Chapter Text
The group walk for a day and a half straight before exhaustion wins out and they decide to set up camp for the night. Along the way, they find an abandoned train car with crude writing carved into its side. "FIND US AT TERMINUS – MAGGIE & GLENN!" it had read, after which nobody was in the mood to sleep least of all Beth.
And so, they travelled through the first night fuelled by their shared eagerness. finally however, night fell again and their exhausted bodies fell with it.
"I'm going to collapse if I stay up any longer." Harlow yawns into the fire, standing up with the intention to sleep in the abandoned car where Judith is already resting. "I'll come with you!" carl jumps up to stand next to her, making Harlow laugh.
"Whatever Loverboy." She teases, kissing his cheek and pointedly ignoring Beth's wolf whistles. "Night Michonne." Harlow bids, taking carls hand and turning to go.
"No funny business you two!" Michonne calls after them, making carl flush while Harlow chuckles. "Wouldn't dream of it!" Harlow calls back, knowing both she and Michonne are merely joking.
Carl however, seems less convinced that Michonne is teasing. "We are only fourteen!" he splutters in embarrassment, glaring at Harlow when she shrugs.
"Well, I'm almost fifteen."
***
Harlow wakes to damp skin and damp clothes. In her ribs her heart beats as if to outrun her, all the while her lungs expand as if to become too large for her body. The entrails of her reverie be it from a nightmare or dream are quickly lost to her waking mind, and she is left cold and empty.
Exhaling, Harlow tries to school her breathing. Timing each inhale to the beat of carl's soft snores next to her. Then, with the reluctance of someone teetering on the edge of unreachable sleep, she opens her eyes.
Beyond the car windows, the press of dark still lingers and the soft crackle of the roaring fire can still be heard.
Shivering, Harlow pops her side door open in search of some much-needed air. Then stepping out, she shuts it gently over so as not to disturb carl or Judith who is sleeping in the driver's seat. The baby cradled in a basket scavenged from the car's trunk.
"Are you alright Harlow?" Michonne's voice greets her as she steps into the light of the fire. Allowing the heat to bathe her before answering. Then, after noticing both Beth and Rick still awake next to Michonne Harlow answers.
"Yeah fine. I'm uh..." Harlow points vaguely behind herself, "Just going to walk to the end of the road if that's alright. Bad dream you know?" she looks at Michonne.
"Do you want me to come with you?" The older woman asks, frowning at Harlow from where she sits. "I think I need a minute alone." Harlow crosses her arms awkwardly, sighing in relief when Michonne smiles her understanding.
"Just don't go far and be back in ten, okay?" Michonne worries her lip. "Thanks." Harlow turns away, walking slowly down the road until the fire is only a faint blot in the distance.
Finally alone, Harlow rests her back against one of the forest trees that line the road. Feeling like she can properly breathe for the first time in a while. She loves her makeshift family, but gone are the days where she can hide under her and Enola's bed when she feels overwhelmed by them all.
"Don't move." Harlow's entire body stills at the abrupt break in the silence, her bones growing rigid as a familiar kiss of metal is pressed against her temple. Shivering, Harlow hardly dares breathe.
"This lass is claimed boys." The same voice speaks again, and Harlow feels bile rise in her throat at the disgruntled sounds made by what is surely half a dozen strangers.
"I've already claimed the boy." A different less refined voice pipes up smugly, laughing at the tittering of his peers. "He's all yours anyway Dan, ain't none of the rest of us like ass." A third voice lazier than the other two mocks. "Hey, a hole is a hole ain't it?" the man, Dan, comments lewdly.
All the while, Harlow can't even find it in herself to scream. Sickening acceptance falling awash over her as it becomes clear this is not an act of random folly. These men know her, know Carl. These men have planned for this, for her. So confident they are that they have already divided up their promised spoils.
"Please." Harlow whispers out a prayer to her sister. Asking for strength. Asking for peace. Asking for it to at least be over quickly.
"What was that sweetheart?" The man with the gun to her head asks, a grotesque hand clasping the back of her neck like she is a prized mutt at the pound.
