[ The dead, as unnatural as they may be, are still a natural sort of hazard. Predictable, more or less, and without malice, only hunger and some remnant of instinct. The only cruelty they have is what you put on them: old memories, half-recognitions, the occasional inability to make yourself forget that they used to be something else.
The living are always the real danger.
He's expecting her, of course, but it's still a shock to actually see her. It feels like it's been ages. Maybe because he was, only hours ago, so close to death. Maybe because he's gotten the sense, all too late, that even in the same room, not so long ago, she was hiding from him. Maybe it's nothing. Still, he draws a shuddering breath, lifts his chin a little, regards her.
He wants to scream at her, actually. It's an old ugly habit brought to the surface by adrenaline, the close call and the harried chase. He's too fucking tired to feel all the things he's feeling so he defaults to the easy one, to being angry, and he thinks-- it's not unjustified, because she ran without saying a goddamn word.
It's tempered by a thousand other things-- gratitude and grief and sheer terror and a deep hurt he doesn't wanna even touch the edges of, things that have nothing to do with Carol and things that have everything to do with her. Something shows of it-- the tension around his eyes and in his jaw, the springloaded way he holds himself, not knowing if he wants to shake her or cling to her or if he'll have to catch her as she tries to bolt. ]
Where you goin'?
[ he asks instead, lifeless and flat because he doesn't want to let anything more leak into it. A question only in structure. Maybe he means it in the straightforward way, maybe it means how the fuck could you, who knows.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2021-10-10 08:04 pm (UTC)The living are always the real danger.
He's expecting her, of course, but it's still a shock to actually see her. It feels like it's been ages. Maybe because he was, only hours ago, so close to death. Maybe because he's gotten the sense, all too late, that even in the same room, not so long ago, she was hiding from him. Maybe it's nothing. Still, he draws a shuddering breath, lifts his chin a little, regards her.
He wants to scream at her, actually. It's an old ugly habit brought to the surface by adrenaline, the close call and the harried chase. He's too fucking tired to feel all the things he's feeling so he defaults to the easy one, to being angry, and he thinks-- it's not unjustified, because she ran without saying a goddamn word.
It's tempered by a thousand other things-- gratitude and grief and sheer terror and a deep hurt he doesn't wanna even touch the edges of, things that have nothing to do with Carol and things that have everything to do with her. Something shows of it-- the tension around his eyes and in his jaw, the springloaded way he holds himself, not knowing if he wants to shake her or cling to her or if he'll have to catch her as she tries to bolt. ]
Where you goin'?
[ he asks instead, lifeless and flat because he doesn't want to let anything more leak into it. A question only in structure. Maybe he means it in the straightforward way, maybe it means how the fuck could you, who knows.
He definitely doesn't know. ]