chapter thirty two: the talk
3716 words

As she had expected, Lin was indeed on fence watch with Carol and Carl. With the both of them on the ground, Lin took to the tower. It let her cast her eyes over the whole of the prison, the yard and beyond. It let her watch over everything with her bow. Would it be more practical if she had the rile? Absolutely. Each time she thought about it only made her miss Daryl more.

She leaned her elbows onto the rail, shifted her weight forward onto them. She missed Daryl, more than she could say, but wow she missed her rifle and her arrows. Lin plucked at her bowstring across her chest, reminded herself it was still there.

The morning was quiet, almost worryingly so. Walkers almost seemed to forget that the prison was there. The fences were clear and the forests surrounding were silent. It made Lin, Carol and Carl's jobs simultaneously easier and harder. No walkers meant no current threats to worry about, nothing to fight for once. But it also meant hours of down time doing nothing more than sitting and watching.

The silence of the day meant that Lin could hear Carol and Carl's conversation below. Carol spoke of how loud the world before used to be, how the air was permeated thick with traffic and construction, constant noise and air pollution. Like the night before, she thought she wanted the silence. Now, she wasn't so sure.

"What I wouldn't give for the sweet sound of a jumbo jet," Carol mused all in good fun, eyes tipped to the sky just past the guard tower. Carl chuckled and his reply yanked on Lin's heart.

"It'd be even sweeter if we were all on it." That would be sweet, but where would they go? Were there places untouched by the dead, home to still thriving life and civilization? Or was the world truly fucked? Lin wanted to know but she felt as if she already knew the answer to her own question.

"Your mom was proud of you." It was perhaps exactly the thing Lin hadn't been expecting and it made her tilt her head down to see how Carl was going to react. Carol spoke the truth more than anything. Lori was infinitely proud of her son. But Carl couldn't believe her.

"For what? Being mean to her?" Carl had acted on his emotions in the moment; they all had. He'd said some stuff he regretted but they'd all done that.

"No, you can't think about that," Carol told him. Lin wanted to comfort her nephew but from where she stood, it was only Carol that could do that. And as much as Lin wanted to wrap her nephew up and hide him away from everything until he was older, she couldn't. Comforting him, however, was the least she could do. Lin pushed away from the railing, opened the door to the tower room to maker her way down the stairs. As she did, Carl and Carol's conversation was promptly cut short by the sound of a car approaching.

"Please be them," Carl whispered. As the car rounded the bend, came into view, Lin pushed the tower door open. And she was instantly confused as to why her watch partners were running to open the gate. The car that carried their people home pulled through the gate and in wake of her relief at them returning, Lin darted around the car to help Carol close the gate, narrowing avoiding the walkers drawn to all the noise as they stuck their rotting hands through the links of the fence.

With the chain secured, lock tight to keep the dead things out, Lin spun around to the car. They were back. Finally, they were back.

Rick climbed out of the driver's side door, told Maggie to drive the car the rest of the way up to the prison. Lin look through the windows the best she could from where she was standing, confused as to why she wasn't in a certain archer's arms. She didn't see him in the car. And her heart dropped down into her stomach.

No. Maybe she just couldn't see him. She checked again and the car pulled away from her as Maggie peeled off to the prison.

Rick hugged his son, asked him where Hershel was but Lin didn't process it, didn't even hear it because Daryl wasn't in the car.

"Where's Daryl?" She asked Rick, making Carol freeze as well. If he wasn't in the car, then he was dead because there was no way Daryl wouldn't willing come back. He had her, here. He had the group, Little Ass Kicker. He had a home. Rick reached for Lin, set a hand on her shoulder and she hated the way he was trying to comfort her through this. She just wanted an answer.

"It's alright. He's alive," Rick reassured her but Lin still didn't understand.

"Then why isn't he here?" Lin couldn't think about Carol behind her, who was taking this news just as well as Lin was.

"We ran into his brother," Rick told her as if it explained anything.

His brother?

Merle?

She'd long since started believing he was dead at this point. They hadn't seen him since Atlanta, since he'd sawed his own hand off and taken their truck, hightailing away from the group he could have actually been a part of had he cleaned up his damn act.

"Merle?" It was with that one word that Lin truly understood. Daryl didn't come back because he'd finally found Merle. They'd found Merle god knows where somehow alive after chopping his arm off and Daryl had looked between his two choices and picked Merle.

