Chapter Text
When they discovered Tara was missing, Rosita’s stomach dropped into her knees and she had to cling to the nearest arm - Eugene’s - to keep from fainting.
But when Daryl grimly reported that Tara’s head wasn’t among the pikes, she really did fall, barely caught by Gabriel.
Tara wouldn’t have just wandered off, not so soon after taking the reins at Hilltop. That they can all agree on. The Whisperers have her, and when Siddiq regains consciousness, he confirms it. His story is confused, blurred by terror, but Tara was there. He might have seen her dragged away before Alpha pinned him to the tree. But he might have seen a lot of things.
“She’s probably dead,” Gabriel says mournfully, staring into the crackling fire. “Why would they keep her alive?”
“They would have beheaded her if she was dead,” Rosita insists, folding her arms protectively over the ever-so-slight swell of her belly. “They’ve got her. They’re probably trying to get information out of her.”
“Tara wouldn’t tell them anything,” Carol murmurs, her face grim as she stares into the fireplace with puffy red eyes. “She wouldn’t.”
“So she’s running out of time.”
Rosita barely whispers it, clinging desperately to the hope that somewhere out there, Tara is still breathing. “If she won’t talk, they’ll kill her. Soon. They’re probably torturing her right now.”
“How do we know she ain’t gonna break?” Daryl mutters gruffly, his arm still around Carol. “She’s tough, sure, but the Whisperers don’t fuck around.”
“We’ll get her back before she does,” Rosita snaps back, pulling herself off the floor. “I’ll take a group into the woods, go after them. We get in, cause a distraction, find Tara, and get out.”
“They’ll know it was us,” Gabriel interjects, turning to face her, his good eye dark with worry. “They’ll want revenge. They’ll kill more. Many more.”
“Not if we take them out first.” Rosita’s boots click against the floor as she paces the room, the cogs spinning in her brain. “We go in, take the element of surprise, and blow the camp. They started a war, and now we can finish it.”
“And the herd? That means nothing to you?” Gabriel shakes his head, extending a hand towards her. “Even if we take out every Whisperer - and there’s enough of them that that’s no guarantee - the herd will take down the walls and then we’ll die with them. Come on, Rosita...think of our baby.”
“There’s no our in this!” Rosita snaps, whirling on him, her vision tinted red with anger. Because dammit, Tara is in the hands of the most brutal enemy they’ve dealt with yet, almost certainly being tortured for information about the communities she’ll never betray. They may even be planning to kill her now, to spear her head on a pike and let her turn. Rosita swore to Tara she’d never let her turn, that she’d put her down herself if that ever happened. “If you won’t help me, I’ll get her myself.”
“That’s not happening,” Michonne says firmly, staring into the glowing coals. “We’re not leaving Tara to die. But we’re not going to be stupid either. Rosita, you know how to handle bombs. Do you think you could make some?”
“ Make a bomb?” Rosita shakes her head, laughing bitterly. Gabriel is still staring at her - staring at her stomach, more like - and she ignores him pointedly, fixing her gaze on Michonne. “Not alone. Maybe if Eugene helped me, but it’d take days to do that. She doesn’t have that kind of time, and the blast could kill her anyway.”
“Bomb’s not for the Whisperers,” Michonne answers, shaking her hair back from her face. “We go in, finish them, take Tara. Then we blow the herd.”
“With what Daryl described…” Rosita bites her lip, leaning against the wall. “Maybe. It’s possible. But we’re talking H-bomb kind of shit here. Like I said, she doesn’t have that kind of time.”
“What if we lit ‘em up?” Daryl grunts, scraping his boots thoughtfully against the floor. “Drenched a few of ‘em on the edges in gasoline and dropped some torches?”
“”S worth a shot,” Carol murmurs, and Rosita doesn’t like the deadness in her eyes. “As long as we can control the blaze…”
“Which we can’t,” Gabriel finishes grimly. “Any way we do this, people die. A lot of them.”
“So we leave her to die?” Rosita snaps, whirling on him again. “We leave Tara - who helped save your life, if you even remember that - to be tortured to death by people who wear walker skins like Halloween masks? We just leave her there to have her head lopped off and stuck on a pike to turn? Because maybe you can live with that, but I can’t.”
