A/N: Ch 3 is up!

DustyClouds, thank you for bearing with my lateness xD. Your words have wise meanings xD. Stay fabulous ^.^ Wendy, thank you! I'm very sorry for the late update again, but I will be able to update more often now that gifts have been finished xD. Now, about the Sophia thing, she's going to die. Her death is going to be used as a part of Eden's development. I don't really like changing up the storyline in general anyway. . . .god I feel so mean to Sophia (RIP you sweet little girl ). HappyGoLuckyGirl, thanks xD. Amaya Albarn, thank you~. Timeofchange, here's your chapter xD. Savannah's Angels, thank you!

Once again, I apologize deeply for the late update. It might be like this for a while, but I can assure you that I will be able to update more frequently now that the painful process of gift-wrapping is finished xD. Now then, how is everyone's Christmas? Consider this chapter a late gift from me to all of you lovelies who take time from your life to read my story ^.^

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE WALKING DEAD

Enjoy~

Eden: Season Two

Ch. 3: Little girl with a Doll

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I'm running. I'm running so fast my lungs hurt and it's hard to breathe, but that just makes me run even more.

"Eden!"

I hear my name catch up to me, but I just shut it out and ignore the stinging pain in my eyes—wait, why am I crying? I don't cry anymore, so that can't be it. Am I scared? No, there's no time to be scared anymore when they're walking the Earth. So why? Why am crying again? Why am I chasing a girl with a doll?

Why did she have to get lost?

"It would've been better if you'd got lost instead of Cal."

Shut up—

I'm pretty sure my knees are numb by now, but I don't care. I keep running.

–Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

Cal, help me.

"—den! Eden!"

I feel a hand grab at my hand, and it's not a good feeling. Why don't I feel reassured? Oh yeah, Sophia's being chased by two walkers and I'm being pulled into the arms of this police officer who's supposed to be going after Sophia instead of me.

Because nobody cares for orphans.

"Hey. Hey—look at me."

I thrash in the unfamiliar warmness for god knows how long, and then I shrivel up. I deflate. I slump into this person's arms and press back the stinging feeling in my eyes.

"Sophia," My voice is hoarse, and it's painful to talk—but I do. "She's still out there." She's lost. "W-We gotta find her—"

"I know." Rick says, and I stare into the eyes that are the same blue as Carl's. "I know."

I can smell the sweat and dirt rolling off of him, kinda like how Lorel used to smell—

I nod, breathless, and Rick pushes me from him at arm's length and stands. "But first, you gotta get out of here. Alright? Do you know the way?"

But I don't want to get out of here. I want to find Sophia.

"Sit in the corner and don't talk. You'll just be in our way."

I look around. There's the trees. The grass. The leaves. The sounds. The sun.

"Always keep the sun on your left shoulder."

I nod.

Rick nods back at me and pushes me in the direction where we came from. The highway where Sophia ran from and when I yanked Carl's hand from mine. I look back to see the familiar blue in Rick's eyes, and he nods again, this time waving his hand and then running in the direction of the girl with the doll.

"Go!"

I run.

Before this world went to hell, mom used to drive me to Lorel's house almost all the time—probably to get me out of the house to sleep with someone other than dad, but that wasn't my business. Lorel's house was different. Her house smelled like coffee and sweat—the good kinds of smells. I liked it. But what I liked the most was her teaching me how to hunt. When she just dragged me out to the woods out of nowhere and told me to watch her catch a squirrel. It was comfortable. I felt comfortable.

Felt.

And I feel so much more different now because my legs are aching by the time I come back to the car infested area and I can barely breathe because Sophia is still out there. She's still out there. I can barely breathe. The dead came back to life. We need to keep scavenging. We can't end up like Amy or Jaqui or Jim and we can't ever stop. It's so much now. There's just so many problems we all have and I try to press back what wants to come out so hard I don't say anything when Lori grabs my arm and yells at me for running off.

"You always stay in my sight from now on, got it?" A fierce voice—kinda like yours, Lorel.

I can only manage a nod while she pulls me into a hug. I can see Carol from here, leaning next to a blue Ferrari, and I know she's disappointed. She's giving me one of those looks that says that she doesn't want to see me. She wants to see Sophia. . .kinda like how dad used to look at me. He wanted to see Cal.

