Lost Too Much 【REDONE】 ║ Daryl/OC or Shane/OC

Chapter 73: There was a time you were all I had.

<<<
(DAY 173) I said in the last entry that I didn't feel safe here anymore and since then, I thought about the idea of leaving. Up until an hour ago, I had convinced myself that leaving wouldn't be a good idea, that I'd miss everyone way too much, but I made a discovery that did a complete 180 on my choice.

Yeah, so there's this room in our house that I never got into before. I asked about it the first time I ever came to this house, but he just said that he never got into it either, that it was locked when he came to the house and he was too afraid to open it. I dismissed it and decided not to question it ever again, deciding that if HE was afraid, it was in my best bet to not fuck with it, but I'd still occasionally twist the knob walking down the hall just to see if someday it would magically be unlocked. Today, that happened.

The room had a recliner chair in it and stacks upon stacks of fish tanks. Not just fish tanks, though. They were filled with water, and in the water was a bunch of dismembered biter heads. See, that was creepy enough to make me rethink staying, but then I noticed a cell-like door and walked closer to inspect. As I did so, two biters came limping up to the door trying to kill me. They had bags on their heads, but I was able to remove one with my hand and realized that it was the undead version of Phillip's daughter. I ripped the second one's bag off and saw it looked an awful lot like me. After thinking for a second, I figured it must've been the one he thought was me when he went looking for me. Before anything else, I just ran out and shut the door behind me. I don't think I want to say anything to Phillip about it, but I probably will eventually.

I have to go freak out somewhere. I can't fucking believe what I just found in the same damn house I've been living in for the majority of the apocalypse.

Signing out,
Corynn Elaine August (Jenner)
<<<

We watched Eddie as he played with his toys, staring at the bright colors it displayed and shook them around for the rattling sound. He was still satisfied with those kinds of toys and I had no problem with it.

A month had passed since the bridge exploded, since Rick sacrificed himself for the rest of us. Things were grim between the communities because of it, because we were missing one of the few things connecting us. We could do without the bridge, but without Rick, we felt like a different group.

After the bridge ---or the remnants of it--- was safe to explore again, we went back and looked to find Rick, to see if we could give him a proper burial. We didn't find a body, nor anything that even looked like him. After some debating, we realized there was a chance he was alive. He could've survived the blast the way I did and just got washed away with the walkers. We tried following the path of the river but we never found him, so rather than declaring him dead, it became an unspoken decision that he might still be alive.

I could see it in Michonne and Daryl that they believed he was still around. They were out of town often, and frankly, I was worried. I had to step up after Rick disappeared. Michonne wasn't in the headspace to do much anymore, especially after she learned she was pregnant with Rick's child. I kept up with her normal tasks, keeping things lined up the way they needed to be.

I still visited Negan a few times despite the horrible way it ended the afternoon he tried to kill himself by smashing his head into the wall. He told me about how it went when Maggie came to kill him, how he had practically begged her to finish him off. That explained why she didn't go through with it. She understood what I meant when I said he was already doing way worse staying alive than any sort of gruesome death she could've manifested.