"They went off," Rick told her and it was as if Lin had her future sealed with only three words. Three fucking words that were not the ones she wanted to hear. She would take anything over 'they went off.'

Lin brought her hand up to cover her mouth. Daryl had left and Lori was dead and she'd lost them both one right after the other. Was this really happening?

"He left?" Carol asked from behind Lin. The redhead clasped one hand over the other over her mouth. Rick knew this wasn't going to go over well, he'd tried to prevent it from happening at all, and yet he was still at a loss if what to say to make this better. He'd had all that time in the car to just be a fucking leader and a brother in law with this and he was falling the flattest into the dirt.

"What did he say?" He couldn't have left just like that. Lin dropped her hands to her sides, willed the rest of her developing anger to her closed fists. "When you asked him how he thought I would take this, what did he say? Rick had to have at least asked. The furrow between Rick's brows deepened, showing his own contempt for this whole thing. He wished he could have changed Daryl's mind, he really did.

He exhaled, remembering the exact words Daryl had used. "He said you'd understand."

She'd understand.

She'd understand?

Rick watched Lin's face turn. She shifted her gaze onto him, pinned him there with the fire he saw in it.

"Which way are they heading?" She understood enough about Daryl to know what he was trying to do. He was trying to submerge himself in times he thought were better, times when it was just him and Merle against the world. But Merle was no good for him, even if he was his brother. Lori was no good for her, Lin had realized that as she began to drop pound after pound from not eating to keep Lori alive. Lin wouldn't change anything she did. She wouldn't change what she went through for Lori, not for anything. But the choices Lori made were entirely different from the choices Merle made. Lin didn't want to turn Daryl against his brother, but she wanted the dumb thick-headed man to understand what he had, what he was leaving at the prison. Whether that be her or Carol, the safety of the prison, the community of people who had no doubt begged Daryl not to go, Lin didn't care. She just wanted him to know. And if that meant tracking him and his brother's sorry asses, then so be it.

"Lin," Rick could only guess what she was going to do. Lin wrapped her hand around her bowstring to ground herself.

"You watched Daryl leave with Merle. Where did they go?"

Rick figured it out by the sheer determination filling her figure. "Lin you can't go out there alone."

"I'm not going to let Daryl throw his life away for his deadbeat brother!" She was fuming, ready to hear down the fence herself. "Merle didn't even bother to drive to the fucking camp; you think he's going to treat Daryl any different from how he did in the quarry?"

Rick hadn't seen Merle in the camp. He didn't know. But with the way Merle and Daryl gravitated to each other despite the months of separation, Rick knew there was nothing he could say that would change Daryl's mind. And maybe Lin knew that too. "Lin, if you're trying to save him from Merle," he wasn't given the chance to finish.

"I'm trying to save Daryl from himself." If Lin grit her teeth together any harder, she was sure they'd shatter. "He's a good man but he thinks he's alone and Merle's the one that puts that shit in his head." Lin shook her head. "I can't let him go, Rick."

Whether it was of the distance or of her heart, Rick believed her. But he would not let her go alone. He'd go with her and if they couldn't convince him to come back, it at least gave Lin the chance for a proper goodbye. "You're not going alone. We can talk more inside." He was ready for her to fight him on the matter. And he didn't blame her if she did.

Lin was fuming but Daryl had been halfway right. She understood what he did. If it was Lori, she might have done the same. But many things were different between her and Daryl and she supposed it was why the two of them had worked so well. "I'll go alone if I have to," she replied, eyes out on the wood where she could imagine Merle and Daryl walking just beyond sight.

"But you don't," Rick offered Lin his hand, positioned it where she could see when she turned back to him. Lin looked between his face and his hand. Her reluctance conveyed the way she cared for Daryl, even when he left. She was afraid to call it anything deeper than that, just caring for him. She would shout that from the guard tower if she had to.

Lin took Rick's hand, squeezed it before letting go. Carol, who had been the unlikely audience of their conversation, was still struggling herself to understand. Lin reached for her, wrapped her arm around the woman's shoulders. Carol accepted Lin's touch with the mindset of someone who also cared for Daryl. It was a man that connected them, besides their shared near-death experiences and loss of family. Carol has no doubt that Lin was taking this worse than any of the rest of them, but loss was not some kind of contest. Everyone hurt, no matter the cause or the trauma. All they could do was support each other. Carol held Lin's hand on her shoulder as Rick led them back to the prison.

