ELEANOR . NEGAN

078.

Pain was one thing she was accustomed to, annoyance was an other. Her head was courted in a fabric bag, the prickles harsh on her face that left scrapes and discomfort on her skin. It pushed hard against her cut that was opening by the second, but that didn't matter because the bag was swung off her in seconds.

There stood Leah without her mask.

It was a dingy cell against a brick wall, light peering in through the cracks of the main walls. There was a cell adjacent to hers, blood on the floor that looked fresh and sickening. They had someone there, she didn't know if they were alive.

"You killed two of my brothers."

Elle tore her eyes away from the cell and looked at Leah. Her stare was cold, Elle smirked. "Who? Fflic neu Fflac?"

Leah sourly chuckled but she didn't say anything, she just left the woman there and waltzed out a guarded door. If this place had cells? Then this place was Meridian.

A second later after Leah's departure, two men opened up the cell and grabbed her harshly by the arms.

This was going to be long.

-

"Two of my brothers were killed."

After Leah spoke to Eleanor, she twisted herself through an open door and closed it, entering another larger room with even more cells. Inside one of them was Daryl, opposite to that was a knocked out and bleeding Frost.

"Michael Turner and Dean Hunt." Leah swung her head back against the brick wall outside Daryl's cell, tears resting on her waterline. "We fought all over the world together. Pope brought them in after our last tour when he started his company." Daryl flickered her eyes to the chained fence—Pope.

"I thought ya were soldiers-"

"We were." Daryl sniffed and looked back down at his tied wrists. "We went private."

"Ya didn't tell me ya were a merc."

Leah scoffed, humorously. "I mean, what does it matter? It was the same damn job. Except we could actually pay our bills." A saddened sigh fell from her lips. "Dean had a family... but Michael was like me, you know? He didn't have anyone. He was the little brother I never had. You know, the little brother I always wanted. And now he's dead. They're both dead. Killed."

Daryl could remember the ambush very well, the way Maggie's people and Gabriel, Alden and Negan took for the left side of the forest while Daryl sprinted through the right. Cutting across the road, he saw two bodies laid flat on the concrete with a body leaning over them.

Eleanor.

"You know, we lost a lot of people here. And that's been hard. But not like this." Leah shakily sighed and Daryl could feel his heart tug at her pain. "This is the first I lost someone close to me in a long time — except maybe for you."

"Ya didn't lose me," he corrected. "I came back and ya were gone-"

Leah finally turned her head and faced him through the bars, an incredulous and sour look laced with sorrow. "You left me. I asked you what you wanted... you left."

"I got scared."

"Of what?"

Daryl looked down in guilt, memories surfacing of his long hours spent looking for his brother. "Lettin' go."