Chapter Text
Rick had been through hell in the past few weeks, but hasn't everyone?
Pushed to the gravel, him and the people he called family had to watch as Negan crudely bashed the head of one of their group members into the concrete until there was nothing but a gross pulp of human flesh and bones that they used to call Abraham. Glenn didn't fare much better, but at least he was alive; Negan beat his leg so badly that his leg was broken and far too many areas, but he'll heal, eventually.
To add the horror, Negan also piled his brother and his son- Daryl and Carl- into the back of two separate vans and drove off with them inside, vowing that they'll never be released from his custody. That they'll become his.
It made him sick.
He had seen Daryl with the Saviors not long after they were taken, bruised and completely and utterly silent. Carl was there too, but he didn't look like Daryl; while Daryl looks exactly like he'd been captured and tortured for a week, Carl looks no different than when he was first taken, aside from two things. The first was that he no longer wore a cover over his missing eye. The crude, empty hole, a dark cavern of evidence of all the hell Carl had been through in this damned apocalypse. Rick scowled every time he saw it; Carl hated when it was visible.
The second thing was that Carl was completely disconnected- not just from him, but from everything that wasn't Negan. He didn't talk, didn't look up from the ground a single time. It was like he was there when he wasn't. Once they left, Rick felt like he was going to explode.
Daryl escapes the Sanctuary. When he finally speaks for the first time- days later, at that- it's rough and brief. It takes another day for him to finally talk to Rick, but when he does, nothing that comes out of his mouth is anything; he speaks of all the different torture methods, how every chance he got to interact with Carl was filled with full-intentioned threats, how Rick needed to promise that he'd get Carl out of there, because Daryl wouldn't be able to live with himself knowing that he left him in there.
Jesus comes back with a message from Carl to Rick and Daryl.
(He loves you, Jesus will say. And he doesn't blame you.)
When Simon comes searching for Daryl, him and his goon squad tearing apart every inch of Alexandria. The leader makes sure to tell Rick that, unless the surrender completely, then there will be no return of his son. Rick doesn't budge.
It takes until the final strike that Rick ever hears about his son again. Over the walkies is where Negan tells Rick that, once this is all over and he had his bat to Rick's head, that he'll show him the special surprise he has. A shiver shoots down his spine the second the words are spoken, so he simply switches off the communication device and gets to their attack.
Everything goes far better than they had planned. They plow their way through Savior after Savior, only a few dozen being left to round up in the largest room they can access with Negan in the epicenter of it all. On his knees, hands tied behind his back outside of the building is the exact moment in which he gazes up at Rick with a new fervor in his eyes. "You still want your surprise, Rick?" he says through a shit-eating grin.
"I thought we were over this," Rick mutters lowly. He won't admit to the man in front of him that he never wanted a single peek at the so-called surprise Negan had into store for him. But, nonetheless, it doesn't seem like his choice.
Negan glances over his shoulder at the entrance to the building. "That box right there- the one on the right side- has it. I want ta' watch you open it up." Rick does nothing, but nods over towards the box. Michonne nods, carefully collecting it from its spot next to the door and walking it over to where he was standing, just a few feet in front of Negan. Daryl steps in, crossbow raised and pointed at the man just in case he tried something while Rick was distracted.
Rick looks down at the cardboard and sends a side glance to his nemesis. "This ain't gon' explode nothing, is it?" he asks.
He laughs. "Feel how light it is; there can't be much more than a deck o' cards in there."
Nodding, Rick puts his hands on the top and looks around at the group. "Wanna blow it up?" Nearly everyone around him nods, so he watches as Maggie happily switches the trigger.
"Two minutes," she warns him.
Knowing that everything will be gone in a near instant, Rick is much more confident in putting his hands on the box and tearing open the tape. He rips open the folded tops and looks inside, staring into what he assumed to be an empty box, only to find folded brown fabric. He pulls out his own old sheriff's hat.
"Took a long time to get that hat off of 'im, eh?" Negan laughs.
Rick stares at the accessory in his hand, one that his son wore like it was stuck to him. "Earlier, you said that he left. That- that he ran off," Rick accuses. "How did you- what did you-"
"He never ran off, you prick," Negan explains, ego boosting off of his own chest. "You think I'm that fucking stupid? That after Daryl here escaped, I'd let my guard down on the kid? No, no," he continues. Rick swallows. "After you got out," he says, glaring at Daryl, "I took some precautionary measures. Made sure he'd never get out. Then, I promoted someone to be my right-hand man- you can tell who he his, 'cause he don't have the left one- and he took care of the bitch for me."
He stops moving.
"30 seconds, Rick," Maggie says.
"Where is he," Rick demands, grabbing Negan's chin with his hand. "Huh? Where is he?!" he shouts.
Negan simply shakes his head and smiles. "Doesn't matter," he whispers, so that no one else can hear. "It's not like you can get to him before the whole place blows."
