Archive of Our Own ^beta

Maggie rapped on the door gently with the back of her hand. It stung where her knuckles were still cracked and healing.

“Jesus?”

No reply. Siddiq had said he was in shock. They were all in shock. But Jesus most of all. He hadn’t come out in two days, or opened the door for food. Maggie saw the plate still sitting near the threshold. She tried the knob and expected to find it locked tight. Instead, it yielded smoothly.

The fetid, ferric smell of blood hit her first. Once, it would have acted like a curtain, forcing her back to adjust. After years of being surrounded by, and in, sun rotted gore, she found the smell of new blood relatively uncomplicated. The problem was the source.

It was on the sheets. The floor, in sticky half-pools were it had congealed around the halo of shoeprints. Streaks across white bedding showed where Jesus had been moved onto the bed, where Siddiq must have sat and smeared it further. The pitcher of water and basin stood where she’d left it two days ago atop the dresser, full, the cloths and towels pristine. If it hadn’t been for the utter chaos the fight with the Saviors had caused their satellite stations, she would have come sooner. She should have come sooner. Because she knew what this felt like.

“Jesus.” Maggie let the door click shut behind her and set the fresh tray down by the basin. He hadn’t moved from where he was curled up like a comma amid the splatter. When she brought the damp cloth to his face, dabbing at dry streaks and trying to work the web of splatter from his hair, he twitched. She saw recognition there.

“Don’t.”

“You can’t lie in it forever.” Maggie reasoned quietly. Her patient didn’t fight her, but didn’t help either, remaining limp even as she worked the cloth through knots. Siddiq had said that his wounds were minor, and clean. He’d stitched and spent his time attending the others. Since, six people had died. It looked like a seventh was imminent due to blood loss. Jesus wouldn’t die. But she didn’t think he’d return intact, either.

The rest of the process, slow, pointed, occurred in silence. His breathing was so shallow she couldn’t hear it. Gradually, the basin pinkened and the towels turned black. Jesus’ skin and hair resumed something of its usual color, but the iron tang of the room had intensified. He looked like he’d rolled in it. Maggie hadn’t seen, but Ezekiel had. He’d told her. Carol had too, but she hadn’t spoken since.

Maggie didn’t know what to offer. What had pulled her through wouldn’t work for Jesus. He didn’t value revenge. And if he had, what more was there to take?

--

Paul felt the pressure and temperature of her hands on him. Recognized her voice. He didn’t feel the need to respond to it, but let her do what she saw fit and then leave.

The pink beds of his nails were visible. The stink of death had lessened, but he still occasionally caught it when the breeze slipped under the raised window pane.

His fingers hurt. The deep blisters on the insides of either hand cracked and stretched when he tried to move them, so he left them curled inward. Siddiq hadn’t seen that under the blood. The stitching over his left shoulder and chest itched faintly.

Maggie left food on the dresser that smelled like oats and beans. He thought he ought to have told her to give it to someone else. Not to waste it. But disinterest in rationing and altruism overpowered the fleeting urge to speak. It felt better not to. His teeth hurt, and his tongue felt like a shriveled leaf in his mouth. Maggie had brought water to the bedside, and that, somehow, was similarly disinteresting. He’d watched her hand on the glass, the scuffed knuckles and broken nails. And then he’d watched her set it down. The room became quiet again.

Ain’t gonna be like that. We’ve got ‘em this time. We’ll win.

Liar, Paul thought. What false bravado. He hadn’t thought Daryl was capable of it.

Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe that’s what he really thought.

Paul thought he should get up. Drink. Wash the rest of the way. Look to their dead, who were many. That dogged push for normalcy and rhythm wasn’t there. He imagined their dead being interred in a polyandrion. Burned on a shared pyre. The labor it would take, the duty bound up in it. How he ought to be doing that, too. Nausea passed like a shadow, and then a sort of chilly numbness. He slept.

When he woke, the sun was gone from the sky. The clouds covered the stars, and he had no sense of the hour. From the window, there was no lingering scent of the cookhouse, no smoke on the breeze from dinner. Instead, the sharp, piney sting of night. Paul watched what he thought might be the edge of a branch in the darkness. It moved in a hypnotic bob and weave with the air. He thought the excessively fluid arabesques it created in the night sky, like phosphenes from a glow stick, might be an optical illusion. Blinking made them dimmer.

It wasn’t me!

He jolted hard. The headboard tapped the wall.

This happened now, at times. When his mind stilled just enough, echoes of the fighting bounced off the sides of his head. The volume grew so loud that he mistook it for a threat.

His fists curled, and one of the blisters snapped open, bringing a cool stinging to the surface of his palm. He tried to count his breaths and forgot.

His eyes stung, dry. When he closed them, he met the unblinking gaze of a rabbit in the grass, its ears pricked up, veining visible in the dying light. He could see its chest moving with its heartbeat, slamming hard in a tense panic, feet pressed into the ground. Paul was trapped in the same torpor, inhaling on reflex alone, blades in either grip. He bolted forward from the grass.

--

They burned the bodies half a mile out. Rick thought it wasn’t far enough. Ezekiel didn’t want to risk a brush fire. They compromised, enduring together the strange odor of whole, unrotted flesh in the flames. It had never been their custom to burn the dead. But it had been Hilltop’s. And this time, there were too many. Thirty-nine in total, and Rick presumed at least another three based on Siddiq’s assessment.

“How were we supposed to see it coming?” Craig muttered, glancing between Rick and Ezekiel as though they ought to have predicted the resurgence. The numbers.

Rick swiped at his face and brought his hand away, black with dirt and ash. None of them had. Not even Carol. And she had been the last to monitor the Sanctuary. After Daryl.

Daryl.

Michonne’s long fingers gripped his arm. Squeezed. He turned his face to her, forehead bending to press against the sticky place where her shoulder was bare. The other was bandaged. Her hand combed through his hair.

“We need to go home.” She whispered.

“We’re not done here.” Rick disagreed in a shaky exhalation. “Maggie was right. We’re not done.”

Michonne wanted to ask. He could feel her wanting to ask—what’s left to do?—but he couldn’t quite wrap his tongue around the words. Instead, they walked to Barrington together. Maggie stood on the porch astride a dark stain on the wood. Alden’s stain. Rick had shot him through the throat as soon as they got back. Him and three others, the pile of which now rotted in a walker trap fifty yards past the tree line.

“You need t’rest.” Maggie’s folded arms felt like an accusation. She would have been right to make it. To dangle ‘I told you so, and now they’re dead’ in front of him. But she didn’t. Gestured the two inside.

There was tea and not much else in her office. Rick slumped back in the chair. Michonne sat on the edge, somehow still energized enough to hold her spine straight.

“Is Herschel…?” She began, glancing to the ceiling where the nursery was.

“He’s asleep.”

Herschel was one. He wouldn’t remember any of it, nor did he understand it now. But Rick had raised two toddlers. They sensed things with greater clarity than people assumed. Part of him wondered if the instinctive part of the brain retained it. Was Herschel inundated with grief and anger, too young to comprehend what either of those emotions were? Had he felt them in the womb too, when his father died?

“Are you gonna tell me?” Maggie spoke it like a statement rather than a question. Rick drank the tea that smelled like pine needles and mint. Michonne looked to him.

“I was on the east end of the factory with Aaron, when it happened. Rick was with Carol and the rest.”

Carol, Ezekiel, Jesus, and Daryl.

“You don’t know?” Rick rasped, wishing she would say she did. That someone had told her. But who would that have been? He’d seen Carol by the pyre, a statue. Ezekiel had made her leave. Jesus, he hadn’t seen at all.

“No.” Maggie didn’t elaborate. Rick realized this was the ‘I told you so.’ She was making him explain it to her. How his decision had been the wrong one.

Bringing air out felt like trying to gain traction on gravel. He clutched the cup too hard and Michonne took it from him. Rick brushed the butt of the Python out of habit, even if it was too light now.

“We took the west side. Near the front. They’d put up the dead—I don’t know how long they must have been gatherin’ them. They had at least seventy-five, maybe a hundred.” He shook his head. It was hard to estimate without actively remembering, and he didn’t want to imagine the looming façade of the factory. The shadows writhing in the windows that had burst out on them.

“They were chained up.” Michonne offered. “This was all around the perimeter—but there were more in the front.”

Maggie was a stone. Her gaze never moved from Rick’s. “And then what.”

“Our snipers took some of them out. Daryl took most of them,” he admitted, hating the way his voice cracked around his brother’s name. Guilt.

