ORDER (sequel to Trouble) [TWD]

storm warning

Sitting in the barn, Sakiko and Nanami sit across the dirt floor at just arm's reach. Sakiko was beginning to fade, her head dropping before she snaps back awake to continue keeping an eye on Nanami.

"You just waiting on me to turn?" Nanami asks her as she picks her head up again.

Sakiko blinks, forcing herself awake, "You were just puking your guts out."

"Rosita said it was probably just the sudden hydration. Not poison," Nanami reminds- the taste of vomit still in his mouth from an hour ago.

"Still. You shouldn't have just.. drank random water on the road. It's literally the same as getting into a stranger's van because he said he has candy."

Nanami sighs, resting his head against the wooden wall behind him.

"Do you want to?" Sakiko vaguely asks.

"Want to what?"

"Did you.." she hesitates, looking at the strand straws of hay on the ground to avoid her brother's eyes, "Did you drink it because you.. hope.. it kills you?"

There are a few seconds of silence between the siblings. The only sound was the distant voices of the others and the crackle of the fire on the other side of the barn.

"I don't know," Nanami finally admits.

"How do you not know about a literal life or death option? You fucking downed that like it was a holy grail."

Nanami smirks, huffing a laugh.

"This isn't fucking funny, Nanami!" she hisses.

"I didn't say it was," Nanami defends.

Distressed, Sakiko exhales a large breath and closes her eyes. On instinct, her right hand reaches over to play with the ring on her left. She found that fiddling with the ring kept her calm and gave her something to focus on.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Nanami asks, watching her movements.

Sakiko looks to him, then to her ring. Once more, she sighs.

"It was just.. a lot. When we came back.. You know? Eugene Krabs lied.. Dr. Death and the Pigs killed Beth. Everything just happened really fast and it felt shitty to try and celebrate something when we're all hardly getting by."

Nanami didn't let himself admit that he was afraid she just.. didn't want him to know. It felt better to know that she only kept it back out of selflessness and not because she hated him.

"How is it?" he asks instead of extending that conversation of worry.

"How is what? Marriage?"

"Mm," Nanami nods.

"I mean.. Marriage is a contract but I didn't sign any paper. Kinda feels like.. A bigger promise to stick together. Like I feel invincible because I have to stay alive. I'm not fighting to survive, I'm just not allowed to die."

"Just cause you got a ring on your finger?"

"Weird, huh?"

Nanami tilts his head side to side.

Thinking back to his conversation with Glenn, he wonders if Glenn and Maggie feel that way. That being in love and finding your 'one' made it so you aren't allowed to die because you have another person to look after.

He looks to where Sophia was asleep a few feet away. Nanami's jacket that he'd had for so many years was around her like a blanket and she looked peaceful despite the storm happening outside the barn doors.

A pain shot through his chest, dull and obnoxious. It wasn't hatred. It didn't feel like an effect of tainted water. But, it wasn't a positive feeling.

Far from positive. But, even further from negative.