don't let the title deceive you

...

i think


oOo

Today was not a great day, Diana summarized. Mostly because Glenn was off to go through unimaginable amounts of danger for their sake.

The weather was all kinds of depressing, gray and colorless and sticky. It dropped everyone's moods about 10%. It was very fitting with the mood of 'farewell'. Diana avoided calling it that. It felt awfully final.

After their incredibly emotional moment the night before, Diana almost refused to let go of Glenn that dawn. Their hug had lasted way longer than a normal hug would have. And after that, as Glenn was getting into the car, Diana's grip on his hand was unrelenting. If you pried her, she would willingly admit she shed a tear or two.

She had total confidence that Glenn would come back safe and sound, and she had told him so. He was amazing that way. But still, an annoying little doubt in the back of her mind told her otherwise.

Back at home camp, Diana overheard her parents talking about the constant presence of death in their lives and how unclear and uncertain their futures were. She heard her mom cry.

Today was not a great day.

Alice was currently experiencing a low phase in her diagnosed bipolar disorder, which contrasted deeply from the energetic emotional high she'd been in for the past couple of days. Being off her meds did that. She was angry and touchy and barely spoke to anyone. They knew the best thing to do was let her initiate an approach instead of forcing one. Those were Alice's rules. She liked dealing with everything on her own terms.

Felix didn't even try to pretend to be okay like he often did. He'd been the last to come out of the tent, eyes were swollen and rimmed red. He hadn't spoken a word to anyone and sighed heavily every two minutes.

The entire atmosphere during breakfast had been runny with unsolved feelings and stuffy with tension. No one dared to speak until the very end when Sam had announced that the self-defense training would not be taking place. It was taken with droopy nods and sighs of relief.

During another shift of nurse duty, the dying flowers Daryl had given her had managed to widen the hole in her chest.

She suffered through her patients' questions, tended to minor injuries and listened to their stories and mostly one-sided conversations with a baseless smile that felt as fake as that last patient's pearl necklace.

When she was done for the morning, Shane approached her station telling her they still hadn't made contact with Glenn. Diana wished and hoped the day would finally end just. So she could retreat to the semi-comfort of her sleeping bag and not have to be a part of the semi-functioning society for a while.

oOo

"Hey Fe-Boy, my man!"

Felix looked up from where he'd been attempting to draw a face on the dirt, a pair of large eyes and a wide smile. He swiped his shoe over it, deleting all traces of the activity and stood to greet T-Dog.

The man had approached Sam about two days ago, saying how nice it was to have another brother around. Sam had resorted to Felix for a translation. Then immediately shot him down with a straightforward, "I've got five brothers but you're not one of them."

Felix had laughed at his dad's candidness and T-Dog's bewilderedness.

He befriended T-Dog with his boyish charisma and the man became a surrogate older brother to him. Felix loved his sisters but there'd been times he'd wished he'd had a brother.

"Hey, T-Dog, how's it going?" They clapped their hands together, similar to the handshake Felix and Glenn had invented for themselves. Except less silly and unnecessarily long.

T-Dog grinned and put an arm around the taller boy's shoulders, dragging him down slightly. He looked over his shoulder and raised a hand at Sam and Irene. "I'mma borrow your son for a while, that cool?"

"They don't understand you," Felix said. He ducked away from him and inform his parents that he'd be gone for a while.

They left in silence but Felix could feel T-Dog's eyes on him, questioning. He didn't feel like putting up a front. Didn't feel like putting up with the man's energy. Not today of all days. Not today after he'd dreamt of Tatiana and woke up crying.

They climbed into T-Dog's van. Felix slammed the door shut and dropped his head heavily on the dashboard, banging it a couple of times against the plastic before letting it rest. His locs spilled around his head, tickling his ears and cheeks.

His entire self felt inexistent. Like he had nothing inside to give form to the hole left in his body and he was caving in on himself. He didn't offer resistance to the feeling, he welcomed it, letting the emptiness swallow part of him.

He felt T-Dog's heavy hand pat him on the back once, bringing him back to the moment. He looked at him from the corner of his eye.

"You okay, man? Wanna talk or something?" His brow was furrowed in concern. He'd never seen Felix act this way. He'd always been humorous and energetic and a little over the top with his antics, never this shell of a person with bloodshot eyes and a dead look.

Felix sighed heavily and sat upright until his torso hit the seat and his head leaned limply against it. If he was being melodramatic, he didn't care.

"I miss my girlfriend. She's probably dead," he murmured, his voice cracking towards the end. He cleared his throat.

"Oh… shit, man." T-Dog sucked air between his teeth and rubbed the top of his shaved head. "I don't know what to say."

"You don't gotta say anything. Mind if I ramble, though?" He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and glancing at T-Dog. "I feel like I need to get this out."

The man nodded and mumbled a "go ahead".

Felix thought back on her. Tatiana. Her soft freckles, large green eyes, big smile.