“Rosita.” Michonne raises a hand, her voice cool and even. “He’s not the enemy. Save it for the Whisperers. Gabriel, we’re not leaving her. That’s the only thing that’s off the table.”
“Could we give ‘em the girl?” Aaron looks up from his corner, his hands tracing the frayed denim from the rips in his jeans. “Lydia? Make a trade?”
“Not an option,” Daryl grunts instantly, and the way his hand brushes over the handle of his knife is enough to silence that idea.
“Perhaps we can make peace,” Ezekiel suggests, even as the fading tracks of tears glimmer in the flickering light of the fire on his cheeks. “Make a deal. Trade food, weapons, medicine for Tara?”
“They’re not like that.” Rosita shakes her head grimly, staring at the glowing embers in the fire. “They don’t want to work with us. They’re obsessed with being natural, with living as the dead. They don’t do trade. They’ll wring whatever they can get out of Tara and kill her in cold blood, probably dump her body outside the Hilltop to send a message. If we’re getting her back, it’s gonna be by force.”
Michonne shakes her head, turning to Daryl. “Talk to Lydia. Find out what you can about these people, about the layout of their camp. We need to gather weapons and fighters, as many as we have. Our only chance is to storm them, hit them hard, and...we have to take out the herd. Without the herd, we can take them easily.”
“I’ll lead a raid,” Rosita volunteers instantly, fingers dancing over the handle of her machete. “I’m quiet. I’ll take a group in, fight my way to Tara, and get her out, hopefully without them noticing. We can rendezvous back at Alexandria, that’s where the best clinic is.”
“Clinic?” Daryl jerks his head up, stringy dark hair hanging in his eyes. “She’s gonna wanna go to Hilltop-”
“She’s gonna be in bad shape,” Rosita interrupts, her mind taking leave of the dull meeting room to pull her back to the day she met Tara. Her hair had been so much shorter then, and she’d practically been shaking with fear when their truck rumbled up. Even washed-out and terrified, the mischievous light gleaming in her eyes had been impossible to miss. And then she’d fallen, her bad leg giving out on her, and she’d insisted she could keep going, dragging it behind her until she could barely move. Rosita had taken her weight then, pulled Tara’s arm around her shoulders and helped her forward before she could protest, hiding a smile at her poorly-stifled sigh of relief as some of the burden lifted on her bad leg.
All she can dream of doing is helping her one more time.
“Really bad shape,” she adds, snapping back to the present in a flash. “We don’t know what they’ve been doing to her, but we do know that they’re not concerned about damage. We can patch her up at Alexandria and re-evaluate from there.”
“Okay.” Michonne rocks back onto her heels, stoking the fire absent-mindedly. As Rick’s partner and first choice of succession, they all look to her now that he’s gone. Rosita hasn’t always agreed with her, but her judgement is always well-considered, and she has to admit, Michonne is almost definitely the calmest person in the room at the moment. “Take who you want, Rosita. Anyone who can fight. Daryl and I will take care of the herd, with Eugene’s help. The number one priority is Tara. But the second...take out Alpha. If it’s at all possible. I want her dead.”
Rosita nods, grasping the handle of her machete. “Aaron, Carol? You in?”
Aaron nods silent assent. He’s always been dependable. Carol turns her head slowly, fresh tears glimmering in her eyes. Something twinges in Rosita’s chest at the realization that this is the fifth child she’s lost. But she can’t weaken now, and she needs Carol’s expertise on what may be the most critical mission of her life. “We lost nine good people today. People we cared about, people we loved. And I know it’s shitty, trust me, I know. But it doesn’t have to be ten. And I need your skills if we’re gonna do this. Please, Carol?”
Silence for a moment in the room. Then Carol dips her head, and Rosita almost feels a wordless understanding pass between them. “Thank you.”
Then she turns and leaves, the cold winter air a shock to her system after the warmth of the fire crackling in the hearth. That’s something else she hadn’t considered; Tara wouldn’t have been wearing anything more than a light jacket, assuming the Whisperers didn’t strip her clothes for themselves, and the Virginia winter is vicious. Hypothermia could kill her before Alpha does.