“We knew they didn’t have bombs or ammo. Couldn’t have. But figured spears, maybe. Short-range projectiles. Avoided the main route. Waited for the signal.” This had all been according to plan. It wasn’t supposed to be half as dangerous as the initial siege, when the Saviors were at the apex of their power. Almost three years after the War, there were barely half left at the Sanctuary. They remained without arms, and without access to their former chokepoints. Two of the satellite buildings had been torn down, and the others occupied by Alexandrians or colonists of the Hilltop. The Saviors had no base, no weapons, half their numbers, and no Negan. Reverse-engineering their organization from this standpoint felt impossible. And it wasn’t as though there was anyone left now to ask.

A low shudder started in his belly and worked its way up the length of his Vagus nerve. His left hand felt partially numb from the ring finger out. He curled it. “We went to clear the side stairwell first. The walkers weren’t a problem. Most of them were dead—weighing down the rest. We got past them. Daryl and Jesus took the side wall to snipe, and Carol and I got the bulkhead doors. Prepped for a surge, but there was nothing. We looked,” Rick insisted, his voice defensively sharp. Because even if Maggie didn’t know what happened, she knew the results. “We looked.”

The interior of the stairwell had been empty. Dark, but visibly empty. Its walls were smooth, with no niches for hiding, no doors concealing hallways or closets, not so much as a circuit breaker panel. The only set of doors was on the opposite end, nearly ten yards away. And even from the stairwell, Rick could see the iron chains glinting where they were wrapped around both handles. That entry point had been locked from the exterior during the initial process of securing the large factory. Those chains were Alexandria’s chains, and that padlock had one tiny brass key, hung up in the foyer of Alexandria’s single-cell prison.

“A few of the walkers broke loose. We handled it—Ezekiel and me. Daryl and Jesus were still on the wall. Carol must have been watching them. I heard her fire first. They were coming out of the tunnel.” The strange distortion the tunnel had produced on their voices stuck with him. He could hear tone but not words. Encouraging, shouting.

Ne-egan. Ne-egan.

“One of their spears hit Daryl. I saw him go down backward off the wall. Jesus dropped down after him. They cut loose the rest of the walkers—Ezekiel and I got stuck. Carol had to help pick us out while we cut through them.” It had felt like walking through mud, but realistically, he didn’t think it could have lasted for more than five or ten minutes. He’d emptied the last of his rounds and used daggers on the rest. Ezekiel had had a scythe.

“By the time we got over the wall, they were swarming.”

“The Saviors.” Maggie clarified.

“Walkers.” Rick bit out. “They had more of them. Maybe chained up past the loading docks on the south side—they cut them loose.”

“They followed the sound.” Maggie reasoned.

Rick rolled his shoulders. “I didn’t see Daryl.” But that wasn’t entirely true. He saw things that were Daryl’s. His knife, lost in the dirt near the base of the wall. Shreds of his plaid shirt in the grass. Blood and mud and signs of a struggle. “There was a cluster of dead by the shed wall.” He choked a sound out. “But there were clusters forming everywhere. The dead were everywhere.”

He, Ezekiel, and Carol had fanned out, calling for Daryl and Jesus and then caught up in fighting off the growing herd. They were being drawn by blood. Beyond the wall, a field had grown up over the crumbling asphalt, but the earth wasn’t deep enough to absorb what was soaking it. There were at least a dozen Saviors with blades in their necks or skulls, all leaking profusely into the weeds.

“I assumed,” Rick continued, “That Cyndie’s group had caught up and taken them out. But we didn’t find them. We looked for Daryl—for the rest of the Saviors. We couldn’t even find one alive to ask. It took over an hour to clear the area. They must have been gathering the dead for months—maybe storing them to the south, in that old hangar. Weaponizing them just like—”

Like we did, when we had the high ground.

“—the Governor did.”

“Where was Daryl.”

“Maggie.” He shook his head. The backs of his eyes were hot and showered with pinpricks. I don’t know. “We looked.” I don’t know. He took a shallow breath that ended too quickly. I couldn’t even tell you. “We thought he might have gotten caught.” I can’t even say where he died. “Right after he fell. Between the shed and the wall.”

By the time they’d managed some degree of movement amongst the three of them, they were cutting through clusters of dead that had encircled the many savior corpses in the lot. Inspecting. Searching. But walkers made quick work of bodies—each pile of innards looked roughly the same. All the fabric equally red soaked, human shapes and silhouettes blurred.

As they moved further south where the lot became true grass and earth, the fronds high in late summer, there were more dead, surrounded and being fed on. One, hidden by the brush, had barely begun to attract flies. It was a man Rick remembered, one of the workers on Eugene’s biofuel project. His throat had been slashed open with such strength that it had severed everything through to the spine. The murky grey gleam of bone was visible even past congealing gore. He'd put a pike through its skull and moved on, searching for Daryl and Jesus. For Jesus.

Rick had almost moved right past him without knowing it. If it hadn’t been for the slight twitch of a jackrabbit, poised near bent fronds with both ears erect, Rick wouldn’t have seen it at all. The high grasses were bent inward three yards east, and Jesus lay in them unmoving, his shoulder trickling red in a thin line.

Rick told her this. Step by step, remembering as he spoke it. They’d canvassed the area for Daryl until dark, but only because Rick had demanded it. Once the others began to gather, Cyndie’s crew and Michonne’s finally rejoining their own small band, everyone else was convinced. They’d walked past him dozens of times, they just weren’t sure exactly where. Rick never knew where.

Michonne reached her arm about him when he turned his face away, the prickling pain bleeding out and blurring the dimly lit room. He could smell her homemade soap and sweat when she pressed close. We shouldn’t have let them live. We shouldn’t have let him live. You were right. Daryl was right. I’m sorry.

“The spear.” Maggie said quietly. “You said one of the Saviors threw a spear, and that knocked him off the wall. Where was it?”

Rick swallowed tightly. “Jesus had it. I think he saw it happen.”

--

Recollection came back in dribs and drabs, like the first granules of hail before a storm.

He remembered odd things. Meaningless things. The cracks in the old asphalt where weeds were sprouting knee-high. The slant of the sun when it hit the decimated roof of the Sanctuary. The faint smell of the woods beneath ash and rot.

His arms were sore with the effort of motion, but the energy propelling him didn’t ebb with the elimination of one threat, only arose to meet the next. A man in a sock cap was running ahead of him, having cast aside his spear. Paul flung his own forward and hit his back. It didn’t stop him, but it caused his right side to drag. Slower. Retrieving the spear was quick because it hadn’t gone deep. His blade did, and he left it where it fell in the back of a hard skull. The man pitched forward onto the asphalt. Paul stepped on his hand and felt bones break as he leaped clear.

He'd seen the woman fling an alcohol-soaked container at Ezekiel. It had missed. When Paul flung the blade from beneath his coat, it didn’t. She pitched to the side, and he barely stopped to jerk the steel free, gouging a scarlet ribbon across the line of her throat. The smell stuck with him even as the gravel turned to earth and grass underfoot.

The Savior in the faded cut in front of him was familiar. Paul had seen him at the Sanctuary before. Seen him on the battlefield with a gun. Most recently, he’d seen him with the crooked wood shaft and spear that Paul now held in one tight hand. Maybe he hadn’t been the one to throw it. Maybe it hadn’t been his blade that knocked Daryl from the wall. But Paul thought it had been. He flung the spear deliberately low, catching him in the calf and forcing a trip.

The man saw him and shouted it.

It wasn’t me! I didn’t hit him!

The blade formed a glittering arc when it sliced through the air, slowing as it encountered resistance but never stopping. Paul drove it in a clean half-circle, gouging out the crevice of the man’s esophagus before snatching up his spear to pursue the rest. Walkers were gathering around the fallen, and the mixture of fresh blood and old rot overwhelmed him.

He didn’t remember the river. It was more dream than recollection. Flinging himself into its clear waters, he let the current drag him down. It coursed beneath him, around him, gliding past his fingertips and soothingly over his scalp and then suddenly forced its way between his lips, plunging down his throat. Choking.

Paul gasped through a mouthful of water, inhaling it and wheezing out a breath as he jerked up reflexively in the bedding to spit the rest out. Maggie smoothed his hair back with a cool hand.

“I’m sorry. But you can’t go that long without drinkin’. We don’t have IVs.”

Paul coughed again. Choked. Breathed and drank the water being offered. He could taste the clean, sharp flavor of the well and the dead, old blood caught in his teeth.

“Slowly, Jesus.” Maggie’s soft voice distracted him from the light touch on his cheek, guiding him. He drained the glass, chest rising and falling rapidly.

Satisfied, she sat back and allowed Paul to lie back down in his nest of crinkled, reddened sheets. Paul lay in silence and her company for what might have been five minutes or an hour. His eyes slid shut, and he found her hand stroking his calf rhythmically. Just before he dropped into sleep, she spoke.

