two. sanctuary of ashes

two˚༺⋆♱⋆༻˚↳ sanctuary of ashes ↲

A GUN POINTED AT MY HEAD, and a man behind it. Rick — the same Rick that had been spitting up his own blood in the courtyard.

I never thought he would make it out of the combat with Brian. Earlier I'd decided he was good. Good people never won those things, and if they did, they left with only half of their morality. In his eyes, there didn't seem to be enough to spare my life.

"I saw you in the fields. With the others." He spit his words out harshly, placing his finger near the trigger.

I stared at Rick, then the boy standing beside him, hoisting his father up. He had the same eyes as Rick. The sharp kind. The color wasn't friendly, or inviting. It was cold, and I dared not to get close for fear of the frost.

The only real difference between them, apart from their age, was the brown sheriffs hat which sat atop his son's head. His face was hardened and unforgiving, yet the slightest reflection of weakness streamed down his face in the way of tears. I wished I could take more time to divulge the image, but the two's grim facial expressions had me wanting to be anywhere else but here, looking anywhere but their faces; to the flicks of hair curling around the hat, the steady hands that held his gun. Anywhere but his eyes again.

The father was apparent in his shaky weakness, and the boy mirrored Rick, but in a complete different sense. His exterior was fine. It was his mind that seemed to be breaking. I wasn't sure how I could tell, but only that I could. Perhaps it was the shared experience of losing someone that any remaining survivor could relate with.

Not one of us were here without sacrifice or efforts from another being.

The two put up a fearless front, but I knew it wouldn't take much to escape the barrel aimed at me. Nothing more than an ounce of initiative, and I could be on my way. They were too weak to stop me, and although it was a terrible thing to hope, I wished that whatever tragedy they had just witnessed was enough to snuff that flickering flame of determination within.

I sidestepped Rick and his faltering aim, immediately taking off into an uneven sprint so that he couldn't take me down if he tried. With my body begging to shut down, I used whatever small bit of energy I had left to make my way past the rubble of what once was held dearly by many lives.

All it was now, were smoking remains.

I was an arms length away from getting out of its grip, through the gate, when I heard the younger boy's voice, shouting. "Hey!"

I continued to carry my body down the path, finally coming toward the small exit. The door made of chain was lined with thick barbed wire at the top, but this defense no longer held any value as it was wide open.

Footsteps followed me, louder staggering following the first set. Rick was rushing after his son it seemed. Which meant that his son was coming for me, and I didn't doubt it from the way his boots pounded against the ground close behind.

"Carl!" Rick called after him.

I had made two fatal mistakes today. The first was thinking that I had any business being here, only proving myself a wrongful soldier. The second, and worst, was assuming Rick's son wouldn't catch up to me. Because, without any warning at all, his body slammed against mine, bringing both of us harshly to the ground.

For a moment, I was able to kick and squirm enough for him to loosen his grip on me. This only resulted in his knee being thrown at my stomach. A pained wheeze escaped as I decided to keep my hands to myself, instead grabbing throat to cough for air.

"Carl, stop it." Rick ordered, leaning his wounded self against the gate we had just thrown ourselves past.

'Carl' now raised his shotgun to my head, blue eyes finally connecting with my green. His gaze was light in color, but it held such a darkness that not even the deepest of brown could obtain. He was devastated, and even a fool could notice it quickly translating to anger.

I knew what it was like. I had felt it fester in every empty body cavity of mine, molding itself into the spaces to become part of me. I was acquainted with it, but not in the same way as him.

His was fresh. Merciless. It was intertwined in the deepest roots of his soul.

"Let me handle it." He told his dad, squinting at me as if the mere image of me was too much to behold.

In his point of view, I was as good as the governor himself. I felt responsibility for what the man had done, and this boy wasn't providing clarity for my role in the downfall of the prison. My reflection in his eyes told me that I was no better than Brian.

"We don't kill people." Rick stated, huffing as if there were pieces of sharp rib astray in his chest.

Carl grit his teeth. "She killed us. Hell, Judith's dead too, because of them."

"Put the gun down. Right now." Rick instructed, his patience with the boy slipping away.

The way he said it was so forceful, so unforgiving. The son felt it too as he backed away and tossed his gun to the ground with a clatter. A muscle in his jaw rippled, like he was seconds away from becoming one of the dead himself, and tearing through me.

