______
FIND YOU
CHAPTER TWO;
( reminder. )
❛ jack is finally able
to speak to carl. ❜
______
DEEP BREATH IN, deep breath out.
Her sneakers rapidly smacked the tile floor, knees bouncing like their only goal was to reach the sky. She didn't even notice it. Everything was shaking, from her quivering lips to the rhythmic tapping of her nails against the toilet lid beneath her; her legs were of no significance. Never had she seen herself so shaky, like a live earthquake out of things to ruin.
Even when she was informed of her father's coma, she didn't shake. She sobbed, of course, but never quaked with fear, worry, and anxiety.
Then again, she didn't witness a man's unjust death.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
She stood to her feet; unconsciously, her hand raised to her mouth where her thumbnail was bitten down on relentlessly. After an entire night of anxious nail-biting, there was almost nothing left to bite. It caused more pain now rather than relief.
She didn't mind the pain.
It was just a reminder.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
"Okay," she whispered to herself with no actual intent to, eyes dragging up the length of the bathroom sink until they fixated on her reflection staring back at her. Her tired eyes wore dark circles and bags that she could only assume were from a lack of rest; thin streaks of interference within her generally dirt-clad face trailed down her cheeks as a result of the hours she spent crying in the RV bathroom; her bottom lip was reddened in some areas due to the tremendous amount of times she bit down on it to stop her cries from being audible.
She wanted to scream.
After some thought, she realized that she'd never actually screamed before; every child screams out of joy at least once in their life - that she had done, but actually screaming was not something she'd ever experienced. Allowing an anguished, tortured, lingering shriek to erupt from her mouth was something she'd never even felt the need to do.
Everything seemed to be changing in the aftermath of Otis' death. Every tear streak was a piece of rubble, every swallowed sob was just another piece of debris, and every muffled scream-to-be was the time-bomb, the paroxysm waiting to destroy what hadn't already been destroy before.
Deep breath in...
"Okay, this fucking breathing thing isn't working," she muttered to herself, wiping her hair out of her face. She straightened her back, regaining the composure she once walked proud with, but she slunk back down within seconds. "Forget it."
Every action that went towards exiting the bathroom felt foreign. Every shaky limb felt like it didn't belong to her. Every step felt like an utter mistake.
Just as she wrapped her hand around the handle of the RV door, it pulled open to reveal the startled face of her mother.
Deep breath out.
"Jesus, you scared me," she smiled. Jack couldn't fathom how such a smile could form in the aftermath of a war, but that was when she realized that the war didn't affect her unsuspecting mother. "Everything okay?"
Jack seemed to be pulled out of a daze when she suddenly answered, "Yeah. Sorry."
"No, it's okay, don't apologize," her mother softly replied through the same smile that Jack soon couldn't bear to look at any longer. "I, uh - I think Carl was asking for you."
The smile that graced Jack's lips also felt foreign. It also didn't belong to her, and it also felt much like a mistake. "Oh, he woke up?"
"Yeah," Lori nodded. The smile was growing more and more proud by the second. It was understandable that she'd be proud of her son for surviving when all odds were against him, but then the very thought that she'd be proud of Jack for assisting in retrieving his medicine crashed into Jack much like a semi-truck. The hopes of her mother ever being truly, knowingly proud of her had gone missing in action; presumed dead, another casualty in the war within. "He did."
"That's good," Jack faintly mumbled, nodding her head the best that she could as she brushed past her forbearing mother and began to pace towards the farmhouse.
The farmhouse had never been so peaceful. The first time she entered was alongside her bloody brother and terrified father; the second time was after witnessing something unimaginable. This time, it seemed so tranquil and sleepy; Jack couldn't walk to her brother's room without noticing the house's lack of something noticeable. No walkers, no guns, no tears - she'd be lying if she said it wasn't refreshing.
The moment she opened the door and met Carl's eyes with her own, a smile inexplicably graced her lips. Of course, she was elated to see her little brother alive and well, but it was more than that. Seeing his face provided a fleeting moment of remission, an undertone of relief as everything that had weighed her down that day drifted into oblivion.
