CHAPTER 21 | DEPARTURE

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  A wave of happiness washed over Lauren as she sat down in one of the pews, watching the group as they filled their plates with food and talked amongst each other. Laughter echoed against the walls of the church, it was a feeling Lauren missed. She gave a toothy grin as she glanced down to her full plate. It was so strange to be eating off a plate, she hadn't done that since the prison. It was even stranger to have plenty of food.

"I'd like to make a toast," Abraham announced as all eyes were on him. Carl soon got his food, and sat beside Lauren. She hummed in relaxation as she felt his arm drape around her shoulders; she felt safety and comfort in his arms.

The chatter ended, Abraham beginning his speech. "I look around this room...and I see survivors. Each and every one of you has earned that title." Carl gave a thoughtful glance towards the girl beside him.

"To the survivors!" He cheered, as many others repeated him. Both teens clanked their glasses together and drank from them.

"Is that all you wanna be?" Abraham added on. Her eyebrows furrowed in thought. Something she learned with this group is that she didn't just want to survive, she wanted to live.

Abraham continued. "Wake up in the morning, fight the undead pricks, forge for food, go to sleep at night with two eyes open, rinse and repeat? 'Cause you can do that, I mean you got the strength, you got the skill. Thing is, for you people, for what you can do, that's just surrender. Now we get Eugene to Washington and he will make the dead die and the living will have this world again. And that is bit a bad takeaway for a little road trip. Eugene, what's in DC?"

The man paused in thought. "Infrastructure constructed to withstand pandemics even of this fubar magnitude. That means fuel, food, refuge, restart."

Abraham smiled. "However this plays out, however long it takes for the reset button to kick in, you can be safe there. Safer than you've ever been since this whole thing started. Come with us. Save the world for that little one. Save it for yourselves, save it for the people out there...who don't got nothing left to do except survive."

Silence filled the room, until Judith cooed lightly. "What was that?" Rick questioned the toddler, making a few people chuckle. "I think she knows what I'm about to say. She's in. If she's in, I'm in. We're in."

A collection of cheering and clapping filled the room. Lauren turned her head to see Carl's reaction, but she knew she agreed with him when he nodded at her.

"I'm gonna get some more beans," Carl commented while beginning to stand up.

"Already?" Lauren questioned with a light giggle. The boy shrugged playfully. Lauren sat on the pew for a moment before seeing Maggie sit alone near the front. Taking her food with her, Lauren walked up to her and sat to her right. She wasn't sure how she wanted to start a conversation; a tense silence was passed between the two.

"You okay?" Maggie asked.

Lauren gave a glance between her and her plate of food, readjusting herself on the floor. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine."

Maggie began eating, but Lauren couldn't get her mind off of wanting to tell her what she wanted to know. She wanted to finish the conversation they started yesterday.

"I was abused," Lauren muttered out quickly, Maggie halting in her movement and placing her fork onto her plate. A sympathetic look pooled in her eyes as she stared at Lauren. "The group that ambushed us, they...I was tied to the wall with rope. That's where the scars are from, and...they would beat me,
sometimes I thought I would die there. The leader did it because he thought I deserved it. Just thought you should know, since you were interested yesterday."

The older brunette placed her plate on the ground, immediately embracing the girl. Lauren was tense at first, before relaxing in the hug and wrapping her arms around Maggie.

"You're here with us now," Maggie whispered, a weak smile stretching across Lauren's lips.

The more she opened up to people, the less it hurt every time she remembered.

➸ ➸ ➸

A lot can change in one night. The moon shone high in the sky, glistening through the tall windows in the white church. The luminescence of the moon clashed against the situation at hand. Daryl, Carol and Bob had gone missing after dinner, but Bob was brought back to the church with one leg gone, telling the rest of the group that Daryl and Carol had drove off. Bob also gave the grave news that he was bit.

Meanwhile, Abraham was forcing Rosita and Eugene to leave immediately due to the fact that they were being watched by whoever took off Bob's leg. The deal they made was that they would leave in the morning if Glenn and Maggie left with them. It sucked that Lauren finally got closer to them and they were already leaving.

Half of the group had left to go raid their camp which was at the elementary school 10 minutes away, the rest stayed back in the one office, locking themselves inside. Carl and Lauren stood side by side, keeping a sharp eye on the door.

An anxious chill trailed down Lauren's spine, hearing the front door being broken down. The group was coming for them. Both teens had the same idea, raising their pistols towards the door.

"Well I guess you know we're here," the man spoke, she'd know that voice anywhere. It was Gareth. The silence that filled the room reeked with nervous anticipation. "And we know you're here. And we're armed, so there's really no point in hiding anymore."

The floorboards in the main room creaked ominously, they were getting closer. "We've been watching you, we know who's here."

