Rating: Mature
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SERIES SUMMARY:
"Not human. She was not human. They all knew it. Could almost feel it, but couldn't make sense of it. That was why they were afraid. Not because of what she used to be Before. But because of what she was now."
Having found herself serving as the right-hand to the Governor for too long, Synnove le Jacques does her best to make things right with the people of the Prison. Stuck beside her partner in crime, her irritatingly obnoxious and hideously problematic best friend, Merle, she does her best to fight back against the monster she has let the Governor become.
CHAPTER TITLE: The Consequence of Morality.
It was easy to forget how fragile humans could be. How easily their bodies break, their minds more so. I should have seen it sooner. The decay. The absolute descent from decent man to homicidal lunatic. Really, it should have been clear as day to me. I’d been with the man since the beginning. Followed his lead. Obeyed his orders because I believed he stood for the good of all those still left alive in this goddamn hellscape.
We had been strangers once. At the beginning.
He, his daughter, and his wife had been waiting in the seen-better-days room outside the hanger of the private airport out west. It had been a present from his wife. A single day of flight lessons from a local pilot.
Me, on the other hand? Well, I’d been waiting for my getaway plane. My day job wasn’t exactly within the realm of legality and, often, I’d find myself requiring a rather speedy exit from the immediate vicinity. That time was no different. I did my job and got out of there like any self-respecting worker would do.
I’m still unsure whether it was his luck or mine that allowed us to be within the same place at the same time that day. The answer would likely change depending on which one of us you asked. I say it was my luck. He would say it was his. Either way, we both lucked out that day.
Well, as much as one could “luck out” at the beginning of the fucking apocalypse.
I had gotten him and his daughter to safety, along with the handful of other occupants of the hanger that day. His wife didn’t make it. She was the first to go. I’d had to drag him away from her in order to make sure the kid didn’t become a damn orphan within the space of two minutes.
After we escape the airfield, we made our way steadily towards the nearby town. We had passed by the prison. I remembered that quite clearly. The screams coming from behind those brick walls were horrendous. Lucky for the rest of them, I was the only one that could hear them.
The town was owned by the dead when we arrived. We should have known better, but it was only the beginning. There were many lessons we had yet to learn.
Myself and two of the others cleared a way to the towering city hall building at the centre of town, barricading the doors for good measure. We held up in there for almost three days before Phil came up with that brilliant plan of his.
Build walls, he said, like it was going to be easy. Build them high and strong to keep the dead at bay.
And we did.
It was hard work. Keeping the dead back long enough to place another panel, building more and more each day until the bodies piling up were almost as high as the fence itself. That was my job, of course. Killing them. I was good at it and the rest of them knew it. In fact, I was too good at it and I knew it unnerved some of them. Especially Marcus.
Often, I’d find him eyeing me up from across the room, as if he expected I would leap up and murder him on the spot for absolutely no reason. I’d been quite transparent about my profession since the start, believing it would solidify a sense of trust, but Phillip and Milton were the only ones that didn’t look at me like I was a criminal. Phil, I think, saw the benefit of having someone like me on his side. Milton just accepted it because I was the only one that would listen to him go on about his scientific theories.
It was only after the walls were finished around our newly thriving little community that Marcus made his move.
I wish I could say I hadn’t expected it. But they’d made their intentions glaringly obvious from the get-go. He, Zach, and Luke did their best to catch me off guard during my nightly rounds. Their best wasn’t good enough.
I didn’t kill all of them, of course. We had gained almost twenty new members to our community, many of which were small families. I doubted my straight-up murdering folks would make them feel at home. Marcus, however… He’d had to go.
Once I told Phil what they’d tried to do, Zach and Luke were the first to be exiled.
There’s only been a handful others we’d kicked out since then. Mostly newcomers that refused to get with the program.
I don’t quite know when I became the general of a small army. Nor I do I even remember at what point Phillip became “the Governor”. I don’t even know when I started calling him that if it was before or after Marcus. All I know is, it happened.
Those of us that could fight, that were unafraid of the undead, were sent outside the walls to scavenge and recruit. We were partnered up, given whatever weapons we wanted from the small armoury, and sent out into the world of the dead with a little pat on our backs.
My partner had been… a challenge, for lack of a better term. He was this pasty, old white guy with a dirty mind and a Southern mouth. Sexist, racist, and whatever other “ist” you could think of – this guy was it. And, my God, for a guy with one hand he could sure be handsy. At least, he had been for the first ten or so minutes after we’d first met. Once I’d made it very clear I had little issue cutting off his other hand and feeding it to him, he’d kept it to himself.
