Chapter Text
The copper wire was cheap, brittle, and a total pain in the ass to wrap around dried valerian root when your fingers were caked in topsoil.
"If you die out there," you muttered, not looking up as you pulled the knot tight with a sharp snap of your teeth, "I’m digging up your prize winning squash bed and planting mint. Pure, unadulterated, invasive mint. It’ll swallow your whole lawn in three weeks, Aaron. I swear to God."
Aaron let out a soft patient chuckle from the doorway of the greenhouse, the corrugated tin humming slightly under the afternoon heat. He was leaning against the frame, his clean, neatly pressed recruitment shirt entirely too bright against the backdrop of your hanging sage bundles and jars of steeped black water.
"I have total faith in my squash, and even more faith that you're all talk," Aaron said, stepping into the shade. He held out an uncalloused palm. "Is that the new batch?"
You tossed the tightly bound bundle at his chest. He caught it out of the air, his thumb tracing the rough texture of the hemp cord and the melted copper wire holding the roots together. It looked less like a charm and more like a neat piece of wilderness scrap, which was exactly how you preferred it.
"It’s protection," you sighed, finally wiping your hands on your canvas apron, leaving twin streaks of dark damp earth across the heavy fabric. "The air's heavy today. The wind chimes have been going off since dawn and there isn't a breeze out past the wall. Whoever you're tracking out there... they aren't like the ones we've brought in before. They're going to tear the gates off this place, Aaron. One way or another."
Aaron slid the bundle into his vest pocket, his smile fading as the real weight of his job settled back onto his shoulders. "Let's hope they just knock first."
"They won't," you said, reaching into your apron pocket to feel the familiar, comforting click of the five smooth, heavy knuckles resting at the bottom of the linen. "Feral things don't knock."
They didn't knock.
When the metal gates finally groaned open three days later, the sound cut through the neighborhood like a warning. You were out by the raised cabbage beds with a rusted trowel in your hand, watching the dust kick up as the battered RV rolled past the clean white houses. The people who spilled out of that vehicle looked like they belonged to a completely different world.
You dropped your trowel into the dirt and walked back up the wooden steps of your porch, wanting the distance. From the shadow of the overhang, you watched them spread out across the pavement. They moved together like a pack, immediately covering every angle. They were filthy—their clothes caked with dried mud, grey road dust, and dark old bloodstains.
A big man with thick red hair stepped out first. His chest was heaving as his eyes swept the windows of the houses, his grip tight of his rifle. He looked ready to drop into a firing stance at the slightest movement.
Behind him came a man on a motorcycle. He slunk off the bike like a wild animal checking for steel traps, a heavy crossbow slung over his greasy vest. His eyes were small and dark under a fringe of matted hair, cutting across the lawns and the tree line.
Then he looked up and caught you watching.
He took in the deer skulls nailed to the porch beams, the glass jars of drying herbs, and then he stared straight at your face. You didn't look away. You just met his stare, your hand sinking into your apron pocket to let the smooth bones click against each other in the dark fabric. The biker’s mouth twisted into a hard scowl before Rick Grimes barked out an order, pulling his attention away.
By nine o'clock that evening, the new group was huddled up inside the house down the street.
Deanna had spent the afternoon running them through her videotaped interviews, trying to figure them out before leaving them to the pristine colonial home on the corner. They had refused to split up into the bedrooms. The whole group had packed themselves into the front living room instead, treating the clean carpet like a campsite.
Abraham Ford sat on the very edge of a floral armchair, looking entirely too big and dangerous for the room. He was dragging an oil cloth down the barrel of his rifle, his thick red brows pulled down hard.
"Tell you what," Abraham grunted, his gravelly voice cutting through the quiet. "This whole setup gives me the goddamn short hairs. It’s a false paradise. Especially that house on the corner."
Rosita looked up from her jacket, where she was fixing a torn seam with a needle. "The one with the wind chimes?"
"The one with the goddamn voodoo aesthetic," Abraham said, pointing the nose of his rifle toward the dark window. "Got deer skulls nailed to the porch like a boundary line and enough dried weeds hanging up to choke a horse. Half expected some wrinkled old Baba Yaga to step out and offer me a poisoned apple. Woman looks like she lives on bad news."
Glenn let out a small tired huff from where he was leaning against the doorframe. "Aaron said she’s just the gardener. Grows the herbs for the infirmary. Said she told him we were coming."
"Gardener my ass," Abraham scoffed, shaking his head. "That’s a certified swamp witch if I ever saw one. The kind that reads your future in your own damn lungs. We need a rotating watch on that side of the street. I am not sleeping with that kind of weirdness ninety yards from my head."