When Lori lets go of me, that's when everyone comes over and I have to retell the story—that Rick is on his way to saving Sophia. That he's tracking her down while I was running back over here.

And now we don't do anything but wait and sit on dirty cars.

I don't know where the bag of mints are anymore.

I don't even remember how it tasted.

Rick is back. He's back and I feel the corners of my mouth move until I see someone missing.

The girl with a doll is lost.

He didn't bring her back.

I slide off of the car I was sitting on—the car that Carl and I were laying under—and I walk up to Rick with the rest of the group. He looks surprised. Why?

"She's not back yet?"

Wait. What? What do you mean?

Carol crumples to the floor and cries. It's a full-blown waterworks show, and we all don't say anything as Lori rushes over and rubs her back.

I don't say anything because—where is Sophia?

And Rick explains. He explains how he found her and then left her to take on the other two walkers.

He lost her.

Carl grasps my wrist and that's when I realize that he's next to me. And I look at his face to see—to make sure that this is for real.

Carl stares into my eyes, and we share this small moment where there's barely any contact between us other than his warm hand and the fact that I wasn't able to press back some of the feelings I've bottled up.

This is real.

Rick, Daryl, Shane, and Glenn are gone now. Went to look for Sophia.

But that doesn't really do us any good because Shane and Glenn come back just around an hour later. Shane does the talking. He tells us not to panic and that Sophia's going to be just fine.

And somehow, I can't bring myself to believe him.

So that leaves me standing next to Dale as he fixes the RV while Shane and Andrea are moving cars out of the way. In the corner of my eye, I see Carol standing beside the guardrail, still waiting for the little girl with a doll to come back.

Dale's working with one of those complicated-looking wires now. I shift my feet from one to the other before looking into the same place that Dale was looking in before.

"Better not get your head in too deep." Dale glances over at me and raises his eyebrows.

I slowly pull my head back. "Can you fix it?"

"Fix it?" Dale looks at me for a moment and smiles. "It used to be a lot worse before."

My head moves up to him as I wiggle my toes. "How so?"

"Used to break down all the time whenever my wife and I went out of state—"

"Why aren't we out there looking? Why're we movin' cars?"

I turn my head to the voice that's speaking—Carol. She has her arms around herself and takes a glance at me before looking at Dale. Something inside of me tightens as I stare at the mother of the lost girl with a doll, and I feel like crying for her despite everything.

"Well, we have to clear enough room so I can get the RV turned around as soon as it's running." Dale moves his arms around, making hand gestures. "Now that we have fuel, we can double-back to a bypass that Glenn marked on the map."

Shane then walks over to us, shotgun in hand. I look around and I see everyone moving, carrying crates and still scavenging until there's nothing left.

I look away and listen to Shane mumbling something about, 'Goin' back's gonna be easier than trying to get through this mess.'

And I'm about to ask him if he's given up on Sophia too until Carol tells all of us that we're not leaving without the lost girl with the doll. Her voice is wavering and I think she's about to cry, but she bottles them up. She bottles them up just like me and waits for something to happen. Lori walks over to comfort her.

"Hey," She touches Carol's back, whispering in a motherly voice: "That goes without saying."

"Rick and Daryl. They're on it—okay? Just a matter of time." Shane says, and he's using an extra gentle voice when talking to her.

I turn my gaze away from all of this and instead choose to make eye-contact with Carl, who's probably the only one that I can call a friend right now.

Because the knot in my stomach keeps tightening whenever I think about the little girl with a doll that got lost in the woods.

Shane tells us to keep going—keep working so that we don't think about Sophia.

I'm still working my brain around on how Dale fixes the RV until I feel the shadow behind me again. It's a good shadow; good person. My friend.

"Hey." He says, and there's something familiar in his eyes that I used to recognize, "I wanna show you something."

I turn my head to Dale as he gives me a pat on the back and ushers me towards Carl.

We walk—more like Carl leading me to a rusted, blue truck.

"Look." He says, pointing to the window. I squint my eyes and peer inside on my tiptoes only to see another dead body. Dead. Not alive. Not moving around. Dead.

I bounce back onto my heels and spin around to face Carl. "What do you wanna show me?"

And before I can walk away he grins. "Under the arm," He points a finger at the window again. "You see it?"

