That same day was the day she was officially a month pregnant. Wait. No. A month and two weeks. Daryl had found her a calender from a gas station they'd encountered on their way to Atlanta, and she'd been counting down the days on that. Today it was exactly a month and two weeks, and she'd known Daryl and Merle for exactly two months. What a thought that was. She'd only known the father of her child for two months. He was gone, too. She'd be lying if she tried to claim that she didn't miss him. He wasn't the best conversationalist, he was often angsty and lashed out, he tried to be like his brother sometimes, he was terrible at being supportive and she never saw much of him anymore, but... he was also kind, he did care about the baby (why else would he have stayed by her side and protected her?), he wasn't Merle - as much as he tried to be sometimes, he was talented and brave and strong, he hated to show that he cared about everyone but he still did, he could be incredibly funny and charming, and he always did the best he could with whatever he'd been given. Cassia couldn't deny she had respect for him. The night she'd spent with him, she'd claimed to have not remembered, just as he had, but... it had been the best night of her life. She'd felt safe for once. Loved. She'd never felt that way before. Cassia shook her head to rid herself of the unwanted thoughts that suddenly plagued her. Flashbacks. No. She needed to do something. She got to her feet and wandered off to go find Dale and ask him how his RV worked.
Cassia had never considered, or been considered by anyone around her as gifted or spiritual, or psychic. Those kind of labels were used for her elder twin siblings. Lavender and Basil. The vegan-Buddhist-hippies. It could not be denied though, that Cassia often got a gut instinct about something bad happening, a little while before it happened. This had happened numerous times before. She'd felt like something horrible was about to happen when Ross was about to board a party boat in Tenerife, and it had turned out that there was a rabid dog on the same boat. Ross had been so relieved that afterwards he had always followed her advice when she got feelings like that. Right up until...
Cassia felt a painful twinge in her jaw, and realised she'd been gritting her teeth way too hard. She didn't want to think about Ross right now. Or the Outbreak. It was too soon. The main point was that she had a bad feeling. No, scratch that. It wasn't just bad. She was practically trembling with it. She felt this off urge to sob. She was sat down at the campfire, Andrea and Amy were serving the fish they'd caught earlier that day, on the trip Cassia had gone on. Dale was sat next to her, and mistook her worried trembling for cold shivers, and started to worry over her, finding her another blanket. She didn't want to worry him and so she accepted it, allowing him to think he had been right. But he was wrong, and something was very very wrong. She could feel that. Cassia resisted the urge to whimper. Oh, how she wished Daryl were here right now. She scanned the group around this fire for Shane. Hmm. No. He must be with the other group. She turned and found him, opening her mouth to ask him if anyone was on watch, when he suddenly stood up, glaring calmly at someone behind her,
"You wanna rethink that log, Ed?" He questioned, his voice low enough that the flickering and crackling of the low flames were still audible. He was right, of course. Ed was being a twit. Walkers would be able to see them from miles around if that flame got any bigger. Cassia turned and with a resigned huff, decided to try and stifle her panicked feeling. Maybe it was the pregnancy? Maybe she didn't have a feeling this time? She aimed to distract herself by getting herself mesmerised by the low burning fire, tuning out of the argument and losing herself in the flames. She wasn't aware how long she did that, exactly, until a shrill scream tore through the air and brought her back to reality faster than if a cold bucket of water had been dumped over her head. The odd thing was, she hadn't known these people that long, and she already recognised that scream. It was Amy. She knew it was.
Cassia jumped to her feet as the now all too familiar sound of walkers started to sound from all around them. That horrifying moaning and gasping, wheezing and croaking, the snarling and wailing and sometimes even growling would always haunt her nightmares,
"Dale-" She called out to the man next to her, but he'd already leaped into action, no doubt trying to make his way towards Andrea and Amy. This left Cassia alone to deal with the walker that was shambling towards her. Rather, it was half dragging itself. One of it's legs could be deemed useless and the walker seemed to be using the bone to walk on. They really didn't feel pain or experience tiredness. Cassia wrung her hands as she desperately scrambled around for something to use as a weapon. She needed to think straight. What did she know she could do? She could throw knives, but... there were clearly now throwable knives in sight. In fact, the sight around her did nothing to help her, as everyone else appeared to be quickly losing their battles. A small uncomfortable feeling towards her abdomen reminded her that she wasn't just surviving for one... she was surviving for two.
