dismissed her then, told her to get some sleep because they had a big day tomorrow. He didn't tell her what it was. She thought he might have been more willing to talk to her about things like that a few days ago, but he seemed different towards her now: a little conciliatory, a little tentative, like she was a fragile thing teetering on the edge. Maybe that's how she looked, but she wasn't at risk of breaking. She was already broken. She was already so far beyond broken now, she was a hollow piece of meat going through all the motions.

The blonde man followed her to her room. She unlocked the door, pushing it open, and she felt him move closer behind her. She tensed, sucking in a breath, curling her hand into a fist ready to plant it into his already broken nose. He made a noise, a huff of sound, and she felt something being pressed against her hand. "Take it," he hissed, "A message from your friend." Her hand unclenched reflexively and she grasped on to whatever it was, then she felt it in her hand, the familiar cool, smooth aluminum cylinder that made up the shaft of Daryl's crossbow bolts. It felt like a red-hot iron spike being driven through her chest, and she gasped for air and fell against the doorframe, clutching at it as if the floor was tilting beneath her trying to spill her off into space.

She didn't know why Rick would give this man one of Daryl's crossbow bolts to give to her, let alone why he would have spoke to the man at all without killing him outright, but she thought it was a particularly cruel gesture for him to send her a memento like this. Was he just trying to drive home that Daryl was gone now? Was this his way of blaming her for what Negan did? If so, it was almost laughable that Rick would think there was any blame left that she hadn't already taken on. Every little bit of this was her own fault, hers alone, and knowing that the world kept turning even though Daryl Dixon was no longer in it, well that was more than she could handle.

As far as she was concerned, there were no more rotations around the sun, she'd been plunged into absolute darkness and no sunrise would ever pierce the veil.

She pushed herself away from the door and slammed it shut behind her.

- Ten Days. Somewhere Else. -

"Pull over," Negan said, his voice tinged with something suspicious. If she didn't know better, she would've thought it sounded like...delight? Anticipation? Eagerness? He was tilted back away from her in his seat, giving her that laconic stare of his, as Wes steered the vehicle to one side of the road and pulled to a stop. The other, heavier vehicles could still get around them but idled in place, waiting.

He stared at her for longer than a moment, eyes never creeping away from her own as she met his gaze with one of placid affection. She let a small smile curl up one side of her mouth, which might have been what he was waiting for because once he had it, he was in motion. Flinging open the door, he stepped down, Lucille in hand, and strutted back along the line of trailing vehicles. One by one, as he passed, they started up again and headed forward down the road, leaving just the Humvee and a single pickup truck with a half dozen men in it.

Dwight peeled himself out of the passenger seat and approached Negan. The two of them spoke, heads bowed slightly together, for a good minute before she got tired of watching and turned back around. Wes was rotated almost ninety degrees in his seat, staring at her, his normal expression of cold indifference replaced with something darker, angrier. Hateful. She met his eye and held it, her own face as blank and impenetrable as a window shuttered from the inside. Blood suffused his cheeks and a vein pulsed in his forehead as he tried to intimidate her into something — submission? — and her non-response only infuriated him. It was a lost cause on his part: her eyes might be glued to his but her mind was miles away, back in Georgia, thinking of the night she spent with Daryl in the women's shelter. They'd both been beat to hell by crashing the car, exhausted and dirty and traumatized by the last few days of pecan groves and railroad cars, but they'd been together. Within eyesight, assured of each other's relative safety and continuation of drawing breath, and most days that was all either of them needed.

It was enough to know the other was still breathing.

In her memory he was lying next to her, radiating heat, and despite the turmoil in her soul and the whirlpool of anguish that was attempting to suck her down and drown her, she was anchored to this life by his presence. She wished, in hindsight, she'd rolled over and kissed him then because maybe they'd still be in that room now, kissing and touching and loving. She wished she'd at least turned in place and looked at him, memorized him in that moment, while she told him how very important he was to her. That he was the force that kept her heart pumping the blood in her veins, that kept her legs moving when every muscle screamed in agony. That it was him that kept her from slipping beneath the surface and letting despair fill her throat and block her airway. She wished she had told him, just once, that without him she would choke to death on her own regrets. But she didn't. She fell asleep. And now he was dead because a sociopath with trust issues wanted her all to himself.

She was at sea again, but the stars were shuttered in the sky and no wind filled her sails. She was adrift in a vast ocean with no possibility of rescue, not anymore, and the only thing left to do was to let herself sink below into the cold, lonely finality of darkness.