Rick, with much effort, walked forward so that Carl was behind him. The father's first reaction was to do nothing but look over me, before sighing out and placing his fingers to his temple. He looked pained. Not just from his injuries, but from my presence.

"How many people-" He stopped, taking a breath in between. "How many of us did you kill?"

"One." I swallowed, easing my dried throat. I came to a careful stand. "She was coming at me."

How many others, not at my hand, but at Brian's, and all the other soldiers? The numbers were surely painstakingly high.

Rick's head tilted in contemplation. He didn't trust me; either that, or he didn't believe me. Even if I was built smaller than his son, features still gentle with youth, he saw something that even I did not.

He saw threat buried beneath my surface. Any other day, he could surely overpower me within the blink of an eye. But there was something silent in me that alarmed him; told him to tread lightly.

He only blinked, and simply nodded."What about walkers? How many?"

"Are you serious right now?" Carl almost laughed. "You can't be actually contemplating letting someone like her join us. She killed someone!"

"So have you," Rick looked into Carl's eyes, a different fiery burning in each of theirs. "In nearly the same circumstance."

I forced myself to look away, chin tilting to the side. As I watched more dead trample past the yard's fallen fences, I knew I didn't want to know what the boys father was talking about. I didn't want to be afraid of what he could do to me.

Rick shook his head at his son. Whatever Carl had done, it didn't matter when we were out in the open and exposed like this. "We don't have an option. Not now."

He was right. The dead were gaining. They had already taken their course through the battlefield, faces stained with leftover vermillion. Somehow, they were always hungry, always searching for more. There was nothing fresh left for them in the fields.

Because of this, sometime in the past few minutes, they had shifted their attention on us. Rick took note of it first, leading him to force us past the gateway and putting its heavy locks back into place.

"Are you stupid? She'll kill us in our sleep." Carl protested back, shifting his weight as he looked to the approaching dead through the chain-link.

I backed away from the fence in anticipation. "He's right. Could you close your eyes under the same roof as me and pretend I wasn't part of this?"

"Things are different right now. You're choosing between life or death." Rick told me, then looked to Carl. "We can figure out the logistics later. She won't try anything if she's smart."

Whatever this man was thinking, I didn't understand. He seemed to find weakness in my youth, no doubt bias from having a child who appeared to be close in age to me. He felt sorry, somehow. A depth of emotion that even he seemed to not quite understand.

I wished I could say no, but I knew being on my own wasn't the answer. They were weak in the moment, but so was I. I could tell by just looking at the older man that he wasn't always this compromised. He had fight. If I went with them, I would have protection in their obvious violence. I could leave as soon as I was strong enough to hold my own.

I looked to the small pathway slowly blurring within my vision, and nodded. No other words were exchanged as I made way forward, the other two staying further behind me, keeping a safe distance.

It took quite some time of walking in order for us to finally come up on a paved road. Usually, it wouldn't have taken any time at all, but not a single one of us had much fight left to spare. Walking was enough of a task.

The road itself was such a contrast from the prison behind us. Blanketed with cooled air from the surrounding woods, the pathway was calm and hushed. The only noises I took much notice of with my compromised hearing, were the soft crunches of my shoes against the leaves coating the ground. There was not a blink of civilization ahead, only taunting road forward and back. Nothing but emptiness. No place to veer off and run with promise of survival.

A exasperated breath came from behind me, then the struggled words, "Slow down."

I tossed my head to the side, looking back at the boy stepping far in front of his father. I chose to let him pass me with a cutthroat glance, and wait for Rick to gain somewhat on me before continuing.

In this moment, I discovered one of the many differences between me and the boy. Grief worked differently between us. He skipped straight to anger, while I had always forced myself to start with acceptance. Both didn't begin in the correct order, but they came down to the same outcome in the end.

Once the last of my family was gone, feeling depressed on the road did nothing but promise my own death. The merciless days that I couldn't bring myself to eat, and the even darker evenings in which I walked on foot and felt too numbed to fight the dead trailing behind me.

I learned in a world riddled with disease, there was no room to shut down. No time to sulk on the side of the road like a hitchhiker await their next ride. Not a second that I could halt my steps and wipe the tears a from my face. It was safer to shove it down and choke on it than try to chew through it.

I envied him for some reason, wishing I had the strength, and time to act on my feelings. Though, at the end of the day, my walls had been built too high. I was like a locked diary, kept under a bed. Nobody dared to find what laid inside.

