Chapter 47

"Here, he is." Rick passed his small baby boy to me, carefully placing him in my arms.

"Oh, my..." I gasped as I looked at the baby boy's beautiful brown skin, and curly hair.

"You guys pick a name yet?" Daryl asked, looking at the baby too.

"William." Rick said simply, a smile on Michonne's tired face as she sat up in bed.

"Oh." I cooed at the adorable name. "William Grimes." I smiled. "Is that his full name?" I asked.

"William Richard Grimes." Michonne said quietly.

"It's cute, you guys did a good job, he has Rick's nose, but Michonne's looks." I said jokingly.

"Thanks." Rick smiled. "And Thank you, for taking Judith, I know she wanted to be here for it, but I didn't want her to get scared." He explained.

"Don't worry about it, we enjoyed having her, Scout loves having her over, they play from morning until they fall asleep, which is usually the middle of the night." I laughed lightly, careful not to wake the baby.

"But it doesn't take long for them to destroy the house, so we better go." Daryl whispered.

"Aw, but, I wanna hold him forever." I nuzzled the baby against my chest.

"C'mon." Daryl scooped William out of my grasp, giving the baby a few bounces, before passing him back to Rick. "Let's go, congratulations guys." We left the house, walking down the street into the afternoon air, that was hot. "What was that all about?" Daryl nudged me.

"What, I'm happy for them." I shrugged. "Besides, feels like a long time since I've seen Michonne."

"Yeah I get it you miss your best friend." Daryl said mockingly.

"You realize that trip me and her went on was two years ago, I only know that because I started keeping better track of days after Scout was born." I stated.

"Yeah I remember, you're very adamant about birthday parties." Daryl grumbled.

As we walked we waved to another couple taking their baby for a walk, then spotted Judith and Scout playing with several other kids, under their age, playing at the playground. Carl was sitting nearby watching Scout and Judith. There had been babies born left and right in all of the communities, Daryl and I, mostly me were hesitant about having another one, losing the last one nearly destroyed us. Scout was older, he was off with friends all of the time, making trouble, a lot, but he was a tough kid; Daryl had caught him outside the wall a couple of times hunting, because he didn't want Daryl doing all the work.

Scout and Judith waved to us, we waved back.

"Well I gotta get to work." I sighed.

"Have a good day baby." Daryl gave me a small kiss. I waved to Carl and the kids before I left and headed for the gardens.

Michonne and I worked in the gardens together bullshitting all day long, many laughs shared between us, but eventually the work was becoming too taxing on her pregnant body, and she couldn't work with me anymore. So needless to say I was pretty bored at work now that she wasn't there. I grabbed my bucket and apron that had all my stuff in it, gloves, hand rake, hand shovel, bandana, shears, and lots of dirt. I tied on my apron, pulled my hair back, put my gloves on and got to work.

"You know that man of yours, reminds me of my husband." An older woman across from me said.

"Oh really?" I said weary.

"Yes." She sighed. "His name was Norman, a sweet man, but you didn't want to get on his bad side." She smiled. "He was real hardheaded, really he used to break things over his head as a party trick. Also liked to wear his hair all long, loved motorcycles too."

"Now it just sounds like you're talking about my husband." I said jokingly.

"That was a beautiful wedding, by the way, I can tell you two really care about each other." She said sweetly.

"Oh I didn't know we were getting sentimental now." I said mockingly toward her.

"Oh I'm not, it was more jealousy." She smiled. "Norman and I, he gave me a ring, we went to the courthouse, and signed a paper. That was it." She shrugged. "Followed with a long night of love making." She laughed.

"You guys have any kids?" I asked.

"Five children actually." She stated. "And no, none of them made it."

"I'm sorry." I shook my head. "I'm Hazel, if you didn't know that already, I just feel bad that I don't know yours."

"Ruth, I've managed to be here since the beginning." She smiled.

Ruth and I continued on with a long conversation filled with laughs, we ranted, we raved, and we bullshitted until our shifts were over. We said our goodbyes glad we had met one another. I headed home, exhausted, sweaty, dirty, and ready to shower and go to bed; but things were weighing heavily on my mind, one thing actually. Ruth said she had five kids, and none of them survived, including her husband, but she seemed content, perfectly fine with life, like she was never going to stop fighting. If Ruth could survive that and keep moving forward, then I could too, but I had to talk to Daryl.

I always got home before Daryl so I would start making dinner before he got home. I spotted Scout and Judith playing in his Fort.

"Scout I'm home!" I called out the back door.

"Hi mom!" Scout yelled back.

"Hi Auntie Hazel!" Judith called to me too.

"Hi Judith!" I waved to her.

I went to the kitchen and started pulling pots and pans out of the cupboards grabbing items to cook. Since recovering I began cooking more, I didn't want Daryl feeling obligated to do it anymore. He came home, looking just as tired as I was, recently the communities had started work on making new bridges over old bridges that were beginning to crumble from time.

"Hey babe." I called to him from the kitchen.

"Hi baby, smells good." He came over giving me a kiss and began scrubbing his hands clean so he could help. "What's on your mind?" Daryl asked as I mindlessly and very slowly peeled potatoes.

"What, oh nothing." I shrugged, picking up pace.

"Yes there is, tell me." Daryl pressed.

"Alright." I sighed heavily. "I think, well maybe, I think I wanna, try for another baby." I said nervously.

"Really?" Daryl said surprised. "Hmm."

