HEART OF GLASS
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE !

[ season two, episode twelve ]

"Dale could get under your skin," Rick said grievously. "He sure got under mine."

Marley intertwined her fingers and stared down at Dale's grave. A small mound in the dirt, marked with a flimsy wooden cross and a blanket of sprinkled flowers. T-Dog and Daryl buried him the same evening he died ── because they were the strongest, most emotionally resistant members of the group who could dig up the earth without breaking down into tears.

It was beginning to hit everyone now. The loss. The grief. The realisation.

For Sage, the pain of losing Dale was insurmountable.

She was standing behind everyone, hovering near the tree line. She was wearing one of Beth's coats, and a pair of gloves to keep her warm on this early fall morning ── although, it didn't really do much. On the outside, she was warming. Inside, it had never felt so cold.

"He was never afraid to say what he thought. What he felt," Rick continued, folding his hands together. "That kind of honesty is rare. And brave."

Andrea shook her head slightly, trying to hold herself together. It didn't work. Everyone heard her gut-wrenching sob ── slightly muffled by her fingers.

"Whenever I'd make a decision, I'd look at Dale. He'd be looking back at me with that look he had. We've all seen it one time or another." Rick pressed his lips together, eyes darting around at the others.

His words elicited a few sad smiles. Dale's look was notorious around their camp; from the Atlanta days. You knew when you had done something wrong because Dale would inform you of such with a simple brow raise.

Marley was going to miss that.

"I couldn't always read him, but he could read us." Rick said. "He saw people for who they were. He knew things about us. The truth, who we really are."

Sage rolled the heavy watch around her wrist. The clock-face was upward, hands frozen in time. In the circular pane of glass, her reflection stared back ── red-eyed, pale complexion, sallow hair.

She didn't look up from the watch. Dale's watch.

"He said this group was broken," Rick's heavy voice ebbed through them all, triggering emotions that had been buried deep down. "The best way to honour him is to unbreak it. Set aside our difference and pull together, stop feeling sorry for ourselves, take control of our lives. Our safety. Our future."

Future. Dale never had one. A proper one. Fate snatched him up before he had the chance to find his true meaning in a filthy, rotten world.

"We're gonna prove him wrong."

Sage turned on the heel of her foot and made her way back to the farmhouse.

"From now on," Rick continued. "we're gonna do it his way. That is how we honour Dale."

✧.｡. *.

The group were moving into the farmhouse. The weather was too cold for them to stay outside any longer ── holed up in tents, only managing to stay warm by the dying hearth of the campfire. They needed to be beneath four walls and a roof, and Hershel accepted their request with ease; something he wouldn't have done all so easily back when they first arrived on the farm.

Marley was helping Lori and T-Dog unpack their things from the back of Jimmy's truck. She was still thinking about Dale. Sometimes, she half-expected to see him milling around the farmland, shotgun propped on his shoulder, a faint smile coiled over his lips. But the realisation of it all whacked her in the stomach so hard that she felt nauseous.

The truth of the matter was, she would never see Dale again.

"Woah, woah," T-Dog waved his arms as he padded down the porch steps, making a beeline toward Lori as she tried to lift a heavy crate from the truck. "Don't strain yourself."

"Thank you." Lori said breathlessly.

With a playful wink in Marley's direction, T took the box from Lori's hands and approached the porch ── where Hershel Greene had now appeared. The elder man glanced down at the wide crate, noticing it was the Grimes woman's things stuffed inside, and frowned.

"You can put that in my room," Hershel said, which elicited a a small nod from T-Dog before he made his way inside. Smiling, Hershel walked toward Lori. "You'll be more comfortable there."

Lori quickly shook her head, "We can't do that."

"A pregnant woman and a child sleeping on the floor while I've got a bed to myself?" the veterinarian inquired rhetorically.

"This is still your house."

"It's our home." Hershel corrected softly. "I'll take the couch downstairs. On nights when I came home reeking of Bourbon, my wife would lock the bedroom door. I'm sad to say that couch and I became old friends."

T-Dog was back, lifting more boxes from the truck. He turned to the two conversing, and raised his brows tantalisingly, "If you two can't decide, I'll take it."

Marley laughed a little.

She reached into the truck and pried out her belongings ── two backpacks stuffed with things like clothes and toiletries. Nothing special.

Hershel placed his arm on Marley's shoulder in a paternal sort of way, "There's enough space in Beth's room for Sage and yourself, if you would like to claim it."

Marley waved him off, "It's fine. We can take the living room floor."

"Beth was quite incessant about having the two of you stay." 

Oh. That was encouraging.

Hesitantly, Marley dipped her head into a slow nod, throwing her backpack strap over her arm. "If she wants us there, then sure. Why not?"