“Jesus.”

It hurt to open his eyes.

“Th’others’re here. From Alexandria.”

He didn’t want to hear what she had to say about that.

“They’re helpin’. With a—Tara calls it a cenotaph. A memorial.”

Paul felt a muscle in his jaw ripple. He knew what it meant. An empty grave. For someone whose body couldn’t be recovered but whose death was certain.

When he spoke, it felt like his throat was bleeding and sounded worse. “I don’t want that.”

“No?” She didn’t stop rubbing his leg. “I didn’t think I did, either. Seeing the grave helped. Seeing other people see it, helped. Your flowers helped.” She whispered.

“We don’t know he’s dead.” Paul’s voice hitched, and he felt the burning pain behind his eyes that meant tears. He was too dehydrated, and instead they only itched. Maggie’s fingers constricted near his ankle, thumb rubbing the tendon.

“Rick said,” she began carefully, “that you might. That you might know.”

Paul felt his teeth pierce his lower lip as he turned his face into the pillow. “No.”

“We want to do right by him. And the others think you should have a say. The final say. You were his…” She sought a word and seemed to recognize that they’d never used one. “You were his.” Maggie completed it.

Paul let out a sob that rattled the bedframe, shoving his forehead and nose into the pillow and curling his hand around the edge. He felt the blisters stretch and pop again, burning where the starched fabric rubbed them raw. It wasn’t supposed to be him first.

Maggie folded herself over the comma shape of his form, arm encircling his waist and absorbing the hard, racked shudders and sobs. Paul couldn’t stop. Maggie squeezed him back without asking him to.

--

When Paul woke again, it was dusk. The pink-blue light of the setting sun that hit the window had a melancholy aura about it. He closed his eyes against the image and wished it dark.

Maggie came back. He didn’t know when she’d left, but this time, she was trailing the smell of cooked oats and honey. He didn’t sit up, but she placed the tray on the bedside table and brought the water to his mouth. It felt rude to refuse, so he drank.

“It will always hurt this intensely, won’t it?”

Her mouth thinned. A nod. “You learn to live with it, rather than let it consume you.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. A lot of us can.” She reminded gently. “It’s the only way.”

“I was so close.” Paul whispered. The memory hovered on the edge of his conscience, a dreadful thing that made his skin prickle and itch and took every ounce of energy to ward off.

“There was nothin’ you could have done.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” Maggie disagreed gently.

“I was so close, Maggie.” He watched the place just beneath the window sill where the wood paneling had a knot in it. It looked like the eye of the hare he’d seen in the high grass, poised to flee, chest thudding visibly as its heart raced in indecision.

“He fell. I followed. The dead were right there—all at once. I got the spear out.” He remembered the vibration of it, yanked from Daryl’s thigh and tearing tendon out with it. Paul had thrust the same blade through two soft skulls and used it to ram the others. But there were endless others. Waiting. Daryl hadn’t even been able to get up. And then he couldn’t reach.

I promised him my life. And then I cost him his.

Paul didn’t know if he’d said it aloud. Maggie was still sitting beside him, one leg folded on the bed.

“It wasn’t your fault, Jesus. But you’re goin’ to think that for a while. Your mind will mix up grief an’ guilt.”

“I can’t even process that he’s not here.”

“That’s what the cenotaph’s for. To give you a here. A place to talk to him.”

Paul pushed his face into the filthy pillow and fell into silence again, heart thudding so audibly he knew Maggie could hear it too.

“It’s okay if you can’t come. Give us your blessing. So you’ll have a place t’go.”

Paul hated the idea of building it only slightly less than the idea of letting others do it for him. “I’ll do it. When?”

“Another day. We gathered stones all afternoon. Diggin’ out a spot outside the wall. Figured he’d want that, since he hated being cooped up.”

“Yes.”

“Eat, so you can carry them.” Maggie advised, and she left him then to sleep.

--

Aaron didn’t recognize Jesus when he joined them.

They’d been stacking stones all day yesterday for the many cairns and graves, but more for the cenotaph beneath the folding hawthorn tree outside the walls. Aaron had placed some of the nicer ones near the roots. Earl had etched eight names in eight flat-faced stones, but Aaron thought that he’d picked the nicest for Daryl.

They were arranging them in the dug-out divot beneath the tree, just the same way that they might for a headstone or cairn atop a body. Because it was an empty tomb, there was no need to dig deep. It was the location that mattered.

He and Rick were grunting through the motion of maneuvering the headstone, Aaron leaning too much onto his good side, when Jesus slipped through the bent branches of the grove.

It was the first time Aaron had seen him outside the walls without protective layers; he wore only a linen shirt and slacks, wrinkled but clean. His hair was loose but free of gore, beard untrimmed. Aaron fleetingly wondered if this was what Aramaic mourners might have looked like a long time ago.

His eyes were darkly ringed in mauve. The injury to his shoulder had formed a long, mottled bruise that extended to his neck. Dehydration probably made it worse. Every line on his face had deepened overnight. Aaron knew what that was. A listless nothingness. The numbness was bad, but the reality of it that followed was worse. If they had waited much longer, Jesus wouldn’t be here with them at all.

Aaron offered his canteen. Jesus, to his surprise, drank from it with a soft thank-you and passed it back. When he moved to transport the stones from the wheelbarrow to the base of the gravesite, Rick tried to help. Jesus walked past him as though he hadn’t seen, settling the stones together so that their angles meshed, their weights balanced out. His fingers traced each seam, forming a sturdy, triangular shape at the head of the earthen divot. Aaron saw that the engraved piece rattled him. It wasn’t detailed—none of their markers were—but bore his name. Jesus cringed away from it, averting his eyes, and took longer to rise from the pile near the wheelbarrow. Aaron offered a hand and felt the one that accepted his shaking.

He embraced his friend hard from behind, good arm squeezing his chest where he knew the pain was the worst. That tightness never quite left. Jesus gripped the back of his wrist.

The others came, slowly, under the dome of the hawthorn. Carol hovered on the periphery beside Ezekiel, and Tara stood to the left, ramrod straight beside a hunched-over Eugene. Enid was half-hidden behind Rosita, her eyes red-ringed but dry. Maggie and Rick clustered near the headstone, Michonne within a hand’s breadth. Beyond the branches of their immediate shelter, Aaron saw a wide circle of mourners. The Kingdom, the rest of Alexandria, and much of Oceanside. Father Gabriel parted the sea of observers with a worn text under his arm. He spoke with the familiarity and ease of one with much recent practice, but stumbled in the way of the sincere. He’d known Daryl longer than Aaron.

Everyone’s words were kind. They were for Daryl, but often directed at the community, or at Jesus. Aaron stayed close to his friend, hand brushing but not squeezing, wondering if his posture was too stiff, his skin too pale, to make it through this. But his breathing never faltered, slow and deep. Maggie spoke. Michonne. Carol tried, failed, and let Ezekiel speak instead. Tara declined with a gesture, and Aaron said what was right.

When it was Rick’s turn, he felt Jesus’ body seize up so violently that he wondered if the entire body of mourners saw it. No one seemed to. The motion was subtle but intense, perhaps because of their proximity. His breathing stuttered.

Rick continued his eulogy, voice rasping but carrying well in the way of a man accustomed to public speaking and loss. He talked about Daryl’s selflessness. That he was a brother, a leader. That his role in the war had ensured their escape from the Saviors’ grasp. That Negan was finally dead, and so were the rest of their enemies, once and for all. Aaron thought that was the moment Jesus’ heartbeat hit audibly, as though the muscle was beating into his ribcage.

“He should have been dead three years ago.”

Jesus’ voice cut across the space like a salpinx. Aaron had only heard that bellow once, at the Sanctuary, a rallying cry against Gregory’s treason among the colonists. Now it was directed at Rick, whose startled expression matched the rest.

“We didn’t need a massacre. We needed one death to make the peace. You refused. Now we have dozens.” Jesus cast the past three years into Rick’s teeth. His voice felt like pelted stones on the air. “Daryl would have died for you. Any of you. And he died for your mistakes instead. For nothing.”

Aaron reached out to thin air, finding Jesus gone, pushing past the limbs of the hawthorn and then parting the sea of mourners on the well-trod path back to the Hilltop.

--

Michonne held the reins as they loaded the last of the wagon. She promised Aaron that she and Leanne would watch Gracie longer, to give him time with Jesus. They shared a loss. Aaron could help.

When Rick mounted the platform to sit beside her, the empty Python on his hip, he looked a decade older. She knew he hadn’t slept all night because he’d stood to pace the room and hallway on and off. He’d tried to speak with Jesus, but received no response to the knocking on the door. Maggie told him to leave him be. Michonne felt guilty offering the same advice but knew it was right. His wounds were too fresh.

