crooked heart → the walking dead ⁵

[ 026 ] gather matters of the heart.

CROOKED HEART.

chapter twenty-six, gather matters of the heart. 
[ season ten, episode five ]

"SO. . ." NEGAN SAYS. ODESSA squeezes her eyes shut, waiting for the blow. Negan readies his bat in both hands. "Back to it."

Odessa doesn't die this night. But apart of her does. The bat never comes down on her head like she expects and desperately wants it to. Instead, she hears the impact of the bat beside her. Directly beside her.

It's what forces her eyes open.

And when they do open, Odessa is met with the worst thing imaginable.

Her scream echoes as Glenn Rhee is hit over the head for the second time. An inhumane sound slips past her lips as her eyes follow Glenn to the ground. This is not real. It's one of her hallucinations. One of the extremely vivid ones.

But it is so real. As real as life is going to get. Odessa's best friend, her very best friend is dying. He won't come back to life. He is going to die tonight right by her side.

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Odessa does not sleep that night.

She doesn't even lay in her bed.

Odessa sits on balcony of Barrington House all throughout the night. She leans against one of the white pillars, the same one her father did all those years ago after the tragic loss of her little brother. The wind even gently sweeps her hair off of her sweaty neck.

Her mind is in another place.

It replays the night Negan took away her best friend. Glenn Rhee was a kind man. He was one of the best. And Abraham Ford was the bravest of all of them. And yet. . . the kindest and the bravest fall the hardest.

Odessa remembers the sound of Lucille connecting with Glenn's head. The cracking sound it made. It was so loud, right beside her. It made her ears ring. When her eyes peeled open, it was horrible. The sight of Glenn's eye popped form its socket and the blood that poured down his gentle face.

She screamed so loud that night. She begged with Negan. She never begged or pleaded with a man, not after Killian. . . but then Negan came into her life. And he broke a part of her she didn't know existed. He broke them all that night. Even her father, a man she'd only ever seen broken once in her life. That was when her mother died.

But when Negan forced the Grimes family in front of everyone, when he told Odessa she would have to chop off her baby brother's arm. Something inside Rick Grimes snapped. He screamed, begging for the sake of his children, his babies. He pleaded with Negan, begging that it could be him. It didn't work. Nothing did.

Negan humiliated Rick. He took away the tiny sliver of innocence Odessa had left. He took away so much. Negan took away something from everyone in the lineup. But he created something too that night.

He created the Grimes Daughter.

Odessa was reborn the second Lucille cracked over Glenn's head. The second he was murdered so brutally beside her.