We're The Ones Who Live | The Walking Dead (2)

Part 26 - The World Before

Daryl's fist collided with Dante's face for the hundredth time. "Hope that hurts."

The Whisperer's hands were bound and rested in his lap as he sat on the side of a bed. The infirmary blinds were all closed, so that no one walking past could see in, and daylight barely leaked through the gaps. Rosita paced up and down the room with her hands on her hips, seething with rage that her daughter's father had been killed just a few hours ago by a man they all thought was a friend.

CJ stood in the corner of the room with her arms folded across her stomach, staring off at the wall across from her. She couldn't believe that the man who took her all those months ago, knocked her out and dragged her to that night had been living within the walls of her home for so long. 

She was angry at him, but angry at herself too for not realising who he was. It made sense to her now why so many times when he spoke, she'd see a flashback or hear a whisper, because it was him all along. There was no logical way she could have recognised him; he was wearing the skin mask when he took her. But she still felt like an idiot for not seeing.

After punching Dante one more time, Daryl shook his hand as he walked back to his wife, standing beside her protectively. Carol sat on the bed across from Dante, and Gabriel stood with his arms folded beside her, all of them glaring at the man.

Dante spat blood onto the floor. "Doesn't matter," he shrugged and pointed to the stab wound on his shoulder Rosita had given him. "None of this, matters. Watch people enough, get incinerated, devoured alive, you see how ridiculous it is getting attached to ourselves. But knowing that sets you free."

"Is that what you're doing?" Carol questioned blankly. "Setting us free?"

"If you learn that lesson, it's only help you," Dante shrugged his shoulders again.

"What, so we can be more like you?" Daryl scoffed. 

"Accept the future," Dante glared. 

The look in his eye, so blank yet filled with evil, only made CJ feel more blind for not seeing it the second he arrived at the gates this first time. It was the same look he had when he got right into her face and knocked her out.

"Siddiq depended on you," Gabriel said, seeming hurt. "Why put him through all that hell in the barn just to kill him months later? What, was CJ on your hit list too because she was there? I-I can't see an ideology behind that."

"I had no intention of killing either of you." Dante's eye flickered to the redhead in the corner.

"Then why kill Siddiq?" she questioned bitterly. "What was the point?"

"I liked Siddiq," Dante mumbled.

"Oh, you liked him?" Rosita scoffed.

"He wasn't a part of the plan." The Whisperer bit the inside of his cheek with a sigh. "But he found out who I was, so I had no choice."

"What plan?" CJ mumbled.

"Encourage your paranoia about us..." Dante slurred. "Which will push you into bad decisions."

He eyed Carol with his statement, and she straightened her back with a glare. It might not have been all Dante's doing, but Carol was definitely suffering from the paranoia the Whisperers gave the community since winter. Making CJ cross the border with her, bringing back that Whisperer to try and find the horde. 

And the previous night, much to CJ and Daryl's anger, she had taken Lydia to the border to show the Whisperers the girl was alive. Carol returned without the girl, saying she had run off into Alpha's territory. CJ would be highly tempted to go across the border alone and find the girl if it wasn't for the Dante situation.