"𝐜𝐨𝐰𝐛𝐨𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐞„

fifty, spectre

THAT WAS THE FIRST and most likely not last, encounter Jane Peletier would have with the whisperers. Maybe, not even the most memorable.

But as the sun beat down hard on them and they stood, on a bridge, pointing guns down at a young girl - it seemed like a moment she'd never forget. The girl was only a teenager, sixteen, maybe? And so it made her think of herself, and then she felt guilty for ever holding the gun up at all.

The girl was pleading with her hands in the air, and as Jane looked around at her peers' faces, she realised they'd all been thinking like her.

Aaron and the newcomers had taken Jesus' body back to hilltop, the grief still fresh and familiar. Michonne, Daryl, Jane and Carl had followed the rest of the herd as they scoured away and had singled a few of them off - this girl being the result. She had surrendered, taken off her mask, and was pleading for her life. Jane wasn't sure what Daryl might do, but she knew for a fact that he wasn't about to kill this girl.

"You're comin' with us," he says finally, and she cries and struggles in protest as Michonne restrains her, Daryl soon joining in. Carl and Jane just stand and watch, not knowing what to do as she screams. She looks malnourished, unfed. Not unusual, out here. Her hair is dark and her skin pale; although it's hard to see under the layers of filth that scrape against it.

Her eyes pierce out from the ruckus, a beautiful doe brown, with spindling lashes that drooped downwards along with her distressed expression.

Carl and Jane look at one another for much too long before cutting their gaze apart; fixing their guns to their fingers to continue looking at the sight ahead.

They've decided (subconsciously, it seems) that she's to be taken back to hilltop. Something that's never really been done before. Capture? Especially of a girl this vulnerable?

"Hey, maybe there's another way-"

"I ain't need your input on this, Peletier," Daryl warns, and she furrows her eyebrows in disbelief at the comment.

"She's just a girl," Carl says, and they ignore him completely.

"Her kind killed one of our own." Michonne snaps.

"Her kind? She's a kid!" Jane exclaims in an almost yell. She's confused, what's the point in imprisoning a poor girl?

"Think about what you were doing at that age," Michonne starts, "She could be...." But trails off before she can finish the sentence. She clears her throat and just stops talking altogether. Dangerous? Monstrous? Psychopathic?

On any other day with any other woman, Jane might follow up on this, but it's Michonne, and she's terribly tired. No, no arguments today. Not even with Carl, which will absolutely be a challenge.

The group take her back to hilltop, and Jane finds herself admiring this girl for putting up such a great fight on the way there. She can't shake the guilt of taking this girl, or the guilt that was brewing inside her, for letting Jesus die. She wasn't sure what she could've done, but not knowing just made it worse. What if something was to happen again? And she had no thought to do what was right?

She couldn't stop thinking of the way the blade pierced his shoulder so easily; the way he fell back into the point like it had always been his intention to crumble beneath an enemy's grip. He was a noble, right man, he was confident and it had reflected on her, at-least a little. She hadn't quite known him for as long as she'd wanted, and that hurt too. It always did, after a loss like his.

There were still drying specs of Walker, and maybe human blood, spattered all over her face and clothes. She hadn't missed the sticky, suffocating liquid but it'd never really become unfamiliar. It had always been something she'd never been able to get off of her, even when she was clean. Never free of it, just my luck.