my tears ricochet

Chapter Thirty Six

DAY 01

Rick cleared his throat, uncomfortable. "Ivy's one of us. That has to mean something."

Was she? Ivy wasn't sure who she was anymore. Her mind was stuck in the courtyard with a man's body at her feet. It didn't matter that she was sitting on a chair with the rest of the group in the library while Hershel and Oscar tried to maintain the fragility of peace outside, she didn't know how to leave that darkness before.

Sasha's face was drawn tight, uneasy with new tensions mixing with old ones. "She killed someone. She killed someone in broad daylight for no reason. That man didn't do a thing to her."

Ivy wasn't in control of her hands anymore. They kept mechanically flexing into tight fists before releasing, a pattern she wasn't able to break. Rick had disarmed her and Ivy had been untethered by the violence, drifting miles above the power shift, half numb to the feeling of him dragging her to the prison library.

She had thought he was arresting her. Rick had told them all the story about the boy who killed his girlfriend and wouldn't stop crying, guilting the jury into letting him go for a second round. Ivy refused to cry. She refused to let them see anything that wasn't true.

Carlos was dead. That mattered. That was all, Ivy thought, that mattered.

Glenn was sitting closest to Ivy at the dusty table. He focused on her blank gaze and kept his voice gentle, the way he spoke to Maggie whenever she was upset. "I don't remember who he was. Did you?"

His understanding made her flinch. Ivy's hands turned to fists, knuckles white. She nodded.

"Carlos was a friend to us. He was with these people from the very beginning," Sasha said. She spoke louder so her voice would carry in the library, like she wanted to make up for the fact that she and Tyrese were two people and they were many. "What reason could you have for murdering him? We came in peace!"

The killing had been easy. The reasons were harder. "I had one," she said, speaking for the first time. Her voice sounded strange in her ears like she was hearing it from very far away, at the other end of a tunnel. "And it didn't matter."

"It probably did," Glenn countered.

Her hands released. She wanted a gun. She wanted a knife. Daryl had her switchblade and she couldn't stand the thought of looking at him from where he stood braced against the door. "He was in the room."

Maggie was just behind Glenn and she looked down at her own hands. "Carlos got a clean death. Be grateful. It was kinder than it would have been any other way."

It was Sasha's turn to flinch. "Carlos was the one who helped welcome us to Woodbury. He was the one who made sure the folk who couldn't get out much got their rations delivered every day. He used to help with the children, made sure everyone was doing okay. That was a good man."

"No," Daryl warned, a literal wash of darkness. He abandoned his station at the door and circled around, facing the two strangers properly. "He wasn't much good at all."

Ivy had seen his confusion after Carlos hit the ground. Daryl had been scanning the area looking for the Governor before realizing that the loaded weapon was in her hands, her own fingers red with crime.

"He's dead," Carol stated the fact without feeling. "Not much we can do about it now."

"Those people out there are going to expect more than this. She's a kid."

"You were the one vetting them. You talked to them before we ever left the gate. What the fuck happened?" Daryl said, turning to Rick.

The man looked startled, drawn out of his worn grey expression with a sharp flash of defence. "Background checks don't exactly exist anymore. I went by his word that he stayed behind the guard the wall and didn't know any better."