Of Blood and Hope || The Walking Dead - Daryl Dixon

V: Looking For Something

"What is grief, if not love, persevering?"

WandaVision (2021)

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground

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Four days.

Four days had gone by since the cops showed up at her door, telling Adeline that the outbreak that had taken so many lives, and still would take so many more, had taken someone that she loved.

Adeline's life stopped when her grieving began, but the world still found a way to happen around her.

A few neighbors passed by on the first day, offering their condolences. Adeline was the only one to receive them, just by the door. None of them ever came in.

She was aware that nobody in the neighborhood liked Lillian very much, but she was a grieving mother now, and Adeline had come to learn that it meant something. All those people were mourning with her, because losing a son was the worst pain someone could ever feel, even worse than losing a brother.

For the past day, Adeline had been living off the casseroles they brought for her family. None of them did much else, though.

Serena came to visit once. She looked somewhere between sad and desperate—desperate for answers, but she quickly realized that Adeline didn't have them. Mostly, she wanted to make sure the girl was alright, but every time Serena managed to get a few words from her, Adeline would retreat back into silence almost immediately, so she left shortly after she arrived.

Mason would come home only to disappear a few hours later. He wouldn't even glance in Adeline's direction, and she, in turn, barely registered his presence. Fear and anger had long since been swallowed by the endless void inside her—an emptiness too vast to fill with anything else. But, oh, how she craved it.

But once, there was a moment when his eyes found hers.

The day before, she couldn't recall the exact time, a woman came knocking. Adeline remembered thinking she looked strange and pompous.

The girl was sitting outside on the front porch, on the ground, among the dead lilies. When the woman didn't notice her, Adeline felt like she was a ghost.

It didn't take long before Mason's hoarse and angry voice greeted the woman, and once they were inside, Adeline could hear the word "son" being repeated a few times.

Just send us the bill. It was the last thing she heard from her father before he stepped out the door again. It was the only time he turned his eyes on her, and for a moment, Adeline thought she saw him hesitate. For a fleeting second, she existed again, but then he walked away.

She has not seen him since, and the woman left shortly after.

Adeline didn't know how much longer she spent on the porch that day, staring into the void. That night, she thought she saw a man wandering outside, seeming to be as lost as she was. But her mind was such a blur—half dead, half alive—that as the months and years passed, Adeline would never quite remember what happened during those first three days.

As for her mother, Adeline would see her even less than she saw Mason. She would mostly hear her.

A few times during the night, she would hear the footsteps of Lillian dragging herself down the hallway. The first time, she thought she was dreaming, but it soon became routine. She didn't know if her mother was asleep or awake, but she imagined it was something in between. Lillian was trapped in her own mind, but still, she was searching for something.