Deadland

Chapter 91- Isolation

(TW!! Mentions of drug usage, torture, abuse, and S/A!!)

I asked to stay in the cell for the next few nights. I know for a fact I would run back to the Sanctuary and run back to the drugs- not that I even want to stay clean. 

I'm at a field near both Alexandria and the Hilltop, as is everyone else. We're planning an attack on the Saviors. 

I want to leave. I want to run back to Nick and Negan. I want to shove so many drugs into my body that I black out. 

But that's too easy.

That's how I know it's wrong. 

Everybody who's not in the "close group" keeps their distance from me. I hear hushed conversations and every time I walk anywhere near someone, a few more inches get put between us. 

Daryl and I haven't really spoken. I haven't spoken much to anyone other than that first conversation with Rick, Inejra, Alyssa, Damien, and Daryl. If I do talk, it's usually to Alyssa or Damien.

I have this deep pit in my stomach, a familiar fear brewing throughout my veins. The fear I tried so hard to get over.

Men.

But now there's another one, and this one is stronger. 

Me.

I saw the graves of the three Alexandrians I killed. Every day I would leave the cell just to walk around. Everyone would try to talk to me, get me to open up, make small talk about gossip, or try to get intel- usually resulting in a slap. 

I don't feel like me. I don't feel like Alyssa Walsh's sister. I don't feel like Daryl Dixon's wife or Damien James' best friend. I don't feel like an Alexandrian and I don't feel like the badass, stubborn, kick-ass asshole I was before the Lineup.

All I feel is an empty, gaping hole in my heart. The one that I thought was covered up for good. 

I don't know where I belong. If I go back to where I felt normal, not being judged for using drugs- in fact, almost everyone else was using them. At the Sanctuary I was in charge, I was feared but in a good way. The same way I used to be feared here. 

But at Alexandria, I'm still an enemy. I'm a druggie criminal who fucked the enemy and befriended the person who killed my best friend and the first man I was comfortable being alone with after Nick. 

At Alexandria, I'm feared. Nobody will admit it, but they're waiting. They're waiting for the Saviors to show up and thank me for being a secret spy, they're waiting for me to lash out and go on a killing spree, they're waiting for me to show my Savior self again.

That "Savior self" isn't gone. 

Hell, it never will be. 

We're all standing around Rick, Maggie, and Ezekiel. Ezekiel is the leader of another group called the Kingdom. I missed a lot.

He's got a cool-ass pet tiger that I'm going to make my mission to befriend. Alyssa's currently sitting next to it, petting it, so she beat me to that. 

Who's surprised?

He's dark-skinned and has white, long dreads with one feather poking out of one of them. He has a salt-and-pepper beard and uses medieval words like "thy" and "shall". 

I'm standing at the back of the group. Whenever I'm in front of anyone, I only sense eyes only on me. I can hear the gossip floating around like a plague in the air and I can feel it when people point at me. 

Rick stands before us, looking around. "When I first met him...Jesus said that my world was gonna get a whole lot bigger. Well, we found that world. That...'bigger world' is ours by right. That we've come together for it, all of us..."