“Rosita!” She whips around at her name, dark hair flying into her face, to be met with Gabriel at the threshold of the meeting room, jaw clenched sternly as he stares her down. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I’m going,” Rosita replies stubbornly, folding her arms almost subconsciously over her stomach. “I have to save her, you know I do.”
“I know you want her safe, but it doesn’t need to be you, it shouldn’t be,” Gabriel protests, rushing over to her despite how she steps away as he approaches. “Aaron can lead-”
“Aaron’s a good man, but he’s not a leader,” Rosita insists stiffly, jerking her shoulder away from his heavy hand. “I’m doing this. Don’t try to stop me. It’ll only waste your breath.”
“Rosita, it’s freezing out, and it’s going to be dangerous, people could die, and you’re carrying our baby-”
“I thought I told you,” she snaps, and the words taste bitter on her tongue as she spits out what she’s been mulling over for weeks now. “There’s no our in this. This is my baby, and right now, I’m choosing a world with no Whisperers in it for them. And you can try to stop me all you want, but it’s over, and this isn't your baby. It never was.”
He jerks back like he’s been slapped, his mouth half-open like he’s expecting her to laugh at any moment, to tell him that her rejection is some big joke, to swoon into his arms and promise to stay with him forever and give him a baby. But she doesn’t flinch, arms folded protectively over her belly, and after a moment, he stumbles away, shaking his head to himself and mumbling, probably sulking.
She doesn’t care. The Band-Aid has been ripped off. She’s been thinking about Gabriel almost since she knew she was pregnant, lying awake at night wondering if this is the man she wants her child to know as father. And now she knows he isn’t. His words confirmed it just now, the way he talked about her as if she were a commodity, a walking uterus to deliver the child he likes to fancy is his.
The way Tara’s face lit up when Rosita told her enters her mind, a gentle tugging on her heartstrings at the memory of her friend going out on a run and returning with an extra bag, loaded with baby clothes from the closest department store, diapers - Rosita doesn’t know how Tara got disposable diapers and she’s not sure she wants to, she’s just eternally grateful - and a small pink rattle she must have salvaged from the scrap pile in the woods. She’d tackled Tara in a hug; she’d been terrified her longest remaining friend wouldn’t understand, would maybe even judge her for getting knocked up in a world like this, but she knew her fears had been baseless as soon as she saw that rattle.
Different images flood to her head then, and they’re not memories, and not nearly so pleasant. A spray of blood, a jagged stick, and Tara screaming, screaming like Rosita’s never heard her scream before, pleading for mercy-
And then she’s back in the semi-twilight in the deceptively tranquil fields of the Kingdom, shivering slightly in the winter chill, alone under a vast expanse of stars.
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She adds to her group as quickly as she can, refusing to shy away from knocking on doors. Convincing people to go is no trouble. As soon as she says Tara’s name, they’re already reaching for weapons, faces set like stones. That’s just the effect Tara has on people - has always had on people. Everyone remembers a time that Tara was there for them, as their leader or simply as a friend.
Rosita vaguely wishes she could have a legacy like that as she sharpens the blade of her machete.
In the end, she rounds up Dianne, Jerry, Magna, Yumiko, Aaron, Carol, and Cyndie, as well as handfuls of additional fighters from each group whose names she hasn’t learned or can’t recall. It’s not a lot, she has to admit, surveying her hastily-gathered militia. It’ll have to be enough.
As an afterthought, she packs a small bag with blankets, one of her own thicker jackets, a fresh water bottle, and a small bottle of painkillers, strapping it close to her back. The basics she might need to keep Tara going long enough to get her back to Alexandria.
“So what’s the plan?” Yumiko questions, slinging her bow over her shoulder. “Just charge in there and start shooting?”
“Basically,” Rosita answers, testing the tip of her blade on the pad of her index finger. It cuts through the flesh like wax, a droplet of crimson blood dripping from the tip. “I’ll take care of Tara. That’s the most important thing. But if we can get Alpha, if there’s even a chance...we have to take it.”
Nods all around. Rosita resheathes her machete, motioning her motley army forwards. “Right then. Let’s roll.”
