Who We Are | TWD

.057

  Emmie laid in her bunk, unable to will herself to move. Her bones felt stiff. Her muscles felt tight. It was almost as if any sudden movement would send them cracking, webs of fractures running along them. Her eyes remained open, staring at the cinder wall that her bunk was leaning against. It was grey and depleted of any sort of interest, but was the only thing she could bring herself to look at. She only closed her eyes briefly when they became too dry, but that rarely happened since her tears were effective at dampening them.

    People came by her side often, trying their best to offer the girl what they could. Bowls of oatmeal were made for her in the morning by a gentle Beth, but would be left to sit on the table beside Emmie's bed until she would come back to clean it up around noon when the mush had dried to a thick paste.

    "You gotta eat at sometime, Emmie," she had told her on one occasion when she had brought her some crackers around dinner time. Emmie didn't even stir. She moved only a couple times throughout the day. She'd get up from her bunk in the morning, restless as always after having spent another full night replaying the images of her brother's demise in her mind, and head to the bathrooms. She tried to wash her face with a bucket of water, but after the first few days, couldn't even get herself to do that small task. Afterwards, she'd take small sips of water from a cup in the dinning area, barely able to finish the glass, before heading back to her bunk to waste the rest of the day away.

    It happened like this over and over again. She barely drank, only consuming what her body absolutely needed so she didn't have to feel the side effects of dehydration, but didn't eat. It caused great headaches to pound in her head and her stomach to feel pains constantly, but to her, that pain was ignorable. The pain inside her mind was the kind that was insufferable.

    Anger began to brew inside her, lingering deeper and deeper in her heart than anything else she'd ever experienced before. Although she had never fully recovered from the deaths of her parents, at the end of the day, there was nobody to blame. There was nobody she wanted to scream and and hurt in order to bring them justice. There was nobody that she wanted to kill. She realized how far down her pain was rooted through these fleeting thoughts. She wanted nothing more than to end the Governor's life.

    Although she never noticed, the boy, the only other kid her age, would linger outside her cell door sometimes, quietly worried about her well-being. He didn't like the dark circles that had encapsulated her eyes or the way she wouldn't even speak to anyone when she did come out of her room on such rare occasions. He never spoke to her or asked her if she was okay because he already knew the answer to those questions. If he hadn't already been furious at the world for what it had done to his mother, he was now because of what it had done to his friend.

    Days passed. At one point, Beth managed to coax some canned tuna into Emmie. She didn't tell the older girl that the only reason she had eaten was because she didn't know how much longer she'd be able to survive without food. People came in to Emmie's cell to try to speak to her, but nobody was able to get even a single syllable out of her mouth. During each of these visits, she'd stay in the same position, remaining constant with her attention being absorbed by the wall as if it had all of her answers. None of those answers were there.

    The others worried, but it was only because they had every right to. The girl, once very vibrant, had become grey, almost completely washed away. The tide of depression had taken her and did not let her go.

    One day, Rick had come to her bedside to ask her if she'd be interested in joining him, Carl and Michonne on a trip to search for some more ammunition to use in the efforts to win the little disagreement they had landed themselves in with the Governor. She wouldn't budge. Usually, she was eager for any sort of adventure, no matter what it was, so Rick, having to see her pale face, dark eyes unmoving from an unknown sight in the distance, was absolutely sickening to him, but he was unsure what else he could do besides leave her alone.