Changing To Adapt ➵ TWD

➵ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴡᴇɴᴛʏ ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴ

Carol yanks away from Daryl. She runs, and runs, and runs the opposite way until no one can see her.

All this time.

All this time and Sophia was right here. In this damn barn.

Lucas's eyes slip from Sophia's prone body. They fall on Hershel. A fire lights up his nerves like no other.

"Did you know?" He asks, squinting. Lucas turns towards the old man, walks closer, past Daryl and Shane. "All this time. Did you know?"

The silence is shattered with his rising voice.

"How long was she in there Hershel!?" Lucas wants to scream. He needs to know.

Rick grabs him before he can move any closer. "Lucas!"

Breathing heavily, eyes attached to Hershel, Lucas shrugs off Rick's hands and backs away.

Beth, instead, stumbles past them both. She's crying, choking on her tears. Kneeling by her mother, she reaches out. But the corpse gets to her first. Rearing up, the walker once her mother, clutches onto her pigtails and yanks.

Jumping into action, Lucas pulls free his knife. Rick and Shane grab Beth around the middle, attempting to pull her back. He slips under them and digs his knee into the walker's chest to keep it down.

Finally, past the screaming and crying, he launches his switchblade into its eye socket and through its skull. Then he stabs it again. And again, and again, and again.

Beth sobs harder, watching Lucas decimate what was once her mother's comforting face.

Noticing this, he jerks away, blood covering his hands, staring down at the tremble.

Lucas can barely grasp what's happened and what's been happening as they follow the Greene family all the way up to their house.

It's Shane that's yelling this time. And he's saying the same shit that Lucas was.

"I didn't know," Hershel says, his voice wrecked from the crying.

"I think you all knew!"

Maggie whips around, glaring at Shane and Lucas. "We didn't know."

"Why was she there?!" Shane keeps going, despite being the only one that didn't care about finding Sophia.

Hershel turns around, says that she might've been put in the barn by Otis. Before he was killed.

"You expect me to believe that?" Shane scoffs, jolting into the old man's face. "Lemme tell you something-"

"Hey! Don't you touch him!" Maggie slaps him hard across the face. Glenn steps in front of Shane to make sure he doesn't retaliate, and for a second, it looks like they're about to fight. Until Rick shoves his arm between them and pushes Shane back a step.

"Haven't you done enough?" Maggie shakes her head and follows her family inside.

Hershel turns around before he leaves. "Off my land." It's a statement. It's set in stone.

Lucas can't breathe, let alone worry about that right now.

Glenn follows Maggie.

Lucas turns around and leaves.

He catches the tail end of a conversation between Shane and Rick when the former calls out to him,

"Lucas said so himself. He agrees with me, don't you, man?!"

Lucas whips around, flipping him the bird. His voice cracks despite his want to be strong, "Fuck you, Shane!"

If he hadn't - if Shane hadn't opened that barn.