"I mean that's only if you're ready, I don't wanna rush things if you aren't ready." I began to reassure him.

"Well I know things are different, I know we've been walking through this healing process together, just one of us slower than the other sometimes." Daryl shrugged. "But yeah, I think I'm ready for this journey again, with hopefully a happier outcome."

"That's what's been holding me back, I'm afraid, I don't wanna go through that again." I felt tears in my eyes.

"I know, I know." Daryl started to chop potatoes. "Neither could I." His voice cracked.

"So we're ready to do this again?" I asked for clarification.

"Yeah." Daryl stated. I hugged him tightly, him hugging me back, before we kissed each other in a very heated manner.

"Mom I'm just grabbing my bow!" Scout barged through the back door, Daryl and I pulling apart." Me and Judith are gonna go back to the fort, call us when dinner's ready!" They moved through the house unbothered by us. The second the backdoor shut we were all over each other again.

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(A few months later)"We ran into some trouble at the bridge." Daryl said in our small meeting with Rick, Michonne, Carl Maggie, Jesus, Ezekiel, and Carol.

"What happened?" Maggie asked, everyone ready for the update, that Rick, Michonne, and I already knew.

"The Whisperer's weren't all taken out, they've rallied up a small army, but a big enough herd of walkers." Daryl explained. "The Saviors stopped working after people kept disappearing, and went back home, not wanting to risk what they had left. We've tried to stay on higher alert but it's slowing progress." He confessed.

"So what do we do?" Ezekiel asked.

"I say we stop work on the bridges until we can get rid of this threat." Daryl stepped up.

"I agree." Rick spoke up. "We want these bridges to get done as quickly as possible, but that's not gonna happen if we have a threat on our hands, and we keep losing people."

"Okay, then what's the plan?" Jesus asked.

"We move in at night, we'll send in a small group to distract the Whisperer's, lure them out, and when they pounce that's when we move." Rick ordered.

"But how do we stay unseen?" Maggie asked. That's when everyone's attention slowly turned to me, making me feel uncomfortable.

"What?" I furrowed my brows.

"You were out there longer then any of us, you've managed to get through states unseen, we need your help in that." Rick explained.

"It's not as hard as you think." I shrugged. "Show me where this plan is happening then I can help with the rest, but we're gonna need good climbers, ropes, fabric, mud, and leaves." I explained.

"Okay we'll need fighters from every community, Saviors are out obviously, they've already lost too many." Rick spoke up for them.

"Hilltop's out too." Maggie stated, all of us looking at her shocked. "Hilltop was the last one standing after the war with Negan, and we've provided for everyone since then, we can't afford to lose Hilltop."

"Maggie's right." Rick spoke up. "So that leaves, Alexandria, Kingdom, and OceanSide. I'll arrange something with Tara." All Of us agreed.

Was this really happening again, we had to fight again, when were things just going to be back to the way they were? After the meeting everyone left back to their homes, Daryl and I watching Scout play with Judith.

"You ain't fighting." Daryl finally spoke after several hours.

"Like hell." I argued.

"You ain't, we have a family that we have to worry about now, besides we just started trying again, remember?" Daryl said a little quieter. Of course I remembered we were trying again, but it had been months, and still nothing, not that I expected it to happen instantly, but still.

"Yeah and I want to fight for my family, for my home. When that group goes out to fight that's my family too, and I wanna be there to protect them." I explained, trying hard to convince Daryl, I had never backed down from a fight and I wasn't going to start now.

"I can't lose you, Scout can't lose you, I don't want him to lose both of us." Daryl argued back.

"He won't." I stated. "We've taken pretty good care of ourselves, we're still here ain't we?" I pointed out.

"Hazel-" Daryl said in a begging manner.

"No, I want to finish this, the Whisperer's took something from me that I'll never get back. I want them to pay for it." I said darkly.

You can bet Daryl didn't win this argument, we went through our plan quite a few times, we worked on camouflage for everyone. I worked on tree climbing with our climbers so they would know the quickest and easiest way up and down the trees. We had people dressed up to look like bushes, we worked on animal calls to communicate with each other, so we would know when to attack. We picked out our bait team, our strongest fighters, Negan among them. He wanted to join the fight, he had a bone to pick with Beta. Daryl had the ground team, I had the tree team, Daryl's team would communicate through a specific bird sound, we would communicate back with an owl sound.

The Saviors had told us which way they would take to get to their camp when they were working on the bridge, so we set up a fake camp with people in it, and then a fake team at the bridge. So our fake Savior team broke off, 'calling it a night'. They took their usual route back to camp, all of us watching intently from our positions. One of my troops hooted, and I looked to her, she was pointing at movement coming in from the sides, I hooted back, getting the ground teams attention. This was it, I heard our decoy team down below nervously chattering as they walked a regular pace to camp, then that's when we saw the towering Beta, and his small army pounce.

"Go!" The ground team moved in, fighting off the Whisperer's. The ground team struggling so my troops dropped in on them, able to get the upper hand.

I went straight for Beta, I knew he wouldn't go down easy, but I wanted to be the one to end him. I jumped at him with hatchet in hand, he easily stopped me, grabbing my arms and head butting me, knocking me completely unconscious, great.

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Sorry for that slapped together chapter, but there will be another update, so don't be upset over this crappy update, I am not sure how many more updates there will be from here on, but definitely look forward to one more! Thank you guys so much for the reads, votes, and the comments they make my day, thank you!