THE REASON

chapter sixteen ; trust
[ season five - episode eleven ]

"GLENN AND I will go on a run later to try and find any houses nearby, praying the people that lived there had asthma once upon a time," Isabelle told Zayn as he approached his younger sister.

"She'll be okay, right?" Zayn's voice shook ever so slightly, his eyes glued onto Kloe's state. Her back was pressed up against the wall, her head flopped forward and exceedingly loud wheezes escaping her.

Her fingertips were beginning to turn a faint blue color, along with her lips. She looked freezing cold, especially from the random shivers her body decided to do. She was barely conscious at this point.

Isabelle glanced over her shoulder, setting her eyes on the Rhee woman. Glenn was beside her, his eyes staring down at her hand that was limply in his.

"We're gonna try to make her okay," she answered honestly, her own hope doubting vastly. Like they were before, they were nowhere near anywhere. Unless they bumped into a place with multiple inhalers and maybe an oxygen canister, they were going to lose her.

She pushed herself over the limit the night before — helping everyone keep the walkers behind the doors and not in. The thing with her was that when it came to her family, she would've done anything. Even if it killed her.

Her debilitated body jolted, making Glenn's heart skip a beat as her head lifted up. The doors to the barn creaked open, which startled Kloe considering what had happened a few hours prior.

The moment Glenn spotted Maggie's face peek through the crack of the door, he turned to Kloe and pressed a small kiss to the side of her forehead. "It's okay. It's only Maggie and Sasha," he comforted. However, he was wrong.

"Everyone..." Maggie started warily, pushing open the wooden door wider. The group's faces all fell simultaneously the moment they noticed there was a middle aged man behind her. "This is Aaron."

Glenn immediately left his wife's side and rose to his feet, clicking his gun and aiming it high — along with everybody else in the barn.

Rick stepped forward, Judith in one hand and his signature revolver in the other. He removed the safety as every other gun people had cocked. Isabelle didn't bother, nevertheless, and knelt down beside Kloe.

She pressed her ear against Kloe's chest, even though she didn't have to since she and everybody else in the barn could hear the wheeze in her airways — making it almost impossible for her to breathe.

Daryl brushed past Maggie, Aaron and Sasha at a fast haste and scanned the area outside of the barn in case of others that Aaron had maybe brought along with him.

"We met him outside," the Greene woman affirmed as Aaron's eyes laid upon everyone, offering them an awkward, uncertain smile. "He's by himself." Daryl leaped forward and began patting him down from the bottom to the top. "We took his weapons and we took his gear."

Daryl only ignored her and continued to search him while Tara carefully closed the wooden barn doors behind them, linking the chain together. The Dixon man stepped back, sending daggers to the back of Aaron's head with the harshest glare anyone had seen in a while.

There was a thick silence hanging in the air, aside from Kloe's often coughing and gasps for breath to the side of the room.

The man was wearing surprisingly clean clothes and not a single smudge of dirt was spotted on him. He had short, light brown hair that somehow managed to stay clean and groomed regularly.

A nervous, sheepish smile plastered onto Aaron's face, his eyes trained on Rick. "Hi," he greeted cautiously before his eyes dropped down to the baby in Rick's arms, who began to wail loudly.

Carl shushed his baby sister and promptly took her out of his father's grasp. He rocked her up and down, continuously shushing as he glared across at the unknown man.

"It's nice to meet you," Aaron said, stepping forward with his hand out for a handshake with Rick. Except, he quickly stopped dead in his tracks when some of the group halted forward with their weapons.

Isabelle's hand remained on Kloe's shoulder as the pair watched in the midst of it all. As much as they wanted to stand up and help defend, Kloe couldn't hardly move and Isabelle wanted to keep Kloe safe.

Rick turned his eyes to Maggie. "You said he had a weapon?" Maggie reached into her belt and pulled out the small handgun she had taken off the man and walked over to Rick. She handed the weapon over as Rick shoved his own back into his sheath to examine Aaron's.

He checked it for rounds before looking back to Aaron, briefly nodding. He placed the gun in the back of his belt as Maggie returned to Aaron's side.

"There something you need?"

"He has a camp nearby," Sasha informed, her eyes moving over to the clean man. "He wants us to audition for membership."

Despite being in her condition, Kloe's brows raised skeptically. If she wasn't so weak, she would've laughed at how stupid his words sounded.