Carl asked about Oscar. Rick told him he didn't make it. Another death on the list. Another empty bed to make.

In the courtyard, the Greene family stood together around Maggie, welcoming her home after a night of nothing but worry. Hershel kissed his eldest daughter's cheek as Rick, Lin, Carol and Carl approached. Beth, upon seeing the group leader approach, darted over to hug him and press a kiss to his cheek as thanks. It was cute, Lin thought, but the circumstances that had led up to an innocent show of gratitude were far less than desirable. Together, Maggie and Beth walked into the prison, hand in hand as sisters did.

Lin didn't stop in the courtyard but pulled away from Carol to let her decide where she wanted to go. She moved like a woman on a mission, barely processing anything around her. She almost forgot they were keeping another group in the common area until she was in the block. She took the perch stairs two at a time, threw Daryl's jacket over her shoulders after she pulled her bow off. She had her bow, her knives and one of the rifles they kept. She'd be fine. She could run if she needed. She had Daryl's bike. But without knowing where they stopped, it would take her forever to find them. They'd brought the samurai woman back. She could ask her. They'd gotten them to Woodbury once before. If she told her where Daryl and Merle had left to, she could try to track them from there.

It was in her haste she barely thought of what it would be like if she went out there alone. The two times she'd been out alone, she'd nearly died. Implosion or walker bite, it didn't matter. It was Daryl's voice in her head that told her that it was too dangerous and it was her own voice that told him he shouldn't have left if he didn't want her to follow.

Rick followed everyone inside, holding Judith who was crying from just being woken from her nap. Lin knew that if she wanted to do this, if she truly wanted to go out and find Daryl, she had to sneak out. Her chances of even finding them were slim to nothing but she couldn't focus on that. She wasn't going to let Daryl leave, she couldn't, not even if he wanted her to.

Lin found the cell at the end they'd let the samurai woman rest in. She really needed to ask her name.

"What's your name?" Judging by the woman's hesitation, Lin was the first to ask her that.

"Michonne," the woman finally answered and Lin nodded.

"Michonne," Lin repeated. "How far did you lead them to get to Woodbury?" She asked, stepping inside the cell to keep their conversation between them as much as she could.

Michonne stared up at Lin, gauging her plans just by her question. She'd seen the way Daryl kissed her before they left and how Rick brought her up when Daryl tried to leave. "You want to go after him," Michonne settled on. Lin's lip pursed at the notion that her exact plan had been called out by a total stranger.

"How far?" Lin repeated. This time Michonne answered, telling her how far it was between here and Woodbury. The longer Lin waited, the further they got. Lin nodded to thank her and slipped out. She got all the way outside all the way to Daryl's bike before she was stopped. And it was Hershel to do so. She hadn't been as sneaky as she had hoped, especially to the eagle-eyed elder.

"You can't go off on your own. We're a group. We stick together." Hershel pointed at her with the end of his crutch. Lin's jaw clenched as she set her hands on the bike's seat. She hung her head, defeated in the sense that she hadn't slipped away unnoticed.

"Then why are we letting Daryl go?"

Hershel didn't have an answer to that, as Lin though he wouldn't. "You're not going off alone, not when Rick and Judith need you."

"Daryl needs me!" Lin snapped, whipping away from the bike to face Hershel when she yelled at him. The tears in her eyes told Hershel she was finally breaking, that the angry front she'd put up was just that, a front. Daryl had left her here, alone, and she was willing to toss herself in the firefight beyond the prison fences to get him back. "I thought he needed me," she sniffed, bringing the heel of her hand up to hastily wipe the tears from her face. "Merle is no good for him and he knows that."

At least, she thought he knew that. He had to. Blood or not he had to know Merle was no good. But he still went off with Merle and left her here alone. She'd already lost Lori, the pain enough to make it feel as if someone had reached their hand into her chest and pulled her beating heart from her. But Daryl leaving too? Whatever was left of her broken heart had gone with him.

"We're not letting you do this to yourself, Lin. We talk to Rick and we form a plan." Hershel moved closer to her, balancing himself on the unstable gravel ground. Lin reminded herself she needed to go on a run for him, tacked it onto her growing to-do list. "Rick brought Maggie and Glenn back. I have no doubt he could bring Daryl back if he wanted to as well."

