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DEVASTATION SLITHERED AROUND the group and draped over the survivors like a large, invisible blanket. The gunshot still lingered in Samantha Walsh's ears, blending with broken sobs that belonged to the childless mother. Tears slipped pass her cheeks as her eyes never left the corpse of the light girl.
It simply wasn't fair, she didn't deserve that. She was abused, scared, and killed. Sophia didn't deserve to be taken away like that, ripped from her mother's arms. If she had the chance, she would trade places with her - because Sophia deserved life possibly more than Samantha. She deserved that chance.
Her gaze trailed to her silent brother, who never let his leave the girl. Shane had an expression full of many raw emotions, but Samantha wanted to smack it right off of his face. He had been the ringmaster of this, the trigger to the explosion of chaos - yet he couldn't find it in himself to pull the trigger? To end what he started so violently?
When did he become so cowardly?
"Don't look! Don't look!" Daryl kept chanting as he lifted a distraught Carol from the ground. Samatha turned in time to see her snatch out of his hold, stalking away.
Nobody tried to stop her, nobody said anything, not even when a sobbing Beth ran to one of the bodies, and a harsh realization punched her in the gut when she saw that it was her mother - one of the walkers she shot.
Suddenly, the walker reanimated and grabbed the teen, this causing Samantha to rush forward into action, Maggie Greene not too far behind as well as the rest of the group. They all tried pulling the teen away, not thinking logically but only thinking that they had to get her away.
A gunshot rang out and blood splattered against a screaming Beth, her mother instantly going limp. Heads turned and found Nathan standing several feet away from the group, his gun raised and his eyes as cold as ice with a face as hard as stone.
He met his best friend's sad eyes and marched away.
━━━━━
Nathan Barton couldn't breathe.
His emotions were putting him under water as he ripped through cabinets, searching under sinks, checking every inch of the kitchen in search for alcohol - something to numb him, to make him forget what had just transpired.
Everyone was out at the funeral, but just - he refused. Nathan couldn't see her grave while knowing she was in there because of him, he couldn't see Carol's teary, resentful gaze, he couldn't stand another funeral.