In an instant, Rick drops his hold on Negan and starts to storm towards the building. He's muttering repeated 'no's' under his breath, but someone grabs his arm, preventing him from going forward. "Maggie-"
"You have ten second 'till that whole building explodes," she reminds him. "What could be so important that-"
Maggie doesn't even get to finish her sentence before the explosion rattles from the center of the Sanctuary, and all of a sudden, a guttural scream is ripping itself from Rick's throat, a call of his son's named begging for him to walk out of the building save and sound. He can hear Negan laughing, but it's abruptly ended by the sound of Daryl's crossbow releasing an arrow straight through the skull of the man.
Rick collapses to the floor, and all anyone can do is watch him.
Rick returns to the rubble for three days straight, overturning loose chunks of concrete, scraps of metal and bent poles, searching through every last tiny pile of soot, even if he knew that his son couldn't possibly be hiding underneath it. Every morning, he had snuck off from the rest of the group, spent the entire day scraping his hands in the wreckage, and returned at the latest time that he could without suspicion.
The third day he continued on this now-routine plan, Rick was so engrossed in his own investigation that he didn't even notice another person approaching him.
"Hey," someone growls, and Rick practically jumps out of his skin. He whips around, dropping the piece of debris in his hand and reaching for the gun on his hip. By the time he had raised it straight up at his target, though, he noticed who it was. Daryl sticks his empty hands up in surrender. "Woah, man. 'S jus' me," he defends himself.
Rick takes a shaky inhale and nods, slipping his gun back into the holster he wore on his belt. "Right," he whispered. "Sorry." He looks down, back at the place he was just digging in and sighs.
Daryl catches wind of his dusty hands and pauses. "This where you' been these past few days?" he asks.
"Yeah," Rick confirms, voice breathy. "I'm just- the bodies aren't mangled too bad," he explains. "I'm lookin'."
His friend looks at him with pity. "I'm sorry, man," he begins, "but you searched through all the bodies with us, man." The implications hang heavy in the air, but Daryl knows that he needs to say exactly what he means. "He's not here."
Rick doesn't answer. Instead, he takes the hat off of his head and shows it to Daryl, finally looking up from the ground. "I thought I'd never wear this again," he says. "But- but I brought it. Just in case he wanted it." Rick smiles and shakes his head. "He never- he never took it off." On the last of his words, his voice cracks, and Rick makes the decision to stop speaking.
"He loved you," Daryl says, putting a hand on Rick's shoulder. "And 'm sorry I took that 'way from you."
Snapping his head up, Rick raises an eyebrow. "What?" he gasps.
Daryl inhales deeply. "I left 'im," he admits, adverting his eyes. He couldn't stand to look into the eyes of his father. "I- I knew he was in there, and I still left without him. Left 'im- left him with that damned Negan and practically killed him myself."
"No," Rick insists. "No, no- Daryl, don't blame yourself." Rick takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "If anything, it's my fault," he argues, kicking a rock by his foot. "They gave me the chance to surrender, to- to get Carl back. But I- I thought we could do it ourselves. I thought we could get him back." Rick shuts his eyes. "Instead, I just let them kill him."
"You better not be blamin' yerself 'bout this," Daryl growls.
Rick sighed. "I guess there's really only one person to blame, huh?" he asked. Daryl simply shrugged, and Rick put the hat down on the ground and replaced his hands onto his hips. He looked around at the area, then towards the woods surrounding them. He nearly turned around, taking Daryl and retreating back to their home, when he noticed it. The figure in the woods.
"We should-"
"Shh," Rick mutters. "Look over there," he instructs. He points to the person, walking with their head down. "That's the man."
Daryl tilts his head. "Who?" he questions.
For a moment, Rick barely remembers that his friends hadn't heard the bold claims of Negan just minutes before his death. "Negan told me about him," he explains. "It's his right-hand man, who's missing his left arm. It's the man who killed Carl."
"That's him?" Daryl breathes, and a shiver is sent down Rick's spine as the man's breath hits the back of his neck.
"Yeah," Rick says, staring straight at the man. He's still walking with his head pointed to the ground, not bothering to look up at where he was walking. "I'm gonna' kill him," he says. Rick looks down, pulling his gun off of his hip and making sure the safety is off. Without looking up, he moves to storm off.
Daryl grabs a hold of his wrist, preventing Rick from taking a single step further. He opens his mouth to ask why, but he looks up and straight at the man at the edge of the woods; instead of looking at the grass, he was now looking straight and Rick and Daryl. All three of them are frozen in place for a moment before Rick watches as the Savior turns around and books it into the woods.
"Man, what?!" Daryl grunts, swinging his crossbow off of his shoulder and running towards the tree line. It takes Rick a second to follow suit, but he eventually starts sprinting in the same direction as Daryl. It's a pretty far ways to even reach the forest, so by the time they can even step a few feet into the heavily wooded area, neither of them has a single clue of which direction to go. "Damn it," Daryl huffs.
Rick stands in place, watching as Daryl angrily hangs his weapon over his shoulder. He paces a bit before stopping. "Thought we was gon' fucking catch 'im," Daryl sighed. "'m sorry, Rick."
"We'll get him," Rick says bluntly. Daryl turns around, raising an eyebrow at the man's words. "Not now. But- but I'll never forget that man, Dare."
Daryl stares at him blankly as Rick pockets the gun. "One day, I'm gonna' end that son of a bitch."