The proud way she held herself. How they'd lay on his bed while he played video games and she stroked his skin with the tips of her fingers like he loved so much. He thought back to the light in her eyes when he gave her a real gold ring with their birthstones and names engraved on it on their one-year anniversary. And how Tatiana had almost cried and held him and kissed his face with joy.

He told T-Dog all this and more. Between sobs and hiccups, he told him all the good and the bad. His jealousy over the stupidest things and how he was sorry about it all now. How much time they'd wasted being mad at each other about ridiculous things. How much it didn't matter now and if he could go back he would apologize for everything he'd ever said. He would kiss her a thousand times over and he would treasure their time together. Because this was Tatiana, the girl he was 100% sure he was going to marry.

When all was said T-Dog pulled him into a bear hug. "It's alright, man, it's alright."

When he was released, Felix wiped his face on his shirt and apologized.

"Hey, it's all good. We all need to have a good cry now and then. It helps." He clapped Felix on the shoulder again. "Sounds like you had a good girl, man, but you can't possibly know she ain't alive. For all you know she could be out there alive and kickin'. Busting zombie ass all over the damn place."

Felix snorted, but the mental image made him feel better. Tatiana dressed like Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'Predator', mud on her face, yelling out "Get to da choppa!" He preferred to imagine her like this than being eaten alive by his worst nightmare.

He locked that thought down in his mind alongside everything Tatiana. He would cope. He might never see her again, but he could at least pretend she was out there to lament over him as well. Maybe one day they'd both move on and it wouldn't be as painful to think about each other again.

Felix sighed and inhaled deeply, filling his chest with air and determination. He smiled at T-Dog. "Thanks, dude. That kinda helped."

T-Dog gave him a cocky grin and tapped himself on the chest. "I'm the best, Fe-Boy. You gotta admit it."

With a lighter heart and some sense of peace of mind, Felix put a pin on his thoughts of Tatiana. He wouldn't forget her, not in a long time, but for now, the pain was still too fresh and he needed to think about something else.

"You had someone before this?" Felix asked.

T-Dog put his forearms on the steering wheel and heaved a short huff of laughter. "Nah, not exactly before. But I had a girl, couple years back. Damn, most amazing girl I ever been with." He glanced at Felix with a disbelieving shake of his head.

"Tell me about her."

"Boy, she had some bombing curves, thickest thighs I'd ever seen. Not the biggest rack, if you know what I mean but damn, did she make up for it," T-Dog whooped and seemed almost lost in his fantasy.

Felix was unimpressed. It was fine to like his girlfriend's body, but was that really all he missed about her? That was kind of sad. And not only because Felix was hopelessly romantic.

T-Dog peered at Felix, probably expecting some form of satisfaction from his description, but his expression dropped when he met none. He sighed, leaned back in his seat and rubbed the top of his head.

"I knew her from back in high school. I had the biggest, most stupidly obvious crush on her ever, and if she ever noticed, she never told me."

Felix nodded in encouragement; this was what he wanted to hear. He was a romantic at heart. Shit, as cliché as it might seem, he'd cried watching The Notebook.

"When we met back up, all that giddy kid stuff just punched me in the gut, ya know? I mean, I wasn't in love with her or anything, but the nostalgia, man, the nostalgia brought that crush right up and I had to ask her out. I swear I coulda screamed how happy I was. It was fucking ridiculous, Fe-Boy.

She was studying dentistry, 'cause she wanted to give people the confidence to smile. She volunteered at an animal shelter, 'cause her parents never let her have her own pet. And I always laughed at her crappy jokes, 'cause I never wanted to let her down."

"What happened?" Felix asked when T-Dog's smile went from ecstatic to melancholic.

"She-uh, she got lung cancer and uh…" He rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers and inhaled a shuddered breath.

Felix laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Fucked up part was she didn't even smoke, man, never had. I mean, how-" He cut himself off when his voice started to give and he turned away from Felix, facing the window so he could compose himself.

It was hard enough not knowing if your significant other was alive or not like it was with him. But T-Dog was going through this knowing his girlfriend was long dead and there was nothing he could've possibly done.

Cancer was a fickle bitch. It had also taken his grandpa that year. He'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer shortly before last Christmas. What had started as that evolved to metastases everywhere in his body. He'd been too weak for chemotherapy. The only solution had been to just offer him the best care possible until he passed away.

The worst part was that he didn't even get to say goodbye. Grandpa had been in Portugal while he'd been in Switzerland. The only ones who'd visited him had been mom - his daughter - dad, and Diana - his Goddaughter.

He and Alice still remembered him as the strong sixty-nine-year-old man who loved tending to his crops and caring for his chicken and rabbits and pigeons. Not as the frail skeleton of a man he'd seen in the pictures.

Cancer was a tricky motherfucker and both Felix and T-Dog had tasted its bitterness.

"I'm sorry to hear about that. She sounds really amazing," Felix said.

"Yeah, she was."

After a second of silence, Felix turned to T-Dog. "Hey, dude, how about you find me a better nickname? I'm not really feeling Fe-Boy," he admitted, hoping to cheer up his would-be brother.