Aaron shook his head, "I wish there was another word. Audition makes it sound like some kind of dance troupe. That's only on Friday nights." He attempted to take some of the weight away from the thick tension, but everyone stayed solemn. He turned to Sasha briefly. "Um, it's not— it's not a camp. It's a community. I think you all would make valuable additions. But... it's not my call. My job is to convince you all to follow me back home."

Everyone continued to stare at the man, saying nothing.

"I know," he started again, noticing the unimpressed look Rick was sending him. "If I were you, I wouldn't go either. Not until I knew exactly what I was getting into."

There was another moment of silence, until Aaron turned his head to the side and set his eyes on Kloe Rhee. He watched her for a moment, and the others immediately caught on and followed his gaze.

Kloe attempted to frown as to why he was looking at her, but she didn't find the strength to and stayed stoic. Aaron swiftly swerved his head. "Sasha, can you hand Rick my backpack?"

Sasha stared at Aaron for a second before pushing herself off the wooden wall and stepped over to Rick. She shrugged the backpack off her shoulder and handed it to him.

"There is something I have to show you, but that can wait," Aaron continued. "In the right side pocket, there's a white canister." The word canister made Isabelle rise to her feet within an instant. "It has the word 'OXYGEN' written across it, not hard to to miss."

Isabelle walked forward immediately over to the backpack in Rick's hands as Glenn did the same. Rick unzipped the compartment on the man's backpack, and his eyes landed on the particular item. A handheld oxygen canister.

"There's a few inhalers in there too. I made sure to bring more than just one this time," Aaron politely sent a smile over to Kloe, who's eyes were widened and set on the supplies that Isabelle pulled out of the backpack.

The moment Isabelle went to spin around to give Kloe, Rick wrapped his fingers tightly around her wrist, restraining her from moving any further. "No."

The Marshel woman's brows furrowed deeper than ever before. "What do you mean no?" she hissed. "Rick, she needs these."

"We can't trust it."

"Uh, they're pretty safe," Aaron joined in. "We have some stored in our clinic at our community. Along with actual oxygen tanks." He looked over at Kloe. "And it seems that you need them, quite badly actually."

Isabelle attempted to rip herself away from Rick's strong hold, but only budged slightly. Glenn stared at the items, more than ready to back Isabelle up to use them on his wife.

"Let go of me," she snarled at Rick, her skin going white from how strong his grip truly was. She scoffed. "If we don't give these to her soon, we'll be too late." She stared deeply into his eyes, wanting him to take the hint. But he didn't.

"We're not using them," he returned intimidatingly. "How do you know that these aren't filled with oxygen and actually have chemicals that'll make her worse."

"Rick, I don't think you understand," Isabelle clenched her jaw, glaring straight into his blue eyes. "Her fingers are going blue. Her lips are going blue. She can't walk. She can't move. She can't speak, eat, or drink. Hell, she can't even sleep. Haven't you noticed any of that?"

There was a long silence, Rick taking in what she had said. He swallowed thickly as his eyes traveled over Isabelle's shoulder and down at Kloe. The Rhee woman watched him with nothing. She knew he was too stubborn to trust anything, and she didn't blame him. She wouldn't trust it either.

"Her brain isn't getting enough oxygen it needs to process things properly. She says things she doesn't mean," she listed more, not giving up her case until she had successfully given Kloe the oxygen.

"The canister can be filled with toxins, Isabelle. We can't risk it," Rick stated sharply. "It can kill her."

"Rick, she's dying anyway!" she pointed to Kloe. "She has a couple of hours left, and we're getting nowhere. These last few days, we've gotten nowhere. We're miles away from any pharmacies. This is our last and only chance to save her."

Glenn swallowed thickly before stepping forward, using all his strength to break away Rick's hand from Isabelle's. Rick stared at him with a certain look. Glenn returned the look. "This," he gestured to the objects in Isabelle's hands and his wife on the ground, "is not your call. Everything else will be. But this is not."

And with that, he set his hand on Isabelle's back and led her away, walking over to his wife who was still suffering on the floor. She had even lost all the strength to keep her own head up and flopped forward again.

Isabelle knelt over the Rhee woman and held up the handheld oxygen canister. Glenn set his hand on his wife's chin and lifted her head. Her eyes were near shutting completely.

Without hesitation, Isabelle shook the preventer inhaler religiously. "C'mon Kloe, you know how this works..." she muttered to herself more or less. Kloe partened her eyes and tried her hardest not to close them.