The ride took most of the day, but it was clear and sunny, and they encountered relatively few of the dead. She waited until Rick’s posture indicated he was open to listening, which was a bit after the noon point of the sun.

“It was a nice cenotaph.”

He made a sound of agreement.

“Daryl would think it’s ridiculous.”

“I know it.”

“But he’d like that it was outside the walls.”

“It should be.” Rick agreed dully, gaze forward. Michonne had only seen him look this way once. After Carl. Carol had said it was the same after Lori, but she had arrived too late to know that stage of his grief. He had lost too much.

“You know what he said isn’t true.”

“No.” Rick spoke after a moment. “I don’t.”

“Why?” She curled one of the worn edges of the leather reins around he thumb, sliding it back and forth. The horses knew which way was home.

“I made the best guess I could at the time. For Carl. For us. I didn’t want a martyr. A rallying point. But the Hilltop was pretty clear about what they wanted.”

“It’s impossible to predict how people will respond. A lot of the original Saviors disappeared in that time. Peeled off. Died.” She knew Oceanside had had a hand in it. That they’d tried to stop it. And then the revolt. The siege. A purge inside even the Hilltop’s walls, because now none of them could be trusted. And now they were all dead. Michonne wasn’t sure how Maggie felt about that. She’d only wanted Negan. Like Jesus did. Rick had been the one to shoot Alden and the others. But at the factory, Jesus had done most of the gutting himself.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now.” Rick admitted.

“Move on. They’re dead. There’s no more Sanctuary to manage. We’re alive, and they’re not. So we go on.”

“Not all of us.”

“No.” Michonne reached for his hand, and he squeezed back. “But enough.”

--

The ravening hiss of the dead and wet click of their jaws deafened him to the cacophony of battle beyond the cluster. He was distantly aware of a tearing pain running down the interior of his thigh and numbing most of the leg. Heat pooling close to his groin where he was slathered in mud and gore suggested a heavy bleed. Dead fingers clawed at his clothes and exposed arms, and he slashed blindly with the short boning knife from his belt, army-crawling through several inches of mud and innards. Something about the ferric scent and rot helped disorient the dead, who often clawed at patches of blood or shadows, missing him or getting their rotting nails caught in his pantleg.

Daryl hauled himself forward where he saw a dip in the land. The old shed’s wall was half caved in, and its wooden plank floorboards, unsupported by any sort of foundation, had warped and fallen in, creating the kind of a den an opportunistic fox or badger might take as a residence. Kicking his left foot out numbly and plunging either hand as deep into the mud and earth as he could, Daryl hauled himself forward and slid down, forcing himself into the worn space just beyond the reach of the walkers mired in mud.

It was such a tight fit that he couldn’t’ move once locked in. The sharp edges of nails poking through the boards caught on his clothes and dragged his skin when he breathed too deeply, but he found the center part so badly eroded that he could keep a full yard between himself and the arm’s-length of the dead. A few reached for him, blindly, but couldn’t maneuver or crawl. Soon the others collapsed atop it, mouthing at the spill of blood that remained on the ground.

He hunkered down as low as the unclear parameters of his hiding spot permitted, reaching blindly for his belt, the daggers there. Some of them had fallen free, with his bow, when he went down. He had only the boning knife and kept it in front of him in case one of the creatures learned how to shimmy and crawl. If there was a back entry in the dark of the collapsed floor, he was shit out of luck. Praying he hadn’t stumbled into some hedgehog burrow, Daryl let himself grow still, urging the icy sludge around him to slow the rush of blood at his thigh and ease his heartbeat.

As his gaze adjusted to the shadow, he could see dying light in cracks to the south. The dragging feet of the dead shuffled by. Some collapsed. He didn’t think they saw him—they were overwhelmed by other opportunities. Daryl’s gut clenched at the thought. There were bodies out there. Luring them. Whose bodies, he couldn’t see. At the widest gap, there was perhaps an inch of light getting through; from his angle, all he saw was mud and dirt, and the faintest green. Tall grass.

He waited until sunset, but the dead were still ravening. The squelching sound they made as collapsing jaws and worn down teeth worked against flesh never ceased. He’d grown used to it, but never at length, and couldn’t even move his arms up to cover his ears.

Whose bodies?

Daryl didn’t have any way to determine that right now. He couldn’t theorize. No amount of focus would quell the lurching sensation in his gut or the faint buzzing in the back of his head. Too much blood loss. Maybe the spear point had nicked the femoral artery. If that were so, he’d be dead before dawn. But he didn’t think it was—he possessed too many of his faculties still.

So Daryl did what he’d been taught how to do since early childhood. He sat in silence, still as the growing dark, and he waited.

In the last dashes of sunlight, he saw a thin shadow slant down. Tiny feet testing the ground before appearing to hover over it, fleeing. A jackrabbit. It ran not away from the fence, but toward it, and this was the clearest indication that the dead had moved on. Still, Daryl waited. Let the dark come down, the cold. He let his body temperature plummet and bypassed shivering entirely when he found himself slipping in and out of consciousness. This was the pivotal moment.

Time to go.

The first motion was perfectly silent. He kicked the leg he could still feel, easing himself forward, inch by inch, dagger out. Watching. The dead that had clustered at the edge of the makeshift den were gone. No sound of shuffling, growling, or eating. But that didn’t mean they weren’t lingering, dead-eyed and waiting to be drawn by sound, sight, or scent in some other direction, clumping together on the way.

Daryl thought the process of drawing himself out of the depths of the earth must have taken an hour. His right leg had lost more sensation than he realized. Packing the wound, which was deep, with mud, he raised himself up on his left leg, scanning the field.

It was littered with the remains of bodies. Piles. Mostly eaten. He found his bow by the fence where it had dropped between the shed and wall. Swinging it behind his shoulder, he searched out a thick enough stick to use for balance, heaving himself toward the paved side of the Sanctuary.

One end of the building was smoldering. There was no sign of activity other than the handful of walkers still chained to one another, lumbering about in half-circles. Daryl gave them a wide berth, dragging his right foot and leaning hard into the staff.

He whistled like a night bird, just in case. Paul knew every signal. An owl hooted overhead. Daryl circled the perimeter and found the bulkhead doors they’d searched earlier, lowering himself inside after a thorough check of the premises. Then he locked the doors.

--

Maggie followed Jesus from a distance every day. She wanted him to sleep. Rest. Eat. He did very little of any of those things, except when she explicitly asked for it.

Sometimes she found him in the belfry, the highest point of the colony. He was never in the trailer. She didn’t think he’d gone in it once since Daryl’s death. Most often, though, he was outside the walls. She knew where to look, cutting north and up the winding path that led to the green grove beyond the fields and fenced in range. The hawthorn, ancient and dense with branches and foliage, created a green dome over Daryl’s cenotaph. Mostly, Jesus was here. Sometimes he had a book with him, but she’d observed him unseen. He didn’t turn the pages or even seem to observe the words printed there, only folded it as an anchor across his lap, leaning back against the cool limestone.

Two days after the funeral, flowers appeared there. Wild things transplanted. Green and gold and white. They might grow, despite the shade.

On the fourth day, Jesus sat with his eyes closed, legs drawn up close, back to the stone. His hair obscured part of Daryl’s name. He didn’t open his eyes to greet her.

“Maggie.”

“Figured you’d be here.”

“What is it?”

She crept forward by ducking beneath the low-hanging boughs. Crossing both legs in the soft grass to the side, she sat nearby. “I wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

“Because I know what you’re suffering.”

Jesus didn’t disagree.

“You spend most of your days here.”

“You need something?”

“No.” She said firmly. “You need to rest.” It might have been better if it were otherwise. If there were something left undone, someone to pursue. To kill. Rick had taken that from her. From Jesus too. From Rosita and Sasha. But it was enough for Maggie to know he was dead. And every last one of the rest. She hadn’t thought that was what Jesus wanted, though.

“I can’t rest. I don’t sleep.”

Jesus was telling the truth. His eyes were perpetually ringed in dark mauve, cheeks gaunt, expression unfamiliar and limp. Knowing why didn’t make it harder to accept. Jesus would not be the same person again. She knew this.

“Eventually, it comes.”

“How?”

“Fatigue. Anger. Yielding to it.”

Jesus didn’t answer that. When the breeze nudged the branches open as though creating a doorway, he turned his face in that direction, letting the wind card through loose hair.

“I thought I might feel him here.”

Maggie leaned forward. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Because you know it’s empty?”

“Because I can’t conceive of there being nothing left of him.” Jesus rasped, his voice growing gravel rough. His eyes were red at the edges now. “This wasn’t supposed to be his death.”

