𝐍𝐄𝐔𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐂 | 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄

𝑵𝑬𝑼𝑹𝑶𝑻𝑰𝑪

𝘊𝘏𝘈𝘗𝘛𝘌𝘙 𝘛𝘞𝘌𝘓𝘝𝘌

☼

"We gotta get you out of those clothes." 

God, the blood. There had been so much blood staining Delaney's clothes, the blue was a deep shade of red now and it had stuck to her skin in the humid heat of Georgia. She could smell it, the strong metallic stench as the remnants of it remained smeared against her face. It was numbingly real, the smell and the feel of it against her skin as Michonne took care of her. They had clothes, not a lot, but clothes left over from the time they'd left the Church for their looting. 

Michonne had taken care of her. She had helped clean the blood off her face, off her neck and her hands, as Delaney dumbly stared off into the distance, horrified, traumatized, thinking. She had been given a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt with long sleeves - a terrible choice in the heat, but also the only one. The privacy was basically nonexistent, and Maggie's sobs of grief were so heavy in their ears.

Beth had been buried outside of Atlanta, in a pretty meadow field - the first they'd come across. Rick had dug the hole himself, tirelessly using his shovel, mindlessly doing it almost, and she understood. She understood, sitting on the grass near by, knee's pulled to her chest, aching with every breath. She hadn't said a word, watching the dirt as it had been tossed to the side, whilst Beth's body laid covered by a sheet near by, waiting until they could lay her to rest. Rick seemed to have understood her silence too, the both of them getting on but not quite. 

Daryl was torn up and as such, he hadn't approached her at all. Not to talk about what had happened, not to ask her if she was okay, not to talk about her injuries or his words. He had left it be, separating himself, for the sake of wallowing in his own grief. It was depressing, but she understood. 

Beth had been laid to rest, and now Delaney sat by the grave site as everyone else grief stricken tried to figure out where they were going to go from there. D.C was a bust, a lie, a tale weaved by a terrified man. Eugene was like an outcast, sitting quietly, miserably, as everyone else tried to conjure a new plan, with their hope dwindling, their hope in some cases smashed - like their trust. There was no plan, no idea, no solid direction for them to go now and it rather felt like they were free falling. Delaney felt like she was free falling.

There was a little bouquet of wild flowers that had been placed on top of the fresh dirt, a cross created from branches of a tree and twine, a proper grave without a name. Beth deserved a name. With her knife - returned to her by Sasha - Delaney had painstakingly carved Beth Greene into the branch before the cross had been put in the ground, as Rick dug. She sat by the wooden shavings now, staring at the name like it could give her all the answers in the world.

She had known life was cruel - that the world was cruel. Delaney had known such a thing from a small age, too young to be exposed to such things, but exposed to them all the same. She had known the darkest parts of people, and it had been such a long time since she'd seen the good in them - Beth had shown her the good in people. But life was a risk, being good was a risk, especially now, in these times. 

Maggie's sobs eventually quietened, though the tears still very much streamed down her red and flushed cheeks. She had been sitting by the fire, on a log, crying into her hands, bleeding out her grief with abandon. She didn't care that people could see her, or hear her, she was crying for her sister, for her dad, for the life she had lost in a blink of an eye. Delaney understood. She understood when Maggie came crawling over to Beth's grave sometime later, on her knees, hands digging into the grass, eyes bloodshot and sobs pitifully silent.