I go up on my tiptoes again and squint my eyes. True to his word, tucked under the rotting corpse's arm is an axe—or maybe a hatchet.

And before I can say anything, I see Carl right next to me, about to open the door. "What are you doing?" I hiss.

He raises his eyebrows. "We need it."

We already have weapons, is on the very tip of my tongue. But I don't say it because it's Carl. He's doing something that I've been attempting to do with my parents before I gave up. He's trying to be useful.

"Suit yourself." I mutter, standing back until I'm several inches apart from him. I watch as he opens the door with a slight tug, the arm of the corpse falling out, looking as if it's trying to grab Carl. I bring my hand back to my side just in time before Carl could see that I was going to pull him away from it.

I stay mute as Carl glances at the corpse and then me, uncertainty in his eyes.

"What?" I cross my arms and watch as he stares at me.

"Aren't you doing this with me?"

"No."

"Why?" Carl asks me, and there's a slight hint of accusation that shouldn't be there. "You scared?"

My arms stay crossed as we stare at each other. Blue on blue. Honestly, what did he think I was? Scared? After having a walker on top of me at the quarry, I can handle myself just fine. "You made the call." I raise my eyebrows again, gesturing to the hatchet tucked under the arm of the dead body.

Carl turns back around to face the body, closing whatever distance there was as he pulls at the wrapped weapon. I think I hear him groan as he places his hand on the wheel for support and tugs at the item. It doesn't budge one bit.

He backs away several steps and I uncross my arms.

"I can't get it out." He says before lifting himself into the car again and making another attempt at getting it out. I walk over to where Carl is and bring myself up next to him as I wrap my hands around the bundle.

He looks at me. "What're you—"

"I'm helping."

And there's nothing but this awkward silence as we stare at each other again.

I raise my eyebrows, breaking whatever just happened and bringing back the reality of the dead body that's in front of us. "Are we going to pull it out?"

He nods for a moment, and I take a breath before saying: "One—Two—Three!"

And before either of us know it, we're both on the ground with the black bundle on Carl's lap. For a second, I'm confused until he grins and looks at me with wide eyes.

"It's an arsenal."

We show the arsenal to Shane, and he tells them to give them to Dale, which we do, but I'm still confused as to why Shane gave us a somewhat cold shoulder. He and Carl got along so well before—

And we go back to scavenging. We go back to what we're good at doing—stealing cans of food from dead people that don't have graves.

I help Lori with organizing the food as everyone else adds to the pile of cans and bottles. And despite how busy I am, from doing chores to changing into fresh clothes, time doesn't stop. It rolls around up to the point where the sun is setting and there's still no Sophia.

And it's still going. Nature never waits for us to catch up. Nature watches. It watches while we struggle and crawl until we go BOOM.

Until time stops ticking for us, and we won't even care about the days going by.

And by the time I'm organizing a water bottle into a row, I see them—Rick and Daryl.

"They're back." I hear someone say, and I stop what I'm doing and I run over to them with the rest of our people, only to see the one person that we've been looking for missing.

She's not here. She's not here with us. God, they didn't find her? How can they not find her? Daryl's supposed to be a hunter like Lorel and—

"But she's twelve!" I hear Carol cry out in between all of her shaking and the fact that Carl has his mouth wide open. . .I guess he never considered what I was thinking about this whole time.

The girl with the doll is still lost.

And I don't feel any of this. I don't feel any of this right now; the fact that they're going to pick up the trail tomorrow, the fact that they gutted a walker and the blood, blood, blood. Oh my god, what if that was Sophia—no, it wasn't. She's going to be oka—no, I don't know anymore. I don't know what to think anymore—

And I hear Carol's accusation. That Rick left her daughter. That Rick had to draw the walkers off. This is Sophia. The girl who carries a doll around and probably still believes in Santa Clause. . .And even with him drawing off the walkers, how would she be able to run back here on her own? She isn't like me. It should've been me.

Because nobody would care if I got lost.

"My little girl got left in the woods." I hear Carol whisper, and I can tell that everything inside her tiny little bottle is spilling and bubbling out. And that's just gives me all the more reason to think that I should've been the one to get lost.

The little girl with the doll shouldn't have been the one to go through this.

It should've been me.

A/N: So ch 3 is done!

Til next time~