Walking Amongst Them (Among Us, Book 2)

It Doesn't Matter

Authors Note: I will hopefully* be publishing at least one chapter per week. Please do remember that this is the rough draft & that I'm so grateful for all my readers... Happy Reading! 

(some of these chapters are shorter than my usual, and I'm sorry about that)

-lil_miss_mageanne (formerly fallon_bear) 

My father made it out better than I would have hoped. I only landed a single punch before Sam and Beck were pulling me off of him. It was in the moments of chaos that erupted after my attack that I realized I didn't care for him at all. That the man before me was no more my father than Mabel was my sister.

Family doesn't turn their back on eachother. At least, not the kind of family I wanted to have. Not the kind of family that I'd witnessed through Chester's sacrifice and the boys' kindness. I let Sam and Beck pull me away, not bothering to fight them.

My father, for his part, simply stared at me as if I was a ghost. A stranger. And I guess in a way I was. Not a ghost, but a stranger. The daughter he abandoned would never have displayed the wild abandonment that I did. She wouldn't have thought to strike him, to even raise her voice to defend herself, much less be the offensive party.

He stared, and I shook the boys off of me, "I'm fine."

"What the hell is going on here?" Clarke asked, moving in between me and the man who I realized was her father too.

She was protecting him. It made me wonder what kind of father he had been to her, to warrant the kind of fierce protectiveness she had in her eyes.

"Why don't you ask him?" I said, shrugging my shoulders and rubbing my knuckles.

Clarke turned away from me only slightly to look back at our father, her eyes full of confusion. "Dad?"

He opened his mouth, started to say something, and then closed it. The move was so familiar, something I'd seen countless times when he'd walked in on me undergoing a punishment that my mother, Mabel's mother, had forced upon me. I laughed, unable to help myself.

"Some things never change."

*
*
*
In the week that followed, I'd made it clear I didn't want to hear what he had to say, even as Clarke had demanded answers and received none. She'd avoided me almost as much as I avoided our father.

Abby was still sick though, and they had the means to help her. Michael was clear that he wasn't leaving, and I refused to leave him or Abby behind despite how I felt about my father or the new sister I seemed to have.

Cody remained missing. It made me feel better that we weren't moving any farther than we already were, giving him a chance to catch up, to find us, but each day that didn't happen I felt a little worse. It was almost like he was as gone as Chester was, who remained a pain in my heart each day I woke up and he wasn't there.

Ben and Adam blended in well with the new people. Lending a hand wherever they could. They introduced me to the older woman Rian. She was their medic, or as close to one as they had. Sam worked close with her, teaching her what he could with what little they had.

I worked mostly with the two other guys in the camp Clarke had brought us to, Elliot and Marty. We mostly kept watch and fought off what zombies did manage to find their way to the camp. As there were no walls, there was a constant threat.

The weather was getting colder as well. It had at some point turned to winter. I was watching the first snowfall late one evening next to the fire when it happened. Clarke sat down next to me, bundled in a large jacket.

"So," she said, a large puff of air leaving her mouth in a visible cloud, "I guess we're related. Dad won't tell me how, but I'm hoping you can fill in some of the blanks?"

I didn't look at her. I wished for someone, anyone, even Michael who had become hard to be around, to take her place. When that didn't happen, I shrugged.

"I don't know what you want to know."

She shifted, "well, I guess I can start. Dad wasn't always around much but when he was-"

"Look, I don't want to be rude, but I don't really want to know any of that. Especially not right now. I just want Abby to get better, and then we can leave. It was just dumb luck that you found us."

She was quiet for a minute. "What happened to you?"

"Excuse me?"

I looked at her then, and she drew her eyebrows together.

"I mean to make you so... untrusting. It's like you can't let yourself even have a conversation with me."

"Maybe I just don't need anyone else to worry about."

"I think it's more than that," she started, but stopped when our dad undid the zipper on his tent and stepped out.

He looked at us, pausing whatever it was he was about to do, and frowned. I scowled at him and in return, he ducked his head and walked off into the woods. Probably just to use the bathroom.

"Look, Clarke, I appreciate what you guys are doing for Abby, but I don't want to get to know you. And I really don't want to know how my- our dad, managed to have such an elaborate life. I grew up with a woman who wasn't my true mother, with a half sister who hated me. Just because we're blood, doesn't mean we need to pretend to be family."

Something like hurt crossed her face, and then it was gone. Replaced with a hard expression, "I think I understand," she said, softly, and stood up.

I didn't watch her walk away, and when Beck came to relieve me of guard duty, I said nothing to him as I went to the tent we'd been given. Inside, Ben was already asleep and Sam was sitting on another one of the makeshift beds.

"Are you heading to bed? I can move. I was just trying to patch up these pants. I really miss having the house, and the extra clothes."

I gave a small smile, "Yes please. How is Abby?"

He moved over and I slipped into the pile of blankets. Because we took shifts, there was no assigned bedding. And because our stay was temporary, there was no need to have more than one tent and a few spots to sleep.

"She's doing better. Trish is in with her and Michael. I'm worried how she'll do since it's so cold, but everyone here seems to be making her the priority in all of this. She's going to be fine, most likely," he finished what he was doing to his pants and held them up for me to see.

I nodded, "They look good as new. Are those Adam's?"

He shook his head, "they're mine, Adam's going to have to fix his own, because I barely managed to do mine. You would think I'd know how to patch a pair of pants considering I can stitch up a cut if I needed to. For some reason it's just different," he sighed.

"You should get some sleep."

"You should eat."

His lips pulled into a half smile, "You're probably right, Sunshine. Sweetdreams," he said, and exited the tent, pulling the zipper closed behind him. I settled into my blankets and tried to ignore Ben's soft snores as I closed my eyes and searched for sleep.