Isabelle placed the inhaler in between Kloe's lips and pushed down the small canister, the contents flying into her lungs as Kloe breathed in. She placed the brown container on the ground and picked up the oxygen canister.

She pressed the rubber mask against Kloe's mouth, the oxygen being sucked in as Kloe breathed in the oxygen, her eyes filling with relief when she felt it reach her lungs.

Everyone in the room watched as Kloe finally breathed, waiting with anticipation. Glenn ran his fingers through her hair as she blinked continuously. Isabelle removed the oxygen canister away from Kloe's mouth and replaced it with a reliever instead.

She counted down from three before pushing down on the canister. She did that another four times, and for the first time in a while, Kloe felt as if she could finally take deep breaths with no complications.

It still wasn't great, but it was better than before. Isabelle placed the rubber mask back onto Kloe's mouth, holding it there for a while.

Aaron smiled to himself as he watched it work. He finally turned back to Rick. "I have more to show you." Everyone's attention returned to what was going on, their own smiles on their lips knowing that Kloe was going to be okay. "Rick, the front pocket, there's an envelope.

Rick flickered his eyes away from Glenn, Kloe and Isabelle and went back to glaring across at Aaron. He unzipped the mentioned compartment as Aaron continued to speak.

"There's no way I could convince you to come with me just by talking about our community. That's why I brought those," Aaron gestured over to the envelope that Rick pulled out of the backpack. "I apologize in advance for the picture quality," he nervously laughed. "We just found an old camera store last—"

"No one gives a shit," Daryl interrupted, only saying the truth to the man.

Aaron pursed his lips and turned around to face the intimidating man, nodding his head. "You're absolutely one-hundred percent right." He then returned to look at the Grimes man, who had taken out the photographs. "That's the first picture I wanted to show you because nothing I say about our community will matter unless you know you'll be safe." The picture was a definitely crappy quality photograph of the walls to his community, which were held up by built in panels. "If you join us, you will be. Each panel in that wall is a fifteen-foot-high, twelve-foot-wide slab of solid steel framed by cold-rolled steel beams and square tubing. Nothing alive or dead gets through that without our say-so. Like I said, security is obviously important. In fact, there's only one resource more critical to our community's survival. The people. Together we're strong. You can make us even stronger."

Kloe's eyes fluttered up to her husband, who was still running his fingers through her hair. He looked down at her and saw the expression in her fatigued eyes. She thought it was a good but suspicious idea.

"The next picture," Aaron went on, "you'll see inside the gates. Our community was first construc—"

Aaron had been too occupied with explaining to them all what his community was about to the people around him that he didn't even notice how Rick harshly strided over to him, striking him across the face with force — enough to send him flying to the ground.

Nearly everyone in the group's eyes widened with shock. A majority of them trusted the man, especially after saving one of their closest friends. But it seemed that sometimes you could never be too sure.

Kloe furrowed her brows as she looked at Rick with a look of surprise. She herself was about to trust him. He didn't look like he wanted to hurt any of them — but who knew, Woodbury looked similar when it was just a town on display as a place that never went wrong. It did.

Rick crouched down and skimmed through the photographs, checking for anything sketchy that slipped its way into the picture. But to his surprise, it did look like a safe place.

He shared a glance with the unconscious man on the ground, who had Maggie next to him with her hand over her mouth with what had just occurred and turned around.

He began to step back to where he was originally put, and Michonne stared at him with furious eyes. "So we're clear," she whispered, making Rick stop and face her, "that look wasn't a 'let's attack that man' look. It was a 'he seems like an okay guy to me' look."

Kloe finally found her strength to move her arm and sent an assuring look to Isabelle — knowing how desperately she wanted to go to Aaron's aid to see if he was okay or if any of his bones were broken. The punch was a pretty hard strike.

The Rhee woman wrapped her hand around the frigid canister before Isabelle rushed over to the man, squatted in front of him and began to inspect his features. She sighed when she noticed that there wasn't a single broken bone.

"We got to secure him," he said, turning to Carl. "Dump his pack. Let's see who this guy really is." He spun around, facing the others. "Everybody else, we need eyes in every direction. They're coming for us. We might not know how or when, but they are."

Kloe pressed her free hand against the wooden wall behind her and strained herself to stand to her feet. She pulled the rubber mask away from her mouth and took a breath of the real air, the wheeze in her chest faint but still there.