“Because it was an accident?” Maggie probed. “Because he didn’t get to die fighting?” Glenn didn’t die fighting either. He wasn’t even given the chance to try.

Jesus shook his head. “Because it was supposed to come after mine.”

She reached a palm out to his knee, open, up. He took it and squeezed.

“I’m going to go.”

“Go where, Jesus?”

“Away. There was a place, in the mountains. Where we used to hunt. I think I’ll go there.”

“For how long?” Maggie knew the stretch of lazy summer and autumn would be tolerable, but their winters were harsh. It wasn’t a long term option.

“I don’t know.” His expression crumpled, looking down at the book in his lap. His mouth pinched shut, and Maggie heard the soft sound of tears on the page even though his shoulders didn’t move.

 “You should wait, then. Plan it. Take supplies.”

Jesus shook his head. “I’ll leave tomorrow.” He stood, abandoning the book beside the cenotaph. “I’m sorry Maggie.”

She rose too, following him, trying to catch his arm. “Jesus.”

“You were wrong.” His breath hitched, but his voice was clear.

“What?”

“What you said.” He didn’t meet her gaze. “It’s like dying. Every morning.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.” She murmured, knowing that it wouldn’t feel so, where he was now.

“Does it go away?”

“No.”

--

Jesus left the Hilltop the next morning. He left behind almost everything he’d collected over the years too. The trailer was still full; he’d carried only a haversack and select weapons that belonged to him, or to Daryl. A recurve bow. A canteen and dry rations for three days, no more. Maggie thought he would come back for this or that when he needed it. That he might find and share an elk. When she’d first met him, he’d spent more time beyond the walls that behind them, but he always came back.

This time, he didn’t.

Summer bled into harvest season, and the settlements shared labor, milling about the bread basket colony and loaning their labor and beasts of burden. Autumn struck in stages, and the first frost didn’t strike the fields until what must have been near the end of the October. It was hard to think in terms of months now, but Maggie understood agricultural cycles.

Twice that month, people offered to bring Jesus supplies. To check. Maggie always said no. But after the first light snow, she was determined to do it herself.

Packing a ruck sack and two saddle bags of supplies, fleece blankets, and a handful of books from the trailer, she rode Daisy out of the Hilltop and up toward the mountains. Daryl had taken to the abandoned hunting lodge almost immediately after the war, and she’d understood why he and Jesus lingered, searching out elk and pheasant and everything else overnight. It had been the only space that was truly theirs. And she remembered, roughly, where to find it.

--

“Daryl?”

Her voice had become familiar now. He jolted, blinking awake as Frankie rubbed both hands down against either arm. “You’re shivering. The fire’s okay, but it won’t last forever. We’re going to need to find a way to get you home.”

Daryl was still unclear on the time of year. The cold seemed out of place. Had it damaged the wheat? He was rarely alert these days. After the infection had worsened, fever had come. Dehydration, fatigue. He slipped in and out of consciousness but didn’t know for how long. Ultimately, his recovery had depended entirely on the woman he’d seen only half a dozen times. One of Negan’s captives, Frankie. He wasn’t recovered, but awake, and attempts at late (and probably unnecessary) reconnaissance, had led Frankie to threaten to tie him to the bed in a fit of anger, forcing him to look at the depth of the injury, the damage.

You might lose your whole leg!

That had frightened Daryl into negotiations. What vehicles were available? It was a half-day’s ride from the Sanctuary to the Hilltop, their nearest location. Eugene’s biofuel project had run here. Where were the cars and bikes they’d used for relay?

Frankie had had to explain what happened to him multiple times. The vehicles were long gone. The fuel was long gone. Most of the building itself was long gone, burnt up in the siege. They were underground, surviving in the remains of the living quarters that Daryl had never seen during his long residence at the Sanctuary.

“It’s four days of walking. You’d never make it. I looked for a travois. A cart. A wagon. Something.” Frankie had initially explained herself, offered to take his suggestions. But the second and third time she’d had to explain it had come across firmer. Usually over dinner.

“You don’t remember that we’ve had this conversation. You almost bled out, Daryl. Your leg is still in question. And I’m starting to worry about your head.”

Daryl thought, on his more coherent days, that it was prolonged bloodloss and malnutrition. He told her to go, gave her his bow. Taught her how to aim. How to find safe trees for the night. How to hot-wire any vehicles she did run across on the way. Frankie refused.

“You didn’t see it.” She whispered. “They burned it to the ground---all of it but the foundations here. Why do you think I’m the only one left?”

“Didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

“Neither did Sarah!” She shrieked it, and Daryl twitched. “Neither did any of them. And don’t you think, the ones at the Hilltop might have come for us? For me? Alden, Laura? Where are they?”

Daryl didn’t know. “They think you’re dead.”

“I think they’re dead.” Frankie shook her head. “I wasn’t part of this. I was never part of this. Nor were half the others here—we were just existing. I should let you die.”

“Why didn’t you?” They were past that now. She’d stitched him up, remaining hypervigilant about the state of the injury, and rationed their food. They were down to very little, and Daryl wasn’t improving.

He’d tried to leave three times. First, after a day of recuperation. He’d gotten as far as the barrier of the loading dock before collapsing. He remembered nothing, but woke up in the same bed, scratched here and there but clean. That was the first time Frankie threatened to tie him down.

She didn’t. After another three days, he tried again. Searched the perimeter for vehicles, even a fucking bicycle. Found nothing on wheels or legs. He limped a good way down the road this time. Based on the changing scenery, he guessed at least five miles. That time, they had to camp outdoors. Frankie couldn’t haul him back on the tarp she’d brought, and Daryl’s pride wouldn’t permit it. He shot a hare and cooked it for them in a ring of trees, ignoring her bitter glares.

So he let her treat his leg when the fever came, drifting in and out of consciousness for days. Dreaming of the battle, the war years before. Dreaming of Paul, who was there at his side half the time and far away the other half. Sad. Paul who didn’t know where he was. Paul who thought he was dead.

Daryl recovered from the infection, the fever, and the nearly paralytic weakness that followed. Frankie made him soup and dry rations. Sometimes they shot a wandering bird, a fox, a squirrel. They ate that too.

He tried again to leave. It snowed. Frankie brought him back in degrading fashion, using the tarp this time with ease atop the slick surface of the snow. Daryl bumped along indignantly before being returned to their tiny shared compartment in the lower, vented rooms of the Sanctuary.

They struggled to find fuel and food. Daryl urged her to depart before the weather worsened. They wouldn’t last the winter here. Not in the state it was now. Pillaged, burnt, empty of resources but still sprinkled with clusters of the dead.

“I need you t’go. To th’Hilltop.”

“They kill me. I know that’s what they did to the rest. To Alden. To Laura.” She whispered.

Daryl thought they would listen. He thought Paul would listen and wrote a letter on scrap that Frankie had found. “Take this. Jus’ do it. Get it t’the guy they call Jesus. He’ll protect you.”

“Against Maggie?”

“Against anyone.” Daryl cleaned his plate and found he was still hungry. Testing his leg, he ran through the exercises that Frankie had shown him, letting her help when his form became lazy.

“What if it snows?”

“Find a place. Build a fire. I showed you how.”

“What about the dead?”

“You got arrows.”

“They won’t let me in. They’re the people who killed the entire settlement.”

“That’s what they think about you.” Daryl pointed out. “Don’t gotta live there. But you gotta get the letter. To Paul.”

“What?”

“Jesus.” Daryl bit out.

She took the letter but didn’t unfold it, tucking it under her jacket. “Tomorrow.”

“Aright.”

“I’d rather you come.”

“Me too.” Daryl agreed softly, letting her climb into the bed beside him when the fire guttered out, its light burning low. “You’ll get there. Straight shot out the gate, past the statue. Jus’ long.”

Frankie seemed less sure.

--

At a higher altitude, the snow was still in the process of melting. Maggie steered the horse through it, careful not to stumble into a mud slick cloaked in white. It had taken the better part of a day to scout the mountainside for Jesus’ cabin. Her general sense of location was thrown off by time—it had been longer than she’d estimated since she’d been here. They had initially used the cabin as a back-up safe house and storage center during the War. Knowing that wasn’t necessary anymore was both a comfort and a source of mild guilt. She wouldn’t have killed Alden, if they’d left the decision to her. She wouldn’t have killed Laura either.

Meera nickered softly and nudged at the base of a tree where still-green grass clumped. Maggie sighed and pushed her forward with both heels. If they went much further south, they’d pass it. The cabin was definitely north of the creek—that she remembered.