Hershel grinned.

"I'll let her know."

✧.｡. *.

Beneath Sage's fingertips, the dirt was cold.

She was crouched beside Dale's grave, finally able to spend some time by it without the pressing presence of others. A bunch of flowers were propped up against the wooden cross, all sprouting from a small hair tie in a plethora of different colours and shapes ── orange dahlias, pink roses, Cherokees, and begonias. They were the only ones she could find within two-hundred metres of the farm. Fortunately, Dale's favourite flower had always been dahlias, so they occupied most of the bundle.

Dale.

Sage missed him already. It had been twelve hours since his passing ── maybe even less.

She wasn't sure who to blame for his death, because it hadn't been avoidable. It hadn't been his fault. Dale was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But still, she felt like someone needed to be held accountable.

There was always Randall to blame, she supposed.

If it hadn't been for him, they would have never had to make a vote between life and death. Never had to wait out in the darkness for the sinful deed to be committed, despite the desperate protests against it. Therefore, Dale would have never walked off into the fields on his own, only to be pinned down and ripped apart by a rabid walker.

He would have never died.

Sage clenched her jaw.

After her parents died, she found solace in Dale Horvath. He was a good man with good morals. A good heart. Golden. He had brilliant paternal instincts ── something he had hoped to use one day with his own child. Unfortunately, his wife had never been able to conceive babies, and they aged childless. Lonely.

He had a good life Before, but it was always missing something.

And then the world ended.

But the apocalypse brought a lot of things. Death, destruction, misery. But for Dale, it brought that one thing he was never able to have. The one thing he felt was misplaced in his life. A daughter. A granddaughter. A smaller figure who looked up to him like a father. Or a grandfather.

That was gone now.

Sage had only Dale's watch to remember him by. She was the next in line ── supposedly the next Horvath. He told her so himself.

With it, she wanted to carry his memory. Keep the watch close. Make sure nobody ever forgot about him. They couldn't . . . they couldn't. Dale should not have died in vain, trying to make a point about keeping their humanity, leaving them all with thoughts whirring through their minds.

Sage would never let them forget.

She was going to honour Dale. They all were. And if that meant keeping her humanity even in the face of terror, then so be it.

With a quick nod in the direction of Dale's grave, Sage pushed herself up from the ground.

That's when she saw it.

Two figures. Both rushing into the forest, breaching the tree line, trodding over fallen leaves. One was a little less inclined to follow after the other, but hurried their feet along regardless, absolutely determined not to be left behind.

Hold on.

Sage squinted.

Why was one of the men bound? Blindfolded. Bloody.

She was almost certain she never seen him before, and struggled to recognise the face. However, once her eyes jumped to the other figure, she twigged on to who it was immediately.

Shane Walsh.

He was glancing over his shoulder, paranoid someone was going to follow along after him or figure out exactly what he was up to. He viciously shoved the blindfolded man into the brambles, and it took only a second for them both to disappear behind the greenery, out of Sage's vision.

She grumbled to herself and began to make her way toward the forest.

A voice inside of her mind was screaming for her to go back and find Marley ── to find the others, tell them exactly what she had seen. Exactly what Shane was up to.

Because she was almost certain that blindfolded man was their prisoner, Randall.

With a quick and unsure look toward the house, Sage inhaled deeply and pushed aside a hanging branch obscuring her path into the wood. She had made her decision.

She was going to follow Shane Walsh.

It was going to be difficult, but Sage was determined to figure out what he was up to.

A tree was her first means of cover. Shane peered over his shoulder, eyes popping from his skull out of paranoia. He turned back around and gave Randall a sharp prod between the shoulder blades. The boy almost toppled over, but Shane caught him and dragged him back to his feet.

Sage saw his lips moving. Fast and imprecise. Randall cowered back.

Nothing good.

She was hesitant to continue moving along. Her next steps had to be made with focus and agility, because she wouldn't be able to hear if a twig snapped beneath her boot, which would indefinitely draw Shane's rapt attention toward her. She didn't want that. She wanted to be invisible. Sneaky.

She had to see the floor. Watch her boots. Make sure they didn't crush crunchy leaves or dangerously thin sticks.

Otherwise . . . well, she wasn't quite sure what Shane would do if he found her.

For the next twenty minutes, her eyes never left the floor ── unless they came to a standstill, where she would swiftly jump behind a tree and peer around it while Shane and Randall conversed.

They were far away from the house now. Too far.

It was scary for Sage. She couldn't hear anything coming; it was all up to her sight and senses. Survival had never been easy, and she was beginning to wonder why on earth she had followed Shane in the first place. She willingly put herself in danger.

And sneaking around? Deafness was certainly not her friend in that particular scenario. When was it ever?