She shakily walked forward, catching Zayn's attention and making him spin on his heel. He leaped forward, placing his hands on her shoulders to keep her steady.

Daryl, Carol, and Jayce all searched the man on the floor for any items he could have hidden, while Isabelle and Maggie crouched side by side. Maggie peered over her shoulder, catching Rick's eyes. "Me and Sasha, we didn't see him. If he had wanted to hurt us, he could've."

Rick only ignored the Greene woman and focused on the ones that peeked through the cracks of the barn's walls. "Anybody see anything?"

"Just a lot of places to hide," Glenn responded, glancing over his shoulder at the Grimes man.

"Alright, keep looking."

Kloe patted her brother's shoulder, assuring him that she was alright and could walk. She stumbled over to Carl, who was pulling items out of Aaron's backpack.

"What'd you find?" Rick wondered as he approached the table with contents. Just as he asked, Carl pulled out an item that wasn't familiar with the group, but they knew what it was from movies and shit.

Carl lifted up the particular weapon and flipped it over in his hands. "Never seen a gun like that before," the teen commented as he handed it over to his father.

"It's a flare gun," Kloe croaked out, being her first words of the day. Rick nodded in acknowledgement as he checked the inside of the flare.

On the other side of the room where Aaron was, Isabelle had pressed a wet cloth against the area where Rick had punched him. He began to stir awake, groaning loudly as he lifted his head.

He lifted his eyes briefly to Isabelle and Maggie before a faint smile etched onto his lips. "That's a hell of a right cross right there, Rick."

Rick tilted his head, shifting his eyes over to Michonne. "Sit him up."

"I think it's better if—"

"It's okay," Aaron reassured Maggie, sending her a polite smile as he groaned from the throbbing pain in his jaw.

"He's fine," Rick added sternly, his eyes as cold as ice. No one could blame him however, it was hard to trust anyone during these days. "Sit him up."

Michonne silently sighed, rolling her eyes unnoticeably as she wrapped her arm around Aaron's and pulled him up. He groaned with pain, the rope that was wrapped around his wrists giving him rope burn.

"You're being cautious," Aaron nodded, sharing a glance with the group again. "I completely understand—"

"How many of your people are out there?" Rick asked intimidatingly. Kloe. fatigued, rested her back against the wooden wall, trying her back not to slide back down to where she started off. Her dark eyes stuck onto Aaron's like super glue. Aaron only blinked and watched Rick, his eyes dropping down to the red flare gun in his hand.

"You have a flare," Kloe's voice cracked, gulping after she lightly coughed into the back of her hand. "Whole point of the flare is to signal your people in case you're in danger. So... how many are there?"

Aaron stayed completely silent for a moment or two, his eyes transferring between Rick and Kloe. He could tell Kloe trusted him more than Rick did, considering he saved her life from the goddamn disease in her lungs.

"Does it matter?" Aaron nervously wondered.

"Yes," Rick instantly answered. "Yes, it does."

"I mean," Aaron nodded as if he had been stupid to even ask, "of course, it matters how many people are actually out there, but... does it matter how many people I tell you are out there? Because I'm pretty sure what number I say... eight, thirty-two, four-hundred-and-forty-four, zero, no matter what I say, you're not going to trust me."

"Well, it's hard to trust anyone who smiles after getting punched in the face," Rick pointed out realistically. He wasn't wrong.

Aaron's face contorted into a mix of confusion and shock. "How about a guy who leaves bottles of water and an asthma inhaler for you in the road?"

Everyone shared a glance with one another. They all had some suspicions it was him that left them out the moment they saw the asthma inhalers get pulled out of his backpack — he confirmed their theories.

This man had been following them for a while.

Daryl Dixon menacingly stepped forward, a look of anger presented on his face — thinking they had all fallen into a trap. "How long you people been following us?"

"Long enough to see that you practically ignore a pack of roamers on your trail," he answered honestly, causing Michonne to rise to her feet from beside him. "Long enough to see that despite a lack of food and water, you never turned on each other. You're survivors and you're people. Like I said, and I hope you won't punch me for saying it again, that is the most important resource in the world."

Everyone couldn't deny the fact that he wasn't wrong. He was right.

Rick, however, completely ignored what Aaron had just said and washed over his head like it was nothing and slowly stepped over to him. "How many others are out there?" he demanded.

"Two," Aaron replied truthfully. Rick's lips turned into a straight line and squinted his eyes skeptically. Aaron scoffed, "I knew you wouldn't believe me. If it's not words, if it's not pictures, what would it take to convince you that this is for real."