As she strides out of the Kingdom’s gates, she catches a glimpse of Gabriel watching her sorrowfully, tears glimmering in his dark eyes as he gazes after her. She doesn’t spare him a second glance. She doesn’t need to.
The moon is their only light as they slip through the woods, careful to move as soundlessly as possible. Even with caution, a large group makes a lot of noise on forest floor, and every twig snapping and leaf crunching sends a chill down Rosita’s spine. Someone just stepped on my grave, her abuela would have called it.
They all seem to pause for a moment at the pikes. No words pass between them. They put down the zombified heads and returned them home for burial, but bits of gore and blood still stain the wooden stakes, some still damp and glistening in the pale moonlight. Rosita swallows hard as she pauses by the pike that held Enid’s decapitated head, a lump building in her throat at the thought that it could have been Tara on one of these pikes.
It’s too awful to think about and so Rosita turns her thoughts to the layout of the Whisperers camp Daryl gave her, courtesy of Lydia. If she knows anything about these people, they won’t be making any secret of their prisoner - or what they’re doing to her. She’ll probably be in the center of the camp, most likely bound, where all can see what happens to those who cross Alpha.
That makes sneaking her out challenging.
Gradually, the noise level begins to pick up, but only slightly. The Whisperers truly do know how to blend in among the dead. Only a few patches of glowing coals to combat the cold of winter give away the presence of a camp at all.
Yumiko clambers up into a tree to get a better view of what they’re looking at, leaving the rest in a clump at the base of the oak, waiting in silence with bated breath for her return. Magna’s eye twitches with the urge to fidget, staring nervously up into the branches at the edge of Yumiko’s jacket fluttering in the breeze. Rosita clutches the handle of her machete, her fingers itching to draw it, to slash and stab and kill, to exact payment in blood for the nine gory heads impaled on pikes and left to turn. She wants someone to hurt for this. But that’s not what she’s here for. She’s here for Tara, not for revenge, and the idea of Tara being tortured is the only thing that gives her restraint as she fights the urge to shuffle in the leaves, waiting for the archer to clamber down.
Finally, she does, dropping soundlessly onto the forest floor. “Twenty or thirty,” she murmurs, knuckles white on her bow. “Armed, most if not all. And...I saw Tara.”
“Where?” Rosita hisses instantly, the mention of Tara sparking a small flame of hope in her chest. “Where is she?”
“Right in the middle,” Yumiko breathes, drawing an arrow in preparation. “They’ve got her tied to a tree. It looked - I don’t think she was conscious, or at least not fully. Are you sure you can get her on your own…?”
“I’m sure,” Rosita swears, drawing her machete from its sheath. “Let’s do this now. We’re running out of time.”
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She barely seems to breathe as she clings white-knuckled to a low-hanging tree branch, gazing through the rough cover of bushes and plants, desperate for even a glimpse of Tara, the slightest indication that her heart is still beating. The others slipped away to set up a distraction, draw the worst of the guards away to buy Rosita time to cut her free. So she’s alone with Magna, armed with two short knives, one in each hand, light brown hair hanging over one eye.
She’s never spoken more than a few words to the former loner, and none of them particularly friendly. Tense silence fills the void between them as she gazes through the overgrowth, scanning the shadowy camp for her friend.
“So, you and Tara, huh?” Rosita whips around at that to see Magna leaning against the oak, sharpening one of her knives against the trunk.
“Excuse me?” Rosita manages stiffly. Whatever Magna’s getting at, her tone implies she’s thinking of something more than friendship.
“Please.” The other girl rolls her eyes, and Rosita realizes for the first time how young she is - early twenties at the latest. “You’re out here freezing your ass off for her, I heard you dump your preacher man for trying to stop you, and you stare at her like she’s the fucking sun.”
Rosita bites her lip at that, more memories rushing back at her words, memories of a very different kind than the ones visiting her before coming to the camp. Memories from the time of the Saviors, maybe a month after Tara found out about Denise. Memories of secret meetings in Rosita’s miserably empty bed, of hurried hookups just outside the walls as evening fell. It fell apart eventually, and with it the closeness they’d shared before, but she can still taste Tara on her tongue, can still feel her warm breath sending sparks shooting under her skin. “That was a long time ago.”
