found lands → the walking dead ³

[ 022 ] run, run, run.

FOUND LANDS.

chapter twenty-two, run, run, run.
[ season six, episode seven ]

ODESSA IS OKAY. THAT'S what she tells herself. That's what she tells everyone. But anyone with two eyes and common sense can see straight through her lies. They just don't want to see it.

It's the day after the attack and the herd finding its way to Alexandria's walls.

Odessa can't believe it but she's bored. She's so insanely bored. There's nothing she can do about the dead people or the walkers that want to get inside the walls. And she hates it.

She hates sitting here, safe behind these walls. Her family is out there. Daryl, Glenn, Sasha, Abraham. They're all outside the walls. Dead. Alive. Odessa doesn't know. She wishes she did. She wants so desperately to feel Glenn's arm wrap around her shoulders and smell the awfulness of Daryl. She wants see Sasha's rare smile and hear Abraham's weird comments. Bitch nuts, mother dick, a monkey's left nut, Voldemort's nutsack.

Abraham has a knack for saying the damndest things at the worst moment. And it always makes Odessa laugh when she thinks about it.

Kathleen sits under the pavilion. She holds an old picture of her and her brothers. She wishes she could see them just once more. Her big brothers loved her. Sure, they only saw each other two or three times a year but they still loved her. They still protected their baby sister.

And now, when Kathleen is twenty-four years old she watches as Cole Tanner approaches her. She eyes him as he sits beside her.

"Hey." She greets him. He smiles weakly at her. "What's up?"

He shrugs. It's been a while now since they've started talking more. Cole's learned quite a lot about Kathleen. Before that, she was a mystery.

She's twenty-six. Her birthday is June eighth. She was born in Austin, Texas but lived in Richmond with her mother until the end. That's when she had to stab a pair of scissors into the eye of her reanimated mom.

It wasn't the hardest thing she's ever been through but it was the hardest thing Kathleen Cooper's ever had to do.

The hardest thing she's ever went through, Cole learned, was her abusive husband. They got married as soon ad they got out of high school. His name was Jacob Stine. Cole instantly hated him when Kathleen told him the story.

But Jacob Stine is dead. Kathleen saw to that before the Fall. Cole was shocked when she confessed murder to him.

They never divorced. Kathleen never told anyone about the abuse because that gave her a motive. So she shot her husband in the head and made it look like a suicide.

It worked because Jacob had just lost his job. His mother was on hospice care. And he and Kathleen has just lost a baby.

And maybe that's why Kathleen is the way she is. Why she can't feel certain emotions about people, things. She can't feel empathy for others. Only herself. She wonders to herself, does that make her a sociopath?

But she likes Cole.

He gives her attention, he's nice to her.

And now he's kissing her.

Kathleen is shocked by his sudden actions. But she caves and kisses him back. Both of their hearts are pounding. This is the first kiss either of them have experienced since the world ended.

Once they pull apart, Kathleen asks, "what was that?"

Cole smiles. "We could be dead tomorrow."

That's the end of their conversation. And it's unspoken but a relationship blooms between Kathleen and Cole.