Patches of snow hidden from the sun revealed forest traffic. The tiny feet of voles, the swirls from hopping squirrels, and occasion rabbit tracks in circles around the bases of trees, seeking the same grass as Meera. When the cabin did finally appear over the height of a hill, it almost blended in with the high pines. There was no color to its exterior; even the signs of settlement were the color of bark and stone. Jesus had built a spit on the east side of the building and apparently bolstered the fencing. There was a clapped-together smoke house a dozen yards from the cabin itself, and she could see fabric stretched behind the glass windows to lock in heat. The brick chimney released a small spiral of smoke.

Jesus must have seen her coming. Before she could dismantle the trip wire and noise-makers, he was outdoors too, gloved hands helping her create a gap for Meera.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Maggie guided the mare through. “I was here to ask you that, too.”

“Why?”

Maggie sighed. “Brought you some things.”

She let the horse free-roam within the confines of the trip wire, unloading the saddle packs to bring their contents indoors. Jesus’ cabin was a single, compact room with a wide hearth. It was crackling steadily and easily warmed the limited square footage. Storage containers dotted the open shelving, and a narrow bed shoved into the corner was piled high with blankets. A vinyl topped card table held chipped crockery. She set the saddle bags down beside them and they rattled. Jesus gestured, and she sat too, using the fold-out chair and stretching her legs closer to the fireplace.

“Was it always like this, or did you fix it up?”

“Half and half.” Jesus sat too, but with the sense of obligation and restlessness.

“What do you do all day, out here?”

“Hunt. Scavenge.” He shrugged.

“Is it safe?”

“There aren’t many walkers this high.” Jesus nodded. “The creek floods sometimes.”

In the bright light from the window that wasn’t blocked off, she appraised him. Not gaunt, exactly, but weary despite the anxious energy surrounding him. It was grief. She knew its contours.

“What will you do for winter?”

He gestured.

“It’s not a bad set-up.” She acknowledged. “But it’s going to be cold. A lot colder than Barrington.”

“It’s okay, Maggie.”

“I know why you want to be away. That it hurts to be home. But your family’s still there.” She had gone away, too, at first. Made a new home when she had to. “We miss you.”

“I can’t go back just now.”

She couldn’t tell whether he was leaving the possibility of return hanging in the air to comfort her, or because he genuinely considered it.

“Okay. I can at least bring you things, can’t I?”

Jesus gave a faint smile. “I appreciate it. You don’t have to. I have enough.” But he took the small containers that she’d brought anyways, integrating them into the organized chaos of the shelving unit. He made tea with water from a black kettle poised atop the hearth. It tasted piney.

They drank in companionable silence. Jesus removed the fabric screen from the lower half of the window so that Maggie could watch Meera as she explored the length of the makeshift yard and grazed. Jesus asked about the harvest once. He asked about Herschel. Mostly he was quiet, the talkative quality she’d come to love about him absent entirely.

Maggie gave updates, describing their newest projects, the bumper crop of garden vegetables and kale—which she’d brought—and trade with Oceanside. When conversation trailed off, Jesus asked it.

“How long does it take to stop hurting?”

“Hurting how?” Maggie murmured. “Here?” She brushed her sternum, and he nodded.

“I don’t remember. A long time, I think. It’s the stress of it. You carry that.” She sniffed, and Jesus accepted this truth.

“I thought, if you’d wanted anything of his, you’d have taken it. So I didn’t bring anythin’.”

“That’s okay.”

“I could.” She offered.

“I don’t need anything.” Jesus shook his head. Maggie understood. He did. But she couldn’t give it.

--

A snowstorm hit days later, and most of the settlement huddled within Barrington’s walls. Its numerous fireplaces and expertly packed insulation made it a safe haven that they hadn’t been able to replicate on a larger scale. Yet. Georgie had some ideas for that.

Maggie hoped that Jesus had cut enough cord before it struck. She recalled spotting a line of pine logs behind the building and wondered if her imagination had added it. Probably not. He was a good planner.

Halfway through the day, the bell at the main gate clanged twice. Despite the extermination of the Saviors, the sound still sent a jolt through most of the colonists. They had become too accustomed to danger and defeat.

Layering a series of sweaters and jackets, Maggie tugged on her mismatched gloves and stalked out through the snow to where Kal had struck the bronze bell. The sunlight on the snow was blinding. The gate hadn’t been opened. Not a familiar face, then. She mounted the stiff ladder and peered down to see a woman bound in fabric, a few threads of red hair streaking out in the wind.

“I don’t know her.” Kal shouted over the gust.

“Open it.” Maggie turned directly back to the ladder, letting the woman step forward. In her gloved hands she was holding a piece of much-creased paper. Maggie had thought she was at the Kingdom, once. And then when Carol had clarified, she’d assumed the girl died in the fire. Another pointless death because Rick waited too long.

“Where’d you come from, Frankie?”

--

Daryl half hobbled about the tiny room, snatching up the paltry remaining kindling and using it sparingly. When the snow hit, the chill sinking into the ground, he had to use the last of it and bank on Frankie’s success. By now, she should have arrived, even with the snow. With horses and a cart, it would take anyone at least two and a half days to reach him. He wasn’t sure what to do about kindling until then, so he lay down to sleep.

When he woke, the space was like ice. His fingers were numb, and so was most of his leg, mercifully. He dragged it laterally, moving with care up the stairs, knife in hand, to search the grounds for anything they might have missed. Usually Frankie needed to walk into the woods to collect enough to burn. Daryl didn’t think he could make it that far. And if so, he doubted his ability to lift enough to be of use. If there had been a wheeled implement of any sort nearby, they would have found it by now. Mostly it was ash and overgrown concrete.

Reconnoitering, he determined the safest path past the wall and circled around, limping along with the same gait as the dead, whom he fortunately didn’t see. The tree line drew nearer at a painfully slow rate, no dry limbs in sight. Daryl kept his dagger at the ready, intensely focused on the shuffling sound of his feet, anticipating another pair. Instead, the dragging roar of an engine resounded from the north. Shoving himself at and then around the curve of a pine trunk, he braced against it and peered at the road’s end. A rusted vehicle, glinting white in the sun, turned into the ruined lot beside the loading dock. The figures that piled out were warmly wrapped and armed. Faintly, he could hear their shouting.

Heart thumping hopefully, he lurched toward the lot and put two fingers into his mouth to whistle sharply and repeatedly, waiting until the wind shifted and the three faceless figures turned in his direction.

--

The storm part passed quickly, but the snow lingered in the lower temperatures of late autumn. Paul only left the cabin to bring firewood in once a day. The basket near the hearth held plenty, and it didn’t take a great deal of fuel to heat the tiny space. Occasionally, he pulled his boots off to warm his socked feet directly by the flames. Otherwise, he kept the wool garments on regular rotation, hanging them by the fire or placing hot stones in the toes to aid his circulation.

The nights felt longer than they usually did in winter. In the first few weeks, sleep had been welcome and needful. He’d spent most of his time unconscious, grateful for the quiet and solitude that permitted it. Sometimes his dreams were painful, but more often, he didn’t dream at all. By the third week, that had all stopped. Sleep became hard to come by, and he spent hours roaming the surrounding woodlands, hunting or gathering what he needed to survive, and clapping together a smokehouse with the intent of using it through the winter.

Physical labor could only do so much. Often, he sat inside and re-read the small stack of books he’d brought from the Hilltop. More often, he stared at the pages and let the words blur together. He couldn’t quite square his continuing existence with Daryl’s absence. He’d never accounted for this possibility. Daryl was the one who would survive them all.

Now, among the snow and darker days, Paul found relief in sleep again. He did what maintenance of a homestead required but held off on long-term planning. It was difficult to think in terms of days when the hours stretched so unforgivingly long in front of him. He missed Maggie but didn’t want to bother her. The idea of returning to the densely packed settlement made his skin prickle. He wrapped up under the blankets and sat adjacent to the hearth, listening to snow melt and re-freeze in trickling sounds atop the roof.

The first real thaw was subtle. The mercury thermometer on the exterior wall said it was 38F, but the white glaze on the ground and rooftop was responding.

Paul drank pine needle infused tea with the honey Maggie had brought and tended the smokehouse. He tracked muddy footprints through the remains of pristine snow around the tiny cabin, checking for gaps and draughts. He peered at the roof, satisfied but not entirely sure of what he saw, and checked the fencing and tripwires. The various noisemakers attached with rubbish from the cabin’s interior remained functional.

Sunset was coming. Filling the wood basket with cord, he prepared the hearth and put the kettle on again, eating little for dinner because he’d spent most of the day sitting. After pulling fabric taut across the windows to lock in the heat, he returned to sitting again. The book in his lap was a comforting weight rather than a tool. Soon, it was too dark to see.