“Except it’s not,” Magna argues, and though she still doesn’t meet her eyes, hidden behind her hair, her voice softens slightly. “Listen, there was something when we were out there alone...a group of guys we were having trouble with grabbed Yumiko, took all her shit and dragged her back to their camp for a little fun. And I was...well, pretty much how you are now. Sad stare and all of it.”
Rosita cracks a brief smile, pushing a braid behind her shoulder. “So you and her are…?”
“Yeah,” Magna mumbles, still studying her blade. “I got her back, obviously. And we’re gonna get Tara back too. We are.”
Rosita opens her mouth to respond, but before she can, a signal flare screeches into the sky, shooting a trail of sparks in its wake. Mid-arc, the flaming flare explodes into a million wailing pieces, shooting more sparks across the sky.
“That’s our cue,” Magna announces, and for the first time, Rosita gets a look at her hidden eye as she pushes off the tree, slipping a knife into each palm. Behind them, feet brushing across earth as a pack of Whisperer guards move out, shuffling like the dead in the direction of the flare. “Let’s roll.”
And then she’s shoving through the undergrowth, and after only a moment’s hesitation, Rosita plunges after her, following her black leather jacket towards the patches of glowing coals.
Maybe five of the Whisperers went in search of the source of the flare, leaving her and her group at least fifteen left to handle. Out of the corner of her eye, Rosita spots Alpha rising from beside the fire, her face twisted with rage as she reaches by her side. But the Whisperers don’t use guns, and the element of surprise is a powerful thing. As their opponents scramble for blades, they attack swiftly and viciously, fueled by the desire for revenge. Rosita charges past Yumiko perched on a boulder, nocking an arrow in the direction of Alpha, past Carol charging a Whisperer with a scream of rage and grief, past Jerry, his usual good-natured grin replaced with a twisted scowl, towards a tree directly in the center of camp.
She’s still nearly twenty feet away when her path is blocked by a hulking Whisperer armed with a stick sharpened to a jagged point, growling with rage. Rosita doesn’t slow down, charging forwards with her knuckles clenched white around her machete. He meets her in the middle with a thrust from the stick. She ducks at the last minute, the wicked edge scraping over her shoulder, barely missing her skull. Hissing in pain as blood sprays from the wound, flecking her face with warm wetness, she slashes with the machete, lopping off the end of the stick easily. His face starts to round in surprise, but before he can recover, she thrusts it into his neck, ripping clean through his jugular. More hot scarlet shoots from the wound, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat, drenching her face and shirt in crimson. Rosita lets him crumple to his knees, clutching futilely at the fountain of lifeblood as she vaults nimbly over his shoulder, spitting the salty, metallic tang of his blood from her mouth.
Screams echo from around the camp, echoing through the woods along with the clang of blade against blade. Rosita winces at the cacophony of battle, ducking under an outstretched arm as she rushes towards the towering oak tree. That’s something else she failed to consider - the noise will draw real walkers, and she has to get Tara out and well on the way to Alexandria by then, or the dead will devour them both.
She crashes to her knees by the roots of the tree, and a weak moan from the other side immediately sends a rush of hope flooding to her chest. Already groping for the ropes, she clambers over the undulating roots to Tara’s side.
Her friend is bound to the tree by thick ropes around her waist, her arms pinned behind her back. And those ropes seem to be the only thing holding her up, her head slumped forward. Rosita cups a hand under her chin, lifting her head to be met with a mess of bruises and gashes, blood oozing from a deep cut in her hairline. One of Tara’s eyes is swollen shut, pus and tears leaking from the sliver of her eye still visible. A hunk of her dark hair is missing, most likely ripped from her head, and her shirt and skin alike are crusted with rusty dried blood and filth. Even too weak to lift her head, she manages a weak smile, revealing a split lip and a missing front tooth, more blood staining her teeth. “You coming to save me, gorgeous?” she mumbles, and the old nickname irrationally sends heat rushing to Rosita’s cheeks. “Knew you’d come...knew you’d find me.”
“You think you can walk if I help you?” Rosita asks, sawing at the ropes around her waist with the dripping machete. “I think you can probably tell that we need to get out of here.”
