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Long Forgotten Memories
TW: Abuse

"She been spouting the same weird shit all night?" I asked as I sat next to Daryl outside the cells. I didn't like spying on Henry as he persuaded the girl to open up, but I knew it was the best way to gain information. "'Hunger is a gift'? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know, kid." He sighed, chewing his fingernail thoughtfully. "She's talking, though. Her name's Lydia. Her people travelled in groups with the dead. Sounds like a pretty messed up kid."

I shushed him quickly, my ears tuning into the conversation below. "-it's called the Kingdom. It's probably like a day's ride from here." Henry didn't have time to say anything else because Daryl swung the doors open, unofficially releasing him from the jail with a frustrated order.

"Are you stupid or something?" My eyebrows were drawn with bewilderment as I met his bewildered expression. "Your parents are at the Kingdom, your family. You can't go around giving that information to anybody."

Henry apologised, his eyes gleaming with regret until they shifted into something else. "You were listening?" He sounded betrayed, his tone almost sad. I knew I felt guilty before, but his realisation only made it worse.

Daryl continued to scold him, allowing me to subtly slip away into the cold cells. The girl, Lydia, was huddled into a corner, back pressed against the stone wall with fear. She looked so small, defenceless.

'Don't feel bad for her.'

She couldn't have been much younger than myself, maybe around Henry's age. The idea of someone threatening him the way we had threatened her, the thought of someone hurting him in any way, made it harder to look at her now.

"You must be thirsty, right?" I couldn't help the kindness that seeped into my words no matter how hard I tried. But she just looked so scared. She didn't answer, instead shuffling closer to the bars as I offered her a plastic cup. She gulped it down in seconds, water drops running down her chin. I noticed how unclean her face was when clear, pale tracks stood out from the brown dirt. "I'm Belle."

"Lydia." She kept her gaze low as she handed the cup back, my fingers reaching around it. The sleeve of her torn shirt inched down her wrist, revealing deep scars in a uniform pattern.

"How did that happen?" I asked softly, but I could already tell they had been inflicted on purpose. Lydia shrugged off the question, her face downcast.

"My d-my mom." I could hear the confusion in her words, like she was wrapping her mind around the fact that her mother wasn't the person she thought. The lines along her forearm made me realise exactly who she was- a kid with shitty parents.

I sat on the wooden stool, leaning forward and peering through the bars. "I remember my mom. She wasn't the kind of person I could get along with, you know? She didn't hurt me, not really. Sometimes I wished she would, if it got her to at least notice me. She would be out all day and night just so she didn't have to come home to me. See, my mom was never supposed to be a mom, it just happened. My dad, he was the real problem." I sighed, hands clenched into fists. My past was a difficult thing to talk about, but the fact Lydia was practically a stranger seemed to help. Her view of me couldn't be changed by this information because she had no idea who I was.

"This one time, I remember staying up all night because my little sister was sick. She had a fever almost at a hundred, shaking in her sleep. I was so scared, I thought she was gonna die. And my mom, she walks in at four am, totally wasted. She used to pretend like I didn't exist, like my sister didn't exist. She didn't care about me, she was a piece of shit and my dad was worse."