Down by the water • TWD

A New Face.

Before.

Jackson felt it before he understood it. The kind of silence that made his chest tighten without warning, that made every step feel wrong before he even knew why. He came around the side of the house and stopped cold.

Mika was on the ground.

For one stupid, impossible second, his mind tried to make it into something else. Maybe she fell, maybe it was a game. A mistake. Anything but what it was.

But she wasn't moving.

Lizzie was standing over her with her hands red. Something inside him dropped so fast it nearly took the rest of him with it.

A few feet away, Carol stood frozen, like if she moved too fast the whole world would shatter even worse than it already had. Tyreese was behind her, his face gone blank in that way people get when something is too awful to fit inside their head all at once.

Jackson couldn't breathe right.

His eyes stayed on Mika. She was too small. That was the thought that hit him hardest. She looked too small lying there in the grass, too soft for this world, too much like a kid in a world that had stopped allowing kids a long time ago.

Then Lizzie spoke, calm and certain in a way that made his stomach twist.

"Don't worry, she'll come back. I didn't hurt her brain."

Jackson's jaw tightened...no, no, no.

He didn't want to hear her explain it. Didn't want her to say one more word that made this realer than it already was.

Carol took a slow step forward, her voice thin with shock. "Lizzie..."

Lizzie looked at her like she was the one not understanding. "She'll come back! We just have to wait. You'll see!"

Jackson felt a cold wave move through him. She still thought this could be fixed. That was the part that made his skin crawl. Not the blood, not even the body. It was that look on Lizzie's face. Like she was waiting for praise. Like this was proof of something.

Carol's face broke in a way Jackson would remember for a long time. "No," she said, shaking her head.

The word landed heavy. Mika in the grass. Lizzie was standing there. Carol was trying to talk to her like she could still reach her.

Jackson looked away for a second, but it didn't help. The image stayed there anyway, burned into the back of his skull.

After the prison, he thought maybe they'd already seen the worst kind of horror people could survive. But this—this was quiet. This was a little girl in the grass and her sister calmly explaining why she thought it had to happen.

Lizzie's voice cut through again. "We have to wait."

Jackson's hands curled into fists. He didn't say anything. There was nothing to say that wouldn't come out broken.

Carol moved closer, careful and slow, like she was standing near the edge of something that could swallow all of them whole. "Mika's not coming back."

Lizzie frowned. "Yes, she is."

"No." Carol's voice shook, but it stayed firm somehow. "She isn't."

Jackson swallowed hard. That was it, really. The whole nightmare is sitting in those few words. She isn't.

Jackson felt sick.