𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐎𝐟 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 || 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐡𝐲𝐮𝐜𝐤/𝐍𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧

21

Donghyuck can feel the same emotions from the first time rise with the bile in his throat as he reads over the note again and again, reminded that he’s alone, and that he’s about to die that way.

He throws it as far away from him as he can, tugging at his hair.

It’s too late though—he can feel terror and sorrow like he’s never felt before surging inside of him, rising to the surface after being repressed for so long.

“Everyone’s gone.” Donghyuck gasps out loud for the first time. “They’re all dead.”

Saying it out loud seems to finally make the cards he had been trying so desperately to keep standing collapse, the façade of calm falling along with it. The waves of grief that hit him can’t be contained anymore, slamming at his heart until it bursts and he can only give in to the inevitable.

Tears stream down his face, and it’s like a dam opening.

It’s ugly and it’s loud and it’s pitiful, but he doesn’t stop his sobs and screams, begging for them to come back to him. He sounds like a child he’s sure, and must look like one too. His head hurts, his heart hurts and his body hurts yet he can’t stop, curling in on himself. His face is hot with the boiling tears that run down his cheeks, soaking his dirty shirt. Donghyuck fears he’s about to explode as everything floods back to him, each lifeless face he had to see and the two he couldn’t.

Donghyuck doesn’t know how long he’s down there, but his loud noises keep the walkers around. He can hear them beating at the door, the only thing separating them and him. He knows eventually they will break the door off its hinges and get to his body. The fear makes the walls close in on him, the sounds of their groans and grunts increasingly louder.

Donghyuck feels fear like no other grip him as he thinks about how he’s going to die again. From the very beginning this was the last way he wanted to go out—unable to run, surrounded by walkers, and alone. He cries harder when he realizes, because he can’t die that way. He can’t die that way, but from the looks of it that’s how he will.

The more Donghyuck thinks about it, the more he realizes that he can’t die by the hands of walkers. As he fights to remember only the happy times with his friends, he remembers laying in bed with Mark one night, the promise they made to each other. If one of them got infected the other would shoot them immediately. If there was any other way to avoid becoming a walker, they would take it.

Donghyuck feels somewhat comforted as he remembers the way Mark had spoke so confidently, closing his eyes in hopes of being able to be that self-assured as well. The thought grows on him until he doesn’t understand how he could even think about letting the walkers get him alive.

This will be his last act of defiance—to show that they can’t take his life from him.

After that it’s even easier. He imagines that he’s standing on top of a building as he pulls out his gun, that he’s stepping onto the edge as he ignores the shaking of his hands and pushes the cold metal weapon into his mouth. His heart pounds and sweat makes his hair stick to his forehead, but that’s just because the heat from the sun hits him right on the back. Just as the sound of the door breaking open reaches him he closes his eyes and jumps, letting the wind take him. They’ll never get him now.

The sound of a lone gunshot echoes in the air.

~Time skip~

Donghyuck never expected to open his eyes again when he pulled the trigger, but he does.