“Mm-mm.” Tara moans as Rosita’s hand brushes against her back, and when she pulls away, it comes back bloody. “They found out my leg was bad...my knee’s shot, maybe for life…”
Rosita glances down, and even in the pale moonlight, she can see that Tara’s leg has been crushed, more blood oozing from the wound, hints of bone shining through the wreck of torn flesh. “Shit,” she mutters to herself, sawing through the last of the ropes. “Let me get your hands.”
Tara leans forward willingly to expose her tied wrists, and the moonlight illuminates her back as she does, revealing a bloody mess of whip marks, her shirt torn to shreds. “God…” Rosita breathes, hacking through the last of the rope. “Okay. Okay. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch, I know it is, but I need you to walk with me, just into the woods, okay? I’ll help as much as I can, but I can’t carry you…”
She swallows hard, biting her lip the same way she always has when she’s nervous, and then nods stiffly, gritting her teeth in preparation. “Okay. Help me up?”
Rosita clasps her hand, giving her a pull to her feet. Almost immediately, Tara collapses against her, a guttural, strangled scream clawing itself from her throat. “Holy mother of God…”
“I know, I know,” Rosita murmurs, pulling Tara’s arm over her shoulders. “I know, I know, it’s not far, not far, almost there, just a few more steps…”
In reality, it’s at least thirty feet to the edge of the woods, but Tara doesn’t need to know that. “Almost there, almost there…”
Finally, they make it to the treeline. Rosita makes her go a few more feet, now practically dragging Tara, before finally helping her sink to the ground. Tara falls instantly, tears coursing down her cheeks from the agony, teeth still gritted. “Hide,” Rosita orders, pushing her into the thicket, already reaching for mud. “Stay here, stay quiet unless they find you. If they find you, scream so loud they hear you in hell, got it? I’ll be back in a minute with help.”
Tara manages a nods, reaching with shaking hands for mud to smear over her face and hair. “Be careful…”
“Of course I will,” Rosita promises, hastily piling a handful of leaves and sticks over Tara, doing her best to fit her in as just another piece of undergrowth. “I’ve got you to think about, don’t I?”
Her good eye half-closed from exhaustion, Tara offers her a thumbs-up. Rosita touches her arm briefly and then charges back into the battle. The Whisperers are falling, slowly but surely, under the force of her friends and their drive for revenge. Out of the corner of her eye, Rosita catches a glimpse of two slender trees, ropes swinging from them in the wind, and the image of Tara strung between those two trees, shrieking in pain from the lashes of a whip, is enough to renew her strength and she whips her machete out once more, spinning the clearing in search of an opponent.
A desperate cry from across the clearing catches her ears and she whirls around to see Magna staggering back, down one of her knives, one hand pressed to her side, covering a gushing wound. Something feral floods Rosita’s veins at the thought of losing yet another good person today and she flings herself forwards, taking a running leap. She’s light, but strong, and she manages to latch onto the Whisperer’s back. He roars in outrage, flailing wildly to try to unbalance her, but she’s faster, plunging her knife into the base of his skull. Dropping off his collapsing corpse, she rushes to Magna’s side, eyes widening at the flood of red staining her fingers. “Here,” she orders, shoving a blanket from her pack into her hand. “Put pressure on it. Tara’s in the woods there, go to her, she’ll help you, she’s the closest we’ve got to a doctor out here.”
“She a nurse or something?” Magna pants, pressing the blanket to her side, her hands streaked with red. “Trained with a doctor?”
“Dated one,” Rosita answers, clapping Magna’s shoulder. “She’ll keep you going ‘til we can get you back to Alexandria. You’re not allowed to die, got it?”
“Hope it’s not that bad,” Magna offers, spitting blood onto the corpse of her assailant. “Shouldn’t’ve tried to fight him on my own…you know you just took out her Beta, right?”
Rosita glances down, grinning as she recognizes the disgusting walker mask as the one worn by Alpha’s second-in-command. “Not till now,” she answers, kicking his corpse hard in the ribs. “That’s pretty badass.”
“Hell yeah, it is,” Magna answers, and she laughs for a moment until it turns into a grimace of pain. “If I’m still alive by then, I owe you a drink.”