I envied the leniency his father provided for him. It was okay for him to act out, because Rick was still here to protect him when his mind was not leveled. He was aloud immediate anger, and it did not have to fester within him.

"Carl, stop!" Rick wheezed from close behind, a pained cough escaping his throat.

Carl finally turned, and stopped. He then staggered to his son, one of his hands on his leg which was slowly but surely bleeding out. Thick red was oozing from beneath his pants.

"We need to stick together, find a place with food, supplies."

He reached Carl at last. His breath was labored and thick with agony. He scanned over his distressed son's facial expression, placing a shaky hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, we're gonna be—"

Carl only stared at his father's broken figure. The both of them were shattered, loss controlling their bodies. Carl's eyes flickered before he abruptly shot ahead of Rick again. I began down the road with a defeated Rick, not feeling the least bit of guilt need to intervene with this fued.

I wasn't a fix for their problems, and I wasn't going to begin to act like one. Whatever tension was between them wasn't for me to mend. If anything, I was going to make it so much worse—maybe even catastrophic if I said my piece.

After many minutes of silent walking, I spotted a small diner around the corner. A slight glint of hope swelled inside of me as I realized I could find food, maybe even water. Although it was likely the place had already been raided, I found my feet picking up the pace, the others using the last of their strength to catch up.

We approached the main doors, Carl raising his gun, while Rick opened the latch.

"Wait outside, and hand over your weapons." He told me, turning to Carl. "You keep watch. Holler if there's an issue."

Carl carefully eyed this interaction, then exhaled heavily at his father. "You keep watch. You can barely walk, I'm not going to let you go in there alone."

"Excuse me?" Rick snapped.

I tiredly leaned myself against the exterior wall, making it unapparent I was listening to each petty word the other spoke. My skin was still tinging from the wake of the explosion that had pushed me back, my legs fighting against a soft shake. I needed to find some place to rest.

"Here." I then broke the two apart in hopes of finding shelter faster, reaching for the gun snugly fit into my leg holster.

Pulling it from its place slow and careful, I kept the barrel pointed to the ground with my left hand in the air and I handed it to Rick.

He broke away from Carl, nodding as he looked me over. "Is that all you have?"

"Yes," I responded. I then patted myself to show I was unarmed, hastily avoiding the knife tucked between my waist belt.

He looked me over carefully. He was alert with every flick of his eyes, until he finally deemed me harmless enough to stand down. Wheezed breath left his lungs, shoulders loosening. Momentarily taking his hand away from the doorknob he was resting it on, he hooked his thumb in a belt loop of his jeans which seemed to be out of complete habit.

He winced a little after realizing this sudden movement had caused him pain. "Rick. This is my son, Carl."

"Cynthia." I plainly replied. "Don't call me that though, Cyn is fine."

The man nodded, while his son only watched me with hawklike-eyes. He had a rather large amount of hair for a boy, which was messy and unkept at this point. His flannel was sweatily attached to his gleaming skin, the very ends of the fabric frayed. There was blood on him, but it didn't seem to be his own. I wondered what kind of terrible monster I looked like in his eyes; wished that I could experience myself through him.

With that, they both made their way inside, courtesy of Carl's demands. Rick had left me 'defenseless' outside, telling me to shout if any company approached. This left me almost defenseless outside as the two raided the place. It took less than two minutes, Rick and Carl dragging through the doors again after only firing a similar shot.

This time, Carl moved to the front, leading us toward the neighborhood that branched from the diner road. Taking in the surroundings, I slowed myself to walk alongside Rick. I didn't have anything to say to him—I could only provide my company. There were endless amounts of apologies that I could offer him, yet none made it to the tip of my tounge.

"How old are you?" He bluntly asked, looking to me.

I thought about this for a second, then came to a final conclusion. "Fourteen. I was born in December, so whenever it starts getting cold, I consider it my birthday."

"Carl's fourteen too." He said.

I looked to the man. His face held many lacerations, his throat bruised with fingerprints—presumably from the eye-patched man. It made me wonder of Brian. If he was dead, or not. I used whatever bit of hope left in me to wish that Rick brought him down for good in the field. The possibility of him still being out there, was frightening.

Rick slowed his walk to a shuffle, then stopped us in front of a white house, on the nicer side, compared to the types of houses I had lived in, before.

