#What if we all ran into the woods and mauled each other like feral dogs. What if

[some-pers0n]

Of course people are allowed to have differing opinions and readings of characters and should not be harassed nor scrutinized for such, but also like...you know when you see criticism or some sort of opinion about something and instantly know that it's that person's first time ever engaging with fiction more complicated and nuanced than a Disney Channel cartoon

[pastel-flapflap-blog]

The Holy Grail, ch 2

With Negan in the best hiding spot in the house upstairs, Thea had no idea what to do with herself and Mads. The wolf-dog was tall, lanky, and not a good bedmate even in the king-sized bed in her room; Thea couldn’t begin to imagine stuffing herself somewhere tight with the big galoot. She could probably get them under the kitchen sink if she tried hard enough but that spot would be found as soon as someone started throwing open doors and cabinets trying to find Negan, so there wasn’t much point in it.

She headed to the large window in the dining room that faced the yard and crouched beneath it. She used her gloveless fingers to make a slit in the vertical blinds and peek outside, eyeing where Negan had crashed through the backyard across the cul-de-sac. No sooner had she opened the blinds, she saw a couple of rough-looking people come through the backyard of the house next to the one where Negan had come from; a tall, scruffy man in jeans and a button up and a dark-skinned woman with long dreads. The woman had a long sword in her hands.

“Fucking aces,” Thea said beneath her breath. “That is so badass.” The couple were talking to each other, no doubt trying to decide their plan of action with so many houses that Negan could have hidden in.

<They’re probably going to start with the houses closest to the woods where they came from,> Mads said. She had followed Thea to the dining room and sat on her haunches beside her, nose poking between the blinds where Thea had them slit open. She huffed through her nostrils and the blinds swayed slightly.

“Maybe,” Thea said. She put her second hand over the blinds to slow the swinging that Mads had started. “But they could also start with the ones further back, towards us. If we were running from someone, we wouldn’t hide in the first place we came across. Too easy to be found.”

Mads let out an airy whine that could have been an agreement, trying to crane her head to look outside and causing the blinds to wave a little more. <Then we need to leave.>

“But what if they find him?” Thea eyed the couple warily as they separated and started up the stairs to the two houses next to where they had come from out of the woods. At least they were starting farther down.

<It’s not our prerogative to keep him safe. We gave him a hiding spot that they most likely won’t find him in,> Mads said, giving up on seeing out of the window and taking a step back. <There’s nowhere else in this house for us to safely hide in. Once they’re here, we have nowhere to go.>

Thea thought for a moment as she watched the couple before nodding, letting the blinds fall noisily back into place. “Okay, let’s go,” she said. She hated herself for turning tail to run and leaving a man behind but Mads was right. There was no point in saving a stranger and sacrificing themselves for his cause because she had nothing to do with these people—with any people—and she intended to keep it that way. They had been surviving just fine on their own together. There was absolutely no need to complicate anything by introducing more people into their little world, whether they were friend or foe. Once it was safe enough for Negan to leave, she would shove him out the door and hope that he never had the inclination to come back.

The two made their way quickly through the dining room and into the kitchen at the back of the house; it was decorated in bright blues and white and reminded Thea of the Dutch porcelain that her mom used to collect when she was younger. It may have been part of the reason that she chose this house in particular to stay in when she found the cul-de-sac. The king-sized poster bed was a big plus, too.

Once they made it to the back entryway, Thea did a quick survey of the backyard through the small window at the top of the door. She looked right, then left, and then right again; she opened the door and ushered Mads through. They tiptoed across the back porch as quietly as they could—the wood protested with every few steps that they took, and Thea swore to herself. She was down the steps and halfway across the yard before she heard the snap of a dry twig coming from her left.

<Thea!>

Mads immediately fell into a defensive stance and began to snarl relentlessly. Thea spun on her heel to face the sound, drawing her knife sloppily and nearly dropping it. In front of her was a dirty, long-haired man with a crossbow and he had it pointed right at her. “Fuck,” Thea said, her mouth a grim line. Mads made a step toward the man and before Thea could stop her, the man swore.

“Call off the damn dog,” he said. His brow was furrowed, and he let the crossbow waiver between Thea and the wolf-dog, trying to decide which was the greater threat. She noticed a bead of sweat run down the side of his face and she wanted to itch her own as she watched it fall. She moved her eyes back to his own and frowned.