Her troubles, however burdensome they might have been, all proved to be worth it in that moment that she greeted him with a slight, "Hi," and watched as he grinned in response. "How're you feeling?" she added, walking around the bed to settle into the chair at its side. His mouth fell open and he drew in a long breath as if preparing an answer, only to sigh and give her a tired look. A tired smile pulled at the corners of her mouth and she had to verbalize what she'd been reminding herself all night: "Well, as long as you're still breathing."
She'd lost count of the endless times she had to tell herself that what happened was justifiable by Carl's condition. As long as his lungs would draw another breath, the collateral damage was unimportant. Never had something apparently so insignificant hurt so much.
"It's so quiet here," his small, playful voice whispered, ironically shattering the silence that befell the still room. "I don't know what to do with all the quiet."
The tranquility of the house in comparison to the constant clamor of their old camp in Atlanta was blatant. It almost made Jack uncomfortable, the silence. Even before the fall of civilization, she never experienced such quietude courtesy of her parents' incessant arguing. And every time silence befell them, she learned to never believe it to be a good thing. Their silences were just as destructive as their vehement shouts.
This silence - this silence was a peaceful one. And peace was not a thing Jack was familiar with.
Three knocks on the wooden doorframe shattered the tranquility. With quick eyes, Jack looked up at whomever it was standing before she and her little brother, only to meet eyes with the sole reason she and her little brother could even share a conversation. Shane's shoulders rose with a deep inhale and suddenly, he spoke, "Me, Carol, and Andrea are heading out to the highway to see if Sophia wandered back, you wanna come?"
"I'm okay," Jack haltingly replied with a small shake of her head and a polite, slight smile. "Thanks, though."
With a small nod, the corners of his mouth slightly twitched in what attempted to be a smile, but all his expression projected was worry. When she recognized that, her eyes softened. The war continued to rage on. They spoke silently, yet louder than the pained cries of inner battle, eyes conveying words they would never speak. He left, but only after giving her a small nod, quietly asking her to follow suit.
Jack closed the door softly, as if her little brother lied unconscious and she feared to wake him. "Are you alright?" Shane asked quietly, voice barely more than a broken whisper. His earth-colored eyes flickered from one of her own to the other, as if waiting for them to tell the truth when her voice failed to.
He expected a faint, "Yeah." A blatant lie masked by hesitance. He'd already prepared for it, readied a response, and braced for the inevitable impact of her trauma. It somehow made his own worse.
Yet, all she blankly responded with was, "I'm breathing, aren't I?" Her whiskey-colored eyes didn't meet his own until after the words had fallen from her mouth. She displayed nothing but stoicism, like no matter how hard he tried to rip the truth from her, she'd keep it locked away. Her pain would never find the words to make itself known; she wouldn't let it.
"That doesn't answer the question," he replied after a moment of strained quietude. He hadn't practiced for this - her virtual silence. It didn't matter how many words she spoke because she'd never actually be saying anything. He expected her to accidentally be an open book, not for her to have learned how to glue all the pages together within one night.
She stared at him for a minute, and then a foreign smile spread across her face. It faded in seconds, nothing more than a formality, but it bothered him all the same. "You have somewhere to be," she slowly started, "and so do I, so..."
Her sentence trailed off and she followed after, re-entering the room where Carl lied. The air felt much lighter past the threshold, and she felt much more at ease when walking to her brother's bedside. He talked for longer than Jack could account for, something about a deer, and she listened the best she could.
It proved difficult with a voice speaking over his, about how Carl was only breathing because of Shane. And when it spoke of the pressure placed on Shane's shoulders that night, how she'd forced him into murder with a simple, "You have to make it, no matter what happens, okay?", she broke. She actually felt a sharp pain deep in her chest, in an area never before pained by something as simple as fault.
And she pieced together a fragmented smile when Carl's eyes looked to her own.
______
this trash took me three months wow
word count: 1665