Chapter Text
“I’ll be honest with you…Rick was it?” Gareth said as he stood in front of the chair Rick was cuffed to. “We’re not bad people. We are simply doing what’s necessary to survive, same as you and your people.”
“We’re nothing like you,” Rick said, lips terse.
Gareth nodded as if he agreed. “While your arrival is welcomed, we now face an unfortunate dilemma and decisions have to be made. You see, our supply has grown beyond our current demand and we can’t keep everyone up without it all collapsing like a house of cards. Usually, we integrate whole groups into ours, if they agree to our terms, or we put whole groups into our supply.”
Rick’s nerves were on edge as he followed the conversation. He had his ideas, but begged and pleaded with his mind that they were wrong, that he was wrong. These people couldn’t be doing what he thought they were, because if they were…
“That way nobody has to feel the loss of their loved ones. Trust me, we understand loss,” Gareth continued. “However, your group is big, bigger than any other we’ve had come through in a long time and we can’t integrate all of you with our current supply and we can’t keep all of you alive long enough to be part of our supply so…”
“You fuckin’ talk too much,” Rick spat, tired of listening to this college kid asshole talk about supply and demand as if they were cramming for an econ exam. This idiot had been rambling ever since Rick had been singled out and removed from the train car and brought for a sit down discussion.
Gareth sighed. “Like I said, we’ve never been in this position before so we know what needs to happen, but we’re graciously extending the final decision to you. If you and your people would like to stay, we can accommodate six people, the other ones have to go into supply.”
Rick stared at him, daring him to proceed, because he wasn’t about to ask. There were twelve of them and Gareth was only offering sanctuary to six, not that any of them would accept it anyway.
“You see, this is why we want you to join our group, we could use someone like you,” Gareth laughed nervously under Rick’s intensity. “It’s been a long time since we had strong and able minded leaders in our group. Don’t get me wrong, we have leaders, just none like you. And it’s no wonder you’ve all lasted so long out there, you’ve got at least three, if not more, of you that, quite frankly, we’d do anything to have on our side.”
Rick flinched, but he didn’t know why, his body was taut so tight he felt like he’d likely just stand up and rip the cuffs off his wrists and beat the man into oblivion, but the metal holding him in place didn’t agree with his plan.
“You, the archer, the samurai, the solider…” Gareth smiled and Rick assumed the soldier was that big guy, Abraham, that he’d met only a few hours ago. “But let me be real with you, okay? Can I be real with you? Your son, he’s a teenager and teenage boys have the biggest appetites of anyone. He’s a liability at this point. Now, I spoke up for him, because I know we need you and you won’t come along without him, so I’m on your side Rick. I think with the proper negotiations, we can come to an agreement where you and your son get to stay, but he’s hanging in the balance right now and you are the only one that can save him. Do you understand?”
At the mention of Carl, Rick had stopped breathing, making sure he heard every word that came out of that dumb punk’s mouth. There was a lot being said, but it was still vague and Rick was ready for the truth, the real truth, not Gareth’s bullshit supply and demand flow charts.
“You’re eatin’ people?” The words were out of Rick’s dry mouth before he could stop himself, before he could deny it any longer and live in their finely crafted illusion.
Gareth tilted his head and frowned. “You make it sound so…bad.”
Bile rose in Rick’s throat and he swallowed to push it down. He looked at his hands, each cuffed to an arm of a chair and thought about standing up and attacking him with the chair still attached to him, but then thought better of it. He had to be smart, he had to get his people out of there and acting out wasn’t his best option at the moment.
Taking a deep breath, he settled himself and started whatever this negotiation process was, anything to buy his group more time to come up with a plan. “Fine. Let’s negotiate. What are your terms?”
The small upturn of Gareth’s lips indicated he was only pretending to be pleased, but Rick had been a cop long enough to know it wasn’t genuine. Gareth didn’t trust his intent.
“Six people can integrate into the group, we would like you, the archer, the samurai, the soldier, your son, of course, and then you can pick the last person. The other six will have to be confined until it’s time for them to serve the greater good of the community. We’ve already discussed that it would be unfair to tell those six that they are the only ones being put into supply so we are willing to tell them you are just being separated and they’ll never know the other six of you lived on.”
A flash of Carl eating a plateful of Glenn crossed his mind and Rick felt the bile again. He reminded himself he wasn’t actually negotiating, just buying time and nodded through his disgust. “Or? What are my other options?”
“There are no other options. Your choice is not whether this will happen or not, your choice is who it will happen to. We are willing to negotiate certain people with you. So if you prefer we keep someone else rather than…let’s say the archer…we’d consider that.”
Rick felt the vein in his neck pulse at the mention of Daryl. He needed Daryl, his brother, his equal. “No, he stays.”
“I figured that’d be your choice, I saw what was going on between the two of you,” Gareth said, wagging his finger with a devious smile.
“What?” Rick growled.
“Oh come now, it’s obvious don’t you think? Nothing to be ashamed of, I saw the way he was looking at you when you first arrived. Not just leader and right hand man…or maybe that is what he is, your right hand man…” Gareth seemed delighted by his little pun. Rick, however, was imagining Daryl’s hand on him—something he’d never imagined before that moment, but now it was planted there, unable to be unseen.
Rick said nothing.
“Regardless of who you are shacking up with at night, we have one more condition to the agreement, one you’re probably not going to like. We are a smart group of people, but we do lack in a certain brute force, so in order for you to stay, we’ll need some assurance that you won’t lead a rebellion against us or plot out our deaths while we sleep.”
“You want to be able to trust me,” Rick said, clearly thinking this guy might be book smart, but he was people stupid. There’s no way Rick would trust them or become trustworthy after all this.
“Oh god no,” Gareth said. “We want to break you.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Rick said, stating a truth. “Especially when you don’t have what it takes to break me. No offense.”
“None taken. And you are exactly right, we don’t have what it takes to break someone as strong as you, not by standard brute force measures at least. Lucky for us, a psychiatrist came through here awhile back. Lovely lady. We integrated her in exchange for her expertise on people, she’s invaluable really. She told us that the people who suffered the most…were the most broken…were people who had experienced intense sexual trauma. Seems to really mess with people’s heads. Anyway, she doesn’t condone this of course, none of us do really, and we haven’t done this to anyone before, so please don’t think this is common practice here…we’re just testing it out on you to see if it works or not.”
“You touch any of my people and I’ll kill you.” Spit flew out from Rick’s mouth with his threat as he strained against the restraints.
Gareth shook his head. “I already told you, weren’t you listening? The only one we need to break…is you.”