10; FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE (season nine, episode eight)
[TRIGGER WARNING, minor ableism ]
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BRODIE GREW UP on stories of dead people. Freya made a habit of coming to tuck her and Judith into bed, and before leaving, she'd sit at the edge of one of their beds - usually Judith's, on account of Brodie's long legs that unintentionally kicked her - and produce a story of a dearly departed loved one.
After a while, the people from Freya's stories resonated deeply with Brodie and Judith - they became vivid characters that ran rampant in their imagination. The adolescents had often made requests to Freya about who they wanted to hear a story about that particular night.
The stories stopped around a year ago. Nobody knew why or even realised at the time but it dawned on Brodie a few weeks ago and now, every time she fought about it - an invisible fist took hold of her heart and squeezed it tight.
Judith's favourite (after Rick, Lori and Carl) was Beth; the pretty girl who liked to sing. Also Freya's first love. Sometimes Freya cried when talking about her but mostly she smiled because it was tales of happier times.
Brodie was torn when it came to picking a favourite. Of course, she had more narrators than just Freya. She had Rosita, Eugene and Negan - though, she often questioned the reliability of his version of events.
It sounded much too biased to admit, but Brodie's favourites of all were her parents. Her Dad who betrayed Negan and shot him in front of everybody. Her Mom who cut her own hand off to spare Carl from the same fate. Those were the stories that she would never grow tired of. They were her heroes.
They were survivors. Against all odds - bullets, machetes, herds, grenades, massacres - they'dmade it ten years in the noxious dome of damnation encasing the world.
Brodie had too, of course, but that wasn't because of anything she'd done. That was Boyd and Freya. Tariq, Trudi and Michonne. Leo. It was thanks to them that she'd managed to slither her way through the hellscape and come out the other end of it with an intact life.
They'd had a lucky streak, Brodie supposed. All three of them - The problem was. . . luck always ran out.
Brodie scraped her machete against corrugated metal, relentlessly chiselling away at the five letters spelling out her mother's name.
'In Our Memory' the emboldened letters at the very top of the wall read. This was a memorial for all those Alexandria had lost in the great battle against the dead many years ago. Most of the names were unfamiliar to Brodie but there were a few she recognised - Glenn, Devin, Jessie, Ron and Sam. All people Freya had cared about and lost.