Harlow bites her lip, refusing to give him the satisfaction of an answer. "I asked you a question doll!" the barrel of the gun is shoved further into her scalp, making it so Harlow is forced to tilt her neck sideways to accommodate it.
"Y'all can do this later, Pete 'll want ya with the others." A fourth voice chimes in, stopping Harlow's racing heart in its tracks. That voice. It's the same one that carefully guided her in setting up her own snares. The voice that praised her aim. The voice that fashioned a bow just for her.
Harlow swallows down her bile, knowing this isn't right. Can't be right. Daryl isn't with these men. Whatever he is doing here, he is not with them. 'Please Enola,' Harlow begs. 'Let him not be with them.'
"Oh give a man a chance to chat up his lass." Her captor strokes a hand down her hair, toying with the ends. Bumps form on her flesh, raised as if to protest the violation. "What do you say doll, want to go see the others?" The man simpers, like he is talking to a child very much younger than Harlow is.
Harlow feels her stomach revolt.
She doesn't bother with an answer, a choice which proves to be a mistake when the hand in her hair tangles and pulls. Forcing her head back.
"I asked you a question sweetheart." Harlow shudders, swallowing painfully as a new wave of stomach acid works down her strained neck in a burning lumping mass. "Yes." She whispers hoarsely, hating herself more with every passing second.
The man's presence poison. Rotting her even now, before he has so much as groped her. He doesn't need to go that far to bring her to ruin. Harlow feels the rot in her bones each time his breath grazes against her.
"Good girl." He coos. Then his face is buried in her hair, and he is inhaling her. "Such a pretty girl." He hums, his hand working its way lower so that it rests right where her lower back meets tailbone.
"Let's go then." He pushes her forward. Giving Harlow no choice other than to move with him and the press of metal on her temple.
The blot of orange where the fire roars blurs and bleeds as they draw closer, and Harlow finds herself desperately blinking the damp from her eyes as they approach.
Focusing, Harlow's stomach roles. Ahead of them three men stand behind her family. Guns to Michonne, Rick, and Beth's heads, the youngest pallid as her captor presses into her from behind.
"Back up Tom, the blonde one is mine." A fourth man warns Beth's assailant, sounding almost cheered to do so. Harlow assumes this is the Pete Daryl referred to, the man so clearly in charge as he watches the proceedings at leisure.
Ahead of Harlow, a grotesquely greasy man lumbers forward. Pressing his pug like face against the car window where Carl sleeps. Harlow only wishes Carl doesn't wake up. That by some miracle, he will sleep through what this man is going to do to him.
"Took you long enough." The man, Pete, reprimands the men who bring up Harlow's rear. In her families frightened eyes something flashes as Harlow is pushed into the firelight, and Harlow wonders if they recognise Daryl yet.
"Harlow..." Michonne chokes, helpless as they all are. "I'm fine." Harlow blurts, and it's a lie. Harlow can count on her left hand the number of times she has been less fine than she is now. If nothing changes, Harlow doubts she will ever be fine again.
"YOU LEAVE THEM BE!" Rick shouts as Harlow hears the car door click open behind her, too frightened to register herself as being included in the man's demand.
"Hold on Pete." Daryl's voice shocks Rick into silence, shocks all of them into silence. Except Carl, who screams into the frozen night upon waking.
"You said we were taking their stuff, that's all you said." Daryl steps into the small semi-circle the men have naturally made. Glaring at the leader.
"And what's got you thinking we're not Daryl?" The older greying man smirks. "First, we'll take the girl." The leader nods towards where Harlow is held.
"Then Dan gets the boy." Harlow winces at the sound of Carl's frantic scrambling. The sound of his breathless attacker hauling him from the car nauseating.
"HARLOW!" She hears him scream for her. His voice scraped and pained, so unlike she is heard it before. She wants to scream for him to, wants to let him know she hears him.
Only the hand on the back lowers and cups her, stealing the words from her throat with a singular squeeze.
