The first chapter is Sam coates's chapter -
Chapter 1 - Acceptence
Rick finally came back. It was the first time I’d really seen him since Lori’s... passing. I had vowed to try my best and be nice, we’d never really been close, Rick and I, but I was willing to start fresh; he deserved some kindness after what happened. I was holding the baby, Little Ass-Kicker; her latest nickname was... thanks a lot Daryl, and when he walked in covered head to toe with walker blood I stood up in surprise. He carefully came towards me, dropping his stained axe on the ground and taking his daughter from me.
“Are you alright?” I asked him cautiously, Hershel had told us to go easy on him as he’d said that his subconscious was trying to get some closure about the death of his wife. It took him a few moments to respond but after a while:
“Y-yes, thank yer for looking after her.” I noticed that he was trying to be nice too. Maybe we could get along this time around. We all decided to go outside and catch Rick up on what had been happening with Little Ass-Kicker, and how Daryl and Maggie had gone out to get the formula. Carl and his father went off with the baby to talk about names or something like that and I went to Daryl.
“Hey,” I breathed, squatting on the ground and tracing my knife in some dried walker blood and scum.
“I haven’t seen much of ya lately.” He said blankly, no emotion in his face or words. I scratched Aurora Winters in my big, loopy writing on the ground before I saw him sit on the ground next to me, fiddling with the end of his raggedy, sleeveless shirt. He was like me, secretive and lonesome but needing something more than being alone.
“I’ve jus’ been tryin’ ta get over this whole Lori thing.” I sighed, scribbling through what I’d written before and just started to aimlessly trace my knife through the grime that coated the prison courtyard.
“I know, I get it.” He sighed with a touch of anger and despair and I knew that he was thinking about Carol. I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t a little jealous about her and Daryl’s relationship, but I didn’t want her dead.
“C’mon,” I ordered and stood, pulling him with me by his rough, dirty hand. He didn’t argue and I knew it was because he was still thinking about Carol; I eventually led him to the three graves that Glenn, Axel and Oscar had made. I knelt in front of them and Daryl did too. It was painful having him so close and knowing he was thinking about another woman and I disgusted myself by thinking that. He was twenty years older than me for Christ’s sake.
“HEY,” Daryl snarled at me when I pulled Carol’s wooden-cross gravestone out of the ground. He grabbed my wrist forcefully but I ignored it and with my other hand, lay the cross in the ground and began to carve writing into the horizontal slate. He carefully let my wrist go and I snatched it back in annoyance. He muttered a regretful ‘oh’.
After about five minutes of slicing away and carving, I had written an acceptable sentence on the cross. You are with Sophia now, R.I.P. Carol Peletier. I turned to show Daryl but realised that he wasn’t there. He’d left me alone while I did something for him and hadn’t even made a sound. I’d been too busy to notice. I growled a little before carefully placing Carol’s cross back in the ground and sighed, gazing deeply at the graves of our dead; Lori, T-Dog, Carol. My eyes threatened to spill and I angrily wiped them.
“Calm down, Robin,” I smirked, “I’ll be back in a few days!”
“But, Aurora–”
“In a few days,” I repeated, laughing at my sister’s stressed voice. “Whatever ya have to tell me can wait until then, it’s not like we’ll never see each other again!”
“Fine,” she said reluctantly, crossing her arms across her chest. She slipped her long brown hair and I rolled my eyes.
“Bye,” I flashed a smile at her before giving her a hug and slinging my sleeping bag over my shoulder. “Oh and there won’t be any reception in the camping grounds, it’s a pretty remote place, so don’t bother texting me or anything.” I added at the same moment that Evie, my only friend in the world besides my sister rolled down her car window and called out of it:
“We don’t have all day, Aurora,” she rolled her eyes as she said this, beeping the horn, “we don’t want the camping ground gettin’ old, now do we?”
“Yeah, just a sec,” I procrastinated, I had a slightly anxious feeling about leaving Robin here, but I passed it off as excitement about going camping with my friend for a week. “Take care o’ Dad, now won’t cha?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she shrugged, passing me my duffel bag filled with my camping things, “by the way, thanks for leaving me with all ya chores, buh-bye now!”
I picked up the rest of my things and headed off to Evie’s car, not knowing until much later that this would be the last time that I would see my little sister, Robin.
I wandered back to the courtyard to find it empty. Yep, it’s all good, just leave me alone out here, I thought furiously even though I was usually alone, I just couldn’t handle it right now with so many extinguished lives to think about. I got back to the cells safely and found that Maggie and Glenn weren’t there.
But everybody was gathered in a cell, next to the bed.
“Hey guys, what’s going on?”
“Maggie and Glenn are gone, Merle’s alive and this is Michonne.” Rick breathed and once my brain slowly registered, my sight was wheeling and my consciousness was spiralling; down, down, down into the sweet-nothingness and peace of the abyss known as unconsciousness.
