Daryl's Angel: Saviour (Book Two)

Chapter 70: Something After

"Did I do the right thing?"

Michonne frowns. Rick stares out into the trees while the other Alexandrians rest nearby. His eyes are still damp and red-rimmed. It was a long night, and the day will be even longer.

"I keep..." Rick stops, thumbing away moisture from his cheek. "If he dies, and I'm not there—" He inhales sharply, shaking his head as he turns to her. "I abandoned my boy."

"No," Michonne says, the fierceness of her voice giving Rick pause. She grips his arms, grounding him. "You didn't abandon him. You left him with people you trust, people who can help him. You trust Hope and Daryl, don't you?"

His head droops, but he nods. "Of course, I do."

She smiles a little. "Good, then let them handle it. Let's get our people to safety, and then we'll win this war."

He steps closer as he wraps her in a hug. She can feel his body shaking against her, calming the longer she holds him. As they pull back, he kisses her, a quick, gentle touch that makes her chest feel warm. She never thought she'd have this again, feeling so good with another person.

"I love you," he murmurs.

"I love you, too," she replies. They had never said it to each other until now. She lightly touches his face, the cut on his brow, the greying beard. "We'll be the ones who live, Rick. You, me, and Carl."

They will. They have to.

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Rick moves through the next few days in a fog as the final battle against the Saviours creeps ever closer. They run into trouble on the way to Hilltop, but Dwight manages to save the day, redirecting the Saviours away from the Alexandrians, but rejoining their ranks in the process to keep up the cover story.

A day later, the Saviours launch a devastating attack against Hilltop. Men and women die on both sides, and Rick fights through it, surviving yet again. The blood of Saviours comes as a sick comfort to him, penance for all the lives they took.

Still, there's an ache in his chest that won't go away. Every day, he watches the road and hopes above all hopes that the Dixons will arrive with his son, safe and sound.

No such thing comes.

It's strange not having Daryl by his side in this fight, making Rick feel like he has to watch his back doubly so without his brother there to watch it for him. He half expects to see Hope helping the wounded, but Siddiq and Rosita are all they have to rely on without Dr. Carson. Rick didn't realize how used to Hope's presence he had gotten, like a reliable shadow always lingering on the edge of his vision. Never a fighter, always a helper, a soft voice of peace in a world of war.

She promised to help Carl. She kept him alive when Rick couldn't, and she promised to do it again. He wants to return her faith in kind by listening to what she asked of him in the sewers—after all, she tried to get them to slow down in confronting the Saviours, to learn more about their enemy, but Rick was too confident (too arrogant) to take her seriously.

It's too late to go back now.

Michonne keeps him grounded, stops him from running away from it all, but Rick can't bring himself to read Carl's letter. He finds Michonne reading hers one evening, smiling through the tears.

"He says I'm his best friend," she tells him. It makes his heart hurt when she holds the letter to her chest. "He's mine, too."

She doesn't talk about Carl like he's part of the past. It's one of the only things that keeps him going.

Gregory arrives at the Hilltop with a message from Dwight, scrawled on a map with details of the Saviours' final attack. Maggie is quick to lock him up, no matter how much he moans and whines about how unfair it all is, that he barely escaped the Saviours with his life, and can't they please just give him a chance?