"And then..." The grizzled leader laughs like he is telling a great joke. "...Once we've finished with the little ones, I'm going to take the pretty blonde and the other boys can fight over the woman." The man leers at Beth, who cries silently under his gaze.
"The hell you will." Daryl has his crossbow on the monologuing man so fast Harlow doesn't have time to warn him of the men creeping closer.
Doesn't have time to do anything but scream as five of them lunge at the hunter.
"Afraid you shouldn't have done that Daryl." The leader sighs as if bereaved. "But you know the rules, we don't threaten one of our own." The man stalks closer to Daryl, now being held down on his knees. Crouching, Pete places a consoling hand on Daryl's leather shoulder.
"What y'all want, you can have it. Take it from me instead." Harlow has never heard the hunter sound so defeated, so cowed. It's enough to almost convince her what's happening isn't real. That she is going to wake up any second and laugh at the absurdity of Daryl saying such a thing.
"Nah Daryl, I like my plan better. And besides, you're going to learn to be one of us." The old man grins, then looks up at the men holding Daryl. "Teach him boys."
Someone screams as fist's instantly rain down on Daryl, knocking him to the ground in seconds. Someone screams as boots join the calamity, partied by the sound of splintered bone.
Daryl isn't screaming though, and Harlow is barely aware of her own voice as she is forced to the ground.
Her captor kicking her so that her body twists awkwardly. Harlow's hip meets the ground first, followed by her screaming shoulder.
The force of the impact jerks her neck sharply, rattling Harlow's skull and turning the world sharply on its head.
In the moments after, Harlow is able to scramble away. Too out of it to recognise she is being played with. A hand on her ankle soon drags her back, but not before she sees him.
Her boy, her love, eyes vacant as his trousers are yanked down.
***
Carl tries to fight as beefy hands drag him forth from the Car. His brain still half in sleep, so that this might all be some disturbed dream.
Only Carl knows he couldn't conjure a nightmare so vile as this. The disgust of reality becoming real to him the moment he sees Harlow. His girl, pressed under groping hands. A gun to her head, forcing her gaze away from him.
"HARLOW!" Carl hears himself call out to her, but his own voice is distant. Robbed from his throat by instinct and cast out into the sullied night like a prayer.
Behind him, laughter. His body becoming something wretched as it is contorted in the man's grasp.
In his head, Carl is fighting. But the scrape of gravel on his cheek is unmistakable, as is the weight that straddles his hips.
In reality, carl thinks he went still the moment he heard the click of a belt buckle and the slide of leather shushing through loops.
"Quit squirming." He hears the weight above him giggle, gleeful and boyish. Then comes the chill of meaty fingers slipping beneath his waist band.
It doesn't make sense, the man's words. Carl isn't moving at all. How can he be squirming when his insides are heavy and dead. How can he be squirming when beside him his love is fighting a battle Carl can't assist in. When she is losing. When her wet eyes graze his.
Then she is gone. Carl is gone. The world and all its horrors are gone.
Carl lets them be gone.
Above him, the devil cheers.
***
Harlow feels her shirt role up towards her breasts as she is dragged by the ankle against sharp stone. Soft chuckling morbidly misplaced as she is flipped onto her back, and a hand yanks her top the rest of the way off. Obscuring her vision for a fleeting second before the biting wind mounts her and a sweaty hand clasps her chin.
With no choice but to look, Harlow is forced to stare into the monsters cold toothed grin and pointedly not at his hungry eyes.
"There's my pretty girl." The words are cooed, licked on, and salivated over. Then the hand on her chin is gone, and for a fleeting moment Harlow is untouched.
Driving her knee upwards, blood rushes in her ears as her leg grazes something hard. The man howls, falling to the side from where he had been crawling over her. Attempting to cage her body in with his own.
Seizing the moment, Harlow blindly scrambles back. Hearing for a brief second Michonne, who screams for her. Then, the beating of her own heart drowns out all else.
Harlow is dragged back under the man with vigour, and this time the hardness presses against her stomach as she is straddled. Attempting to free herself, Harlow achieves little save for further engraving sharp stones into her exposed back. her bra the only thing saving her chest from ravishment under angry eyes.