The door beside her opened and Negan reached for her hand, tugging her out of the vehicle and leading her across the road, away from the others, down the embankment and towards the tree line. She looked back, once, and saw his men ranged around the vehicles, weapons in hand, watching them with carefully blank faces. Dwight stood slightly apart from the rest, his head rolled back as he studied her from slitted eyes, slouching in place and tapping his index finger on the trigger of his shotgun. It was the last thing she saw before Negan dragged her into the woods and the trees crowded in behind them.

She was quite certain that he was taking her into the woods to kill her, but she didn't care enough to ask him why now? And why like this? Why not in front of an audience where her death could be useful to him? And why did he dress her up in biker's leathers, only slightly too big for her — leather pants and jacket that he'd sent four of his men out to find for her, and only three had come back — telling her to wear them no matter how hot it got because no geek could bite or scratch her through the hide? Why do all that only to kill her now? She just couldn't fathom how his mind worked.

They walked for a few minutes, barely out of earshot of the road, when he stopped abruptly and she plowed into his back. Her full, distracted weight banging into him didn't even signify, his feet were planted in the earth and his body was as unyielding as one of the trees that surrounded them; she might as well have been water crashing against a rock. He glanced over his shoulder at her and grinned, using their linked hands to tug her forward next to him. She looked up at his face, speculatively, and he smiled down on her with a measure of fondness that might have warmed her heart in another time, another place, with another man. If Ed had ever looked at her like this, she suspected her life would have been very different. If Daryl had, she'd probably have combusted in place. But this was Negan, and any tender feelings he might have towards her sprang from deceit, violence, and death. He gave her no choice so she gave him a lie, she gave him a shell of a body to do with what he would while her mind and soul were elsewhere. For whatever reason, that elicited affection from him, care for her and her well-being, and an equally strong impulse to destroy her. He was like a small child, so enraptured with his new puppy that he couldn't stop hugging it even as he squeezed it to death. And she was okay with that now. She was ready to let go. There wasn't anything left to keep her here.

But he didn't bring her here to kill her body, just her soul.

"I saw this place the other day. Got outta the truck to take a leak and saw a flash of white through the trees. Thought it was some fucker watching us so I took off after him but found this place." He said this while wrapping his arms around her, holding her tight against him with her back against his front, and he spoke in a hushed tone as he ran his lips down the curve of her neck breathing shivers against her skin. She stared dumbly ahead, not understanding the change of events, not comprehending what she was seeing here. It was a break in the trees, and a shaft of light pouring down on the last remains of an old fence, crumbling into chunks of rotten wood and rusted iron around the edges but still held up in the middle by the twining glory of a Cherokee rose bush in full bloom, a hundred pure white blossoms exploding from the deep green leaves and tendrils choking the remains of the fence beneath it. "I know you like this flower, you've been stitching it on every fuckin' thing in your room, and I saw this place and though maybe I could make love to my favorite wife surrounded by her favorite flower. Cherokee roses for my Georgia girl, my own Cherokee rose." He whispered the last part, a hot, breathy growl as he turned her in his arms and ducked his head, his mouth seeking hers. He was uncontrolled, insatiable, his hands grasping at the smooth leather cupping her curves, his strong arms lifting her to her tiptoes while his mouth devoured her, but his heat was like a single match trying to burn in a hurricane. His passion, all consuming and as wild and destructive as a forest fire, was turned pitiful and impotent when set against the fathomless depths of her rage, the empty vacuum of her hate.

She let him kiss her, ravage her mouth, as she twisted her arm away and flattened her shoulder so that the sleeve of her jacket slipped down over her hand. Tucked up inside, secured with embroidery floss to the lining, was the crossbow bolt that Dwight had delivered to her as confirmation, a souvenir of Daryl's murder. She'd studied the thing at length, the pointed barb affixed to such a delicate shaft of metal, such a thin length of aluminum that carried a small scrap of steel and turned it into a vehicle for death. When he'd given it to her, she'd looked at him curious and confused, not understanding, and he'd whispered "a message from your friend." He had folded her fingers around it and forced her to conceal it within her shirt, the arrowhead scratching a line across the skin of her belly that would be dotted with small beads of dried blood when she finally noticed it later. Only afterwards did she recall that he pressed his mouth close against her ear to deliver the killing blow, whispering "I'm really sorry to tell you this, but he went to Alexandria to kill your man. No one could stop him, he wouldn't be denied. I saw your friend after, and he sent this to you. Said you'd understand."

She did not cry. She hadn't shed a single tear for Daryl. Dead things don't cry. Instead she broke the shaft down to a reasonable length, ran a stone along the four blades coming to a point to sharpen them, then sewed her weapon into the sleeve of her jacket. There would be time.

There would be time.