Why wouldn't Rick want to bring Daryl back? Lin wanted to believe him, she really did. "Daryl left on his own. He's not coming back."

Hershel's pulled his lips thin, squinted Lin's way. Has she gotten any further, if she had started Daryl's bike, Hershel wouldn't have been able to stop her. And they both knew it. "He'll come back." Hershel nodded to the prison. "Come back inside. We'll talk to Rick and make a plan." He left no room for argument, no room for Lin to do anything but what he asked. It was his wisdom, his fatherly intuition. But maybe it was more so her exhaustion at the world. She thought of how happy things had been the first couple of nights in the prison, when Lori was still alive and her and Daryl had been at their newest still fumbling into kisses and embraces. She was tired, so very tired. And she couldn't go back to that.

"Okay," she whispered, stepping away from Daryl's bike. Lin didn't want to let him go, not after everything they'd been through. If he didn't want to stay for her, then he could stay for Carol or Judith or Rick. There was so much she wanted to still tell him, so much she thought they still had time for.

Lin shook her head. If she thought like that, she'd only sink herself further. Hershel had told her that, when he'd asked her to see him after Lori had died. It was a difficult premise, one Lin struggled with almost on the daily, she knew that better than anyone who could armchair therapist her, but it was a premise she had to accept.

Daryl leaving was his choice, whether he thought of her when he made it or not. She couldn't control that. She could only care about Daryl the way he deserved should he choose to come back. That was, of course, after she ripped him a new one for leaving her in the first place. She was sure that, whether Merle came back with him or not, that was going to be a fun conversation to have.

Carol and Beth stood up on the perch. Lin sat on the mattress she had shared with Daryl, thinking only of what she was going to do next. It left her within earshot of their conversation. She didn't mean to be the eavesdropper but with silence encroaching on the block, it was good for Lin to listen to only them. It let her tunnel her focus, especially when it was Daryl and Merle they were talking about.

"We're weak without him," Beth said, rocking Judith in her arms. Carol shot a glance Lin's way, met the redhead's eyes unintentionally and held them there when she spoke.

"We'll get through this too."

Lin felt useless just sitting around. The Dixon brothers could have been getting further and further away the longer they waited but any chance she had of sneaking away was shattered the moment Hershel caught her and then warned Rick when they made it back to the cell block.

"I'm pissed at him for leaving."

"Don't be," Carol told Beth without missing a beat. Lin wished she could have been that calm but it was the nagging bitch inside her that told her Daryl was never coming back. He'd left her there alone because she was weak and he could get along with Merle better. She couldn't control anything but herself in this world, certainly not the man she could have loved.

"Daryl has his code. This world needs men like that." Judith fussed and babbled a cry when Carol finished. She was right. Daryl had his code; it kept him loyal to himself and to the group from the get go; it kept him honest with her. She could only hope it would keep him honest with himself.

Lin stood from the mattress once Carol and Beth descended the steps down into the block and began to drag it into the cell it belonged. She pushed it back into the bedframe, dropped her bag in the corner. Some of his things were still here, things he hadn't thought he would need on a run. Lin couldn't stop herself as she reached for one of them, thumbing the flannel fabric between her fingers. She was putting it on then, over the plain tank top she already donned. It stung, a lot, but she had to live with it.

She sat down in time with one of the cells shutting downstairs. She hung her head at the neck, buried her face in her hands.

The rift between should be feelings and current feelings deepened. Lin could feel it building within her, the rift cracking, spilling out into the cell around her. She inhaled, tried to keep herself together, but with the next breath she took, she was crying. And when Rick starting yelling the common roombelow, she couldn't discern her cries from his.

an: my poor baby she's trying so hard and the world is so mean to her. we haven't heard much from the governor at all, haha i hope that everyone reading this book isn't too confused with everything happening (id hope that you would already know what's happening in season 3 BUT there are some people that dont (which is totally fine) and are reading for fun in the twd community so i hope this all isn't too confusing!

ive also made a whole bunch of super sweet friends on here and they've been making my quarantine so much better and so much easier to live through. check out the "open your purse" reading list to check out their books!!

but thank you so so much for all the love and support and interaction with this book!! it keeps me so motivated to keep writing lin and daryl's story and i know this book is going to be the longest ill ever write. (seriously like we're at 180k in season THREE,, THERE'S TEN SEASONS) but anyways,, love you all loads and ill see you in the next part!!