Blessing or a Curse? ➳ Daryl Dixon

18. Made to Suffer

A girl stands in the courtyard of the prison, the sun shining down on her and not a single cloud in sight. Her strawberry blonde hair had grown increasingly since the beginning of the apocalypse, having used to have just reached her shoulders but now it was well past there. She used to not understand why her mother had always cut it short, always made sure it never went past her shoulders, but maybe now she did understand. She was still a little kid, barely even a preteen, yet she feels that her view of the world had widened so much and she recognized all the little things that she was too stupid to notice before. 

She hated her dad. She hadn’t realized it before, of course not, what kind of person hates their dad when they’re a child? But then again… not everyone had a dad as she did. Did, being the keyword, because he was long dead and the world was much better off without him.

Except now, her mom was dead too. She was an orphan in an apocalypse surrounded by not a single person she knew in her last life. 

Her hands were sweating and she wasn’t sure if it was from the sun or the gun clasped in her hand, and the thing felt so much heavier than it usually did. Groaning and moaning could be heard from a short distance away, and her shoes scuffed against the concrete as she moved. Her feet dragged as if she was trying to take her time to get there, but inevitably she did. 

There was a walker on the ground, unable to move because its stomach and legs had been ripped so far apart that it could no longer even roll over or sit up. It looked sickly, blood splattered everywhere across the walker’s pale skin. A huge chunk was missing out of its neck, so big that the head lolled side to side in an uncomfortable way.

Sophia stopped a foot away, and the walker’s arms stretched out in an attempt to reach her though it couldn’t. Its jaws snapped for something more than air, wanting to taste her flesh, but she wouldn’t allow that. She raised the gun and pointed it directly at the walker's head, and she clicked the safety off, just like Daryl had taught her to. 

“I’m sorry mom.” She whispered, mostly to herself than the walker who no longer understood her anyway, before she squeezed the trigger. She shut her eyes on instinct, shoulders tensing up as the shot rang throughout the courtyard, and she spun on her heel before she could even look at the dead body on the ground. Despite this, not a single tear fell from her eyes, despite them watering ever so slightly. 

She didn’t look back once, clicking the safety back onto the gun and tucking it away, making her way back into the prison.

More time passes, but he’s not exactly sure how much, and it has been silent since the exchange between Glenn and Maggie, and at this point his arms and legs are numb. His arms he couldn’t move at all so they had fallen asleep, but his legs were a little better cause he was able to move them a little from the position he was in but other than that they were half asleep. 

He heard the door open and he figured it was Merle, back to hit him some more, until he heard a voice say, “Christ, what did Merle do?”

Sydney didn’t say anything in response and just stared up at the ceiling, until his vision was blocked by a man standing over him. He looked to be about in his early forties, brunette hair and a lot more than Merle had. His face was soft, yet somehow Sydney didn’t trust anything about him. He was wearing a button-up with beige pants, and strapped to either of his sides was a gun and some sort of hunting knife. Before he even knew it, the man had leaned down and grabbed the chair, and heaved Sydney back up into the normal sitting position.