[DISCONTINUED] FIND YOU ( T. WALKING DEAD )

- IV.

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FIND YOU
CHAPTER FOUR;
( touch. )

❛ jack dismisses important news;
glenn tries reconnecting with an old friend. ❜

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PEACE ONLY EVER made its appearance while she slept. The look of tranquility that graced her trouble-worn face, washing away the stress of breathing and the daily anxiety that no one could shield themselves from, was like nothing that Lori had ever witnessed. It was almost miraculous, the mother thought, to see her daughter at peace for the first time in forever.

And she hated to be the one to shatter whatever calmness engulfed Jack, with a reluctant hand landing on the younger's side, shaking her unconscious figure slightly. "Feel like getting up?" Lori spoke quietly, her comforting voice falling just above a whisper. "You don't need to be sleeping right now." An unintelligible series of discontent grumbles spilled from Jack's mouth as she further buried her head into the single pillow beneath it, pulling it closer while slightly inching away from Lori. "How about we go on a walk?" her mother proposed lightly. "I have news that you might wanna hear."

Lori noticed the slightest of movements behind Jack's shuddered eyelids. "What?" The question fell from the younger's mouth rather easily, with her chapped lips hardly forming the short question. She simply let it be and put in no extra effort in speaking, no matter how unclear it would sound. Sleepiness weighed down her voice, breaking it into little creaks of noise- showing Lori that she was "actually tired" and not just being lazy. (However, she was genuinely neither. She was just uncomfortable, waiting for her isolation to return.)

Lori hesitated for a moment and then strengthened her grip on her daughter's abdomen in the softest way possible. "Get up and I'll tell you," she countered lightly.

An incoherent noise of disapproval spewed from Jack's mouth as she attempted to bury herself further into her pallet of blankets, with the only recognizable word amongst a blur of unintelligibleness being, "Sleep."

"Nope," Lori playfully responded, patting Jack's side with careful, gentle force, "come on, up. Get up–"

Unmoving, Jack implored, "Please stop." It wasn't a frustrated demand nor an unamused order, but rather a desperate tormented plead. She was almost begging to just be left alone. Her voice didn't even sound that tired anymore, she just sounded tortured and agonized by her mother's touch.

Lori, lips pursed, retracted her hand and leaned back slightly, shoulders slumping with a small sigh. For just a moment, she waited– for something, anything. A display of effort, maybe, or a reciprocation of care. However, Jack remained motionless, eyes closed carelessly. (A fleeting thought invaded Lori's mind, that maybe Jack was just doing this to spite her, but she dismissed the notion.)