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» THE STORM PT.1 «

Step After Snowy Step

No one was surprised when Ezekiel defeatedly announced that the Kingdom wasn't suitable to live in anymore. It had been a long few months since the fair, and the weather had only become that much harsher. Even at the Hilltop we had to move everyone indoors, the trailers being too cold for the residing families.

I could hear the mutters and whispers that went around my community, I heard it every day. Most people understood the losses, they accepted my pain. But others reckoned I was unfit to lead after such trauma. I was 'just a little girl who had been through too much' to them. I hated to admit that I didn't care enough to fight back. There was nothing they could do anyway, no one standing up and taking over my role. No, there was just me.

I was the one who checked the perimeter every single night, I was the one who preserved the remaining food stores and organised the rations. I was the one who decided the Kingdom needed our help.

It was time to move on, for all of us.

We were moving the people of the Kingdom to the Hilltop, the only place that had the room for them even if it wasn't the safest. Alpha and the Skin freaks hadn't shown their ugly faces in a long time but the threat was still hanging over my shoulder with every choice I made. Every time I had to send out a supply run team, or a few riders to check on the other communities, it felt like hell.

I wasn't sure when I last spoke to Daryl or Michonne, the last time I even saw Carol. It had to be on that horrible day and even then I couldn't meet her eye. A lot was changing today and I had to accept that.

I walked alongside the wagon in silence, my woolly hat pulled firmly over my ears to protect them from the cold. Glenn's jacket didn't keep me warm alone, so I packed in the layers underneath it. Sweater over shirt over T-shirt.

I didn't know what was to come, but as the snow began to fall, I realised it would be our new beginning.

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Feeling lonely was something I despised most, but lately I had rather enjoyed being alone. Self-pity wasn't something I was previously familiar with but it had become something of a friend recently. Pity? Guilt? What's the difference?

I couldn't deny I had shut myself off from the family and friends I still had, but that wasn't what I felt guilty about. Maybe it came with being a leader, but I couldn't help the feeling of responsibility deep within.

Alpha murdered my people, the people that belonged to the Hilltop. I should've protected them, right? Henry had said it himself, he never would've gone there if it wasn't for me. Then he never would've met Lydia, he wouldn't have gone after her-

"Do you hate me?" A nervous voice piped up, the girl herself meeting my distant gaze. I wasn't sure when I caught up to her, my thoughts being too deep in my own head.

I let out a low, humourless chuckle. "I want to. It just never works out the way it's supposed to." I hated myself for being unable to do it, in fact. But it had happened before, where I so desperately wanted to blame someone who had absolutely no fault in the situation.

I turned to Lydia for a brief second, our eyes meeting before I returned my gaze back to the ground. Every time I looked at her it felt like they welled with tears. "You remember meeting my daughter, right? I introduced you a couple months ago."

I watched Lydia nod from the corner of my eye. "Yeah, her name's Heather." She recalled with a frown of confusion.

"You must've heard about Rick Grimes by now, and his son, Carl?" I continued, the girl nodding in agreement. "Carl is Heather's father. He died when I was pregnant, he never even got to meet her."