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 war didn't pause after the road.
If anything, it surged.
Rick and Negan collided again in the days that followed—loud, violent, unfinished. Their encounters felt less like strategy now and more like inevitability, like gravity pulling them back toward each other no matter how far anyone tried to move away. Each clash ended the same way: no surrender, no clarity, no space left for Carl's voice to land.
The world kept choosing momentum over mercy.
Rick threw himself into it. Planning. Striking. Reacting. Always moving, as if stopping would mean feeling the full weight of what he'd lost.
He didn't come looking for Tessa.
Tessa didn't go looking for him.
They hadn't spoken since the road.
That silence settled between them slowly, thick and deliberate. Not anger—something worse. The understanding that if they spoke again too soon, they would only fracture further.
Rick sat alone on the porch as the morning burned the fog off the fields. The letter lay open in his hands, the paper already creased and softened like he'd unfolded it more than once. He didn't read it again. He didn't need to. Carl's words stayed where they'd landed—memories layered with просьs he didn't know how to answer.
Birthdays. Walks. Safety.
Peace.
Rick stared out across the land like he was bracing for something that never came. His jaw tightened once. His hands curled slowly around the paper, then loosened again, like he didn't trust himself to hold on too tightly.
Behind him, the house was quiet.
Too quiet.
Tessa saw him as she crossed the yard.
She slowed without meaning to—just long enough to register the slope of his shoulders, the way he sat hunched forward like the weight of the world had finally found a place to settle. She recognized the letter in his hands immediately.
He didn't look up.
She didn't stop.
Tessa walked past without a word, her own letters pressed close to her chest.
Rick never knew she saw him.
But the distance between them had already been written.
⸻
Hilltop absorbed people the way it always had—quietly, practically. There was work to be done, and Tessa did it. She hauled water until her arms burned, reinforced fencing already patched too many times to count, spent hours in the fields with dirt under her nails and the sun heavy on her back.
