33; GOOD OL' SAILOR DIXON (season nine, episode sixteen)
[TRIGGER WARNINGS attempted suicide (lydia)]
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE FAMILIARITY WAS getting too much for Freya.
For the world too. A gloomy overcast breached the horizon - painting the sky with streaks of what had a nauseating resemblance to curdled milk - and an artic chill settled on the skin of all those still breathing beneath it.
Freya wasn't one to believe in the supernatural, but she couldn't shake the feeling that winter had been summoned a month early by the souls Alpha had so irreversibly dismantled, some twisted case of letting the outside reflect the inner.
It was oddly refreshing to see the universe finally respond to an atrocity accordingly.
Validation was hard to come by, but this. . . This was a clear message.
Alpha had gone too far.
Further than anybody Freya had encountered yet. She'd stooped to the lowest level of hell and embodied the malevolence residing there.
Now, as a pitiful penance for her crimes, Alpha's 'guardians' were going to shrivel up and freeze, and she was going to have to break her own rules and find shelter to survive this wave of inordinate cold.
Freya spent a great deal of her journey to The Kingdom wishing for pneumonia to befall the vile woman, give her an undeniably human death to remind her that underneath the mask and impenetrable layers of grime, her existence was as susceptible to a premature end as those who'd fallen by her hands.
The Kingdom was unnervingly quiet.
A bleak atmosphere had blanketed over Ezekiel's community in the wake of those chosen to mark Alpha's border. The raucous laughter and delighted squeals of last month were nothing more than a taunting echo now.
Look at what you had.
Look at what you lost.
Freya sucked in a deep breath and shook her head slightly. Wallowing wasn't a luxury she could afford to indulge in. Instead, she let her eyes scour The Kingdom grounds, taking in the sights of a community terminated - civilians huddled around the final campfire, unsettled children clutching onto their parents, discarded tissues strewn across the asphalt from the torrent of non-stop weeping and a teenage girl sitting alone with her guilt.
The latter rose to the top of Freya's priority list.
Lydia had been withdrawing more and more each day, denying herself human contact, starving herself of affection as punishment for what she believed to be her fault; the fair's end.
Freya was wrestling with similar demons. Only in her case; there was blame to be placed. She couldn't shy away from that fact, and although they'd never voice it, she knew that her people couldn't either.
