Lost Too Much 【REDONE】 ║ Daryl/OC or Shane/OC

Chapter 62: Anything you can do is just too risky.

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(2-006 AV --- 736 AV) I've got plenty to update on. Last I wrote, Merle had just been kidnapped and Clark and I had just gotten back to Alexandria. We're not even there anymore. Daryl escaped the Saviors, luckily, but Merle didn't. He should still be alive, as far as we know, but he's not in a great place.

The next day, Negan showed up again. He had Carl with him because apparently, Carl went on a stealth mission to try to kill Negan and failed. Clark and I had to hide again, and in the midst of it, Negan killed Spencer and had one of his people kill Olivia. I guess Spencer was trying to talk Negan into killing Rick, so that whole ordeal is iffy. After that, though, we declared war. We're taking the Saviors out in some way.

We went back to the Hilltop the next morning to try to convince Gregory to join us, but of course, he wasn't having any part of it. Some of the residents there said they want to help anyway, so Enid, Sasha, and Maggie are working with them. That was about the time Jesus told us about a whole new community, the Kingdom. That's where I am now.

The leader here is a man named Ezekiel, and he calls himself the King. We spoke with him as a whole to try to get him to join the war, but it failed. He still let Clark, Daryl, and I stay here where we'd be hidden, which I appreciate. Since the rest of the group left to go home, I've tried to talk to him again. It didn't seem to work. Also, Morgan is here. Carol was here for a bit, but she left. Those loose-ends are tied up, at least. Morgan likely knows where Carol is, so I'm not too worried.

Last night, I got a chance to talk to Daryl about the break-up after all that time. Like we all thought, he didn't actually break up with me over Shane. He tried to get out of the conversation time and time again but I finally got the truth out of him. He broke up with me because 'things changed and he got scared'. Apparently, all the talk and marriage and kids and everything going on freaked him out. Then he tried to say that he didn't think I was as happy as I could be with him and he wanted me to be with someone better, or some illogical bullshit like that. He even argued that all the stuff about Shane was partly because he hoped I wanted to be with him because Shane would make me happier. In the end of it, I realized that maybe he was just internally making these excuses because he himself wasn't happy in our relationship and didn't know how to get out. Either way, the conversation has been finished.

Daryl just left to go back to Hilltop. I'm not sure what's in his plans there, but he probably just didn't want to be here. It's just me and Clark now.

-CJ
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Our house, though we had only been staying in it for a day, felt empty once Daryl decided he was leaving. Having just myself and Clark staying in a place together was odd and uncomfortably reminiscent of when we were dating, though neither of us was going to bring that up.

In the kitchen, I saw Clark finishing up making breakfast as I walked out. He plated both of our meals and sat them at the small, circular dining table, taking a seat at his own plate as I joined him. I began eating wordlessly, already aware of what was coming. After my talk with Daryl last night, it was only a matter of time before Clark interrogated the truth out of me. Judging by the look he gave me across the table, that time was now.

"So," he mumbled with a mouth full of food, "What did he say?"

"You mean Daryl, right?" I asked, already certain.

"Yeah. What was his scummy excuse?" he asked.

I sighed while the conversation came back to my mind yet another time this morning. It was hardly ten in the morning and I had already recalled the encounter four times. It was probably going to be the only thing on my mind today. After hearing what Daryl had to say about the break-up, I wasn't completely pissed at him anymore. Confused and annoyed, yes, but I wasn't nearly as mad. His reasoning had been more emotional than I expected.