"Fucking bitch!" The man heaves, sparing a hand from her body only for the brief moment it takes for him to rummage in his belt. Then, catching in the moonlight, a winking blade looms over her. Angelic, Harlow could almost cry in gratitude. 'At least this will be it', she thinks. At least she has angered him into a different kind of violence. A kind of violence that at least allows for her dignity. A kind of violence noble men died from in battle fields. A kind of violence that at least promises peace at the end of it.
Sucking in a breath, Harlow convinces herself she is ready. That she is okay. Only when the blade beds her flesh just below her eye and the pain blooms, she figures this to be a lie. She is not ready. This is not fine.
In the fleeting moments in which she is sure the knife will wed her skull, her last regret is of carl and his lips that she will never get to kiss goodbye. In the fleeting moments in which she is sure the knife will wed her skull, her last thought is of Michonne wondering if she will live on after this without her? In the fleeting moments in which she is sure the knife will wed her skull her last memory is of Daryl, 'Take it from me instead' he begs,' 'Ya did good kid,' He promises.
Only, the knife doesn't wed her skull. Nor does it whisper sweet nothings into her brain. No, instead it drags and tares. Drawing down her face, she tastes the metallic blade on her tongue as it splits open her gum.
Distantly she is aware she is screaming, or at least she is trying to. Only a gurgle comes out, bubbling like hot broth. Then her nose is covered, and her mouth to. "This is your fault sweetheart!" Harlow shakes her head. That is not true. She is drowning on her own life blood, killing herself as she chokes but is unable to heave.
Darkness crawls into her peripherals, and the last thing she will ever see is that cold toothed smile. Only that's wrong. In the final seconds before her eyelids become too heavy to hold still, there is no smile. No leer. In those final seconds, Harlow finds herself confronted by a reflection of her own fear.
***
Voices scrape her eardrums painfully, splitting her head in two. "Move another inch and I'll put a bullet in her head." The pain isn't only internal she realises, there is something harsh pressing into the side of her pounding skull. For a moment its like she is swimming, her throat swollen and waterlogged. Then she is pouring, her eyes flying open as her stomach starts to pump.
The urge to curl forward is groaning, but her body is stiff and pinned as if to a bored. As if to him. Him. Harlow feels his breath on her back and recognises his arm over her naked chest. Her legs dangle, her toes barely able to scrape grass. No, not grass. Gravel. Road. Harlow recognises the road.
Then she sees her, Michonne on her feet. One hand over her hip, fingers grasping onto her gun. Its only then Harlow truly understands the gun against her own head, and the statue it has forced Michonne to become. Towards Michonne's side, Rick stares wildly at something beyond Harlow. Carl, she prays. Let it be carl, let him be looking back.
Ricks beard is bloody, as are his lips and teeth. It dribbles down his neck onto his shirt, much as Harlow's own blood is doing. Only hers splatters down her front in puffs. Angry and volcanic with each fruitless express of her lungs.
Infront of Rick lies a body; one Harlow decides to believe is the leader. the man who had them beat. Who had Daryl beat. Daryl is not in sight, like carl, he must simply be beyond her gaze. Alive and watching. Alive and breathing. Alive and Alive and Alive. 'Please, let them be alive.'
Beth, pallid and shellshocked, isn't looking at Harlow. Her eyes as frozen as the rest of her, locked onto something resting by ricks boots. A meter south from the bleeding neck of the corpse, Harlow wonders if she is imagining the small husk of dismembered flesh lumped innocently on the gravel.
Then, a pulsing wave of crimson copper erupts from her chest, and her eyes move to follow as it splatters onto darkened ground.
"Please..." Michonne's voice is forced, almost practiced. Preformed. Harlow follow her gaze, finding her friends dark eyes not on her but rather on something behind her. Above her. Over her. Not on the man, but on something beyond them both.
Harlow hears it before she feels it. The bullet, a single deafening bang. It's over in only a second, so quick she hardly as time to recognise her fate before she falls out from where she stands.