“Don’t you dare shoot my fucking dog,” Thea said to the archer, who glared at her through blue-green eyes and raised the crossbow back to her head. His muscled arms were bare, and Thea noticed the way they looked like stone as he held up the weapon; he was so tense it looked as though he might explode given the right type of push.

“Call it off,” the man growled. “I ain’t gonna ask ya again.”

<Let him shoot. I’ll rip his throat out,> Mads said, a vicious growl bubbling out from deep within her barrel chest. Her lips were pulled back in a great snarl, showing off the pointed teeth that were dying to tear him apart.

“Mads, back,” Thea swept her leg in front of the beast and used it to hold her back when Mads tried to push forward and around. “Leave it.”

<Let me see him!> Another dangerous growl erupted from the wolf-dog.

“Who are you?” Thea asked a strange man for the second time today. This really was more human interaction than she was comfortable with; she hadn’t so much as seen a person in the past couple of months and now, suddenly, she was coming across more than a handful in the past twenty minutes. Her head started feeling light and she felt a keen ache begin to spread from the center of her chest. She wasn’t okay with this, not in the slightest.

“Where’s Negan?” the man asked, ignoring her question. This made the nervous ache in Thea’s chest start to mold a little more into a throb of anger, but she played the perfect part and feigned innocence.

“Who?” She felt her breath hitch, but she hoped that he would think it was a reaction of having a deadly weapon pointed in her face.

The man squinted at her, and Thea knew that he wouldn’t believe a word out of her mouth. He took a step forward and his words came out as a feral growl. “I ain’t playin’ games. Where is he?”

As soon as he made the move forward, Mads pushed past Thea’s leg. <Don’t come any closer!> Thea dropped her knife and fell to the ground beside it, wrapping her arms around Mads’ neck; the wolf-dog struggled, her jaws snapping as she lunged against Thea’s arms to get to the man.

“Leave it!” Thea commanded, to little success. She grunted when Mads swung her head around and hit her in the nose. The man stood as a statue and eyed the two warily, but never once lowered the crossbow. “Just leave us alone!” Thea yelled at him, angry tears beginning to spill over her lashes.

“Where’s Negan?” The man raised his voice over Thea’s and took another step forward, ignoring her tears and the wolf-dog’s attempts to get to him. She had slowed her advances only a little, but still looked ready to maul him; her muscles were bunched and coiled all around her, and she was struggling not to bite Thea in order to get the girl to release her.

<I’m going to kill him!>

“Mads, stop!” Thea pulled on the wolf-dog and ignored the pain when her rear leg stepped back and ran her claws down the inside Thea’s thigh. Mads was going to get herself shot and Thea was going to lose it if she lost her only friend. She clenched her jaw and glared at the man through wet eyes.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Thea saw the man from across the cul-de-sac run around the side of the house and point a pistol at the two on the ground. He was sinewy and had a head full of wavy, dark hair that hung in sweaty strings down his forehead. Thea looked at him and felt her face grow hot and the ache in her chest began to flower out throughout the rest of her body. She was hyperventilating now.

“Don’t,” she gasped. “Please don’t shoot her. I can make her stop.”

The second man seemed to hesitate, and his blue eyes flicked almost nervously between his partner and the nearly-wailing woman on the ground. After a moment of consideration, he returned his gun to the holster on his hip and raised his hands up by his chest, facing outward in surrender. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. Daryl, put the bow down.”

Daryl gnawed on his lower lip for a moment before beginning to lower his weapon. He eyed the man beside him as if to ask him if he really thought this was a good idea. The small exchange wasn’t lost on Thea, who began crying in earnest now. She was relieved that the immediate danger had passed and her friend was safe.

<Thea?> Mads had calmed down slightly at the surrender of the men in front of them and when Thea started sobbing into the wolf-dog’s fur, she turned her head and worriedly began to lick away the tears. Her tail wagged furiously. <Thea, it’s okay. Stop that.> When the second man took a cautious step forward, Mads turned her head and began to growl again before swinging back to Thea to comfort her.

“Who are you?” the second man asked. Thea couldn’t answer, though, too busy crying gratefully into Mads’ fur. She had been too close to losing her, she thought. This day had gone from shit to worse so quickly; she should have sent Negan on his way and hidden in the hidey hole herself. She wasn’t made for standoffs at gunpoint, especially for a man she barely knew or trusted.

When he didn’t get an answer, the man sighed. “Look, I’m sorry we scared you. But we’re looking for someone and we need to know if you’ve seen him.”