Lauren let out a shuddered breath as he began naming everybody. "There's Bob, unless you've put him out of his misery already. And Eugene, Rosita, Martin's good friend Tyrese, Carl, Lauren, Judith. Rick and the rest walked out with a lot of your guns."

There were a few more moments of silence besides the slow creaking from them walking around. "Listen, we don't know where you all are, but this isn't a big place. So let's just stop this now before things get more painful than they need to be."

Lauren's irises widened as the door handle rattled back and forth. Their men were trying to get in; Lauren kept a steady finger on the trigger, even if her breathing was shaky.

"Look, you're behind one of these two doors and we have more than enough firepower to take down both. Can't imagine that's what you all want. How about the priest? Father you help us wrap this up we'll let you walk away from this. Just open the door and you can go, you can take the baby with you. What do you say?"

Bullshit, Lauren thought to herself, knowing that they needed all the food they could get. And by food she meant them. They would kill them all in a heartbeat if it meant that they would have food for a solid month.

Lauren didn't have much hope for them, but her hope diminished even more when Judith began crying. Carl gave a worried look at Lauren, but she nodded at him to let him know she had the door covered. He ran over to Judith in an attempt to make her stop the crying.

"It's your last chance right now to tell us you're coming out," Gareth continued. Nobody moved an inch. Lauren heard them incoherently whisper to each other through the door, but she couldn't make out what they were saying.

Lauren expected them to blow the hinges off the door until a sudden silenced gunshot rang through the building. She knitted her eyebrows in confusion.

There was more talking from behind the door that she didn't pay much attention to, but she did recognize Rick's voice making Gareth's group kneel. After about a minute of talking, she heard all hell break loose in the other room. Slashing, stabbing, slicing, that's all that was heard. Lauren closed her eyes, trying to drown out the sounds of their group slaughtering Gareth's group. Even though they deserved it, those sounds reminded her of that night of the ambush. The amount of times she slashed and butchered that man who tried to hurt Carl made her stomach clench.

Blood seeped through the wound, as he cried out in pain like the other man. She took her knife out, kicking him to the ground.

"This is for everything you did to me!" She shouted while shoving the dagger back into him once again. Lauren seemed to drown out the sounds around her, focused on the nefarious feeling in her veins.

"How does it feel?" She questioned, blood covering her hands and face as she plunged the knife once more into his throat, until he finally died of blood loss.

Lauren squeezed her tired eyes shut as she refused to remember that night. Her trembled hands dropped the pistol on the floor. It didn't matter anyway, the threat had been taken care of.

The fighting had stopped, but Lauren refused to walk out that door and witness those mutilated bodies.

She knew how much hurt her to remember the pain she had received, but she had no clue how much it hurt to remember the pain she had caused.

➸ ➸ ➸

It was the next morning, and they were still set on leaving for Washington. Everyone was in a rough state since Bob was bit and had to be put down.

Everyone was telling each other goodbye. Lauren felt a little left out seeing as she didn't know many people well; besides Maggie who approached her first.

"You stay safe out there, okay?" Lauren stated, a chuckle escaping the older woman's lips.

"I should be telling you that," Maggie replied while stepping forward, the two embracing each other in a short hug. After Maggie went off to say goodbye to others, Glenn surprisingly came up to Lauren.

"Keep up that good knife throwing kid," he said while taking something out of his backpack, holding it out to Lauren. Her breath caught in her throat as she examined the object. It was her old dagger that was left at Terminus. She almost felt relieved to have it back, but it held so many bad memories with it.

But some things can't be left behind.

Lauren reached out and took back her dagger, placing it in her holster.

"Thanks Glenn," she breathed out with a small smile.

The rest of them filed into the white bus, everyone else saying their goodbyes. Lauren backed up to stand beside Carl who was holding Judith in his arms.

Maybe they would be able to make the cure and save the world. It was a long shot, but Lauren believed in them.

➸ ➸ ➸

Daryl and Carol had found their way back, getting traces of where Beth could be. Lauren never talked to Beth in the prison, but she knew she meant a lot to Maggie, so she hoped they would find her. Most of the group was going to find her, whereas Michonne, Carl, Lauren, Judith and Gabriel were staying back at the church. Everyone was setting up the church to be guarded, taking the pipes from the organ to stick them in the ground, warding off walkers. Most of the windows were boarded up by now too.

Anger seethed through her teeth through each hit of her hammer. She had been nailing down one of the last boards with Carl, but the night before, Gabriel had apparently spilled his sins. He had locked the doors of the church as people--including women and children--begged for shelter. He didn't let them in. Carl had finally told her about it, but she couldn't help but feel furious of his actions.

But she had to let it go, since she knew she had done even worse acts in her time in the apocalypse.

The group had finally packed up to leave. Lauren leaned against the wall as she watched Carl hug his father for their departure.

