The Archer and The Airship » 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕨𝕒𝕝𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕕 «

Chapter Twenty Nine

29. Live Again

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  Time stopped existing. Seconds into days into months, none of it mattered. It wouldn't be enough to heal the hole in her heart. Zepp didn't think a person can ever truly 'get over' grief. It's always there, lingering in your blood, hovering over your shoulder. You can grow, you can live, but you will never lose the feeling. You just make room for it.

  The names and faces of all she'd loved and lost flashed through her mind, each image striking against her skull like a fist into a wall. She had seen and felt loss plenty of times, even before the turn. She should know how to keep it together. But the weight of this loss was crushing her, incapacitating her. She wanted to scream, to slam her head into the concrete, to push and yell and fight the universe for letting it happen. She lost Veronica once, and was lucky enough in this godforsaken shit hole of a world to find her again, to be reunited after years in the madness. Only to be torn away again, the night on replay in her dreams for three months now. It wasn't fair, any of it.

  Her time in her months of grief passed with very little contact. She watched over Carl every night during his healing process while everyone else slept, leaving quietly when Denise woke up. Him and Judith were really the only people she sought out to see these days. Rick, Rosita and Abraham took turns checking on her, making sure she was eating, sleeping, normal human things. Easy things to lie about.

  Part of her was angry with them all, with their laughter and their family meals and their normalcy. Veronica died, their friend died, people in the town died and here they are making pancakes and shit. She fought with herself for weeks to accept their help without a cold stare in return.

  Aaron kept his distance, though he hadn't really bothered to go on any trips anyway. The people in town spent most of their time rebuilding the walls and cleaning the destruction the walkers left behind. So she passed Daryl in short glimpses, their eyes meeting once and dropping away. Not a word exchanged between them. She knew it was wrong, and her heart ached to be near him, to apologize. But the words never came, and he never bothered to stay long enough for her to try.

  She spent most of her time in a bedroom upstairs, across from Rick's. She was the first to choose to sleep separately from the others, apart from Maggie and Glenn who needed their privacy months ago, like back when they'd sneak to the furthest edge from camp and giggle under their blankets.

  She was tracing the fading V tattoo on her wrist when she was suddenly aware of Rosita's presence, breaking her numbness. The woman plopped down next to her, under their favorite tree in the farthest edge of Alexandria. Zepp came here the morning they buried Veronica, after the funeral, sobbing and cursing the earth. Rosita had found her and simply sat down quietly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and let her cry. Now the two sat with their backs to the tree and soaked in their sullenness.