SARAH
Sarah had lived that day feeling as if it was endless. She was well aware of the meeting that they would have to face at twilight, but she was not emotionally ready for it.
She hated her thoughts and what they would have caused in a few hours.
Sarah remembered her mother and when she would follow her during the trials, her boss was working on. That was the main reason why Sarah decided that she would never become a lawyer. It was brutal. The same was true for the judge. And she hoped that they would never call her to be part of the jury. She never wanted to decide on those matters, and now that they were talking about a human life, she felt guilty. It didn't matter what she would have chosen. She would have felt guilty anyway. Sarah was sure that they could not trust Randall, and that and the perspective of his group coming to destroy them made her prefer to side with Rick, but she understood where Dale was coming from, and in another kind of world, she would have sided with him instantly, but not now...
Now, things were different, and she felt like it was needed for them to protect themselves.
And there they were, all gathered in Hershel's living room. No one was talking, and the dread and terror on their faces was evident. Sarah was sitting next to Glenn, her legs bouncing as he rubbed his eyes. Dale was right next to them. Maggie and her father were sitting on the couch across from them. T was next to Patricia, who was sitting down, Andrea and Shane side by side, while Lori, Carol, and Rick were on the other side of the room. Behind them, leaning with his hand on the wall, there was Daryl. As he entered, Sarah shared a look with him; she was glad that he had come to talk with them about this. The last to enter were Carl and Nicki. It was evident that they both wanted to stay there, but Rick told them to go up the stairs. Nicolette looked over her, but Sarah shook her head and gestured for her to do what Rick had said.
Once the children went upstairs, Glenn had been the first to break the heavy silence.
"So how do we do this?" He asked tensely, "Just take a vote?"
"Does it have to be unanimous?" Andrea proposed, but Lori shook her head.
"How about majority rules?" she said, and Sarah closed her eyes. Were they already voting? Her hands trembled. She wasn't ready; she simply wasn't. Was she really raising her hand to vote for a boy to die?
"Let's... let's just see where everybody stands," Rick proposed, "Then we can talk through the options."
Sarah did her best to breathe as she nodded her head, but she felt like no air was entering her lounges.
"Yeah, well, where I sit, there's only one way to move forward," Shane stated.
"Killing him," Dale challenged him with a glare, "Right?"
Sarah clenched her hands in an attempt to release some stress. They were killing a person... that was something she had never thought would have happened in her life. The word killing was really making anything easy. She felt so selfish, but she couldn't decide to try and feel less selfish. If those people found where Randall was, they would have come and killed everyone, and the same thing could happen if he had escaped. And if he was as bad as his people were, what would he have done to them? They couldn't know. They couldn't risk. Could they?
"Why even bother to take a vote?" Dale kept saying, "It's clear which way the wind's blowing. " The man's voice was so disappointed that it hurt deeply. It was so painful to know that Dale felt that way toward them.
"If people believe we should spare him, I wanna know," Rick protested, but that didn't stop Dale.
"Well, I can tell you it's a small group," he answered. "Maybe just me and Glenn." Sarah turned to her friend, but his expression was the same as everyone's. He was not going to side with Dale...
"Look," he started quietly looking at the older man, "I think you're pretty much right about everything, all the time, but this-"
"They've got you scared!" Dale argued, but Sarah shook her head.
"Not them. Him," she said honestly, "And what he and his group can do. " Her eyes met Daryl's as she turned; he was observing her with wide eyes, and then he looked down.
"And he is not one of us," Glenn kept saying, "And we've lost too many people already."
Dale took a breath before turning towards Maggie to ask her what she thought about the situation. The girl stood up with crossed hands, her face showing a conflicted expression.
"Couldn't we continue to keeping him prisoner?" she asked, but then Daryl was the one who spoke.
"Just another mouth to feed."
"It may be a lean winter," Hersel said.
"We could ration better," Lori proposed, and Dale immediately responded, telling them that Randall could have been an asset during winter.
"Give him a chance to prove himself," he said, looking at each one of them.
"So, we..." Sarah muttered, her head pounding from the stress of that situation, "We'd let him go around?"
"Putting him to work?" asked Glenn, backing her up.
"No," Rick said, turning to Sarah. "We're not letting him walk around," the girl nodded her head. She appreciated that he was trying to reassure her.
"We could put an escort on him," Maggie proposed.
"And who wants to volunteer for that duty?" Shane asked skeptically.
"I will!" Dale exclaimed, and Sarah knew he would have done it.
Her eyes fixed on Shane and his reaction to Dale's words; he scoffed mockingly. It was clear that he wanted to kill Randall, but he didn't seem bothered about it.
Her mind went back to a few hours before and to what she had witnessed in the cabin: how Shane had treated Randall. He almost seemed eager to get rid of the guy.
"I don't think any of us should be walking around with this guy," Rick said, and Sarah felt like agreeing.
"He is right," Lori backed her husband up, "I wouldn't feel safe unless he is tied up."
"Me too," Sarah said, nodding her head, "If we find another way to keep him alive, that's great. But I don't want him near my sister, Beth and Carl."
Maybe Randall was not strong enough to do something to Daryl, Rick, or Shane, but the children were another matter. Sarah was up for other solutions, but they needed to be sure that Randall was not a threat, in any way, to anyone. If they didn't, then the worst solution was the only one they had.
"We can't exactly put chains around his ankles, sentence him to hard labor," Andera argued.
And that was true as well...
"Look, say we let him join us, right? Maybe he is helpful, maybe he is nice," Shane began, always with the same tone, almost mocking, "We let our guard down, and maybe he runs off, bringing back his 30 men."