Everyone stayed silent like they did before, their eyes simultaneously landing on Rick. No matter how many times he told them he wasn't their leader and that they all had a choice in what they were to do — he was their leader.

An idea pinged into Aaron's mind. "What if I drove you to the community?" he suggested, dragging his eyes across all of them again. "All of you. We leave now, we'll get there by lunch."

Rick shared a glance with the members of his group. "I'm not sure how the twenty-one of us are gonna fit in a car you and your two friends drove down here in."

"We drove separately," Aaron clarified, nodding his head singly. "If we found a group, we wanted to be able to bring them all home. There's— there's enough room for all of us."

"And you're parked just a couple miles away, right?" Carol questioned, having a hard time believing him slightly.

Aaron nodded to the woman in a flash. "East on Ridge Road, just after you hit Route 16. We wanted to get them closer, but then the storm came, blocked the road. We couldn't clear it."

Rick narrowed his eyes, nodding ever so slightly. He was still unconvinced with the whole ordeal. "Yeah, you've really thought this through."

"Rick, if I wanted to ambush you, I'd do it here," he reasoned. Reina squinted her eyes and bit onto her cheek, subconsciously tightening onto her gun. "You know, light the barn on fire while you slept, pick you off as you ran out the only exit. You can trust me."

Kloe brought the frigid canister back to her mouth to suck more air in, relief pumping through her veins with every breath she took. She blinked slowly, shifting her eyes between her husband, brother, and sister, attempting to read their expressions.

Brianna seemed hesitant, which Kloe completely understood — she was too. Zayn seemed intrigued, yet also hesitant. Glenn, he did exactly what Kloe did and turned to her to read her expression. Wherever she went, he would go.

"I'll check out the cars," Michonne informed, filling the deafening, thick silence.

"There are no cars," Rick snarled, not breaking eye contact with Aaron.

"There's only one way to find out," she argued, knowing that there was quite possibly another chance for them. For all of them.

"We don't need to find out."

"We do," she addressed firmly, making herself clear as she stared into Rick's eyes deeply. "You know what you know and you're sure of it... but I'm not."

"Me neither," Maggie spoke up. Kloe's head snapped over to her, and for the first time in weeks, she saw hope. Perhaps Kloe should've done the same. Look for the light.

Rick sighed heavily, his head flopping forward and shaking his head. "Your way is dangerous, mine isn't."

"Passing up someplace where we can live? Where Judith can live? That's pretty dangerous." Kloe continued to look between her family, expecting them to believe her... because she was. "We need to find out what this is. We can handle ourselves. So that's what we're gonna do."

"I'm going, too," Isabelle stepped forward. "I must be one of the only ones that trust him. He's already proven he's trustworthy to me. He just saved one of our lives."

Kloe watched her, bringing the rubber mask away from her. Isabelle felt the eyes on the side of her face and turned to face her. Kloe sent her a small, thankful smile.

"Then I will, too," Glenn chimed in, nodding his head firmly. The man on the ground saved his wife's life — he wanted to trust him too. "I'll go."

The Rhee woman wasn't going to be like those people that were willing to go out into the world when they were at their weakest, she knew better than that. She stayed silent, knowing even if she did say something, they would only turn her down.

Rick exhaled exasperatedly, not liking how the majority of the group in the barn did not agree with him. He turned around, facing a particular redhead. "Abraham?"

"Yeah," he immediately responded. "I'll walk with 'em."

"Rosita?"

She nodded, setting her hand on her hip. "Okay."

"Jayce, Reina?"

The pair both shared a glance with one another, both nodding. "You got it," Reina responded, kneeling down and grasping onto her rifle on the ground.

"If there's trouble, you got enough firepower?" Rick questioned, standing in front of Glenn.

"We got what we got," he shrugged, his eyes flicking over to his wife, who was walking over to him.

Rick pulled out the gun he took off of Aaron and handed it over to the man. "The walkies are out of juice. If you're not back in sixty minutes, we'll come. Which might be just what they want."

Kloe wrapped her arms around her husband. "Stay safe," she whispered, resting her chin on his shoulder as she felt his arms wrap around her waist.

"Always," he assured, pulling back and pressing a soft kiss onto her lips.

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words: 4472
1st august 2023
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aannnnd SHE HAS BEEN SAVED!
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rest in peace angus cloud ❤️