Erie Settlement

[ineedmymods]

For: livii
From: afullmargin

Title: Erie Settlement
Fandom: The Walking Dead (comics)
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Set seven years after #1, contains spoilers up through & including issue #100.


Their sitting rooms show most of all what's been lost, I think. More than the countless dead we've burned – more than the living we've killed. A battered fisherman's hat, a dull badge that once shined, a blood-caked wedding ring, a broken sword... countless mementos we can't bring ourselves to get rid of because they remind us of our humanity. Of what we were, once, and how far we've come in the last seven years. It all seems like a dream now; the Greene farm, the prison, the safe zone and Hilltop – we stayed near Washington as long as we could, but eventually it just got too dangerous and food got scarce.

Rick made the choice; even then I think I knew we had to leave though. It was such a confusing time after my Daddy... after Glenn... I can't even remember much of anything till about a year later when we first started laying down roots again North of Baltimore.

Baltimore is where I killed my first live raider – I don't know how I made it that long without coming face to face with one on my own... guess I just got lucky and folks let me ignore everything until I couldn't anymore. I just remember picking up the gun and screaming and shooting until Carl made me stop and told me they were dead. Now, I wish I'd been there when they took apart Negan – wish I could have seen his stupid face like I do every time I kill someone livin' or dead that'd rather be killin' me.

Someone we met in Baltimore, long dead now though parts of their group have blended with ours just like always – gain some, lose some – convinced us to stick near water. The fishing would be good and if worse came to it, walkers can't swim. A lot of people argued about it, wanting to stay close to the cities where we could scavenge and get food and medicine so in the end we split up again. I went where my family went... with Rick. Rebuilding was his idea, settlin' in and getting used to the fact that the world aint coming back. He finally made us believe that we won't wake up one day to the national guard telling us it's safe to go back home and they'll have the power on soon. We had to start over.

After almost a year and five hundred miles of fighting and dying, we first laid eyes on Erie. We settled near a big lighthouse, and just like back in Washington – we started building. One block at a time, a few buildings each week with a perimeter of cars and trenches that we still use now. Everyone says growth was slow for a while, but it sure didn't seem like it. Always new people, good people. Most of ‘em followed the rules, some of ‘em got killed for not following them. Now, seems like we get more babies coming born than grown people comin' in from the wild.

Erie's a good place, we've got enough to get by and we even trade with another big group in Pittsburg for things we can't make or grow or catch. We've got doctors, builders, growers and fighters. Now, after being here longer than we were running, it's finally starting to feel like things might be all right again. At least as all right as it can be with people sometimes trying to raid us and walkers still showing up from time to time. Andrea says it's like things used to be couple hundred years ago only instead of walkers in the orchard it'd be wolves back then. I think like the wolves better.

We've relied on being organized and trained to keep us going, even when losses are heavy after a raid or a bad winter we can still make do. Everyone over ten has a job, and after going a whole year without a doctor – and getting one by means I don't dare ask about – we all got taught how to do at least the easy stuff for every job. I've been a teacher for three years now; during the day I teach folks – mostly kids, but some grown-ups, how to read and write and do sums just like Mommy taught me and at night I learn how to do other things so one day I can teach others that too. It's a good life, I think. I don't cry much anymore – sometimes it's hard but Carl always tells me cryin' don't help and it don't bring anyone back; not Mommy, not Glenn, and not his Mom and baby Judy. We just gotta do what we do to survive and make a life for the kids now.

For our baby.

He don't know yet, of course. Nobody's even supposed to know we've been together like that, but I'm pretty sure they do. It's only been a few months, but people look at me funny now, like I'm gonna break if they touch me. Like they sometimes look at Carl when he's being funny and sayin' things that make people scared again or when he goes out without his eye patch because he don't like the glass one we found him. He aint never funny to me though, not like that – I aint scared of him since we know all each other's worst secrets – everything there is to know about a person.

After the last winter we got our own little house right next to the town hall – Rick thought it'd only be right since he said he was retiring soon and letting Carl take over. Carl and me. He's fifteen this year, but with his Daddy doing most of the planning and making sure everything runs smoothly all he's really gotta do is make sure it all gets done. For now, watches after the teams that go outside the walls; the orchard pickers, the builders, scavengers and runners when we send ‘em out to Pittsburgh or Cleveland or even Buffalo in the summer. Me and Andrea take care of folks inside; the growers and the cooks, the teachers and the house tenders, the doctors and the town guard.

Nobody's really in charge in Erie, we had a council for a little while but it disbanded a couple years back and now we all do what we can, but there aint a boss no matter how much people look to Rick still... we'll do all right when his time comes. There's almost five hundred of us last count and the preacher says if we don't get another man of God soon he'll have to run two services – I don't think he'd mind much though, folks got a lot of sin in ‘em these long years. If I thought he'd say yes, I'd ask Carl to get the preacher to marry us but I don't think he thinks much of it... says it's for the old world, like comic books even though I know he's got a stack of those under his bed.

Today after class I'll be working with one of our best teachers; he says he was nobody before the dead times – a historian that worked up at Penn State. But now, he's one of the best things that've happened since we been here; he taught our cooks how to make flour out of corn and when the wheat comes up this year he can mill that too, and he's teaching Mommy Maggie how to keep bees and make honey. He claims he don't know how to spin wool into thread, but with the sheep we got penned in this year I'm sure they'll find a way. This spring Rick's even talking about rounding up some cattle we seen a few months back and looking for chickens.

It's home. For the first time in a long time, I can call it that and not wait for the next monster to come knocking down our gates. I'm gonna see the doctor next week, I think, and see if we can figure on me coming due before winter comes... it'll be close, but if it gets too cold we can move back to the big house with Rick and sleep upstairs in the small room where it'll be warm.

It'll be all right. Everything is going to be all right. We did it, Mommy... I know you never thought we'd make it, but we did. We got good people here, you'd have liked it, but Carl and Mommy Maggie take good care of me like always and I'll never be lonely like you were at the end.

I miss you, but I like it here now. We can live again.

This fic is mirrored at ineedmyfics.