Paul was in some liminal state between sleep and wakefulness when the thudding resounded in the tiny room.

His response time was lagging, sluggish. The fear that usually propelled him into motion wasn’t there. He tried not to think about what that meant.

“Maggie?”

Drawing a knife, he peered through the tiny slit in the fabric of the window and saw only shadows. The wind gusted and made a hollow noise through the chimney.

Dagger ready, he unbolted the door and eased it halfway open, squinting against the shadow. Somewhere in the yard, a horse snorted loudly. He sensed movement.

“Paul.”

--

The tearing pain in his leg subsided once he’d dismounted, but still he placed most of his weight on the opposite side, half-limping even as he stood.

Round, bright eyes observed him in a squint, pupils dilating in the dark. Daryl realized that Paul couldn’t see him, and he spoke.

A gust slammed the door entirely open, its knob striking the interior wall violently where it had been released. The blade slipped out of Paul’s hand and clunked on the floorboards below. Daryl tried to catch him when he flung himself forward but stumbled hard into the casement, bruising his good leg with a grunt.

Paul was touching his face, his neck, expression incredulous before it crumpled into some sort of misery.

Daryl felt him sob hard against his collar, hands gripping tight at either shoulder. Maggie had told him. Everyone had told him. They’d promised to go for Paul with sunrise, so Daryl had stolen a horse and left on his own. They’d know where he’d gone. And this time he hadn’t fallen off.

The wind cut through his garments where his thicker jacket had been pulled back. Paul’s face was hot and damp at his neck, body shaking too hard for someone who had just left the heat of the hearth. Daryl stumbled again and got them both inside, leaning into the door to close it and cut off the whistling screech of the wind and airborne snow.

Paul’s hands were shaking harder than his, slim and calloused and bare of gloves. Daryl allowed himself to be petted and stroked, identified as real and breathing. Using his teeth to tear off his own wool lined mittens, he swiped gently at the tears streaking Paul’s face and running into his untidy beard. When he was kissed, it tasted like pine and the sea.

They sat half-kneeling by the fire until the tearing pain in Daryl’s leg made his muscles twitch. Paul helped him into the bed, peeling him out of damp layers and then swathing him in thick fleece within a foot of the brick fireplace. They had shared that tiny bed many times before.

This time, instead of placing his head on Daryl’s chest or tucking his chin over his head, Paul remained propped up, eyes unwavering on him. They were wide, disbelieving even when Daryl spoke, said his name, touched his skin.

“How are you real?”

Daryl didn’t know how to answer that. But he understood why Paul had to ask it.

“ ‘m sorry. Paul.”

The crying sound again. And Daryl was being clasped tightly to his chest, warmed and protected like something fragile. He felt damp trickle on his collarbone and smoothed a hand back through wild hair, embracing him just as close.

A knot of wood popped in the fireplace. The wind died down and kicked up again several times, sending wild flashes of light throughout the small space as it batted the flames. Fatigue loosened his limbs, and Paul didn’t budge until the muscle of his leg began twitching painfully, noticeably.

Paul inspected it. Changed the bandages. Smoothed his hand over Daryl’s thigh and knee, up his chest and throat. He was mapping out what was real.

Daryl waited for the question, but it didn’t come.

Paul undressed, keeping the blankets tented over both of them and locking in their shared heat. Astride Daryl’s lap, he leaned forward, long hair spilling down from either shoulder in a perfect halo around his head. Daryl drew his fingers through it gently, breathing the warm scent of soap and sweat and pine. He could see the outline of Paul’s features and kissed the slope of his nose, the furrowed lines between his eyes. His beard was longer, and it brushed against Daryl’s newly-shaven stubble when they kissed.

Their kisses were slow. Soothing. Daryl stroked the place at his nape and the side of his hip, forgetting the pain in his leg each time their mouths clicked together. He caught Paul’s hand and kissed each fingertip, biting gently when a thumb pushed at the seam of his mouth.

Heat coiled between them beneath the covers, trailing like vines and tingling down each limb. Daryl felt the sudden urgency of it, Paul’s need to be pressed against him, close, all but crawling under his skin. Daryl could have slept that way, tangled close with Paul’s scent surrounding him. But the twitching, insistent need for constant assurance was catching. Slim hands touched his face or neck almost constantly; both thighs pressed on Daryl’s flanks. Paul wanted to know he was here.

He met hungry kisses with equal force, raising a hand to sweep tangled hair back and pet his nape every time Paul whimpered against his mouth.

When they were coupled, mostly thanks to Paul’s balance and the slant of the mattress, his uninjured leg rose to try to meet his partner’s movements. Warm heat forced his eyes halfway closed each time Paul rocked down onto him. His left hand was snatched up repeatedly, palm pressed hard against Paul’s left breast. Daryl could feel the usually sedate, rhythmic beating become frantic well before their motion did, the overworked muscle jackrabbiting just beneath the skin.

The burst of pleasure in that moment felt secondary to what followed: being enveloped by the heat of Paul and scratchy security of blankets, surrounded by familiar scents and the rasping breath of another person. Daryl kissed him, hands cupping the sides of his face and catching tears as both legs tangled together near the foot of the bed, pressed tight wherever possible.

Sleep was abrupt, and deep. He didn’t wake once, even though he knew that Paul must have moved long enough to stoke the fire throughout the night. When he woke, they were still entangled, ensconced in the bubble of heat beneath thick woven fleece.

Daryl endured the same ritual of exploration again, this time shorter. Smooth fingertips stroking his jaw, his cheekbones and nose, his neck. Slow, hungry kisses followed, and they re-mapped one another beneath the covers until one slid off, exposing their feet to the chill.

Paul scrambled up and out. Daryl’s eyes traced his silhouette the entire time, watching him half-dress, stoke the fire, bring the kettle down. When he moved, Paul shook his head hard.

“Please. Just stay.”

Daryl nodded. “Yeah. Gotta piss though.” He pushed himself up, shy now, but didn’t mind when Paul moved to help him, wrapping him in a blanket. Daryl flushed brightly when he stumbled, realizing the ligaments that were injured had become numb overnight. Paul caught him, and they both went to the porch. Meera glared from beneath a tree, and Daryl snorted at her expression, one arm balanced on the railing.

Paul promised to get the horse water three times before actually leaving. He hovered in the doorway with his jacket on, wide eyes watching. “Just, stay.”

“Ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Daryl dressed while he was gone before re-seating himself on the bed. He saw out the window that Paul brought a wooden bucket up from past the hill, setting it in front of Meera before darting back inside. The sun and clear ground suggested it was warmer.

Paul made breakfast. Soaked oats and jerky. Daryl was impressed that he’d smoked it. They drank a bitter tea. Paul hardly touched his, but offered it instead. Daryl was about to suggest that they ride back together when he saw white teeth biting into a full lower lip. Paul was looking between Daryl’s hands and the fire. He set the cup aside and blinked hard.

“Where were you?”

There it was.

Daryl shifted back in the bed and set the crockery aside. Paul didn’t join him. He listened, wide eyes set on Daryl the entire time. He swiped at them twice and hardly blinked.

“Maggie said. What happened after.” Daryl rubbed his mouth with one hand. Paul was still looking at him as though he were a ghost.

“Yes.”

There was a question there. One Paul wasn’t answering. Daryl tried again.

“When I got out from under that shed, I saw the rest of ‘em. The ones who ambushed us.”

Paul only nodded.

“That was all you?”

Another nod. Daryl bit the inside of his lip.

“What about now?”

“What about now?” Paul echoed, quiet.

“You good?” Daryl prompted, uncertain. Killing twelve people was a physically demanding process. Doing it with blades even more so. It wasn’t their first time at it—Paul had been at the outpost, that first night. But this was different. This wasn’t pre-emptive slaughter, it was cutting down a group fleeing toward the trees. Paul would have Thoughts about that. Even if they were enemies.

Paul stared, and Daryl caught a glimpse of what Maggie had described to him. The dark, dead gaze.

“No.”

--

The snow came again, harder and deeper. Frozen granules plinked against Barrington’s lead glass windowpanes, but nothing accumulated where the heat of the room chased them off.

Paul and Daryl still hadn’t returned to the trailer, chased by the weather to the manor’s upper story, one of only two rooms in the servants’ quarters that possessed a hearth. Paul hauled new cord up every morning and evening and ran Daryl through his exercises for PT. Frankie helped, meeting them in the attic from her shared room on the second floor.

Paul had spoken with her quietly upon their return. Thanked her. Promised her safe harbor at the Hilltop, if she wanted it.

She wasn’t, he reasoned, one of the Saviors at all. No more than they were.

But she was the only one from the Sanctuary who was left alive. And he could see that that weighed on her. It began to weigh on him, too.

