damnation → the walking dead ⁴

[ 031 ] those without a soul.

— CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.
those without a soul.

AN OLDER SISTER STARES down at the grave where her younger brother lays.

Her eyes are empty. She's cried her tears. Odessa's whole world has crashed down around her. Her heart has been ripped from her chest. It was buried six feet in the Earth alongside Carl Grimes.

Despite Carl's wishes for peace, Odessa has never wanted to feel someone's blood on her hands more. She wants to cut Negan's throat just as she did two years before in the field on Hershel Greene's farm. She wants beat Kathleen to death like she nearly did Randall and Francis.

Rick's eyes fall onto his daughter. Blood covers her hand and her clothes. Her eyes that used to be so full of life are dead now. Just as she is.

Her hand is pressed over the stab wound in her side. The blood stopped thankfully but it still hurts. She is still at risk of the wound getting infected if it isn't stitched up soon.

Siddiq said he would have but he didn't have the right equipment. The teenager wouldn't have let him anyway. The only thing keeping her grounded is the physical pain.

Rick's own heart still has vengeance curling around it but he knows now what must be done. Even at the expense of his daughter's own love. He knows now. Despite the sacrifices that will be made, he knows.

Michonne's eyes move to look at Odessa. She's never seen the girl so broken, so beaten. So weak. Not when she lost Beth or Noah. Not when she lost Hershel, Glenn, Abraham, and Cole. Not when she was begging for Negan to take her instead of her family.

Odessa Grimes just lost her brother.

Michonne realizes what's going to happen. The girl is going to spiral. Perhaps worse than any that's happened before. Odessa has heard voices and had hallucinations since they arrived at the prison. She's had night terrors and violent episodes. She's beaten herself to near death during a hallucination fit.

Michonne vows to herself that she will try everything in her power to protect her daughter from her own mind.

"We should—" Rick starts, "we should get whatever we need and head towards Hilltop. Des, pack your stuff. Whatever you need"

Odessa nods.

She turns away from Carl's final resting place. And she doesn't look back. Not once.

When she reaches the Grimes-Hawthorne-Dixon household, she doesn't dare look down at the three blue handprints on the porch in fear of breaking down. Instead, she pushes open the yellow door and walks straight to her bedroom.

She grabs her shoulder bag from the closet and moves straight to her bookshelf. She places all her books gently on the floor. She moves back to the bookshelf where she then opens the hidden compartment she and Theo made to hide her most important belongings.

She grabs Dale's hat and her father's badge, placing them in her bag. She then moves for the photo album that holds the faces of people she's lost and the people she fears of losing. Then she grabs her notebooks. She places them in her bag. Then she grabs the gun from inside the hidden compartment before shoving it in the waistband of her pants.

Better to have two than one.

She closes the hidden compartment and grabs Frankenstein off of her shelf, throwing it in her bag.

She then packs what few clothes she owns. Two pairs of jeans, once of which has a semi-large hole in the left knee. More of Beth's old shirts than her own. One of Glenn's old tee's she stole from him at the farm. Socks and underwear and the one other bra she has.