T-Dog turned to him, forced smile and all, and gestured with his hand. "What you talking about, you ain't feeling Fe-Boy?"

oOo

Alice looked up as Felix entered the tent and lied face down on his sleeping bag.

"Same," she mumbled to herself and sharpened the pencil she'd been drawing with. She'd been lying there, drawing, since breakfast. She was both grateful for the escape and wishing she was dead.

It wasn't even anything in particular that powered the feeling. She just thought she'd be better off dead. No one cared about her, probably more than half the world's population was already gone, so who would notice just another corpse? Who cared?

To be honest, the logical part of her knew there were people who did care. But then again, did they really? Or were they just pretending to love her?

Knowing the doubt was something her mind was making up was different from feeling it that way. She told herself, again and again, it wasn't real, that she was loved, that she would be missed. But there was always this little voice in the back of her mind that told her it was all lies. That voice became stronger and stronger until it was the only thing she heard.

So to occupy her mind, Alice drew.

Her drawings were polar opposites of what she was feeling. She drew happy faces full of love and joy in hopes of drowning out the negativity she felt.

The last depressive phase she'd experienced hadn't been so low. She hadn't been so unwilling to do nothing other than lie in her tent. She'd been angry at everything and everyone, that was how she coped. She'd hid it all under a thick coat of anger but still had cooperated in the goings on of nowadays society nonetheless. She had worked together with her family to ensure their survival and had found enough motivation to go through daily life without wanting to die.

She'd had thoughts of suicide in the past. She'd pass by a car on the street and consider throwing herself in front of it, same with trains. She'd thought of jumping from a high building, feel the wind rush by her as she plunged to her death. But she'd never been so bold as to try anything. She wanted to be dead without the hassle of killing herself.

Mostly because of her religious upbringing. Her family wasn't extremely religious but Alice had always been scared of the Hell her grandma used to tell her about. She joked about belonging there many times but she knew how terrified she was of the concept.

Something that also made her want to stay alive a little longer was little things. If she died, she wouldn't know how her favorite show would end. She wouldn't hear new songs from her favorite band. But now the world was dead and none of those things mattered anyway.

Still, she didn't let it deter her. She wished she was dead, but she would never kill herself.

To her, killing herself now would be giving in, giving up. It would be seen as an act of cowardice. And if there's something Alice was not, was a coward.

"Something you want?" she asked Felix. "I'm tryna concentrate here and your stinky feet are right up in my face."

Felix pressed his sneakered foot against her cheek. She yelled out in disgust and slapped it away. She punched him on the hip afterward but ended up hurting herself on his sharp bones. "Go away, you skinny comemierda. Get out of here and leave me the fuck alone."

"The tent ain't yours," Felix countered after sitting upright. He seemed too lethargic to fight back. "Hey, whatcha drawing?"

Alice widened her eyes and covered the sketchbook with her arms. "Nothing!"

"Was that-"

"It was nothing. I'm drawing skulls and dead flowers. Leave, now!" Alice bellowed and lowered her head, letting her hair help with hiding.

"Bitch, I live here. I'm not leaving." Felix plopped himself back on his sleeping bag, crossed his arms under his head and crossed his legs at the ankle.

Alice dragged out an annoyed groan. "Fine, do whatever the fuck you want. Just stay over on your side." And that's mainly the reason why Diana always slept in the middle of them; natural barrier, neutral as they came.

Alice scooched away to the very end of the tent, as far away from Felix as possible. She uncovered her book after checking over her shoulder that he wasn't looking. His eyes were closed and mouth slightly apart, probably on the verge of falling asleep.

She looked back down. She'd drawn herself, in her cartoonish style, hair extra big and poofy and an unnaturally big smile on her lips, throwing a peace sign.

The lines were sketchy, just as she liked them but she was considering cleaning them up for a smoother effect.

Around her, she'd done her best to draw renditions of her family. Diana was to her right, giving her bunny ears with a flower stuck in her hair like Alice had seen her the day before. Felix had his arms crossed and had a confident smirk on his lips, locs flopping over his forehead, covering one eye – only because it had been a pain to get the other one right.

Mom and dad stood behind their children, looking down at them with pride. She'd accidentally drawn them too tall and floaty as if angels from a cloud, but she liked the effect and let it be.

Alice flipped over the past attempts, all goofy looking and with beginner mistakes that she hadn't been able to tolerate and had forced herself to start over.

She started drawing intricate flower designs around the five people. Her tongue poked slightly out of her mouth in focused genius. When she was done, she peeked again over her shoulder, but Felix appeared to really have fallen asleep.

She smiled softly at the drawing. It was cheesy as all hell and she'd never let another set of eyes see it, but it was something she would treasure. Not only because it was one of her best works until now, but because it would be something that she could look at when she had her next low. Something to remind her that she was loved and she had something to live for.


please leave a comment, tell me your thoughts, i'd really appreciate it.