And now, clenched together in a clearing in the woods with the distant voices of his men a rough murmur, was that time. She slid it into her hand and broke the kiss, leaning back from him to meet his hungry gaze half-drunk with desire, and thrust the bolt into his neck.

He staggered back from her, eyes wide and panicked, reaching toward the shaft but she still had a grip on it, and she yanked it out again, the barbs on the head tearing open a gaping hole in his flesh that began to gush blood like she'd tapped a mountain-fed spring. He stumbled, falling back against the broken fence, trying to dam the flood but already the knowledge of his own death was hollow in his eyes.

"I'd have stayed with you, done whatever you wanted, without complaint," she said to him, standing aloof as he began to wilt. "I gave my word, and you were good to me in your way, and it was enough for me to know that they were safe. But it wasn't enough for you. You had to destroy everything that came before you. You had to kill him, kill my Daryl." His eyes went wide, and his mouth began to move, but even if he had a voice there was nothing he could say that would matter. Not anymore. "If you had just left Daryl alone, let him live out his time in peace, I could have lived as your whore. I could have lived with myself. But you didn't." His arms fell away from the bloody massacre of his throat and he looked up at her in wonder as too much blood left his body to sustain his life. Numbing cold crept over him and his field of vision narrowed until it was just her face he saw as she knelt next to him, holding his hand, then his vision dimmed as the world went silent and he died tangled up in vines and white roses.

She stayed like that for a time, long enough to hear the familiar rasps and growls of the dead dragging themselves towards the smell of blood, coming from all directions among the trees. She stayed until they were close, so close, until the figure lying next to her began to twitch again as a different kind of hunger filled him, then she held up the pistol she'd liberated from his belt and shot up into the air twice, then again, knowing the sound would bring the dead faster but the living as well. She stayed at his side as he tried to free himself from the grasp of the roses, weak like a newborn kitten trying to reach the warm, living flesh of her body. She blocked the sight of him from his men as they flooded into the clearing and tried to fight off the encroaching dead. They almost succeeded too, but in the chaos no one noticed as she made her way among them, disabling or felling each one as he fought until only their screams lingered as the dead feasted, then she made her rounds again and finished them all — the dead and the living alike — with muffled shots or jabs to the brain. Only then did she notice Dwight, standing in the shadows as Negan's animated corpse began to claw it's way across the forest floor, too driven by starvation to bother getting to his feet, and she let her hands fall to her sides. The buck knife and pistol she'd picked up along the way dropped from her numb fingers and she sagged to her knees, Negan's fingers grasping at her calves, pulling her towards his gaping maw, and she smiled at Dwight with real warmth, eyes sparkling. She gave a slight shrug as if telling him there were worse ways to go as she simply gave up the fight, but he was on them in a heartbeat, plunging his own blade into Negan's ear and finally ending it all.

The glare she shot him, full of disbelief and betrayal, was gentle compared to the gush of vitriol and curses that spilled from her mouth, and she lunged towards him with fists poised. He cold-cocked her in the chin and caught her when her body went limp as her mind went black.

He carried her back to the Humvee, laying her down on the back seat with a great deal of gentleness, bordering on reverence, then returned for Negan, hauling him back and setting him upright in the passenger seat. Lucille was in the next trip, and she was propped up between Negan's feet to rest against his knee. WIth his red scarf pulled up and sunglasses on, he could pass for the living, and Dwight giggled to himself about enacting a "Weekend at Bernie's" scenario with Negan's cold, dead corpse. After he'd gathered up all the guns and knives, machetes and crowbars — any implement of death he could find strewn about the killing field — he plucked one of the biggest, fullest blooms off the rose bush and set it down on the seat next to Carol's head, hoping the sight of a pretty flower would soothe her when she woke.

Then he got in the driver's seat and started up the engine, heading towards Sanctuary. His mind was going a million miles an hour trying to figure out how to take out all of Negan's loyalists, before they figured out that the man was nothing anymore but an 80s movie cliche.

It was a good problem to have.

- AN-

So...yeah... sorry I disappeared. In the ten (!) months since I last posted, I lost two beloved pets, almost a third, and two beloved people who were important to me. It messed me up.

There's still a couple chapters left to this, mostly written. This story was supposed to get lighter at some point, but I had to throw out a lot that I've written in the past few months because it just kept getting darker. I hope it ends up being worth the wait.

Thank you to all of you who contacted me or posted multiple reviews while I was...on hiatus? Checked out? Depressed as fuck? It meant a lot to know there was still interest.

Anyway, thanks. And new chapters to follow, though I can't commit to a schedule yet. Just promising I WILL finish it.