i clung to your hands so that something human might exist in the chaos.
[summary inside]
twd | oc x oc
season 3 - ?
i do not own the walking dead. i only
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❚ CHAPTER THREE ❚ ◜ 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒆𝒊𝒍 𝒊𝒏 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 ◞
SHE WAS LAUGHING and she couldn't stop. It felt like the blaze of a hearth had ignited inside her chest. It burned primitively with every delirious laugh liberating itself from her lips.
⠀⠀For weeks, Thorne had felt as if she were to hold her breath for just a little too long, she would simply cease to exist, like the flame of a burning candle suddenly snuffed out. That had not been a terrible prospect at the time, but now... now, anything felt better than the expanse of her despair, of her rage, and the terrible anguish of missing June. Anything felt better than the torment of thoughts that racked her mind. Anything felt better than the pain that started as a prickling in her temples and expanded to a searing agony that advanced rapidly across the rest of her body until it left her gasping for air.
⠀⠀Somehow, she'd forgotten what it felt like to laugh. The reverberations of her laughter felt and sounded foreign to her, like she'd made some sudden revelation of her own body. Thorne couldn't remember the last time she'd genuinely laughed. For June, she'd always kept up a veneer adorned in the parts of her that weren't so twisted, because she would've rather lost a limb than hurt her baby sister at all.
⠀⠀She didn't know how to be good without her anymore. Thorne was a mechanical gadget, contrived of her adoration, protectiveness, unwavering love, and instincts for June. A horrid affliction pricked at her skin, like vines ingrained with thorns-wrapping around her, holding her in a taut vise. She would never be released until she found June.
⠀⠀But she couldn't do it; Thorne couldn't live without her. Not even now. She couldn't do it. How was she to live, to survive without the other half of her heart? How was she supposed to do this? How was she supposed to find June? When the thoughts seeped in, there was no way to push against them. They barreled in, hellbent on her misery.
⠀⠀She didn't know what she was doing. Since June had been taken, she'd tried convincing herself that she could do it, that she would find her little sister. There was no aversion to that. But Thorne had been following clues she could've made up herself; the women hadn't left anything behind. Not even footprints.
⠀⠀But it wouldn't have mattered what she found, because they had still taken her. They'd ripped her from Thorne's arms-but she knew somehow that her little sister had fought back with a fierceness she too often concealed. The bracelet June had left behind was an indication. Thorne let her rage fester. She let it build its way deep in the innards of her being, and when she found the women who'd taken her sister, she would tear them to shreds.
⠀⠀Her laughter had since ebbed, but that no longer mattered. Anything within her radius had surely heard her. But she couldn't find it in herself to care. Thorne wanted them to come. She wanted them to come en masse. That's not what she should've desired, she knew-especially not in her current condition. She had to keep herself alive if she wanted to find June. Running into trouble headfirst was not being cautionary, but when had she ever cared? When had that ever truly protected her? It was only an evasion of what would come anyway. Her fingers flitted to the paring knife at her hip when she heard the first of the raspy growls.