Other than that, as a woman with dark skin who was from another country – even one as benign as Australia – it had been a little… tense between Merle and I for a while there.
But, somehow – and I don’t even know at what point we decided we didn’t hate each other anymore – we started getting along. Inside jokes, begrudging respect, and a ride-or-die attitude – we had the whole nine-yards. It came to the point that, suddenly, this redneck, trailer trash, white boy knew me better than anyone. And I knew him. We traded stories like they were currency and barely spent more than a few hours apart. Which was weird, in retrospect, but at the time, it hadn’t felt that way. He was like a brother to me. An older, obnoxiously irritating and horribly problematic brother.
And, as strange as it was, the feeling seemed to be mutual. He’d jump in to defend my honour at every opportunity. One of the guardsmen looking at my backside? His fist would be in their face before I even had a chance to turn around. He knew I could have done it myself – in fact, as much as he said otherwise, I knew some of the things I could do freaked him out a little. Mostly, it was the things he couldn’t explain away – like how I could hear things that he couldn’t or how my reflexes were just a fraction faster than was humanly plausible. Thankfully, he gave up questioning me about it rather quickly, and now just kind of… accepted my weirdness. For which I was thankful.
It was hard trying to come up with logical explanations about my oddities without outright lying about them.
Anyway, the two of us served beneath the Governor’s rule for longer than either of us would like to admit. I wish I could say I knew the exact moment his orders became less than favourable. To be honest, I hadn’t thought to question them. My entire life had been spent listening to orders and obeying them with little enquiry. I’d grown somewhat suspicious of his mindset near the end, there, but the only thing I could actually pinpoint was the exact moment I decided I’d had enough.
It was that night, in the haphazardly put together cells out by the old warehouse. We had brought in two strangers, members of a rival group that had made their home in the once-overrun prison. It had been a completely coincidental run-in. We had been out looking for a woman, a newcomer that had caused some “trouble”. We managed to track her to a series of small shops out by a deserted strip of road. I went around the back while my partner surveyed the storefronts. She was lucky I spotted her first. I didn’t know what he would have done with her. While I had made my growing concerns about the Governor’s current state of mind clear, he hadn’t deigned to share his opinion of the man with me.
At first, she had looked at me with suspicion. The woman I knew as Michonne had seen how close I was with the Governor, knew it was his orders I followed. But when I had jerked my head toward the field behind me, indicating for her to make a run for it, understanding dawned on her face. I was letting her go.
Unfortunately, that was right at the exact moment I heard a voice I didn’t know ask, “Merle?”
A young Asian man and a pretty, petite woman were standing out the front of one of the stores, looking up at Merle as if he had just sprouted horns from his thinning head of hair. I peeked around the corner just in time to watch Merle lift his gun and decided it was likely best to intervene before he got too trigger-happy, like he usually did.
I kept things relatively calm for about three entire seconds before Merle pistol-whipped the poor guy and forced him into the driver’s seat of the nearby sedan. The two of us piled in behind them and instructed them to drive back to the gates of Woodbury.
Everything just seemed to escalate from there.
We threw the two strangers, whose names I learned were Maggie and Glenn, into the barely kept-together cells and began our interrogation. And by “our interrogation” I mean the Governor and Merle’s attempts at intimidation.
Merle’s I could handle. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before. Berating the guy, beating him, tossing a biter in there – the usual. But the Governor?
I had been standing in the room with Merle, watching him berate Glenn, probing him for answers about the group making their home inside the prison fences, when I heard it. The sound of his belt was oddly stark against the soft sobs making their way through the solid metal wall. I knew the other two couldn’t hear it. It didn’t matter.
That was the moment I drew the line. The second I heard that belt, I knew what I had here in Woodbury was over.
Without a second of hesitation, I spun on my heel and marched out the cell door. Martinez was standing outside it, keeping guard, and caught my eye as I made my way down the hall a step to the next door down. His eyes were wide as he shook his head.
“Don’t,” he warned me.
I didn’t listen.
Lifting my booted foot, I kicked down the door to the cell next door and strode across the empty space to where the Governor stood, still undoing his belt. Maggie sat across the metal table from him, naked from the waist up, arms crossed over her bare chest as tears slid down her cheeks.
The Governor turned to face me at the sound of my sudden entrance. I pushed him aside as I peeled off my own shirt and gave it to the sobbing woman. Rapid footsteps sounded by the doorway and I knew both Merle and Martinez were standing there, watching as I rounded on the Governor with fire in my gaze.
He snarled at me. “What do you think you’re doing, Jacques?”
“Putting a stop to this,” I snapped in response, stepping back around the table.
