𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 | CARL GRIMES [TWD]

6 | the parting glass

Sylvie untangles herself from Glenn and Maggie's web of care and resists the urge to make herself small. "'M fine," she mutters offhandedly, too tired to string together a firm and coherent response, but it seems to sate the trio nearest to the front of the bus who turn warily back to whatever it is they were doing before the disturbance.

"You don't have to be," says Maggie softly.

If she were more conscious, she might have something smart to say about that. But she best she can manage is a quiet but hopefully stern enough grumble, to which Glenn gives a quiet chuckle.

"I get nightmares too, you know," Tara shuffles to the edge of her seat and peeks half her head around it's low back. Set on ignoring her heart and honesty, Sylvie focuses on Tara's hands on, in, around her pistol — dissembling and inspecting the parts, then clicking them back together again. The mechanical rhythm of her actions proves a steady distraction. "Mostly about my family and the asshole who got them killed. Or about my new family, these guys, and what could've happened to them at Terminus." Sighing, she drops the gun on the seat beaide her. "I know what it's like," she finishes quietly.

"The ones I lost there weren't family," Sylvie spits, tone bordering on venomous. There you go again Sylvie, she scolds as Tara's face falls, messing everything up.

But Tara shakes off her words with a wan smile. "Who were they?"

Sylvie quiets. She's not staying with them. She's not, she reasons, even though they seem determined to make their way into her cold heart. Like Abraham and Rosita and Eugene, she has a mission — one they can't follow her on. So she's tried to stick to that with guarded coldness, and she's done an adequate job of it so far. She may as well throw them a bone.

"My brother and I met them on the road," she says, looking down and trying not to pay attention to the feeling of being watched — Glenn, Maggie, everyone. "We were going north; they were going north, so we stuck together. They weren't all good people."

"Nobody's good now," Maggie says. She bumps her shoulder in reassurance, and Sylvie realises how close they are, all three of them piled into the back like this. She wriggles a little for space.

"I know," she responds, having gained as much room as possible. "But some people try to be. They didn't."

"Did they hurt you?"

"No," she says. It's not a lie, but it doesn't mean it's entirely the truth. She remembers Vernon and the things he said, things which riled Wes' volatile temper — racist old asshole, Wes had called him. His son was no better. But they don't need to know the politics and intricacies. Truth is they don't need to know anything, but they want to. So for them she drops a trace of the truth, another, smaller bone. "Sometimes they wanted to."

Tara's face cracks open with surprise, but Sylvie looks to the side, the tight set of her lips a message of finality to te conversation. Understanding this, Glenn clears his throat and swerves the topic to the first time he learned to drive. An accessible anecdote, every joke and youthful mishap untangling the knots of dread Sylvie wove. In their amusement she busies herself with the window. The wind bursts through a small slit at the very top of the glass; she angles her head up to catch it and let in run through her hair. It's dank and thick when it hits her mouth, like the stink of a skin eater made digestible.

Her nightmare still crawls on her skin. Dreams are unguarded planes, filled with people and events beyond her control. They aren't places she tries to visit often. She has been lucky enough to sleep fitfully for the past few weeks; short, sporadic bursts of darkness and then light, nothing and then life. But she was so, so tired, and for once she felt some kind of safe, wedged between Glenn and Maggie, so she had let her guard down. In response she receieved too much memory and little sense.