wastelands → the walking dead ¹

[ 022 ] suicide watch.

— CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
suicide watch.

mentions of suicide and self-harm

AS DAYS PASS ODESSA'S angels come in the forms of Carl Grimes, Theodore Douglas, and Dale Horvath. She spends a lot of time with Beth, too. But she's struggling. She's struggling really bad. She's hidden a knife to hurt herself. Odessa cries with her after her screaming match with Maggie ends. Odessa held holds and Beth allows her to. Beth doesn't need Jimmy anymore and she knows it.

Shane and Rick leaves to drop off Randall eighteen miles out. Randall who has healed.

Before they leave, Odessa sneaks into the shed at night to get a good look at him. When he hears the wood creak above him, he looks up at her. When his eyes settle on the dark silhouette in the darkness, he becomes a little unsettled. The way her head rolls to the side when she notices his attention on her. . .

"Hey," he calls out softly to her. "Hey, let me out. I ain't bad. Just undo these cuffs."

She replies with a scoff and a comment that absolutely humbles the idiot, "you're just about as dumb as you look."

She leaves the shed with Randall pleading after her to let him go but she silently refuses. But she can't help but let her mind wander. Is this what they're doing now? Is this how bad it's gotten?

Is Odessa really devoting everything to murder Shane? Are they really holding a boy who isn't much older than her hostage?

But she had been told the story of what happened in town. Her dad killed two men. He told her their names.

Dave and Tony.

Her dad killed people as a cop, she knows that. He doesn't like to talk about it but now killing is something everyone will have to do eventually.

She tells her dad she understood. That one day, they'll all have to kill someone.

But now, Odessa currently sits with Carl and Dale at the picnic table, all talking and smiling and laughing every once in a while.

Suddenly, Carl turns his attention to Odessa. "Did you have a coma dream?" He asks.

Odessa's blue eyes shoot over to him. She stares at him for a moment, contemplating haunting her baby brother with her own mind. Instead, she turns back to looking at her hands. She begins to think back to what her dream self said to her.

"But Shane, he— he sexually assaulted us, he tried to be our father. He tried to kill us. It's different. Shane deserved to die."

Is Shane going to try to kill her?

So, Odessa shakes her head, "no, I didn't. It was just like taking a normal nap, I was just super hungry when I woke up."

"You really scared me," he informs her. "Don't even run off like that again."

Both Dale and Odessa are shocked at his tone. He sounds stern and somewhat angry. Odessa can't really blame him. He cried himself to sleep and worried himself sick about her.

"Sir, yes, sir," she mock salutes at her brother. Dale watches the two siblings with a small, fond smile.

Dale doesn't have children or grandchildren of his own. All he's ever had was his wife who he lost to an evil disease before the Fall. But now he has Odessa and he has Andrea. He views as Andrea as the daughter he's never had and Odessa as his granddaughter.