Over in the darkest corner of the living room, Daryl Dixon sat on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest. He didn't join in. He didn't laugh. He just kept his head down, aggressively picking at a frayed thread on his jeans.
But he was thinking about the porch. He knew what a clean knife cut on a deer skull looked like, and he knew those hadn't been put up for decoration. But it was your eyes he kept coming back to.
You hadn't looked at them like they were monsters, and you hadn't looked at them with that fake smiling pity Deanna used. You just looked tired. Like you had already buried everyone you loved, and you were just waiting around for the rest of the world to catch up.
Daryl spit into an empty soda can, his eyes narrowing in the dark. Witch. He let out a low grunt to himself.
They were all out of their minds. Every single one of them.
The next morning, the sun broke hot and heavy over the asphalt, baking the scent of damp earth and blooming honeysuckle into the air.
You were kneeling in the dirt between the rows of young carrots, a pair of rusted shears in your hand, quietly humming an old tune to pass the time. The soil was dry beneath your fingernails, a familiar grounding weight that didn't care about the people down the street or the walls keeping the dead at bay. The sound of footsteps on the gravel driveway made you pause.
"Good morning," Deanna’s voice carried over the fence, crisp and entirely too cheerful for the hour.
You sat back on your boot heels, wiping your brow with the back of a dirty forearm. Deanna was leading a small delegation down the pavement. Rick Grimes walked a half step behind her, his face clean shaven now but his eyes still darting toward every shadow. Beside him was Michonne, a long sword slung over her back, pushing a battered stroller. Maggie, Carl, and a heavy set man with a dark mullet followed closely behind, looking like a vanguard entering enemy territory.
"This is our community gardener," Deanna gestured toward the garden bed like you were an exhibit in a museum. "She manages our medicinal crop and the greenhouse logistics."
Rick didn't say good morning. He just stared, his hands resting near his belt, taking in the deer skulls hanging from your porch rafters just twenty feet away.
Your eyes didn't linger on him, though. They dropped to the stroller. Inside, the little girl was fussing, her face flushed a dark angry red as she gnawed furiously on her own fist, tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
"She's teething," you noticed, standing up and brushing the loose dirt from your apron.
Michonne instantly shifted her weight, her hand dropping instinctively toward the handle of her stroller, blocking the path by a fraction of an inch. "She's fine."
"She looks like she's miserable," you countered quietly, keeping your hands visible as you stepped closer to the wooden fence. "The cheeks give it away. I’ve got some dried marshmallow root and chamomile leaf inside. You steep the leaf cold, soak it in a clean rag, and let her chew on it. The marshmallow root gives them something tough to gnaw on, and the chamomile takes the swelling down."
Rick looked from you to the skulls on the porch, his jaw working. "We have aspirin."
"Aspirin runs out," you tilted your head, meeting his eyes dead on. "Plants don't."
Maggie looked at the baby, then back to you, a slight softening around her eyes. "My stepmother used to use clove oil for that. Back on the farm."
"Clove works too, if you can find it," you nodded. "But marshmallow root is what we have."
The man with the mullet stepped forward slightly, his eyes scanning the hanging bundles of weeds on the porch with a look of intense skepticism.
"While the physiological efficacy of Althaea officinalis is well documented for mucosal inflammation, I must voice a notation of caution," Eugene swallowed hard, clearing his throat and shifting his weight. He glanced sideways at Rick. "Sergeant Ford did explicitly state during our nocturnal brief that the resident of this particular quadrant possesses a high probability of occult affiliation. Specifically, he categorized you as a certified swamp witch who intends to read our futures via our internal organs. Taking pediatric medical remedies from a suspected practitioner of the dark arts seems a statistical risk to the health of the infant."
Deanna blinked, her polite smile faltering as she looked between Eugene and Rick in total confusion. "I'm sorry, a what?"
You let out a short dry laugh, leaning your hip against the fence post.
"Sergeant Ford?" you asked, tilting your head. "The loud blood nut with the rifle? Yeah, he was staring at my porch last night like he wanted to shoot the chimes." You sighed, shaking your head. "Tell your Sergeant that unfortunately, I don't have any Valium for him. He’s just going to have to calm down on his own. And as for the witch business..."
You looked back at Eugene, holding his gaze.
"It wasn't witches they burned, Mr...?"
"Porter. Eugene Porter."
"Mr. Porter," you smiled. "It wasn't witches they burned. It was clever folk. People who knew how to use the dirt to fight the things that kill us. Besides, you don't have to worry. I haven't turned anyone into a toad since the world went to shit. It's bad for the ecosystem."
Eugene blinked, his mouth opening slightly as he processed the response, while Maggie let out a tiny, unexpected huff of amusement. Even Michonne’s mouth twitched, just for a second, before she looked back down at the baby.
