Lost Too Much 【REDONE】 ║ Daryl/OC or Shane/OC

Chapter 102: You've been different and I'm not the only one that's noticed.

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(13-064 AV --- 4,809 AV) It's been a dark couple of days since my last entry. We're still dealing with the loss of Alana. In an attempt to deal with it, I want to write her letter now.

Dear Alana,

Life really isn't fair. You deserved to live, to meet your baby, to get a happy ending. Losing you like this is devastating. Clark is destroyed. Eddie is broken. I'm still accepting it.

I can never thank you enough for what you did for me. You were my best friend at the hospital. You and Conner got me through all those tough times. And when you decided to come back to Virginia with us, I was relieved we weren't saying goodbye. Now, here we are. I never thought of what it would be like to lose you.

I hope you know how much we love you. And I hope you know that we're going to take care of your daughter, and Clark, too. We'll do you proud. Everything you've taught me will be put to good use. You can rest easy knowing everyone will be taken care of. And don't ever think for a second that Clark will let anything bad happen to your little girl. He's been an amazing dad in just the week she's been alive. I promise that'll never change.

Rest in peace, Alana Connely.

-CJ
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The walk to Hilltop was anything but friendly. I could feel the tension with every step I took. I could feel eyes digging into the back of my head. The short friendship I had with Lance had unofficially come to an end. That much was certain.

After we took out Toby yesterday, we had come up with a plan to get the Riverbend group to safety. That included lying entirely about how things happened when we called Lance down from the Commonwealth. The story, as Lance was told it, went way differently. We told him we had barely escaped with our lives, that things had gone awry and only the three of us had managed to live. Of course, he found it suspicious that his trained army had been killed but not the three of us, going as far as to call us liars to our faces, and he wasn't wrong. He suggested the killers weren't strangers, which we denied, but I could tell by the look on his face that he knew more than we wanted him to.

Daryl, however, defended us and insisted we were telling the truth. Lance ultimately went along with our tale, though we all knew he didn't believe us in the slightest.

Daryl and Shane had come along with the troopers he brought for the trip, and both also seemed to know our story was bullshit. It was nice to see them after the hell we had been through, but it was also concerning that they were getting involved in something I only saw going south. Lance didn't trust us anymore, far off from how things felt before we left for this mission. Lance had considered me a friend before this, and I had officially lost that advantage. Lance was too powerful to want to make enemies with him.

Currently, we were coming up on the gates of Hilltop. Lance wanted to check things out there, to see if the killers had gone their direction or, at the very least, to warn Maggie of the dangers. Again, Lance knew damn well our story wasn't the truth, but he was pretending he actually gave a shit about Maggie in order to collect evidence that we were lying.

The closer we got, I recognized Maggie and Elijah standing up in the guard towers. As our soldiers marched up to the gate, I started to fear something I hadn't considered in a long time: this was heading toward war. As I gazed at Shane in front of me, his full black armor as he trekked ahead, I considered something even worse: Shane might be on the opposite side of the war.

Daryl was in uniform, too, and part of me wanted to talk to him, to ask if he still suspected Shane of being disloyal. There was no good time for it, especially given Shane was standing only a few feet away at all times. I just had to put my faith in my boyfriend and hope Daryl was wrong about him.