𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 | CARL GRIMES [TWD]

3 | feeding behaviour

"Now I hope you don't mind my sayin', but the little lady here did make her choice," states a man. His dark hair is shaped into a mullet. His lips seem set in a perpetual frown; Sylvie itches to twist it off.

"She changed her mind," defends Carl. Where Maggie looks softer in the light, he's harsher. Raw: burning and bleeding. The orange sets him on fire as if forged in flame. She itches her burn. She's on fire too.

"That looks nasty," says another person Sylvie can't yet name. She points a slim finger towards her burn, which swells crimson. It looks deadly in the light. "We don't have much right now, but I can probably get it cleaned and patch it up." The unnamed woman places a gloved hand on her hip and casts her a look that embodies expectation.

On an instinct she can't fight, Sylvie glances to Carl. He nods at her. "Okay," she answers.

"I'm Rosita."

Everyone's attention ebbs as Rosita leads Sylvie to one of the pews. Beneath her the wood flats, its firmness unlike the bed she slept on, or the felled log she'd hauled in front of the fire for extra seating. When Rosita kneels before her, fingers extending to grip Sylvie's hand, she flinches away.

From beneath the bill of her military cap, Rosita cocks a brow, eyes dark as the pistol tucked into her waistband. Tentatively, Sylvie offers her hand back, tries to restrain the urge to fight or flee when Rosita's fingers clasp around her wrist like an unshakeable bracelet. She angles Sylvie's palm this way and that to study the worst of it. Sylvie bites down a scream or a shudder when she feels something prod where it hurts most. Instead, she focuses on the high arcs of the stained glass windows, the coloured mosaic of moonlight bleeding through them, the priest upon which it falls. When Rosita finally drops her hand, she exhales hard through tensed teeth.

From a backpack Rosita procures a grimy first-aid box, unclasping the lid to reveal a meagre stash of medical supplies. Sealed plasters, ointments wrinkled with consumption, a bottle or two of antibiotics Sylvie can't read the name of. She evades all of this to grab a gauze and a canteen of water.

"How'd it happen?" Rosita bunches up the tattered sleeve of Wes' hoodie — Sylvie's now — and it clouds at her elbow.

"Fire."

"You were stupid to leave," she says abruptly, but it's not bitter like Sylvie expects. It's frank.

Rosita tips water onto a cloth and swabs gently at the dirt embedded in the burn. To give her mind something to latch onto that isn't pain, Sylvie breathes in counts of five. Between suppressed winces, she manages to force out, "Why?"

"You never would've made it alone." After a while of letting the water sit and dry, she positions the gauze over the burn. Her search for answers in Rosita's face is fruitless; there is nothing but fixed focus in the furrow of her angled brows, the thick line of her lips. She has to wait for an explanation. "You're alive because of the kid. I'm alive because of Abraham. We're alive because of these guys. Sticking together is survival; going it alone is a death sentence."

Rosita ties the two ends of the dressing tightly, too tightly. Sylvie is hissing now. "That's what Carl said."

"And what do you think?"

Finished, Rosita pulls back and looks her in the eye. Sylvie looks anywhere but hers. The suggestion that her word could have value is both laughable and startling. Palms down, she smooths her palms across the spruce. Not to steady herself, but to feel the glide of the gloss, the splinters like the loose threads on the old bed. To remember what it is like to be alone and restless.

"Alone or together, we're all on borrowed time."

"We are, but you'll cut that time short if you take your chances out there."