A few hours had passed and Carl and Michonne were about to board up the front door. Before they could do so, Lauren spotted a figure moving along the tree line as she stared out the window.

"Wait!" She shouted, as the two stopped before they could hammer any nails down.

"What is it?" Carl asked, placing the board on the ground and walking over to Lauren to see what she was looking at. The figure came out from the shadows, beginning to look at the church in admiration.

"There's somebody out there," Carl exclaimed while running toward the door, but Lauren grabbed his arm before he could move any further.

"Wait, he could be bad, or worse, in a group of even worse people," Lauren explained as he struggled from her grip.

"So you're saying he should die out there?" Carl questioned, making Lauren's eyebrows furrow in thought. "That's not who you are, Lauren. I know it."

Lauren took a moment to think about it, before huffing loudly and letting him go. Both Carl and Michonne ran outside, letting the boy in. Lauren peeped through the window to watch them, making sure he did nothing stupid. It seemed that Michonne was asking him certain questions, until he came in, trailing behind Michonne and Carl.

Lauren wasn't a fan of this guy.

He had wavy, short brown hair; most of the strands were covering his forehead. His clothes looked pretty dirty, as everyone elses, but he couldn't have been any older than Lauren or Carl. Maybe a few years from his height, but overall she didn't trust him one bit.

"This is Adam. Adam, this is Lauren and Gabriel," Michonne greeted while giving Lauren a knowing look, as if telling her don't be rude to him.

"Thank God I found you guys, I was running from a small herd. This place is cool," Adam proclaimed while glancing around the place. She almost rolled her eyes at his choice of wording.

For the next few minutes, Carl and Michonne began boarding up the door again.

"Wait, what are you guys doing?" Adam questioned. Lauren knew this couldn't be good.

"Protecting the church, why?" Carl answered, wondering why he was so anxious. Adam's actions soon became frantic.

"H-how long are we keeping it that way?" He questioned again.

"Not that long." Lauren answered while picking at her nails. She was already angered by this boy. She could feel his eyes on her.

After they finished the door, Michonne had the same idea as Lauren, as she grabbed ropes from one of the backpacks and tied his hands together in front of him.

"What the hell is this?" Adam asked while struggling against her grasp.

"You could be a threat, we need you under control for now," Lauren answered again.

"This is ridiculous," he continued to whine, sitting himself down onto a pew.

"Would you rather us throw you back out there?" Lauren seethed, glaring at the boy.

"Yeah, I actually would."

"My pleasure."

Lauren tugged at the boy's shirt, dragging him towards the front door. Michonne took ahold of Adam, whereas Carl grabbed onto Lauren. Both of them pulled Lauren and Adam away from each other.

"Knock it off you two," Michonne ordered, placing Adam back on the pew as Carl kept a tight grip on Lauren's arm.

Another hour had passed when Adam began whining again. It was more like random spurts of groans.

"What is it?" Lauren hissed through gritted teeth, turning to her left to look at the boy in the other pew.

"Ugh, it's just...this cut is like the worst thing ever." Adam complained. The girl stuck her tongue against her cheek, angered at his choice of words, once again.

She turned to see him looking at a cut on his arm. "Try for a solid week every month bleeding out of your va-"

"Okay, okay, let's just get him some stitches," Carl interjected quickly, biting on his lip to stop himself from laughing.

If she had to spend one more week with this kid she would probably throw him to the walkers.

➸ ➸ ➸

It was late morning the next day, and Lauren could heard Gabriel and Adam talking in the main room. She had been with Judith and Carl in the office room, until both teens walked out to see what all the commotion was.

"...regret this!" He shouted at the priest. Lauren stayed back, trying to figure out what he was talking about before they entered the room. Adam's back was facing the two teens, standing beside a table while trying to intimidate Gabriel.

"I'm sorry Adam, but we can't let you go." Gabriel replied while clasping his hands together nervously.

"No, I have every right to leave! 'Cause if I don't my...my group will find me, and-and kill you for this!"

Lauren clenched her fists, feeling rage flood inside of her. He had a group? That just gave them an even better reason to keep him here. If he knew where the church was, he could tell his group and they would be screwed.

"I bet they're searching for me now! Just let me go or else...we'll kill you!"

Lauren had enough. "Just shut up already," she exclaimed while striding over to him. Before he could do anything Lauren placed a hand on the side of his face, slamming his head down onto the table with a loud thud, making him unconscious as he fell to the floor.

Lauren hid her smirk, turning around to walk back to Carl. After shutting him up, it felt like a weight had lifted off her chest. His voice was even more annoying than Judith's cries.

"That's my girl," Carl stated while wrapping his arm around her, heading back into the office to check on Judith.

She knew Adam wouldn't be happy when he'd wake up.

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a/n: slay lauren slay