No Tomorrow

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"Yeah, well, he did. He knocked the both of us out and nearly beat her to death, but that's not even the cherry of it all. Remember how you slapped her because she said she was pregnant yesterday morning?"

I patted my flat abdomen before I pointed over my shoulder with a thumb, Belle's blood dried on my skin hours ago and I really needed a shower; I hated the smell of blood, it always smelled like rusty salt.

"She probably lost the damn thing! How good for you, huh? Now you don't have to deal with the consequences of your actions, how great is that?''

He tried to speak but I growled and he shut up, I shook my stained hands around in the air near his face before I backed up a few paces until I was closer to the opening of Hershel's cell door.

"As soon as I know that she'd gonna survive this bullshit, I'm taking her away from you and these people. Here, her fingers were so damn broken that this didn't want to stay on."

I fumbled around in one of the pockets on my pants until I was able to nab Belle's wedding band and I flung the thing into his face, it was covered in a thin crusting layer of her blood and he just stared down at it like it was a disease.

"I'm out of here to take a bath, don't you fucking go near her Dixon."

*

Belle's POV:

The pain was horrible, it was worse then when I first transformed; where that felt like every bone in my body was being ground into dust to be reshapen, this felt like my organs were being thrown into a vat of pure volvanic lava. I couldn't seem to pull anyone's faces into my meory either....Jay, Daryl, Rick, Maggie, none of them...All I could feel was the intense burning and nothing else but a thick blackness that pressed down over my eyes like a thick blanket. I had no means of time but at some point the burning began to decrease and I started hearing things outside of my mind.

"She's starting to heal again, that's a good sign...But...it's been days Hershel. What happened to the baby?"

The voice sounded all around me in the inky black and I wanted nothing more then to reach out and find the source, but whatever had me downed still wasn't done yet; some of my organs still ached with a dull feeling of fire but the pain was concentrating on the lower half of my abdomen.

"I'm afraid the baby didn't survive- too much trauma to her physical body, that's why she wasn't healing the way she should have been. Whatever she went through, the trauma went to the baby mostly and her body tried to prioritize keeping it alive over her."

I heard a small sob and then I realized that my other senses were returning although I had no sense of body, I smelled nothing but cleaning alcohol and anteseptic wipes.

"That's going to hurt her so bad...I knew that she was looking foreward to being a mother."

I heard the smallest shifting of fabric and found out that my sense of body was coming back to me in small increments, the feeling came back to my hands and feet in tingles like they'd been asleep the whole time; I was finally able to tell that someone was holding one of my hands. I tried to squeeze a few of my fingers together and I heard a sharp gasp of air.

"I think she's waking up, what do I tell her?.."

"The truth, if she asks for it. Her body absorbed the fetus and there was nothing to do to try and save it. Everything about the Governer too."

"Dad said he doesn't want us out here too long Hershel, we should head back now."

The blackness faded along with the rest of the lava feeling and when I was sure I wouldn't burst into tears first thing, I braved my intuition and opened my eyes after hearing several heavy footsteps and the front door slamming; Jay's tear stained face was the first thing I saw and when I tried sitting up he had to help me. I noticed that we were in his little cabin house and then I saw a little gun with a silencer next to the bed on a tiny end table, I had to blink a few times to make sure I was seeing it correctly and he just looked sheepishly at the thing.

"....they were worried that you weren't going to wake up so I just took you out here...just in case you didn't. I wanted to be the one.."

He shook the thought from his head and I smiled weakly before placing a hand on the left side of his face and rubbing my thumb around in circles.

"That's ok, you made a choice for everyone's sake and I'm proud that you did."

I winced at the thought of him putting a bullet through my brain but that didn't last too long, eventually my hands fluttered down to my belly and pawed at the shirt that I wore, I recognized the scent rolling off it to be one of Daryl's and it made my eyes sting with tears.

"....so there really was no choice to save it then?"

He pulled my hands away from my belly and shook his head again.

"I'm afraid not, if you heard what Hershel said anyway. That....well, Merle nearly killed you."

I winced again, and I knew I wasn't going to forget the pain of that anytime soon, the look on Merle's face everytime his knife sliced into my skin...

"I remember...where's Daryl?"

At this Jay leaned back heavily in the tiny chair that he was in and stretched his arms back over his head until I heard his shoulders pop in unison, a little bit of light was fluttering in from a tiny window near a wood burning stove but I couldn't tell what time of day it was yet.