Shambles- The Walking Dead [Alden x Maggie] [1/2]

58- Report

Teresa was buried now. And Gabriel and Jesus were sent away to scout ahead. That left the rest of the group to locate walkers in the woods.

"I don't know if I can do this." Rose admitted as they watched Negan skin the face of a walker they'd put down. "I understand we have to do it, but I don't know if I can." She ran her finger past the large scar on her cheek.

None of them were there when it happened. None of them saw the destruction that happened in that barn. They wore their masks to scare them. They taunted her and Syddiq as they killed the others. She didn't want to wear a mask like they did because that would make them exactly like them in her mind.

"No one's going to force you to do anything." Alden told her calmly. "I don't like it either, and you have a lot more reasons to object to it than I do. I know that. But then I also know you'd be safer if you did wear one of those masks."

"You can stick close with me till we can take them off." Carl insisted.

A while later Negan came up to her with one of the masks. He held it out to her without saying a word. Now he knew how she got that scar on her face, and he'd learned that it was a touchy subject the hard way. Aaron had made sure of that. She took the mask in her hands hesitantly. It was horrid to hold someone else's skin in your hands. Some old stringy locks of hair were still attached to the scalp and the skin itself felt like old leather. She hadn't touched one of their masks before, mostly because she didn't want to.

She stared at the empty holes where the eyes had been. And she was right back there in the barn again. The images flashed in front of her eyes again and her grip on the mask tightened in an attempt to ground herself back in reality.

"Hey." Elijah began calmly to snap her back to reality. "You wanna give it a try? It's just the one walker and I'll be right there to make sure nothing happens."

She scraped her throat and stood up, "let's give it a spin."

—

Alden looked up from the rabbit he was skinning when someone blocked the light and cast a shadow over him. "Negan." He sighed without looking up. "What is it?"

"I'm not the enemy anymore, Al." He replied as he sat down. "Haven't been in a long while."

"You know, using that nickname sends a whole different message"

"You're still holding on to that, huh?" He teased. "And here I was thinking Sasha used to call you Al all the time."

Alden froze. He wasn't supposed to know that. "How- How do you know that?"

"I've got my intel." He shrugged. "All I wanted to tell you is that you need to be ruthless for the fight to come. You're not known to be ruthless and the way you went back for Gage; you can't do something like that when we fight these people."

"What?" He frowned slightly, not quite understanding what Negan wanted from him exactly.

"I'm going to be frank here because you're not quite getting it." He sighed. "Those people won't hesitate to kill us all, so we can't hesitate either. They massacred an entire community. Kids. We can't risk them following us back. They all have to die. We can't show mercy."

"I know killing them is our only option. What makes you think I didn't?" Alden frowned.

"Well, Al. Unlike me, Gabriel and Maggie, you're a good person. You hesitate to kill another human being, and now you can't because you won't." He held a short pause. "You got it?"

"Got it." He nodded.

—

They'd rounded up a horde of their own. Enough to bring the fight to Meridian. For now they were just waiting, lurking, keeping their herd at a distance from the walls. They had already taken one of them out into the woods. Two stabs in the stomach had been enough to have the walkers finish him off.