I think I liked you better when you didn't have a knife in your hand, Peaches

A Safe Haven

Time was a good healer, or at least, so people said.

And yet until now, Blake had never in her life realised, just how much that saying rang true.

But as the days slipped by, one, after another, after another. That hole inside of her, that ache, that anxiousness slowly began to fade little by little.

Day one here might as well not have happened.

Blake had hovered around, closing herself away from the world, latching the window and bolting the doors with shaking hands, and lying there, trembling and afraid. But not afraid of the walkers she could hear roaming about outside, but instead for her own sanity.

She had felt like she was in a dream she could not escape, being swallowed whole by something far bigger than herself, knowing that her light was almost gone and her air supply was diminishing by the second.

She was choking....dying...lamost fading from this world.

And one more push was all it would take, for the Blake that everyone knew, to be gone for good.

But time WAS a good healer and even by the following day, a fresh new morning, Blake felt herself regaining consciousness even just a little.

And so she had sat there, mourned, doubled over in pain from the endless tears and grief.

And yet somehow it was as though the pain had began to lessen.

What had swallowed her ,was slowly letting her go. She could see the light. Feel the breeze and the sun on her skin again.

And it had taken her at least a day of this achingly slow healing, for Blake to wake herself up somewhat, snapping out of her daze a little, and realising she hadn't eaten or drunk anything in days, the pain of hunger and dehydration hitting her hard, making her more tired than she needed to be.

But delving into the pack of supplies Arat had left for her, Blake had devoured two apples and a small packet of dry crackers in a matter of seconds, washing it down with an entire bottle of clean water.

Then it was like freight train of realisation had dawned on her, sitting there on the bare floor of the house, shut inside in the darkness, even though it was the middle of the day.

She was really here.

All this, it wasn't just a dream. This was real.

She was alive and still surviving. And that could only be good. Desperate thoughts of no longer wanting to exist on this earth, disappearing like wisps of smoke on the wind, filtering away from her mind.

Blake could feel that pain still sitting in her stomach now, but she knew that she had done the right thing by coming here, the peace and quiet of this place settling her nerves, allowing her time to breathe properly again.

She knew she had gone through a lot, and realising how much she had lost and had had to endure over this last couple of weeks, really became obvious to her, perhaps more than it ever had after her last two miscarriages.

For Blake loved Negan, more than she could ever say, and the guilt of being responsible for losing his child like that, well it had almost tipped her over the edge, drowning her in a sea of hopelessness and hurt for what had felt like a lifetime.

But here and now, in this place away from the politics and the claustrophobic walls of the Sanctuary, Blake felt like her thoughts could be her own again.

Things far more clear here, her priorities straighter, and her fears seeming like nothing but nightmares, long-since passed.

After a night of bad sleep on the couch that first night, her mind whirring, heart still pounding and breaths still hard to come by, by the second day the blonde woman seemed to settle somewhat, finally opening the windows and shutters to the mid-afternoon sunshine.