𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊, the walking dead¹

iii, false hope

[SEASON FIVE, EPISODE ONE]

"DAD?"

The word reverberated throughout Rick's mind as he became motionless, the hand stroking his baby's hair coming to a stop, his mind blank. Silence surrounded the area once the voice sounded from outside the hut. Tyreese's head turned up, chocolate irises staring in confusion as he watched the girl he had newly met. Goosebumps shadowed Carl's skin, the familiar voice bubbling teardrops in the bottom of his eyes.

Tilly had spent a long-standing time solitary, eternally musing whether she was the last Grimes still alive. Her life had become a spiral of nothing as she surmounted it alone. But, at that very moment, standing outside the door of a hut she had only just found, Tilly felt the forlornness slip away in the blink of an eye. The chilly weather she had pushed through was taken from her memory. All the girl could think about was the two people standing only a couple metres away from her, the people she was unsure whether they were dead or not just a few minutes ago.

Rick'a head stood up swiftly, his eyes already teary from the fact he reunited with Judith after so long of believing the walkers had sealed her fate the same way they had everybody else's. Suddenly, there stood his eldest child, one he had been lost without for so long. His eyes blinked multiple times, trying to see if it was a figment of his imagination, just like Lori had once been.

As her feet subconsciously moved forward, Carl's hand removed from his little sister's soft, jolting forward as his body immediately crashed into Tilly's. The hat sitting atop his head titling as his face bent down cradle into her shoulder.

He was real. Tilly had questioned if she was imagining them too, but the second Carl wrapped his arms around her waist every negative thought she ever had washed away within a millisecond. Arms wrapped over his shoulders that were so easy to reach from his growth spurt, Tilly allowed tears to flow from her own eyes the way they did in his.

"We thought you were dead," Carl whispered, his head moving upwards so he could see his older sister. Rick was still in a state of shock, standing frozen as he watched his first two children hug again—an image he thought would forever be erased. It was different now though, both of his babies had grown, and Carl's height reached up between his sister's eyes. Tilly's hair had gotten darker, her face had grown more mature: she was an adult.

"I'm okay," Tilly whispered back, slowly removing herself from the hug she wished could last forever. Her head turned to her father, him frozen still. An overwhelming source of emotions powered over Rick as he too launched forward, encasing his daughter in a large hug for the first time in what could've easily been forever. Small sobs escaped his lips as he held tightly onto Tilly, right arm encasing her as Judith sat confused in the other.