Maybe she should turn back.

She should definitely turn back.

Sage halted her movements. She looked over her shoulder, gaze falling on the maze of trees and brambles. Her heart was pounding in her chest, throat tightening.

Bad decisions were easy to come by. Too easy. This one definitely took the cake for worst decision she had ever made.

She twisted around and looked back at Shane and Randall.

They were stopped.

Sage immediately pushed herself behind the closest tree she could find, splaying her hands over the rough bark. Her fingers dipped between the indents in the surface of the bark, and a particularly sharp piece of wood unexpectedly sliced open the skin on her fingertip.

She bit down on her tongue.

Blood oozed from the laceration on her forefinger, trickling down to her palm. She didn't want to make noise ── but she wasn't quite sure if she had already done so. The pain in her finger was like a faint heartbeat, and it just kept thumping, over and over again, relentlessly.

She drew her hand up into a fist and pressed it to her chest.

Shane was pulling the blindfold off of Randall's face. He had not looked over his shoulder sceptically as far as she knew, which meant he hadn't heard Sage's movements in the trees.

Good.

She continued to watch the pair.

Shane murmured something to Randall ── mouth moving in a barely decipherable way ── while the prisoner began to move onward in rather long, happy strides. That was strange.

He looked happy. Relieved.

Shane trudged along after him. But ── well, he was glancing around frantically, and his steps were growing faster. His expression grew more calculated, more darker.

He approached Randall.

The scabbed boy turned his face sideways, and Sage could see he was grinning gleefully while he spoke. From where he was standing, he wouldn't be able to see Shane nearing him like a cat prepared to pounce.

Prepared to kill.

This was not good.

Violently, Shane lunged at Randall. He hooked an arm around the prisoner's neck and pulled him into a tight chokehold. Then, he twisted the boy's neck so sharply that Randall's entire head swivelled around.

A second later, Randall's body slumped on the ground.

Dead.

Sage clapped two hands over her mouth ── muffling the gasp of despair ── and slid further behind the tree.

Shane just . . . he just murdered a man in cold blood!

He just . . . he just . . . God, he killed someone!

Shane Walsh was a devil in disguise.

With a vacant expression, the man turned back to face the expanse of the gloomy forest. Trembling, Sage peeked around the tree, absolutely horrified by what she had witnessed, but still extremely curious to see what he was up to. Where this was headed.

Shane paced. As always, he rubbed his stubbly head while he thought. He thought deeply. Cogs were twisting and turning behind his dark, cruel eyes ── which were now much darker and beadier to a young girl who witnessed a man she never thought to be capable of such a corrupted act of unspeakable terror kill someone.

If he found her, what would he do? The same thing he did to Randall?

She had to get away. Now.

In her moment of panic, Sage almost missed Shane's second act of insanity.

He ran headlong into a tree.

Instantly, he collapsed to the ground like a bag of dropped bricks. Blood gushed from his nose as if a plug had been pried from it, and the bone was now sitting at an odd angle. And his eyes . . . they were closed.

He was unconscious.

A surge of relief thrashed into Sage's chest. She almost stumbled over the log behind her in her immediate rush to leave, but managed to stay standing.

While he was knocked out, she was able to make her move.

Without so much as a single glance back, she began racing through the wood.

She ran.

And ran.

Until the sky warped into a leaden backdrop on a nightmarish evening.

✧.｡. *.

Something was wrong.

The house was unusually empty when Marley left Beth's room, having finally put away all of her belongings.

She raced downstairs, whipping her head around every corner of every room. She called out a few names, but nobody answered. Jimmy was in the kitchen ── making some kind of soup ── and told her everyone had gone outside. Although, he wasn't sure why and was beginning to grow curious of the circumstances himself.

Marley threw open the screen door. From there, she saw the group. They were gathered around the barn that held their prisoner, looking panicked and concerned.

Anxiety immediately settled in the pit of Marley's gut.

"What's going on?" she asked Glenn breathlessly, who happened to be the first person she came into contact within upon her arrival.

He was gnawing on his lower lip, "Randall. He's gone."

"Gone?"

Rick trudged out of the barn, shaking his head furiously. Everyone eyed him, awaiting the bad news of the dire situation. "Cuffs are still hooked. He must've slipped 'em."

"Is that possible?" Carol inquired.

Andrea retraced Rick's footsteps and came to a halt in front of the group, "It is if you've got nothing to lose."

"The door was secured from the outside." Hershel informed, pointing at the busted lock whilst giving them a demonstration of what would happen if the door was shut.

Marley began to pace. Randall . . . their prisoner, escaped. It was horrifying news. He consistently put up the same cowardly, innocent facade whenever the group intimated him or dared approach him ── but it turned out to be fake. Slightly surprising. The boy, barely older than Marley, had managed to slip free from the restraints and run out into the wild. Or at least, that was what it looked like.