The Governor did his best to stare me down, but he was about as intimidating to me as a baby lamb. “You don’t get to make that decision!” he screamed, spittle flying from his thin lips. “I give the orders here! Me, not you!”
“And I’ve obeyed them!” I yelled. “But I can’t stand by and let you do this. It’s not right and you know it!”
The Governor looked as if he were about to explode. His face was red, and his mouth kept opening and closing as if he were trying to form a response. I turned my back on him before he could, reaching out for Maggie, who had turned around to shield herself as she pulled my shirt over her head. Gently, I took her arm and began leading her towards the doorway.
Merle gave me a warning look, shaking his head just as Martinez had done. Martinez was a close friend, and Merle was my partner in crime, but I didn’t listen to either of them. Instead, I pushed my way through, pulling Maggie along with me as I lead her back into the cell where Glenn sat. The tears that had been steadily spilling down her cheeks increased tenfold when she saw what Merle’s fists had done to Glenn’s face. Once I let her go, she ran to him and began to cry as he asked her what the Governor had done.
She didn’t get a chance to answer.
The man himself burst through the partially closed door and made to grab me by the arm. I sensed him coming and spun out of his reach, turning to face him with a sneer.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I hissed.
The Governor looked slightly taken aback. I hadn’t spoken to him like that for a long time. Too long, it would seem. “You think you can just do what you want?” he snapped back, throwing an arm wildly in the direction of the two prisoners behind me. “You want to end up in here, too? Be my guest.”
Merle took a tentative step forwards, lifting his one remaining hand in a surrendering gesture. “Oh, come now. Ya don’t need to be like that, Governor. She’s sorry. Ain’t cha, Jacques?”
“Not really,” I replied plainly. “No.”
The exasperated look he gave me would have been comical in any other situation. What had he really expected? He knew I wouldn’t – couldn’t – lie. Besides, like hell I was going to apologise for stopping him raping a woman. Jesus Christ. I may be an assassin, but I wasn’t a monster.
“Have you forgotten who’s in charge here?” the Governor asked, his voice returning to a normal volume, though underneath the blasé tone I could hear his growing contempt. “Which one of us gives the orders and which one takes them?”
“Have you?” I responded, cocking my head to the side to regard him with cold, narrowed eyes.
The Governor blinked in surprise, his right eye twitching as he tried to make sense of my reply.
I gave him the curtesy of elaborating, making sure to emphasise each hissed sentence with a step in his direction. “Did you really think you had control over me? That I wasn’t only following your orders because I agreed with them? Do you think that highly of yourself that you forgot, for a moment, who I am? What I can do?”
The Governor’s legs seemed to act without his permission, pulling him back, matching my every step forward with one back. He retreated until I came to a stop, looking down at him despite the few inches of difference in our heights.
“If I had wanted that crown of yours, Philip, I’d fucking take it and there would be nothing you could do to stop me.” I stared at him with my piercing blue eyes until he dropped his gaze, swallowing, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.
A moment of silence passed before I returned to my usual casual lean, the tension in my body evaporating almost instantly as the intensity in my gaze dissipated.
“Now that we’ve covered that,” I began in a chipper tone. “I’d like to continue by stating that I happen to believe freeing these two in good nature would be in our best interests as a community. However, if you say otherwise, I won’t argue.” Because I’d be wasting by breath.
The silence continued to stretch for another few moments before the Governor raised his gaze back up to meet mine once again. I could see the steely resolve in them, the growing sense of distrust and malcontent. He spoke in that authoritative voice, as if I hadn’t just put him in his place merely a few minutes ago.
“We keep them here.”
And that had been that.
Kind of.
No more than a few hours later, Glenn and Maggie’s people infiltrated Woodbury.
I had returned to the cells mere minutes before I knew of their presence, knocking the working guard unconscious – sorry, Andy – and picking the lock open to set them free. My intention, of course, had been to lead them out to the loose panel in the eastern fence, escorting them to safety. That had not exactly panned out, as the people from the prison had decided to launch their attack whilst I was partway through leading Glenn and Maggie to the cellblock’s exit. Once the smoke grenades went off, I brought them both to a stop and explained to them the best way to escape, telling them to keep low in the smoke and wishing them luck before we parted ways.
As much as I knew in theory that I was done in this place, I hadn’t quite accepted it emotionally just yet. After all, I had plenty of friends here, people I almost considered family. It didn’t feel right to fight on the opposite side, not in such an outright way as taking the prison’s side in this.
I should have just gone with them. I wouldn’t have ended up here if I’d just gone.
If it had been anyone other than fucking Martinez that came for me that night, I would have fought back. And I think he knew it, too. The apologetic look he gave me before forcing me up against the side of the building to chain my wrists together was the only thing that stopped me from punching him directly in the nose.