"You're more than welcome to come inside and get it if you want it," you told Rick, your voice casual. "I don't bite. Unless you step on the seedlings."
Rick didn't move right away. He looked over at Michonne, his eyes communicating a whole silent conversation in a split second. Then he turned to Carl. "Stay here with Michonne."
"I'm going in with him," Maggie decided, already stepping around the edge of the stroller. She gave Rick a look that left zero room for argument.
Rick swallowed, his posture stiffening as he looked back at the rest of the group. "Stay with Deanna. I'll find you when we're finished here."
As you turned to lead the way up the wooden porch steps, you paused, looking back over your shoulder at Eugene. He was still standing there, staring at you like you were a riddle he couldn't solve.
"Oh, and Mr. Porter?" you called out, flashing him a quick, cheeky grin. "If you start sprouting warts by nightfall, it was entirely coincidental. I promise."
Eugene blinked, his mouth dropping open, but you were already turning the brass doorknob.
Maggie followed you up the stairs without hesitation, her feet snapping against the wood. Rick stayed right behind her, his hand hovering automatically over his empty belt where his gun used to sit. His eyes tracked the dried sage and the clean bone cuts on the deer skulls as he crossed beneath them, his shoulders tense.
The inside of the house smelled completely different than the rest of Alexandria. It didn't smell like lemon floor wax or clean laundry. It smelled like rich dirt, bitter roots, and old paper.
"What is that smell?" Maggie asked, her eyes adjusting to the dim cool interior after the bright morning sun.
"Sage, mostly," you shrugged, already walking toward the small utility kitchen at the back of the house. Before you stepped out of the room, you paused and glanced back over your shoulder at Rick, whose eyes were already scanning the window locks. "I hate to be that person, but please don't touch anything."
You disappeared around the corner, leaving the two of them standing in the quiet of the front room.
Rick didn't waste a second. He moved silently across the floor, his shoes making barely a sound on the woven rug as he checked the back exit and the sightlines to the street. His brow was furrowed, his eyes taking in the strange markings drawn in charcoal along the doorframes—rough pagan sigils that didn't look like anything he’d seen on the road. The windowsills were lined with smooth river stones and eggshells, black bird feathers and tarnished copper trinkets.
Maggie didn't look at the walls. She walked over to a low wooden table near the cold fireplace, where a neat canvas mat was laid out.
Sitting right in the center of the cloth was a weathered leather pouch, its drawstring worn thin from years of use. It was small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, but the leather was stretched tight, molding around the hard irregular shapes of whatever was trapped inside.
The floor creaked as you walked back into the room, holding a small brown paper satchel and a clean square of linen cloth.
Maggie didn't flinch, but she didn't look up from the table either. She pointed a finger toward the mat. "What's that for?"
You stopped, your eyes dropping to the little leather pouch. Your hand instinctively twitched toward your empty apron pocket before you caught yourself.
"That's just my compass," you explained quietly, stepping forward to hand the paper satchel to Maggie. "Helps me find my bearings when the weather gets bad."
Rick stepped back into the center of the room, his eyes cutting between you and the table, his suspicion practically radiating off his skin. "Looks like a bag of bones."
"Everything's a bag of bones if you strip the skin off it, Mr. Grimes," you replied, meeting his hard stare with a calm, flat expression. "The marshmallow root is in the bag. Steep two teaspoons of the leaf in cold water, soak the linen, and let her chew. It’ll help."
Maggie reached out to take the brown satchel, but Rick’s arm shot out, his palm flat against her chest to stop her. He didn't take his eyes off you.
"Chew it," Rick ordered, his voice dropping dangerously low.
Maggie frowned, looking at him. "Rick—"
"Chew it," he repeated, blocking her from taking the bag. "Both of it. The root and the leaf."
You looked at his hand, then up at his face, completely unbothered by the accusation. Paranoia wasn't a sickness out here; it was a lifestyle.
Without a word, you reached into the open paper bag. You pinched a small clump of the dried green chamomile leaves, tossed them into your mouth, and then pulled a tough fibrous piece of the pale marshmallow root from the sack. You popped the root in behind the leaves, standing right there in the middle of the room as you chewed. It tasted bitter and earthy, but you swallowed it down anyway, showing him your empty palms.
"If I drop dead in the next thirty seconds, you can loot the house," you jested, your voice entirely deadpan.
Rick stared at you for a long heavy beat, waiting to see if your knees buckled. When you just stared back, thoroughly bored by the standoff, his jaw worked, and he finally lowered his arm.
Maggie took the satchel from your hand, offering you a quick grateful nod. "Thank you."
As she took the bag, your eyes lingered on her. There was a heavy suffocating shadow hanging over Maggie's shoulders—the raw bleeding kind of grief that comes from a very recent loss. The air between you felt thick for a second, the quiet in the room shifting as you looked at her.
