RIDE OR DIE | DARYL DIXON

welcome home

Six years later.

THE WORLD STILL wasn't like it was before. They had adapted to the new world once already, and it soon became the norm. But that, too, was destroyed. No one really knew what normal was anymore. It used to be waking up each morning in Alexandria to Rick cooking eggs and bacon. Listening to the plans he had for them all that day. Watching him lead and carry them through that new world on his back. Going to bed and waking up the next day to do all the same.

Most of them pretended. Went about their days and continued with the plan he had left for them. Plans that built their communities up to more than they ever could have imagined them to be. Others couldn't find it in them to put up that facade and pretend that the world didn't stop that day. Everything was still, and they may move forward, but the world wasn't moving forward with them. 

Daryl was one of those people that couldn't pretend. He could, but he didn't want to. There was a guilt that held him down, tied him to the river that he's searched along every day for years. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. Rick, of course, but alive or dead? A body with a soul or an empty corpse? Either option petrified him. He's thought about both scenarios in his head when he laid awake at night. What if he were to find him alive and breathing? There was no way to make up for the six years that they had let him sit there. What if he were to find him dead? That may just make the world crumble even more.

Willow and Sienna tried to visit him as often as they could. He had said word of where he'd set up his camp if they ever needed to find him, but it took them a while to actually visit. With the communities still adapting to the change, she had been bouncing around each of them trying to keep them standing. It was also his emotions that kept them away, too. Before he had left, he didn't speak much. He didn't eat and he hardly showed his face to anyone. When he did, his face was always full of resentment and anger, but at no one in particular. He'd have frequent outbursts at anyone who tried to get close to him, but no one could really blame him. He lost his brother that day, and their parting before wasn't ideal. He's been carrying that weight with him for six years.

Today, Willow decided, would be their visiting day. They hadn't gone all week, and things have finally began to smooth over at Hilltop. There was a re-election after Maggie departed that briefly halted their progression. Wells had mentioned a small community that needed saving, and he was ready to venture into it alone. Maggie felt that it was right for her to go along. She had already saved Hilltop, and she wanted to further save others. She had realized after leaving Negan in that cell that she needed to bring more good into the world. Good that would banish the bad that he left in it with his presence. She joined Wells and even got Georgie to join them as well, and that was the last they all have seen of her. 

Willow had a hard time accepting her and Hershel's leave, but she knew it was something she had to do. Just like her, she needed to keep moving and keep doing. The events with Negan and the Saviors will forever be a part of them, but if there was anything they could do to somehow suppress the things they still felt, they'd do them.

"Chicken salad." Sienna slapped on the lid to the container. "Does he even like chicken salad?"

Willow finished oiling her gun and set down her rag. "Your dad likes anything he can digest."

Sienna grimaced at the thought and handed her gun over to Willow for her to clean and polish. "Have you seen Sibby around?"

She shifted uncomfortably. She had to have a talk with Sibby when she had gotten back after the bridge, and it didn't go too well. Sibby was a fierce little girl, and her words were venomous when Willow had confronted her about sharing the story of Gregory. Willow tried to go about it as politely as possible, but Sibby took it as a threat and immediately became defensive. She had let it slip that she had eventually made it over the walls without being noticed and she was trying to bring a walker back in for Sienna to see. She said it was the only way for her to acclimate and understand the world they lived in. While she may have been right, the execution of it was wrong. Willow offered to take her and Sienna out in a few years once they were both old enough and had some training with weapons, but Sibby passed on the offer and has kept her distance from the both of them. That didn't stop her from still helping Sienna learn her way around a knife and her old pistol. She's older now, and she has a dire need to help in any way she can. As a mother, it was hard for Willow to get comfortable with it. She probably never will, but she knows she's kept her behind the walls for too long and she'd have to learn sooner or later.