This was what she'd needed. Cassia's eyes landed, finally, on the pile of logs that had been left by the fire, right by where Ed had been sitting. Where was Ed? Cassia decided swiftly that Ed must be the thing that rhymed with his name now. How poetic. She lunged forward and swooped up the nearest log, hyper aware of how close the walker was gradually getting. Others around them were fortunately busy feeding (she felt horribly guilty for thinking this, but~) and this one particular walker seemed to be entirely fixated on eating her. She was flattered. Cassia snarled and threw the log at the walker's head. The log hit the walker right in the temple, caused it to stagger back, but then fell to the ground and was no longer of any use to her. She cried out in desperation, and started to back up, aware she didn't have much room to maneuver.
Daryl Dixon where the hell are you right now?
Something hit the walker perfectly, right in the side of the head, and went in deep. Blood spattered towards her but didn't quite reach her, the space being enough. Cassia blinked. A crossbow bolt. A hand, to her left. A grimy, dirty, familiar hand. Daryl. She'd never been so damn happy to see that man. She could have kissed him right then and there. She didn't, of course, but she was feeling up to it. Daryl's usually cold, shrewd eyes scanned her face briefly, and then his hand clamped down on hers and that was when they started running. She was aware of Daryl firing off some shots around them. She had no doubt he got the headshot every time. They'd reached the RV, and everyone else was gathered here now. All the other survivors. She backed up until the hit the van, and then swiveled to look back at it in shock. She hadn't processed that it was there for some reason. The stench of death and just... human flesh was everywhere. It hung over them, threatening to suffocate them. It rattled around in her chest along with the panic and the horror and the anxiety. She caught sight of something among the destruction, and all of that suddenly turned to fury and vengeance. Sophia and Carol were struggling to back away from four walkers. Cassia's mouth set in a grim line and she fumbled for Daryl's hunting knives, two were hidden along his belt, she knew that, and ignoring his protests, she took them, and the tree that were on his hunting vest, and then she was off. She leaped over a dead body, veered right wildly, suddenly, to avoid a lunging walker, she heard a thwack behind her and assumed that must have been Daryl's work. He had her back. Good. She glanced right and automatically stabbed a walker right in the center of it's temple. She had to work to get the knife back out, but she managed it. Cassia had no idea what she was doing, but it was like something else had taken over her. The sight of Carol and Sophia vulnerable and on the verge of death when they could be saved was too much. It caused her to snap, triggering something inside of her, and now here she was, on some kind of homicidal auto-pilot. A knife plunged into the back of the nearest walker, and she kicked it hard in the back to dislodge her knife; a chunk of the head and the brain coming away with it. She used a second knife to force the extra bits off and then used both knives to get the next walker either side of it's head. Oddly enough, she had been so exact with her aim that the two hunting knives met each other in the middle of the walker's head.
Cassia blacked out after that, as a walker had gone for Sophia. Lunged for her. Of course, there was no way Cass could allow that.
When she did eventually come back to her senses, she was back over by the RV, and Daryl was kneeling down in front of her, cleaning up his hunting knives with a dirty rag. She frowned as she focused. What was that wailing sound she could hear? Like a siren. Were the police coming? Had there been some sort of accident? Had she been in a car accident with Merle and Daryl? She scanned the faces around her but could not pick out Merle's sneer or his smug smirk amonst them. Daryl was here, at least. Her eyes settled on the remains of a walker, and then everything fell back into place. A sob escaped her, and suddenly she was bawling, her entire frame rattling and shaking with it. All the tears she'd kept pent up and hidden away, all the anguish and the horror, her brave facade crumbled away and she knew Daryl had never seen her this vulnerable before, and he'd seen her at her absolute worst. He'd seen her during the darkest times of her life. It was funny how that was only about a month ago. There was suddenly an uncertain presence on her knee, and she opened her eyes to discern what it was, a teardrop falling onto the back of Daryl's hand. Cassia's lip trembled as she looked down at it, uncomprehending. What was Daryl's hand doing on her knee? She looked up to his awkward, somber expression. He was looking away from her and he was trying to hide it but the emotion was there. Was Daryl Dixon actually trying to comfort her? Cassia sniffled and brought a hand out from the blanket that had been wrapped around her, and very gingerly, she patted the back of his hand with four of her fingers. He glanced up at her and gave her a stiff nod, and then withdrew his hand and went back to cleaning his knives.
The sirens were still sounding around them. The realisation came to her that they weren't sirens, after all. They were the heartbroken cries of the dying and the broken and the mourning.