"So the answer is to kill him to prevent a crime that he may never even attempt?" at Dale's exclamation, Sarah looked up. It was hard to hear outloud what she was doing exactly. The guilt crept into her heart. She didn't want to choose. How could she choose something like that?
"If we do this, we're saying there's no hope," Dale insisted, "Rule of law is dead, there is no civilization."
"That's true..." Sarah said, and Dale looked toward her.
"Oh my God," Shane said shaking his head.
"I'm sorry I don't find it easy," Sarah exclaimed, looking at Shane, who looked in her direction, "I've never thought that I would ever find myself talking about killing a guy. I hate it, and I am scared. And I'm thinking about killing someone only based on that," she took a breath, "If there was some kind of rules there would be a trial..."
"There's no jury," Daryl said, making her turn, "Not anymore."
"I know that..." she muttered, feeling her eyes fill with tears. She didn't want to make that decision.
"Could you drive him further out?" Hershel proposed, "Leave him like you planned?"
Lori shook her head, turning to her husband. "You barely came back this time. There are walkers. You could break down, you could get lost."
"You can get ambushed," Daryl added.
"They are right," Glenn intervened, "We should not put our own people at risk."
Sarah found herself nodding. They could not lose someone else. She loved all of them, and she did not know Randall. Was that enough to decide a person's life?
"If you go through with it," Patricia said, "How would you do it? Would he suffer," Sarah took a heavy breath.
"Please, let's not torture him, at least," she muttered.
"We could hang him, right?" Shane said, looking over Rick, "Just snap his neck."
"I thought about that," Rick explained, "Shooting may be more humane."
In what kind of world were they living if shooting a person was considered a human act?
"What about the body?" T asked, "Do we bury him-"
"Hold on, hold on!" Dale exclaimed, "You're talking about this like it's already decided."
"We've been talking all day," Daryl said, "Going around in circle. You just wanna go around in circle again?"
"This is a young man's life!" at Dale's exclamation, Sarah closed her eyes, forcing herself not to cover her ears. "And it is worth more than a five-minute conversation!" No one talked, but everybody knew that, morally, Dale was saying the right thing.
"There is so much at risk, Dale," Sarah said sadly. As she looked at the man, she had to dry a tear that had fallen from her eyes.
"You said yourself before, Sarah," Dale answered to her, "We can't kill someone because we are scared, or even worse, because we can't decide what else to do with him!" Then he turned to Rick, "You saved him, and now look at us. He is been tortured. He is gonna be executed," Sarah found herself turning towards Daryl, looking at his hand, before meeting his gaze. They observed each other for a moment, thinking back to the conversation they had when she was taking care of his hands.
"How are we any better than those people that we're so afraid of?" Dale kept saying. No one answered. They all felt guilty about what they were thinking of doing because it was indeed selfish, but they couldn't risk losing someone else.
"We all know what needs to be done," Shane stated after having taken a breath, but Rick interrupted him.
"No, Dale is right," he said, "We can't leave any stone unturned here."
"So what's the other solution?" Andrea asked, "We haven't come up with a single viable option yet. I wish we could-"
"So, let's work on it!" Dale exclaimed.
"Stop it," Carol said with a trembling voice, "Just stop it. I'm sick of everybody arguing and fighting. I didn't ask for this. You can't ask us to decide something like this," Sarah looked down, drying another tear, "Please decide, either of you, both of you, but leave me out," Carol kept saying.
"Not speaking out or killing him yourself, there's no difference," Dale's words stung hard.
"Alright, that's enough," Rick said, stopping the conversation. "Anybody who wants the floor before we make a final decision has the chance."
Again, the room filled with silence. Sarah hated all of that; how could they kill someone? But what if he would have caused harm to one of them?
"You once said," Dale tried again, making a step towards Rick, "That we don't kill the living."
"Well, that was before the living tried to kill us," Rick argued back. Sarah instinctively looked over to Glenn. They really could have lost him, Rick, and Hershel that night. And Randall was there, too.
"But don't you see?" Dale begged, "If we do this, the people that we were, the world that we knew, is dead. And this world is ugly. It's harsh. It's... it's survival of the fittest. And that's a world I don't wanna live in, and I don't believe that anybody of you do. I can't!"
He was right. Sarah hated that world as much as he did. She hated what she was seeing, and what her sister was seeing. She frequently woke up in the middle of the night, looking at her sleeping sister, asking herself what would have happened to Nicolette in the future, what she would have become. And it scared her. It terrorized her what that world could do to her little sister. If they killed Randall, what Nicki would have learnt?
"Please," Dale begged, tears in his eyes. "Let's just do what's right."
Nobody spoke. Someone looked away, others took an heavy breath.
"Isn't there anybody else who's gonna stand with me?" Dale asked
Sarah couldn't. And she hated herself for that. She hated how Dale was heartbroken, but she didn't know what to do.
"He is right," Andrea said, looking at Dale, "We should try to find another way."
Rick nodded his head, "Anybody else?"
Sarah took a breath, "I'm sorry, but... I'm terrorized by what can happen," as she spoke, Dale looked over her, "And, Dale, if we can find a safe solution, I'm more than happy to side with you," another tear fell against her cheek. She didn't want Nicki to think that killing was the easiest solution. She was terrorized by the idea of Nicki dying in that world. But she didn't want to make her forget what it was to be human and live in a safe civilization.
"Someone else?" Rick asked, but no one else spoke.
Sarah looked at the ground.
"Are y'all gonna watch, too?" Dale said, holding back his tears, "No, you'll go hide your heads in your tents and try to forget that we're slaughtering a human being," he took a deep breath, shaking his head, "I won't be part of it," then he headed towards the door. As he passed by Daryl, putting a hand on his shoulder, "This group is broken," and then he left.