In a world ruled by fear, survival comes with a price.
When her brother's attempt to overthrow the Saviors fails, Tessa finds herself under Negan's watchful eye-protected, controlled, and dangerously close to the man she should hate. As violence, po...
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The road stretched ahead of them, pale and endless, like the world had already decided it wasn't going anywhere better.
Rick drove.
His hands were locked around the steering wheel, grip too tight, knuckles pale. The radio stayed off. Silence filled the car—deliberate and dangerous. His breathing came shallow and controlled, as if letting too much air in might let something else out with it. Michonne sat in the passenger seat, posture rigid, eyes fixed forward. She hadn't cried since the house. Since Carl. Whatever grief she carried lived instead in the tightness of her jaw, the way her fingers curled slightly against her thigh, like she was holding herself together by force alone.
Tessa sat in the backseat. Carl's letters rested across her lap—neatly folded, careful. Names written in steady ink. Rick. Michonne. Maggie. Others. One envelope sat apart from the rest. Her fingers brushed it, then stilled.
The paper was thicker. The ink pressed harder, less certain. She lifted it slowly. The name written there didn't belong.
Negan.
Her breath caught, sharp and quiet. Rick noticed her stillness in the rearview mirror. "What is it?" he asked, his voice rough, scraped raw by grief. Tessa turned the envelope once, then again, like the name might change if she looked at it long enough.
"He wrote one for him," she said. The words landed heavy in the car. Rick's foot eased off the gas without him meaning to. The engine whined softly as the car slowed, then steadied again.
Michonne turned in her seat. "Who?"
Tessa lifted the envelope between them.
Rick saw the name.
"No," he said immediately, shaking his head. "He wouldn't."
"He did."
Silence pressed in around them, thick and suffocating.
Rick stared straight ahead, jaw tightening. "What do you think he meant?" he asked, more to himself than to either of them. "Did he want us to stop fighting? Just... give in?"
"We could pull over," Michonne said gently. "Read what he wrote."
Rick shook his head. "Not yet."
Tessa lowered the envelope back into her lap and folded it carefully, separating it from the others.
The road went on.
⸻
They moved through Alexandria like ghosts.
The house echoed in ways it never had before—empty space where Carl should have been, quiet where laughter used to live.
"He used to sit on the roof," Michonne said softly, standing in Carl's doorway.
Rick stopped in the hall. He didn't go in.
Tessa lingered behind them, eyes drifting to the corner where Carl's boots used to be, the place he'd dropped his hat without thinking. She could almost hear his voice—casual, hopeful, stubbornly alive.