“Haven’t seen anyone,” Thea mumbled, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm. She sniffed. “I saw you come from the woods and I didn’t want any part of it.” She had been truly terrified of the men a moment ago but as soon as the danger had passed, she knew that she had to use the man’s hesitancy and seeming concern to her advantage. She could easily fool them into thinking she was still scared shitless because she very much was.

“Bullshit,” Daryl said. His fingers tensed around the crossbow, but it remained at his side as the second man had requested. “He had ta come through here. If she saw us, she had ta seen ‘im.”

Thea raised her gaze to meet Daryl’s and glared. Her anger began to get away with her and her own Southern accent started to shine through now that she was pissed. “I didn’t see no one but your friend and the woman,” she said. There was only a slight twang to her words and nowhere near as prominent as the archer’s, but it was enough for Thea to remind her of her less than stellar childhood and she normally kept it in check.

As soon as she mentioned her, the sword wielder stepped around the house where Thea figured she had been keeping an eye out. There was no way that she hadn’t heard the commotion she and Mads had made earlier.

“She could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, Rick,” she said. Her voice was low and velvety. Thea immediately liked her, even though she stared hard at the girl and her wolf.

“Or she could be lyin’ and hidin’ the bastard,” Daryl growled.

Rick looked troubled and clenched his jaw. He looked from the dark-skinned woman to the one in front of him who was still holding onto the wolf-dog. He raised his fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinched. “What’s your name?”

Thea hesitated before answering. “Thea,” she said, nearly so low that he missed it. “Thea Kerrigan.”

Rick crouched down to get on their level, knees in the grass and hands on his thighs. “Thea, we’re looking for a man who we think came through here. I need to know if you saw anyone else besides us come through this neighborhood.”

“Ain’t no use in askin’ her again, man! She could be one of them!” Daryl yelled. The sword woman glared at him but said nothing.

“One of who?” Thea asked, her nose wrinkling. She was sure her eyes were sending daggers his way, but it didn’t seem to affect him when he met her gaze. Rick treating her like something delicate was part of her plan to get away from this situation with as little harm as possible; the archer’s rudeness toward her was not.

“Thea,” Rick said, ignoring Daryl. “Did you see anyone else come through here?”

Thea turned to look back at Rick. Her grip tightened on Mads’ scruff as she felt her face scrunch up in frustration. She was lying, but it still irritated her that they thought she was. What if she’d been telling the truth? “No,” she fibbed. “I only saw you.”

“Why’re ya runnin’, then?” Daryl asked. He reminded Thea of a petulant child who was trying to argue until he was blue in order to get his way. She ignored him, taking a guess that would piss him off more than giving him the tongue lashing that he deserved.

When she ignored him, purposefully looking away, he muttered something beneath his breath that Thea didn’t hear but she could feel the nasty intention behind it. She tore her eyes away from her fingers working Mads’ coat around and opened her mouth to say something rude when the woman interrupted.

“Why were you running?” she asked, a little more harshly than she had spoken before, but not as accusing as Daryl. Thea stared at the archer for a moment, weighing the consequences of arguing with him, but turned to look at the woman instead.

“I don’t like dealing with other people,” she told her truthfully. She pointedly glanced at Daryl before looking back into the woman’s eyes. “Most of them turn out to be assholes.”

The woman held her gaze for only a moment before she must have seen what she was looking for and turned to face Rick, who was still crouched on the ground eyeing Thea and Mads. “We’re losing time. If he’s here, we have to keep looking.”

Rick took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “Yeah. We need to go.” He pushed himself up and dusted off his knees. “We’re going to go through the houses here and if we find that you’re lying, we’ll be coming back for you.” His once gentle demeanor had turned ice-cold almost instantaneously and Thea felt the chill in the air as it seeped into her skin.

“Michonne, let’s keep to the plan and just work out our way from here. Daryl, head into the woods out back and see what you can see.” He waited for the sword-wielder and the archer to start out before turning back to Thea and nodding. “Ma’am.”

They all disappeared around the front of the house and left Thea and her wolf-dog on the ground, feeling a little more than whiplashed.

<They left awful quick,> Mads finally spoke.

Thea swallowed thickly and felt her fingers dig into the wolf-dog’s scruff, as if to anchor herself. She thought of Rick’s sudden mood swing and his icy stare as he threatened her. “They’re probably definitely coming back.”