With the cenotaph covered in half a foot of snow, the labor of demolishing it now was too risky. Paul was eager nonetheless, wanting to split the stone and erase Daryl’s name from it. He wasn’t superstitious, but the presence of a headstone just beyond the colony walls set him on edge. When the snow eased up, he went out to do it himself, chipping away at Earl’s hard work until the writing was inscrutable, the name gone. He toppled the cairn for good measure. They could use the rocks to extend the fence of the cattle range in spring. Disperse them.

Daryl’s leg was improving in small measures. Sometimes he tromped through the snow with Paul, walking the perimeter of the settlement or checking the walls. Mostly, they stayed indoors with the others, protected by numbers from the cold.

Paul took the day watch now and again, not minding the chill. From the parapets, he could see most of the colony. He knew Daryl was inside the manor, probably helping with patch work and overstressing his injury. But safe. The cautious observation of the man’s movements wasn’t particularly conspicuous to others, but Paul knew that it would become so in spring, when their range of motion and activity increased. He was going to need to find a way to deal with separation once the season changed, and the thought was so entirely overwhelming that he chose to ignore it for long stretches at a time.

Every night, they curled close together in the bed. Paul couldn’t sleep without some part of himself in constant contact with Daryl, which was easy enough in the roomy twin they made use of.

If Daryl minded, he didn’t say so. He noticed, of course.

With a brief interruption of winter weather came hasty repairs to the barn and outbuildings. Paul volunteered and, in retrospect, ought to have been less surprised when Daryl did, too. Maggie let him, despite the injury. Paul followed, and they addressed the trip wiring that ran in a circuit about the limits of the winter grazing land for the cattle. The horses trotted freely and cows remained clustered further south near the wall. They alternated standing on watch against the dead and working with stiff barbed wire and thick gloves in 40-degree weather.

Mostly, it was silent work.

They moved slowly west, checking the circuit and rubbing their hands together for warmth.

Daryl knelt hard onto one knee and took out his pliers. Paul unspooled more of the wiring, dexterous despite the thick gloves. They went through the motions.

“I thought you were dead, Daryl.”

He dropped the pliers, looking up so that grey-russet hair fell away from his eyes.

“What?”

“I did.” Paul swallowed, gripping the wire too tightly. The pressure overrode the cover of the gloves. He felt sharp pinpricks in his palms and ignored them. “I tried to find you. But they were the only ones I did find.” His eyes stung from the dry winter air. “I didn’t mind killing them. For what they’d done. We’d lost. So it didn’t seem to matter either way what I did, in that moment.” Paul found it hard to square with the resurgence of ethics that had accompanied Daryl’s return. That meant something dire. But he cared more what it meant to Daryl.

“We didn’t lose.”

“We lost the peace. We lost our decision. We lost you.” Paul breathed, feeling tears bloom again. They rushed uncontrolled this time, and his fingers tightened around the wire reflexively, the way they had tightened around the hilts of twin daggers.

Daryl surged up with a grunt of pain, standing and pulling the wire out of the gloves, tugging Paul hard against his chest.

“Didn’t lose none’a that. We’re safe.”

Paul felt his cheek press down through long hair and buried his face at Daryl’s neck, hands hanging limp at his sides. A warm hand stroked his back. Paul felt numb.

“I think I lost myself.”

“Weren’t your fault.” Daryl nuzzled him, and the gentle gesture had a calming effect that Paul had previously associated with medication. He leaned into it.

“Of course it was. I’m not strong without you. That’s only my fault.” Everyone had lost during the War. Deeply. Except for Paul, who had Daryl. Who won, alongside Daryl. Of course it had been easy to remain level-headed and ethical. He wasn’t suffering in the same way. He didn’t need violence to restore order because his internal order had never been challenged. The way of the world was dark, violent, but still acceptably ordered. It hadn’t become chaos until he had lost, too. And then he hadn’t known what to do with himself. How could Daryl look at him, knowing that, and not deride it?

Daryl kissed his hair and he felt it like a warm raindrop.

“Do you still.” Paul couldn’t move his face or look up to ask it. He tensed, but his partner didn’t. “You know what I did.” He stammered. “Are you—can you still…”

Daryl cupped his jaw, forcing his eyeline up until their foreheads brushed. Paul felt heat in his face, a sort of shame he couldn’t reason his way out of.

“Why you gotta hold yourself t’those standards, Paul?”

His words had the effect of a hard shake to his shoulders.

“We gave ‘em a second chance. More’n they ever gave us. More’n they gave Glenn, or Abraham, or Sasha. They killed our people. An’ then they tried again. You can’t save everyone, or spend all your time feelin’ guilty because you hadta make a choice. That’s all there is.”

He nodded, shaky. Daryl wasn’t wrong. But it wouldn’t leave him that he’d made the wrong choice. They had been fleeing. But one of them had wounded Daryl. And he didn’t know which one. So he made sure they all paid for it. The very corporal memory of the killing was still jagged, and he imagined it would take years to smooth that stone over in his mind. Come to terms with it. His biggest fear was that Daryl would sense the change. Hate it.

Tugged forward by his hands this time, he let his partner pluck off the heavy working gloves, revealing red-smeared palms. The barbed wire had laid open the skin in several places. He was walked to the medical trailer, patched gently, and herded inside. The urge to trail along after Daryl was strong, but it felt better to oblige him. So he stayed indoors and helped Maggie in the study, palms freshly bandaged but not raising any questions.

By nightfall, they were huddled in front of the hearth of the attic room, a sherpa wool throw shared between them and draped over two pairs of shoulders like a tent. Paul leaned into Daryl’s weight, rubbing his arm.

“How is your leg?”

“Mn, s’better. Tea helped.”

“The willow bark?” Paul smiled. “Good.” Alex had said that Frankie’ stitching was solid and the torn tendons and muscle would heal. The PT was crucial, but Daryl was dutiful in maintaining it, and Paul was happy to help. Seeing his gait return to normal in small steps was encouraging.

He was dozing in place, lulled by the heat of the fire, when his eyes slid halfway shut. The bedding beside them was streaked in scarlet and knotted, its state months ago when Paul had returned from the siege. He jolted so hard that Daryl almost toppled, reaching out for him reactively.

“What?”

“I don’t—nothing. I was falling asleep.”

The disbelieving frown was enough of a question. Paul shook his head. Daryl seemed to intuit it anyways.

“You know you ain’t actually Jesus, right?”

“What?” He gaped, trying to decide whether it was a joke or sincere.

“I know it’s gonna take you longer’n most t’deal with it. What we have to do. But it’s what there is. There ain’t another option, Paul. This is how it is now.”

Accepting and internalizing that sentiment were two different steps in a lengthy process. Paul nodded mutely and knew when Daryl didn’t believe him. The man slung one arm about his shoulders and tugged him close, mouth open in a soft kiss against his temple. “C’mon. Get in bed.”

Paul obliged, treading barefoot in his nightclothes to the blanket-topped bedding and burrowing beneath the covers. The side nearer the fire was warmer, and Daryl nudged him to it, curling around his back in a close embrace.

“You’ve only just come back from the dead, and you’re comforting me.”

“S’mutual.” Daryl grumbled into his shoulder, kissing his nape.

Paul stroked the back of his arm gently, fingertips gliding over soft hair and faded ink. The sheets warmed, and he turned over to face Daryl, whose arm was tucked beneath his head, expression tired.

“You know I was alone, since the Turn. Deliberately so.”

Daryl made a sound of assent. He did know.

“I never felt so alone as when I thought I’d lost you. Like that state didn’t mean anything, if there had been nothing before it.”

Daryl ‘mhm’ed his agreement, and Paul knew it wasn’t to silence him. Daryl had experienced this, too.

“How do you deal with it? The fear?”

His partner bit the inside of his lip, a thinking gesture, and didn’t shoo off Paul’s hand where it was stroking his sternum lightly.

“Mn, not sure you do.” Daryl said. “Can’t make it go away. Can’t ever make it safe, not really.” He caught Paul’s hand and kissed the bandaged palm lightly. “It’s a trade-off. If y’care about someone, it’s gotta be enough t’be worth it. Even if it don’t last.”

Paul frowned, hand stilling where Daryl still held it. “Maggie said that once.”

Daryl looked unsurprised. “She knows a lot.”

Paul remembered doubting her in his grief. “It’s hard to square the happiness with the suffering.”

“Izzit easier t’be apart, then?”

Paul gave a faint smile. “I don’t think that’s even possible now.”

“Guess you made your choice then.” He said sleepily.

“Oh, I know I have.” Paul let his nose brush Daryl’s before kissing him softly, hand still clasped to his chest.