“I’ll take you up on that.” Rosita claps her shoulder, nodding towards the bushes where she hid Tara. “Go. You’ll be safe there.”
Magna staggers off, clutching the gash on her side. Rosita swallows hard, taking just a moment to collect herself as conflict rages around her. Then she kicks Beta’s corpse once more for good measure and flings herself back into the heat of battle.
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Alpha needs to go. That much is clear.
It’s impossible to take her down. She’s as fast as the Oceansiders, as lithe as the Hilltoppers, as clever as those from the Kingdom, and as full-on stubborn as the Alexandrians. Watching Beta fall barely shakes her. Even with Cyndie and Jerry tag-teaming her, they’re barely dodging each of her slashes, unable to land even a glancing blow.
Seeing Rosita walk away from the corpse of their second-in-command, another faceless Whisperer charges up to challenge her. But her adrenaline rush is fading, and pregnancy is taking its toll on her stamina, and she’s slow to rise to the challenge as he raises his stick, dealing her a powerful blow to the abdomen.
The staff kicks the air out of her lungs so harshly it doubles her over, tears pricking at her eyes as she coughs up a bit of bitter bile, bracing herself with a hand on her knee. Her other hand goes automatically to her stomach, cold terror rushing through her veins at the thought of any harm to her baby.
It clicks just in time that he’s lifting the stick again, this time going for her skull, and she drops and rolls across the dirt, slashing at the exposed Achilles tendon from the ground. Her blade hits true and he crumples, screeching in pain and clutching his ankle, and Rosita is just pushing herself up to finish it when an arrow pierces clean through his eye. His body strikes the earth with a resounding thud.
Rosita looks up to see Yumiko balanced on her boulder, already nocking another arrow. The other woman gives her a nod before drawing back the string, loosing the arrow towards one of the returning Whisperers that went out after the flare.
Still afraid for the fate of her baby, Rosita scales the boulder as well, sinking onto the hard stone to take a breath. “Can you get Alpha?”
“Don’t have a clear shot,” Yumiko answers, fingering the fletchings of another arrow. “I could hit Cyndie instead.”
“Yeah, don’t do that,” Rosita agrees, arm still wrapped protectively over her belly. “I don’t know if you saw-”
“Magna’s hurt,” Yumiko answers stiffly, her fingers tensing around the shaft of the arrow. “Stabbed. I saw.”
“I sent her towards Tara,” Rosita offers, guilt stirring in her stomach at the thought of losing Magna. This mission was her idea, her responsibility, and the only reason Magna was out here - the only reason anyone is out here - is because she asked them to. If anyone dies tonight, that burden will fall squarely on her shoulders. “She’ll be safe. She’ll be fine.”
“How’s Tara?” She gets the sense Yumiko is fairly desperate for a change of subject, and Rosita can’t blame her.
“Bad,” she admits truthfully. “We weren’t wrong about the torture. I had to hide her; she can’t walk. They completely smashed her leg.”
“Bastards,” Yumiko mutters, nocking another arrow. “I saw him hit you. Everything okay?”
“Not sure,” Rosita murmurs, folding her arms protectively over her belly. “I hope so.”
Yumiko opens her mouth to respond, but freezes before she can, the arrow dropping uselessly from her bow as she stares out from the boulder. “What?” Rosita gasps, pushing off the rock to rush to her side. “What happened?”
And then a shriek splits the air, desperate and feral, and Rosita can only watch helplessly as Carol rushes forwards, stabbing her knife directly through Alpha’s chest.
For a moment, for one perfect shining moment, Rosita starts to smile, to plan her leap down from the boulder. The last of the Whisperers have been defeated, and she can ask Jerry or Dianne to carry Tara home, and save the lives of their wounded friends-
And then with one final, vindictive act, Alpha slashes out, cuts Carol’s throat from end to end, and falls down dead.
Rosita’s ears ring. She can’t hear anything, not what Yumiko mouths beside her, not the cries she’s certain arise from the straggling remainder of their enemy, only the ringing in her ears and the beating of her own heart. Blood sprays in a perfect arc from Carol’s throat, slit open into a cavernous red smile, and she collapses by Alpha’s side. Her hand twitches feebly against the grass and then falls still, and Carol’s fight is finally over.
