↳ we aren't who we were anymore...
oc x carl grimes
season 7-8 (sequel to who we were)
TW: Depression, thoughts of suicide, use of drugs/alcohol, use of tobacco, detailed gore, use of weapons, death, and mentions/suggestions of assault.
DISCLAIMER:...
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Above all, fear drives a person the most. It's one of the most powerful motivators for a human being.
That's why Cole Sallow would stay awake in his bed throughout the night and think all about the worry that had flooded him each time he thought about his children and where they were. Daryl had said nothing to him in regards to his children, how they were doing, or who was taking care of them. This only fueled the fire of fear that filled him.
The concept of his children being dead had plagued him for so long - almost to the point in which he had been living in a haze of delusion. It was a thick curtain that pulled itself over him as he tried to decipher what was true and what wasn't. Even after seeing Daryl alive and well, despite the fact he had been held captive at the same compound in which Cole himself had been residing in, he had been given no confirmation as to the state of his children, so there was no way to feel a certain way about situation, even when he tried to break it down for himself.
There was a complete piece of Cole that wanted to believe that his children were alive - that he needed to believe it. Once he had been separated from the group, he had found Negan. Negan was his life now. He served the Saviors. He worked alongside the lead man, something that everyone else at the Sanctuary secretly wished could be in the interest of themselves. It wasn't typically because they favored the man or could even say they idolized him amongst the other dull faces consuming the community, but because he had a sense of security around him - the idea that if you were on the ins with him, then you were safe from his random bouts of wrath.
With Negan becoming the center of his world, he had given up hope of anything else in us life. In order to open another door, he had to close a different one. Hilary was dead. He knew that. He watched that. The spine-crawling familiarity of her fate was ever present in his mind, never failing to creep its way back to him. It gave every suggestion as to why he should feel the same about his children. They probably ended up the same way. After the cars departed from the farm on that dark and frightful night, they hadn't made it very far. They broke down, got surrounded, got lost. The possibilities were endless, but they all ended the same exact way: they died.
There was a sort of comfort that arose when thinking about these things in the way that Cole did. There was an idea of stress being relieved for him as he came to terms with the concept of Emilia and Milo being deceased because that meant he had to hold no more worry over them. If they were dead, he wasn't concerned with where they were. If they were dead, he didn't have to think about whether or not they were hungry. If they were dead, he didn't have to hope that they had a roof over their heads at night, shoes on the blistered feet, friends surrounding them to keep them safe, or comfort to protect their perilous minds. The list went on. It would never stop.