"Here's as good as any."

I followed behind the two as they held their guns cautiously upward. Rick brought the edge of his boot to the door, slowly pushing it to a creaky open. He took the living room head-on, while Carl forked off from him. After a minute or so, Rick signaled for me to step inside, and I made my way through the kitchen to search for anything edible.

After spending a good amount of time rifling through the cabinets to find a singular box of stale cereal, another outburst began to take place.

This time, I could tell it would be full-fledged.A heavy fist was brought down against the hallway's doorframe, leaving the silverware cabinet beside me to clink and rattle with the aggression.

"Hey, asshole!" Carl shouted angrily. "Hey, shitface! Hey-"

Rick grit his teeth. "Watch your mouth."

I shook my head, sweeping aside the pounding that had begun in my chest. Standing here, I was forced to remind myself that this was not my childhood home. It was not my father banging against the wooden frame. It wasn't directed at me, my mother, or my younger sister. There was no-one that I had to protect. It was just a boy lashing out at his father. It wasn't real violence.

With that, Carl went upstairs in an instant, Rick walking into the kitchen I occupied as a distant bedroom door was slammed shut. Things were being kicked around upstairs, but it didn't sound like a brawl. Only one extremely pissed off boy.

"Find anything?" He asked, avoiding the obvious elephant in the room, making the interaction at hand worse.

I shook my head. "Just a box of cereal."

He took it from my hands, placing it to the center table. "That's good, anything counts. Thank you."

I leaned against the counter, slumping slowly to a sitting position on the ground. The pain had only gotten worse, and I couldn't begin to imagine how it would feel after a night of sleep. The mere thought of sheets rubbing against my bruised body sent a jolt of phantom pain up my spine.

"Why were you alone, towards the end? Were you abandoning your people?" Rick asked as he swayed, then sat himself onto a wooden stool.

I picked at dried blood on my hands, the brown flaking away with each movement. "Those weren't my people. I didn't know who they really were—what they'd do to you all."

He tilted his head at me. "How long were you with them?"

"A month, at most." I responded truthfully. "They found me and took me in."

What wasn't completely truthful, was that they had "found" me. They had more caught me in the late hours of the night, attempting to ransack their camp for any valuable supplies. In that point of time, I had been on my own for months. I was unleashed, willing to screw anyone else over for the chance of survival.

They took delight in seeing a young girl with such savagery. I was in a state of shock from my losses, and had unknowingly let go of my compassion. The only thing I knew how to do with certainty was surviving. Brian saw this as a war tactic. No enemy would fire at a child. Not until I had already unloaded on them first.

"You didn't know what the governor planned to do?" He questioned me.

Lines formed between my tired brows. "The governor? That's not what we called him — but no, he said you were maniacs who we would persuade to leave by flashing around artillery. I didn't think we would truly use it."

Rick nodded. "What about before that? How long had you been on your own before joining them?"

"Maybe five months?" I guessed, still focused on scratching my hands and fingers raw of dirt and crimson.

"Five months, all alone?" He wasn't convinced, but I didn't blame him. He then shook his head, "How?"

That was a good question. I didn't quite know the answer, either. After loosing everyone who had previously been alongside me, I had turned into more of a machine than a human. Suddenly thrown into full fledged independence, my thoughts became as shallow as the dead who roamed behind me. Thinking of my next meal, and where or who I would have to take it from.

"Sleepless nights. Calloused hands, and my pistol."

Plus, my knife. Nonetheless, I was smarter than to admit to owning such weapon.

He shifted in his seat, taking in every word I spoke. "I hope you understand why I can't give you your gun back. At least not yet."

"I understand." I assured him, dragging my hand along the thick later of dust on the wooden floors. "If it means anything, I'm sorry about your people."

"Thank you," He said. "I'm sorry about yours, whatever happened to them."

He wasn't talking about the people who had fought them at the prison. He was talking about my family.

My mind searched for a response, but I was left empty handed. I could barely even remember them anymore. Their voices fuzzy, faces blurry. It was nothing but a haunting image, following me day and night. The only time I ever saw them clearly was in my dreams, filled with unwanted memories. I wished to forget them, but I couldn't. It felt as if sometimes their beady stares were burning into the back of my head, despite that fact that they were gone.

Would they hate the person i've become?

"Thank you, Rick."

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