MADISON'S POV.
NO!NO!NO!NO!
Impossible.
This is just a bad dream.
But the blood is everywhere! It's hard to see past it. I shake my head.
Surely, there's away around this. This can't be the end.
I release my grip on her wounds and begin to beat against her chest with my hands, trying to restart her heart. I try to match the pace of beating to my own heart but it's much too fast, speeding away like it's in a race.
"Aaggghhhh!" I yell into the silence. The voice bounces back to me through an echo as if to mock me, to remind me that I truly am alone.
I bend to listen to her heart, to see if it's restarting with my amateur cpr but I hear nothing. Not a thing.
She's fine, she's going to be okay! She'll wake up in a few minutes. I just have to stop the bleeding.
I turn back to her wounds but when I stare at her neck and peel back the thin material of my top against her wrist I notice that the blood has stopped flowing.
I feel my conscience laugh at me. I know the truth. I know it's there, at the tip of my tongue but I don't want to listen to it, I don't want to accept it.
"No! No! No! No! You're not dead! You're not dead! You're not dead!"
It shocks me when these words come out louder than I intended. I meant for them to be in my head.
I'm not sure what to do anymore. All there is left to do is listen to my conscience. She's laughing at me like I'm a fool. I know what this means. I know the facts.
Why won't I let them sink in? Why won't I listen?
My thoughts in my head are;
What I want versus what is real.
It weighs down on me so heavily that I feel my own body slump. It's like I have the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Telling me what I want to hear and telling me what I need to hear, what is real.
My heart lurches when two pairs of hands grab me and lift me upwards, dragging me away from my mother. Somebody is shouting as I struggle against the hands.
"Noooo! Stop! Let go of me! Let go!"
It takes me a while to realize that it's me shouting.
My face is now hot and wet with tears and my own breathing comes out ragged as I gasp for air.
I kick my feet around trying to escape whoever has hold of me. I haven't even looked at who it is. My eyes refuse to leave my mother. After all my struggling I feel a light sting as my hand connects with something hard. One of my hands slip through their grasp and I fall to the ground. I use this precious time to quickly rip my other arm out of a now weakened grip.
I scramble back to my mother and again, stupidly, my hands fly about to find somewhere to attend to first. But everything is a mess, every wound is as fatal as the next. Finally, the devil's whispers from my shoulder comes through loud and clear.
What's the point?
She's dead.
Her heart stopped beating minutes ago and she isn't breathing anymore. You only have a few minutes until she turns.
Salty water floods from my eyes faster now and i'm making the most horrible sound. I sound like a broken toy that used to talk but now it just wheezes. I slump back on my knees, looking at her body. I lay my head back down against her chest and lay there for a few more minutes. I know what I have to do.
Slowly, the noises around me become more clear. I can hear voices muttering behind me, cautious and unsure. Somewhere else I hear a desperate sobbing. Gentle arms try to lift me again but this time I don't fight them. I wipe my tears away as I'm turned around to face the group. My eyes instantly drift to Nick, sobbing on the ground. Tara leans down beside him, comforting him.
I look up to Rick at my side, who supports most of my weight and Glenn who helps him the other side of me.
For once, Rick doesn't look down at me with hatred or suspicion or those accusing eyes. He looks to me with sympathy.
I hate that, I don't like it at all.
It makes all of this so real, so final.
She's dead and there's nothing we can do about it. She's dead because she came out here to find me, even though I'd been a total bitch to her.
I grow irritated with Rick and shrug him off of me, too hastily. I catch him frown but I look away. I don't care. I look around the field at all the walkers with arrows in their heads. I took out all those walkers by myself yet all it took was that one walker, one second and it was all over.
A strange, empty feeling floods me, settles inside of me, unmoving. I squirm under its control but it doesn't release its hold of me. I cough and splutter, anything to make the feeling go away. I want it gone.
Almost the whole group is out here. When I look to Carl his eyes are focused on the ground. So are everyone else's. I can understand that this is uncomfortable for them but I can't feel that awkwardness. All I feel is that empty hollowness, resting in my chest, in my lungs, making it hard to breathe. It leans heavily on my heart. It feels like it might crack.
"She just kept shouting. She wouldn't stop. She was looking for me." The whisper comes from my lips.
"And I was looking for her too, but it was so dark. I kept looking but it found her first."
I see someone move behind me from the corner of my eye and I whirl around to find Carol creeping up to my mother with a knife. I know what she's doing before she does it and my body reacts before my brain.
My feet move first, racing towards my mother and then my hands act. I shove Carol away with a surprising amount of force, sending her flying. The knife falls from her hands and she takes the blow hard as she tumbles to the ground, feet away from my mother.
Only for a few seconds I stand protectively above my mother until I'm hurdled to the ground.
I feel the air being knocked from my lungs and the pain of my ribs being crushed under the weight of Daryl.
But I don't care really, it's relieving to finally feel something other than the emptiness.
"What the hell Madison!" Carol yells at the same time Daryl growls at me.
"What do you think you're playing at?"
"DON'T TOUCH HER!" I pelt back.
"She's dead Madison!" Carol says lowly.
"I KNOW THAT!"
"Then why-"
"She isn't yours!" I wheeze through the pain in my chest.
"Get off her Daryl." I hear Maggie whisper and only seconds later the weight disappears.
"I don't understand." Carol shakes her head. I stand to my feet, ignoring the large number of eyes watching me and snatch the knife off the ground angrily.
I kneel beside my mother again and lift the knife. It shakes in my hands and I focus on taking deep breaths.
"It should be done by her family." I murmur.
I close my eyes and look away as I force the knife into her temple. A shudder runs through me at the sickening sound.
She can't change now. She can go to the stars and look down on us.
I can't bare to hear the noise again so I leave the knife there and let Carol collect it later. Without looking back, I grab my bow from the ground and my knife from the walker next to my mother, kicking it as I go.
"Pack your shit. We're not staying here." I say to Nick as I pass him. I walk back to the trees, leaving this disastrous scene behind me.