The door was a curious one, though. How could he unlock the door from the outside?

"Rick! Rick!"

The sudden and harsh, gravely yelling was coming from the treeline.

Simultaneously, the group turned to face the nearing figure. Marley squinted and saw who it was right away ── Shane Walsh. She could recognise the shaved head immediately, alongside the broad stature and long, seemingly confident strides.

He was bleeding. Crimson coated his face, smeared across his nose and chin. And as he drew closer, Marley realised Shane's nose was broken and a uncharacteristic look of panic dominated his features.

"What happened?" Lori questioned fearfully.

Shane continued storming out of the woods, "He's armed! He's got my gun!"

"Are you okay?" Carl asked.

"I'm fine," Shane assured, voice strained and harsh ── booming through the large clearing. "Little bastard just snuck up on me. He clocked me in the face."

Rick took action instantly. Previously a sheriff, he was fairly habituated with what to do in situations as dangerous as these. That had been his duty. It still was, but the wider public had been narrowed down to a compact group of people trying to survive day by day in the face of horror. They were his responsibility.

"All right, Hershel, T-Dog," Rick bellowed, jabbing his finger at the members of the group mentioned. "Get everybody back into the house. Glenn, Daryl, come with us."

Marley twisted around. Searching.

Sage.

Where the hell was she?

The voices flitting through the air around her melted into soft and muffled mumbles. She continued searching, eyes dipping between the gathering of people, scrutinising the gaps that her sister could have been standing in.

Nothing.

Panic began to develop.

There was no way Sage was in the house. Marley would have seen her. She would have been drawn to the commotion outside.

Glenn, Rick, Shane and Daryl were heading into the eerie wood. Andrea was ushering everyone back toward the house, glancing over her shoulder at the trees sporadically and fearfully. Marley felt like she was existing outside of her body ── hovering over the scene, struggling to swallow the truth.

For the second time, Sage was missing in the aftermath of a dangerously unfolding situation.

"Rick!" Marley yelled hoarsely. She ran toward the men breaching the tree-line, and Rick quickly placed his hand on her shoulder, looking even more concerned. "It's ─ it's Sage! She's not here."

"What?" Glenn questioned. He gripped his shotgun tighter and began using his eyes to pick apart every inch of the surroundings.

Rick shared a look with Daryl. Shane glared at the floor, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He looked . . . confused. Annoyed.

"She isn't in the house?" Rick asked gently.

Marley shook her head.

"And you haven't seen her?"

Again, she shook her head. The expression that unfolded over Rick's face did nothing at all to liberate her panic. Apprehensive and distressed, for he knew exactly what was out there; the undead, an escaped convict. And he knew how dangerous it was for a little girl who couldn't hear to be out there all on her own. 

He gave the eldest Whitman a sharp nod, "We'll find her. Don't worry. Now, head on back to the house."

Still, Marley refused to budge. She stared between the men, trying to dissect their expressions. Nothing of importance sprung to mind, apart from the obvious impatience of Shane Walsh and the avid look of concern and from Daryl Dixon.

"I can track her," the Dixon informed, breaching the short silence with words of reassurance. "Ain't no way she's gone far."

"I don't know why she would be out here in the first place!" Marley fretted. She ran a hand through her knotted hair, eyes flaring wide as another assumption came to mind. "You don't think Randall took her, do you?"

In the middle of the line of men, Rick paled. As if to rid of the thought, he shook his head and glanced sidelong at Shane. The man was still looking at the ground absentmindedly.

"Let's not think that way," Rick said sternly. "The sooner we find Randall, the sooner we find Sage. Alright?"

Reluctantly, Marley dipped her head into a nod.

With the men going out to look for her sister ── more specifically Daryl, who could track for miles ── she felt slightly reassured. Going out there herself . . . she would just be a burden, losing herself to fear and worry, tripping over her own two feet. She would provide little to no help.

"Go back to the house," Rick pointed toward the other side of the field. "Lock the doors. Keep everyone safe."

Marley swallowed her fear. "Okay." she said finally. "Promise you'll find my sister?"

"Promise."

Rick gave a final nod ── squeezing the base of Marley's shoulder reassuringly ── before urging the other men to follow him into the forest. Daryl gave the young girl a tight-lipped smile, Glenn did nothing as he turned toward the woods with one task in mind, and Shane refused to meet her tearful gaze.

They were going to find Sage.

All she had to do was hope.

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

my motivation to write is
absolutely skyrocketing right
now. this is literally the third
chapter to come out in three
days......

also, we're heading into
act 2 very very soon i can't
wait.