Her feet pound against the grass as Rosita leaps down from the boulder, rushing to Carol’s corpse, even knowing that the last drops of her life have already drained away into the dirt. Behind her, Yumiko follows, her face pale with shock as she stares down at Carol’s limp body.
The last of the Whisperers - only a few of them left now - are already running, slipping soundlessly away into the woods. Rosita lets them go. Carol lays limp and still in a pool of blood, the river of scarlet already beginning to ebb. Blood does not flow long from corpses.
“What do we do now?” Jerry mumbles hoarsely, staring down at her body. “Rosita…?”
She’s still the leader. She’s still the leader of this godforsaken mission, and it’s entirely her fault that Carol is dead. It’s all too much, the amount of blood on her hands will never wash away, and she might have crumpled and given up if the baby inside her hadn’t chosen that moment to flutter, giving her a gentle reminder that life will go on. She presses a hand to her stomach, hoping for another soft flutter as she lifts her head. “We have to get Tara and Magna to Alexandria,” she manages, her voice cracking with grief. “They’re hurt, both of them. We have to hurry.”
Cyndie kneels by Carol’s body. A blade flashes in the moonlight, and her brain is silenced. Rosita nods towards the bushes where she hid Tara, where Magna hopefully made it. “Tara can’t walk. I doubt Magna can either. They’ll need to be carried.”
“And Carol?” Aaron questions, his voice shaking. “What do we do…?”
“We bring her back as well,” Rosita orders, her voice sharp as she stares down at the corpse of the woman she begged to join them here. “To bury her.”
Cyndie and Aaron take Carol’s body between them, beginning the long walk back to Alexandria with a handful of soldiers as their guard. The rest follow Rosita to the bushes where she hid Tara.
Magna is propped against a tree, her breathing shallow but even. The worst of the blood seems to be stopping, and her hands still press the blanket to her side. Tara leans against the tree as well, head lolling on her shoulder. She looks barely conscious in the dim light of the moon, her hands stained with Magna’s blood. But as Rosita drops to her knees beside her, her good eye flutters open, and she cracks another thin smile. “Bleeding’s about stopped. She’ll live.”
“You’d better too, you got that?” Rosita chokes out, sudden tears rushing to her eyes at the sight of how horribly beaten Tara must have been. “You’re not - not allowed to die-”
“Easy,” Tara breathes, reaching out to touch Rosita’s arm with shaking fingers. “I’d hug you, you know, but I’m pretty sure most of my ribs are broken - what happened?”
“Carol,” Yumiko murmurs from Magna’s side, and that’s all she needs to say to get the point across.
“Shit,” Tara mumbles, her head falling back against the tree, hot tears leaking from her good eye. “Shit, shit, shit...this is all my fault.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Jerry orders, even as he chokes on his own grief. “Come here. We’ve gotta get you to Alexandria.”
“I have to go to Hilltop,” Tara insists, biting her split lip, blood dribbling down her chin. “They need me, I’m the only leader they’ve got-”
“Tara, you need a doctor,” Rosita interjects, wiping away tears on her sleeve. “We have Siddiq. He can help you first - Hilltop needs you healthy.”
“We have Enid,” Tara says stubbornly, her voice faint from exhaustion and pain. “Please...they need me…”
“Tara,” Rosita says softly, and the words feel almost mechanical on her tongue. “Enid’s dead.”
Tara jerks her head up for a moment, shock obvious on her pale and bloodied face, and then Rosita can practically see the wave of memories hit her like a bus. Her mouth falls open, blood still trickling down her chin, and a soft whimpering noise escapes her before she faints against Jerry’s legs, falling limp and still at his feet.
“Shock was too much for her,” he murmurs, already leaning down to scoop her up. “She’ll come around soon.”
“You can carry her?” Rosita chokes out, hand gently tracing Tara’s bloodied arm.
“Course,” Jerry promises, adjusting her limp body to support the crushed leg as best he can. “She’s a featherweight; I got her easy.”
Rosita nods, leaning in to lightly kiss her forehead. “Let’s take her home.”