He put a bag over my head and dragged me out to the warehouse, where the sounds of curious, excited chatter met my ears. I could only partially see through the cotton fabric covering my face, but it was enough to make out the shape of the stands we often used during our Game Nights. They were as full as they’d ever been, overflowing with the townsfolk who had no doubt been gathered at the behest of the Governor.
His voice cut through the aimless whispers surrounding him, crisp and authoritative as he announced the purpose behind tonight’s entertainment.
“What can I say?” he asked the gathered people of Woodbury. “There hasn’t been a night like this since before the walls were completed.”
Yeah. Thanks to me. I wanted to scream, to yell at the people that our “fearless” leader had lost his damn mind, but I couldn’t. Not yet. Martinez still held my arm, keeping me in my place at the edge of the biter-lined arena. On the other side, I could see another figure being dragged forwards, bag over his head.
I knew who it was from the dirty wife-beater alone and gave an internal groan. Of course, the one time I wasn’t with him when he did something stupid, he got himself caught.
“I thought we were past it. Past the days when we all sat, huddled, scared in front of the TV during the early days of the outbreak. The fear we all felt then… we felt it again tonight.”
I could barely make out his shape, standing at the back of the stands, a blonde figure sitting in the place beside him. Andrea. She had come to Woodbury alongside Michonne; yet hadn’t heeded the other woman’s warnings. Nor had she listened to mine, when I’d tried to encourage caution around the man she was taking to bed. Well, she was about to learn. As were they all.
“I failed you!” the Governor continued, his voice breaking as if he truly were ashamed. “I promised to keep you safe. Hell, look at me.” I saw the outline of his hand gesturing towards his face, though couldn’t make out what the hell he was pointing to. “You know, I – I should tell you that we’ll be okay. That we’re safe. That tomorrow, we’ll bury our dead and endure, but I won’t. Because I can’t… Because I am afraid.”
Uneasy gasps of surprise rippled through the townsfolk.
“That’s right,” the Governor sighed. “I’m afraid of terrorists. Terrorists that want what we have – want to destroy us! And worse, because more than one of these terrorists are one of our own!”
Across the arena, Patterson pushed Merle forward with enough force to almost send him sprawling onto the sands. Thankfully, my partner kept his footing, skidding to a halt in the centre of the arena and looking around at the townsfolk that had gathered to watch what was no doubt his execution.
“Merle. A man I counted on. A man I trusted.” The Governor shook his head, the dismay in his voice almost, almost believable. “He led ‘em here! And he let ‘em in!”
Merle opened his mouth to argue but something in the Governor’s gaze must have stopped him.
“It was you,” the Governor hissed down at him. “You lied. You betrayed us all.”
From the side of the arena I couldn’t see, someone else was pushed through the gap between the biters and onto the sands. The newcomer stumbled slightly, barely managing to maintain his balance as he came to a stop in front of Merle.
I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell by the change of air around them that they recognised one another. They were not strangers.
I bit my lower lip. That did not bode well.
“This is one of the terrorists,” the Governor announced to his audience. “Merle’s own brother.”
Ah. Shit.
“And worse yet,” he continued, his voice growing deeper in his attempt to sound dismayed. “Merle’s influence over my most trusted – our most valuable asset to this community…”
I could see him shaking his head, as if the words he was trying to say hurt him too much to voice. Had I not already been almost ninety-nine percent sure he was about to tell the world it had been me that had helped Merle, I would have laughed. He’d gotten good at this.
Behind me, Martinez whispered, “Sorry ‘bout this, ese. Orders.”
He pushed me forwards, keeping his grip on my upper arm as he led me out into the sands alongside Merle and his brother. When he brought me to a stop, he let my arm go and reached up to pull the bag from my head.
“He poisoned our beloved Synnove’s mind against us. A founding member of our community!” the Governor yelled, and the stands erupted with shock and malice.
My gaze, partially obscured by the blonde strands of hair that had fallen free from my ponytail, snapped to Merle’s. He gave me a pointed look, like he was disappointed I’d let myself get caught.
“Really?” he asked, brow cocked.
“Oh, fuck you,” I snapped in response.
From up in the stands, the Governor continued his speech and I was finally able to get a good look at him. He was dishevelled and battered, as if he’d been in a fight, and across his right eye there was a white bandage, splattered with red. Someone had come for him and I hoped beyond hope that that someone had been Michonne.
“What should we do with them?” the Governor asked his people.
From my right, a distinct cry broke through the torrent of voices. “Kill them!”
