prologue, carl grimes
"please.. don't give up on me— on us."
[slow burn. mature scenes ahead]
It was a rainy night, thundering booming through the air and lightning shining into her bedroom, seeping pass her thin sheets. A whimper left her lips when another bolt of lightning flashes pass, sounding closer than before. Her blanket hiding away her figure, yanked up to her neck. As another boom of thunder goes by, she jumps from her bed, clutching the blanket around her and heading straight toward her Mom and Dad's room.
"Just... stop yelling so loud, Kendall will hear you." Mom whispers.
"You put her in therapy, behind my back, without even consulting me, Kassandra." Dad's voice is filled with anger and hate, his lips deepening with a frown.
"She needs to talk about her feelings and obviously she doesn't trust us enough."
"Then we make her!" He shouts at her, in a whisper.
"That! That is exactly why she doesn't talk to us. Do you want to know what the therapist said to me?"
"What?"
"Kendall acts out for attention; she says that Kendall thinks we work too much, so much that we don't have time for her. She doesn't talk to us because she's scared, is one reason, and the other is because she thinks that we won't listen. Our daughter hears us fight, she notices when we don't talk to each other. Kendall is a very, very observant child and she said, and I quote 'Because Mom and Dad don't love each other anymore, they don't love me.' Do you know how much that hurt me to hear? Huh? We can't make her talk to us but we have to be open with her."
The sound of them arguing was nothing new to her but the topic they were talking about made her heart drop down to her stomach, the sinking feeling only growing and growing like a parasite.
"Mom... Dad?" She could hear them stop, the feeling in her chest only deepening as she pushes open the cracked door. A pout pulls at her bottom lip while looking up at them. "Can I sleep with you tonight?"
"Of course, baby, come sit next to us." Mom encourages patting the empty spot right between her and Dad. A sigh of relief trembles pass her lips as she rushes to lay right in between her parents.
She just wanted them to shut up— and she was scared of thunderstorms but that's not the point.
Kendall is a young dark-skin girl, and her skin is smooth and clear; though there she does have a light birthmark rounding her left eye, dragging across her hairline. The twinkle of her deep and dark, doe-y brown eyes made her look innocent. She has very long hair; she's had it trimmed every year since she was three. Kendall wastes away the beauty of her curls by always keeping them in a bun or ponytail— she just didn't like them in her face. A few beauty marks pepper across the skin of her cheeks and arms. She's kind of tall for her age, it was always told to her that it was because of her father; but she liked it, being taller.