Casually Cruel - TWD

17. Luck runs out.

"Was it my dad?" Eliza broke the silence that had filled the entire infirmary for half an hour. She had really hoped Pete was lying when he told her that, but she couldn't shake it from her mind.

Rosita, Abraham and Eugene all looked at each other.

"Yes," Eugene replied blankly.

"Eugene!" Rosita and Abraham both yelled.

Eliza looked down and shook her head. "I just wanted to know. Pete said it was."

Abraham nodded. "You coming with me to that meeting tonight?"

"Deanna said no kids," Eliza furrowed her eyebrows.

Abraham rolled his eyes. "He ain't getting away with punching you, darlin'. It's either you go and tell 'em, or I do."

"Fine," Eliza huffed.

Truthfully, Abraham and Rosita never told Eliza that it was her dad because they didn't want to hurt her. That day was traumatic for them all. Sometimes, each of them would have nightmares about it.

🦋

Rosita stayed with Tara while Abraham and Eliza went to the meeting. Rick hadn't even shown up yet.

"We're going to start," Deanna announced.

"Can we wait?" Maggie asked. That's when Eliza noticed Glenn wasn't next to her like he usually would be. "There's still people coming. Glenn, Rick."

Deanna didn't even take Maggie's words into consideration. "We're going to start," she repeated, making Eliza almost roll her eyes. Deanna looked at Maggie. "It's already dark. We're gonna talk about what happened. Not the fight. Not what precipitated it. We're dealing with that. We're going to talk about one of our constables, Rick Grimes. We're going to talk about how he had a pistol he stole from the armory, about how he pointed it at people. And we're going to talk about what he said. I was hoping he'd be here."

What the hell did Deanna mean by 'we're going to talk', it seemed like she was just telling them all things and all of them were just obligated to sit her, smile, nod, and listen.

"She said he's coming," Michonne persisted, repeating Maggie's words.

"I'm sure he'll be here," Carol added. "And I'm sure we can work this all out," she said with a sweet smile.

The meeting started, Pete wasn't here, thank God. Eliza would probably start shaking if she saw him. Michonne stood up first, talking about Rick, about how he just wants his family to live, how he helped the group survive.

Then, Carol stood up to talk about Rick, how people need him, how she's sure he's sorry for what he did.

Next, Abraham. "Simply put, there is a vast ocean of shit that you people don't know shit about. Rick knows every fine grain of said shit...and then some," Eliza zoned out for a little while after that.

Eliza focused again, listening to what Maggie had to say.

"All of us that were together before this place, no matter when we found each other, we're family now. Rick started that. And you won't stop it. You can't. And you don't want to. This community, you people...that family...you want to be a part of it, too."

Deanna stepped forward, Abraham still glaring at her. "Before we hear from anyone else, I...I would like to share something in the spirit of transparency. Father Gabriel came to see me the day before yesterday and he said our new arrivals can't be trusted, that they were dangerous, that they would put themselves before this community. And not one day later, Rick seemed to demonstrate all the things Father Gabriel said. I had hoped Gabriel would be here tonight."