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⠀There was a block in the road. An abandoned car and rotted tree. Converging together to make a problematic gate we had to try and open, thinking for a moment that this may be something telling us to go back, telling us that we left something behind. But I quickly squashed that minuscule thought.
⠀The thing was... we had left something behind... and we still had to keep going.
⠀My hands clasped together in my lap, and for most of the drive had been looking down at them. Watching as the ends of my fingernails dug into the tops of my hands, seeing how deep I could make crescent moons appear. But when Rick, Maggie, and Glenn instinctively rose from their respective seats and left the car to approach the obstruction, my eyes flew upwards.
⠀The new movement in my otherwise stagnant scenery seemed to have jolted me somewhat awake. Not that I had been sleeping. The long night had still left me exhausted and battling to keep my eyes open. But, then he went. And I had never felt more of a need to keep them open.
⠀A sort of... unsafeness had hit me. A feeling you get when you're on the edge of a cliff. That breathless push, hurtling you backwards. As if the muscles holding my ribs together were shakingly telling me to take a few steps back.
⠀Uncurling my hands, watching them tremble from bone to skin, I raised my gaze to the rearview mirror. Where the woman was in my sights, sitting adjacent to myself. Always far away.
⠀She was looking outwards to her left, eyes steadily looking above and below the window. She seemed to be tracing her eyes along with the barks of trees that littered our surrounding, no matter how far we drove.
⠀"Where did you go?" I asked, my voice just above a whisper. My throat was raw from all the crying I had been doing. It had left my face sticky and warm. My cheeks flushed and swollen. "Where did you go when you left us at Woodbury?"
⠀She now looked towards me, evidence of a fight on her skin. "To see the Governor," her words biting down on the air as she said his name.
⠀"But you didn't kill him."
⠀"I was stopped."
⠀"By what?"
⠀"Andrea."
⠀Andrea? Did she stop the woman from killing the Governor? I wasn't sure what our former friend had been up to, but that made it evident that she was charmed. The woman had said he had a way with people. He was a pretty boy. I wouldn't be surprised, with the evidence of how many people were cheering on the death of two men, that those people were loyal. Sickeningly loyal.