I twisted in place to look for the owner, only to see an ocean of familiar faces glaring back at me. Jesus Christ. Were they really this easy to manipulate?
“Kill them! Kill them!”
Apparently so.
The chant continued as the Governor smiled down at us, a chilling grin absent of any and all warmth it had once held. I could barely recognise the man standing there.
“You wanted your brother,” he said to Merle. “Now you got him.”
Merle just looked across to the man he called brother before meeting my curious gaze. With a casual gesture towards the man standing across the arena, he grinned. “Jacques, meet my baby brother, Daryl. Baby brother, meet Jacques.”
I glanced over at the other Dixon, my gaze travelling up and down his dishevelled form. He was shorter than Merle, but not by much, and had dark, unkept hair that partially over his forehead. His ruggedly pleasant features were scrunched into a confused scowl as I took my sweet time surveying him before turning back to Merle with a cheeky grin.
“At least now I know where all the looks went in your family,” I remarked lightly.
Merle snorted and gave me the finger.
“Brother against brother,” the Governor called, promptly ruining the moment. “Partner against partner!”
I looked up at him with my upper lip curled over my teeth in a snarl.
Andrea was standing beside him now, looking up pleadingly at him as if she had expected different. Expected better of him, despite all the warnings to the contrary.
“Winner goes free! Fight to the death!”
It was incredibly unlikely he’d keep that promise.
“Hey now,” I yelled out, over the cheers and jeering voices of the crowd. “I’m sensing a little unfairness here!” I jiggled my chains behind my back and gave the Governor a pointed look. “I’m the only one with chains!”
He merely looked down at me as if I were nothing to him, a fly upon his shoe. “Well, we wouldn’t want the fight over too early, now, would we?”
The voices from the crowd called out my name, called out for me to fight. It was almost as if this were any other Game Night, where I would tag-team with Merle against challengers in this very arena. We had been undefeated since the games had begun. These people knew only a fraction of what I could do and, even then, they had always put their money on me.
I looked over to Merle. His upper lip was shaking the way it often did when he was about to explode in anger.
Somehow, he managed to keep it somewhat under control. He took a step back and began to spin, looking at each member of the crowd in turn as he lifted his arms up like he used to do at the beginning of every Game Night.
“Come on, come on! I can’t hear yous!” he called out to the townsfolk.
A few scattered “Let’s go, Merle!”’s echoed around the warehouse, followed shortly by a “Get em, Jacques!”.
“Come on, ya’ll know me! I’m gonna do whatever I gotta do to prove my loyalty is to this town!” Merle continued.
Stepping further into the centre of the arena, I kept a close eye on both him and Daryl while I prepared myself to leap-frog over the chains loosely tied behind me. I knew Merle was talking shit. Knew him well enough to see that glint in his eye that meant the wheels in this balding head were beginning to turn.
From my right, Merle’s brother scoffed. “You really think this asshole’s gonna let you go?”
Merle looked at him with a smirk. “Just follow my lead, little brother. Ready, Jacques? Just like old times?”
I flashed him a wide grin before I jumped up, swinging my bound hands down and around the base of my feet so they were now in front of me. “Ready when you are, old man.”
Merle looked back to his brother, smirk growing wider as his excitement overtook his sense. “We’re gettin’ out of this right now.”
Merle and I leapt into it first. After all, we’d had plenty of practise fighting against one another in this arena. The chain linking my wrists made it a little difficult, but I managed to pull out some old moves to make it our battle somewhat believable. When I stumbled back, having been “kicked” in the chest by Merle’s dirty boot, I took a brief moment to look behind me towards Martinez. He was holding one of the Biter leads, pushing it closer to me each minute that passed.
I knew he was the weak spot. He wouldn’t shoot me, even if his life depended on it. Not after all we’d been through together. I knew it as well as he did. That was our way out.
While I had been “recovering” from Merle’s kick, the old redneck had started beating on his brother. They tussled on the ground for a moment, looking as if they were actually going at it more than they really needed to. Daryl managed to get his boot between them and kicked Merle off and when he scrambled up onto his feet, I stepped into his guard. He took a swing at me and I ducked beneath it, stepping around him and throwing my hands over his shoulders, pulling the chain taut across his throat, leaving only just enough room for him to breathe.
Merle locked eyes with me over his brother’s shoulder. He gave a little nod.
“Martinez,” I said, quiet enough so only Merle and Daryl could hear. “He’s the weak spot.”
Merle nodded. “Count o’ ten?”
“Better make it three.” I looked to the side of Daryl’s face. “You ready, little Dixon?”
He snorted in response. I took it as a yes.
Merle started a countdown.
One.
Two.
