Worn out hardwood floor creaked under dusty heavy leather boots. The rushing pace composed a cacophonic chant radiating the sense of emergency across a narrow wrap around porch of a oversized tree house. Finding the right door in a row of entrances, the dirty hand of the impatient man pushed it open.

"Is it true?" His harsh voice found its recipient sitting behind a massive wooden table in the middle of a rustic room. "Is she back?"

"Nico, finally, you're back..." The other man looked up from the pages and pages of handwritten material spread in front of him. He squinted his eyes and rocked his head to flip away a string of ebony hair shading his view.

"Where is she? Is she alright?" To hear the answer was too urgent to go through pleasantries.

"First..." The man stood up from behind the table. His height was impressive but the other man did not scare easy even though their eyes were not level.

"God help you, Xavier, if you make this about me, again. Everything went as usual, okay? Now... how is she?"

Xavier hesitated about whether Nico didn't try to blur something out, his sandy jacket matching his hair was filthier from corpse blood more than times before. Nico was out there longer than he routinely did and that kept them all jumpy, even more so after Sally's return. The man at the head of the table sighed deeply, crossing his arms on his chest.

"Yes, she's back. My brother and Dottie brought her in. They found her half dead in the woods, probably heading here. "

Xavier's memories were too fresh to be spoken with ease. His mind played the horror movie over and over.

'Xav... Xavier, please!' Sally was delirious, she could hardly keep herself conscious, but she was on a mission. Her hands were reaching towards him. She was so pale in contrast to her bloody attire. He only recognized her because she used to cover herself in the corpse-blood for protection.

The dark smears all over her were her war paint. But for the man being carried unconscious from their pickup truck it might've as well been his burial wear.

'Help him, help... save him! You have to save him!' She tried to untangle herself from the hands of two people who were trying to keep her standing, one of them being Dottie. Xavier's brother was helping carry Negan on the other side of the car.

'Take him up, prepare everything, I'll be with him shortly,' Xavier ordered to ease her mind and rushed to her to check her real quick, too.

'Sally,' he caught her collapsing body into his arms.

"She was... badly injured." The words were strangling him.

"How bad?"

"Shot, scratched..." Xavier was ready to list all the casualties but Nico heard only what he wanted. His heart was thumping in time with the wings of a hummingbird.

"SCRATCHED?" He lost all his cool.

"No, god," Xavier kept shaking his head. He was terrified by only imagining something like that. "Not scratched by a corpse, but her face is... you'll have to see for yourself. And..."

"And?" Nico braced himself, this was the worst for last situation, he was sure about that. And he was not wrong.

"She's worse," Xavier said with a heavy impact on the last word. Both men knew what that meant, but Nico tried to find asylum in denial.

"Worse? What do you mean worse?" The wishful thinking made him clench his fists, the knuckles under the grime on his hands went white.

"She's talking about him again," Xavier made every point of Nico's worries valid. "She thinks she saw him, that she found him."

"I thought we were over this. She was good while she was here. I knew we shouldn't just let her wander off like that." Nico was quick to flare, but he just wasn't ready to watch Sally go through that again. Her last withdrawal was...

"We know her, we know she just won't be sitting around doing nothing. We can't keep her here or anywhere else but yes, it's back, worse than ever... I've been talking to her every day since she woke up and she's ... She's ..."

'He's dead! He's dead! He killed him!' She kept repeating powerless in Xavier's arms. 'Dead, dead, dead,' she murmured under her breath. 'He killed him! Help him!' She made no sense anymore, her skin was burning up, she was shaking, looking for comfort folded inside his embrace.

"She's behind the veil," Xavier went on with filling Nico in, "she's mourning. She's talking about her old group, about some disastrous deaths. She... relapsed."

There was about that much that could've been said without raising action.

"I'm gonna go see her," Nico said. "She's in her room, right?"

"No, she's in the new branch."

"Why? It's too big for a single person." Nico furrowed his brow.

"Well, she's not alone," Xavier shrugged.

"Whatever, I don't mind, I can relieve the watch. Who's with her?" Nico was the one to overcome any obstacle. No was not an option.

"Nobody from our people. She didn't come back alone."

Nico got completely lost. She came back almost dead, how could she bring someone. Someone ought to bring her!

Xavier continued with explanation right away.

"She brought this man along, better said she dragged him with her, he was injured even worse than her - shot in the leg and head trauma... she refused to leave his side so we put them in the same room. She's by his side all day, talking to him, waiting for him to wake up. She scarcely comes out."

"Will he make it?"

"Can't tell. We don't have any equipment to determine the damage. Head traumas are a tricky thing, you can never know how it turns out. It's literally on the brain itself."

"She clings to people way too soon and way too much." Nico said it and it came out way too more harshly than he meant it.

"No, she doesn't," Xavier rushed to defend Sally's side. "She just has to see something in them. It draws her in and she can't let go. Not even death is the terminus for her."

"Reckless creature," Nico shook his head in disbelief. "Is she even human?"

"That's the part that makes her lose her mind," Xavier nodded. He knew a fair share about workings of Sally's mind. They pulled her up from a pit before but this time she was astray and twisted more than ever before.

He knew that by the way she was not standing in the same room with them. She was always the first one to hear Nico's chopper closing in. She used to run towards him and greet him sooner than anyone else even had a chance to spot him. That was if she wasn't on the run with him.

Not seeing Sally welcoming him at the moment, not seeing them exchanging subtle displays of their affiliation meant only one thing. They needed all manpower they could gather to yank her back to them and maybe just maybe she wasn't long gone.

"I need to see her," Nico headed back to the porch.

"You can come with me," Xavier rushed after him, "I need to change her bandages anyway." He needed Sally under constant observation, he had to pick up her every response to determine the damages. He had all means to provide her with consolation and guidance, but how much she wanted to be helped though was questionable.

She retreated, found her way back to them, but he was skeptic they would've seen her again if it wasn't about the rescue she sought for the man she brought in.

One thing was clear to him. The Sally they were about to see wasn't the same Sally who evaporated in the woods. Part of that girl was lost forever, part of that girl was never coming back, part of that woman died along with the person that held her together.

'He's dead! He's dead! He killed him! Dead, dead, dead. He killed him! Help him!'

'Who is dead, Sally? Who is?' She was in shock, but Xavier needed to see inside her mind. 'Who died?'

She broke down right as the name was leaving her bloody lips.

'Glenn.' 

___

Author's Note:

My loveliest readers, I can't keep this story off my restless mind! I think about it ALL THE TIME! Uh-oh! 💜 🌸

Let's call this previous little publishing hiatus the end of the season break and WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD! Are you following me so far? If it gets too confusing because I didn't do my part right, shoot me... a comment or a message, we'll see to it. And if I did something just right, you can let me know as well. 😏 😂

In case you want to see a bit of my inspiration behind (not only) this story, you can find it in The CLOUDS. It's a new book I published and if you want to see SALLY'S DRESS, it already has a chapter on that. Xavier's face how I picture it will be posted next. But if you're okay with just your imagination, I'm okay with that, too, no pressure.  https://www.wattpad.com/story/117344956-the-clouds

Get your flowers ready, we're visiting Sally next! 🌸

Thank you so much for being here! 

🌩