Lovely Bones

silent treatment

silent treatment

Tyreese was dead, another soldier down. Beth, Bob, now Tyreese made three people she had lost within the short time she accompanied the group. Prim wasn't sure if she could say that she lost them, however, the heavy weight of grief and agony had suffocated the people around her, leaving her to witness the suffering misery they had experienced. There was a look in Tyreese's eye, one that flashed through her peripheral each time she looked at Sasha. The look of a crazed man in denial — hallucinations inviting him to the heaven above, if so existed. Even when Rick threw three heavy blows to his arm, even when the sickening crunch of his bone made Prim's grip on the dying man nearly loosen as she held his bloodied hand. His eyes told a million stories at once, and she walked through each one of them until he took his last breath with his head on her lap.

She didn't know him much, but she felt the gentle touch of his generous soul fade into the distance when she sung him to his last slumber.

And she felt the warmth of the crimson that stained every inch of her clothing — the blood that once belonged to him. It weighed her down and sent an angry ache of pain dragging behind her while she walked amongst his people, beside his sister who lost her brother. Sasha shuffled at her side, a bead of sweat dropping from her hairline, one of many. Prim could barely look at the woman without feeling utterly helpless. She was so exhausted — as much as the rest of them — and so emotionless that she could be mistaken as the dead.

Prim knew the feeling, she had felt it before. The agony she felt with each breath she took after Charlie had abandoned her. The hollowness of the world around her and the darker it got the farther she pushed herself through. She would never admit it though, as she knew the pain Sasha, and Maggie for that matter, was worse than what she had ever experienced before. The idea of losing her sibling, Charlie aside — the idea of losing Teddy, it haunted her day and night. Scenarios played in her imagination, drowning her in day dreams and fear. It was unfathomable, really. 

It had been days since the death of Tyreese and Beth. Since the fall at Terminus, and the massacre back at the church. All hope had vanished through the group as the time passed dreadfully slow, the clock moving backwards a tick each step they took forward. They walked in circles, marching through the dry land, through rundown neighborhoods and empty trees. The search for what seemed to be survival diminished slowly. The strangers had nothing but grief and starvation lying on their chests. The more they continued, the more exhausted they fell, and the more exhausted they fell, caused for Prim helplessly digging her fingers into the damp dirt beneath her feet.

She searched for the source of the wet soil, no longer cringing at the feeling of sand beneath her fingernails — the tips of her fingers painted in non other than blood and earth. She dug deeper and deeper, until her wrist ached and she sighed in defeat. Defeat turned into the familiar sensation of anger and her fist grabbed a rock and chucked it at the nearest tree which happened to be planted right beside where her stalker had been watching her silently.

Daryl Dixon stood to its right, staring emotionless at the young girl as she stood and walked over towards him. Not a single word had been muttered between the two before she trudged straight past the archer and disappeared back towards the road they came from, Sasha and Maggie joining the pair like a small herd of the dead. Speaking of silence, Teddy was doing a wonderful job at winning the treatment. So good that Prim had stopped attempting to get her sister to even acknowledge the fact that she was on her hands and knees, begging the nine year old to just look at her. To say something — anything, but it was no use. Prim didn't understand. It had been nothing but pure, tortured silence between the two sisters since Daryl had carried Beth from the hospital doors. Everyone around them could see the defeat weighing Prim into exhaustion, yet no one voiced their concerns. It wasn't their business, they had no right to step in and access the situation.