"If you ever want a cup of tea," you said softly, your voice dropping its sharp edge completely. "Or just some company... a north star. My door is open. People in Alexandria come to this house from time to time when they need a little direction."
Maggie caught her breath, her eyes widening just a fraction as she looked at you. She didn't say anything, but the tight line of her shoulders dropped just a bit, the offer hitting exactly where it was meant to.
Rick's eyes narrowed, sensing the sudden shift in the room even if he didn't understand it. He cleared his throat, moving toward the front door. "We need to get back."
"Don't mention it to the red head," you added, walking them out onto the porch. "I don't have the energy to fight off an exorcism today."
Rick pushed the front door open, stepping out into the bright midday heat first. His eyes instantly cut to the street.
Daryl hadn't gone with Deanna and the others. He was leaning against the wooden fence post at the edge of the yard, his crossbow held low against his thigh, aggressively spitting a stream of dark saliva into the dirt. The moment the porch door creaked, his head snapped up. His eyes locked onto Rick, then Maggie, making sure they were both in one piece.
He walked over to meet them halfway down the gravel path. He ignored you completely, keeping his shoulder turned to the porch as he looked Maggie up and down.
"You good?" Daryl grunted.
Maggie nodded, her fingers tightening around the brown paper bag. She looked back at the porch, her voice quiet. "Yeah. There's... something about her."
Rick let out a short breath, his eyes tracing the perimeter of your yard. "Inside's weird. Whole place is full of junk." He glanced down at the bag in Maggie's hands, then gave Daryl a single terse nod. "She took some first. It's clean."
Daryl glared at the bag, his brow furrowing into a hard deep V. He finally cut his eyes toward the porch, where you were standing by the wooden railing, your hands tucked into the pockets of your dirty apron.
You didn't stay up there. You walked down the wooden steps, your feet hitting the driveway with a slow easy gait as you closed the distance.
"I wasn't introduced to this one yet," you said, stopping a few feet away and nodding toward Daryl.
Daryl didn't shift his weight. He just tightened his grip on the stock of his crossbow, his mouth working as he stared at you through the his messy hair. He didn't say his name, and he didn't offer a hand. He just stared.
"Daryl," Rick supplied for him, his voice level.
You met the man's dark guarded eyes directly. You didn't leave a blank space or a clunky pause—you simply spoke your name aloud, letting the syllables clear the heavy air between you.
Daryl didn't repeat it, but his jaw clenched slightly, his gaze dropping to your dirt stained attire before flicking back up to your face. He gave a single barely perceptible jerk of his chin—not a greeting, just an acknowledgment that he’d heard you.
"You look like you haven't slept since the world ended, Daryl," you noticed, your tone shifting back to casual. "I’ve got some dried valerian root inside if your nerves ever get the better of you."
Daryl didn't answer. He just let out a defensive grunt, twisted his mouth into a scowl, and looked away toward the road.
"Suit yourself," you said, a small dry smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. "But the offer stands. For all of you."
You gave Maggie a final quiet nod, then turned on your heel and walked back toward your garden patch, leaving the three of them standing on the hot street.
Daryl watched you go, his eyes tracking the sway of your body until you disappeared around the side of the house. He spit into the dirt one last time, his voice barely audible.
"Crazy," he muttered.
You didn't look back as you knelt down by the beds again, the rough wooden handle of your shears settling comfortably back into your palm. The low murmur of their voices faded down the clean asphalt street, swallowed up by the sterile quiet of Alexandria.
They thought they were safe behind the high steel walls. They thought the dead were the only monsters they had to worry about.
Your eyes drifted to the edge of the fence, landing on the exact patch of gravel where Daryl had been standing. The dirt there was torn up from the heel of his boot, and a dark damp circle stained the dust where he had spit.
Walking over, you pulled off your gardening glove and reached out, pressing your bare palm flat against the earth he had just agitated.
The soil was still warm from the midday sun, but beneath the heat, a sudden violent jolt of static seemed to hum against your skin. The air had changed the second that rusted RV breached the gates. This new group brought the stench of blood and impending ash with them—something dark. An unyielding storm that Deanna Monroe's fragile little paradise wouldn't survive. But it was his shadow that lingered heaviest in the dirt. A man so fractured, so fiercely guarded, he was practically a ghost walking around in a living body.
You curled your fingers, scooping up a handful of the earth and squeezing it until the small rocks bit sharp into your palm.
"Daryl," you whispered to the empty yard.
Up on the porch, a sudden gust of wind caught the dried sage hanging from the rafters, setting the bleached deer skulls and wind chimes to clatter softly against the beams. A storm was coming, alright. And you were going to be right here to watch it roar.