CHAPTER FOUR ,
and i pray . but i see red

⠀The cowed body of Carol Peletier lay before Isiah as he trailed his eyes over her. His pupils raked over the purplish strokes that ran over her shoulders, peeking out from the faded fabrics of her frayed clothes. Something inside him didn't want to question why she was here? The last time he saw her was at the prison, and he remembered being explained to that she had murdered their own. He only wondered where she had been?

⠀He couldn't voice any of this, as his thoughts only ricocheted back and made his throat swell. Isiah felt he was having an allergic reaction to words ― so it was best to keep them at bay. To conserve the syllables.

⠀Isiah and Carol lay in a temporal anticipation, adorned in their own uniform ― rather than the one produced by this substantial, and formidable hospital. And they didn't converse over the raw deal that lay between them... and the outside. He hadn't heard an abundance over it, the way Dawn sauntered towards the room they were both in and commanded in a stiff, subdued voice to "get your clothes on". And they acquiesced.

⠀The young man had to assist Carol with getting her own on, due to the severity of her contusions. Then he briskly darted to his own room, and appareled his own afflicted skin.

⠀"What's taking so long," she enunciated. Carol rolled her eyes lightly, leaning back into the pillows. And it seemed just as she whispered those words, a person appeared just at the lip of the doorway. It was that doctor, the one Isiah remembered to be the one who told him about his condition. About his leg, and repeating the severity of his asthma, even though he knew that all off by heart.

⠀don't run... don't strain yourself.

⠀How could he not?

⠀Isiah also remembered his sister's words about their father ― don't strain yourself ― all we do is run. Words no more true than anything else nowadays.

⠀"Is it time?" Yet again, words failed to rush past his chapped lips ― except knocking in his voicebox like a watered drum.

⠀Dr. Edwards nodded to the duo, wheeling in a creaking wheelchair; the awful thing in the young man's head was, who was it for? So when he pushed it passed him, he sighed under his breath.

⠀Carol was helped by the doctor into her chair, and just then, another person appeared. Beth, with her tussled cast and stained yellow shirt that her brother recognised from before. She still had those stitches, etched into her cheekbones like ink words. Much like the tattoos Isiah had riddled his own skin with.

⠀When they eventually made their way to the hallway, an eery silence and foreboding calm set over each and every muscle Isiah possessed. He limped away, gritting his teeth with such a force he expected a curse from himself. A "dear god" or "jesus christ". One his father would reprimand him for; and he only wished for that. The scolding words from the old man with the severed head... now.

⠀But nothing sounded, just the soft patters of their worn shoes and heavy breathes escaping his lungs like they were captives of his body. And he allowed them to be free and never come back, so much so he thought he would run out.

⠀And the sickening thought of doom echoed down the placid hallway.

⠀But Beth's sharp whispers over her brothers shoulder catches his attention, as she babbles away about how she is going to escape... again. Isiah can't help but notice how he's excluded. And as he stands behind the mountainous crowd of officers, the doors at the end of the connecting hallway catch his eye, as they swing open forcefully.

⠀As much as Isiah wanted to bombard the officers with questions, about how is family had suddenly appeared in front of his face ― he settled with a steady silence. He almost went to open his mouth but was cut short at the sight of dirt tracking the hallway from whence they came.

⠀Four officers he'd only seen a few times; Rick, Sasha, Tyreese, and Daryl; followed by the boy who seemed to have escaped, he still couldn't put a name to.

⠀His heart clenched tightly and he leant backwards against the doorway adjacent to himself. And memories of his last encounter with Daryl rush through his brain, running through every word uttered ― and action commenced between the trio that had gotten lost.

⠀He wondered how long he had been looking.

⠀"Where's Lamson?" Dawn's tight voice echoes down the passageway.

⠀"Rotters got him," one of the nameless officers informs.

⠀"We saw it go down," the other chimes in. Isiah couldn't help but notice the almost predemonstrative way the officer said those words. The way their eyes kept steady, and the sequence of words didn't sit right in his stomach.

⠀They were lying, and Isiah knew they were.

⠀"Oh," Dawn whispers, and the small words send a shiver down Isiah's spine. He brings his arms around himself, tightly grasping his elbows and ducking his head. "... I'm sorry to hear that. He was one of the good guys." Somehow, the Greene boy doubted that.

⠀"One of yours for one of mine."

⠀Isiah doesn't know who says it but, he can do the math. He knows Dawn means as well as she can, even though it may be a little twisted. He knows there must be a choice ― there are two officers to trade, and three people on his side. Isiah presumed it was obvious; to trade Carol and Beth, since he hardly counted as one. He would slow them down, he wasn't worth it. Isiah didn't voice any of this despite his sister's frantic eyes casting over to him, as if she knew what he was thinking.

⠀Isiah Greene never knew his worth - he didn't think he had any.

⠀Rick meets his eyes, a slow nod passing over him yet the boy couldn't riposte it. He artlessly stood, and watched the transaction go down like he always did. Always as everyone turned to him like he knew the answer; but what was the point of him knowing, if he couldn't say so?

⠀The moment Daryl's voice fills the hallway with a short, simple, "Move," Isiah finds his footing as he pays closer attention. He didn't feel the need to detest against any of it. The man pushed the officer in his grip towards Dawn's side, staring darkly towards them like a stalking wolf. Isiah could remember the days back in the prison when Isiah tried to find out why he would always have that scowl ― he feels the need to laugh, but yet again, it's held back.

⠀His head veered towards his sister, as she costively starts to steer Carol's wheelchair onward. Isiah discerns a reverie within him, at the sight of someone getting anything in their abet. It's promptly diminished as yet another officer (Isiah had been counting, and this was the fifteenth he had seen these past few days) shoves Beth backwards and takes a hold of the cold metal handles, plausibly ruminating that Beth is trying her luck.

⠀As they plucked the wheelchair, Daryl's eyes meet Isiah's. They're putting two and two together, veritably. He knows that Isiah is going to be left behind, and he more than anyone hates seeing people left behind. He loathes the sight of his family being forced into the distance, and due to a late night intoxicated recitation, Isiah knew who Daryl's family was.

⠀Daryl's kindred did include the unfledged Greene boy, peculiarly.

⠀Almost everyone on his side had the identical simper, that yearning pain. And Isiah abhorred it.

⠀Recurrently, he avoided the girl's wired blue eyes as she searched for any presage that her brother was upset with the decision. Just as another transposing arised in the almost inhibited, stark planes of the corridor. Isiah doesn't know if he should be offended, dismayed or appeased. He knew Maggie may be on the other side of the building, just waiting for that saccharine reconciliation. Or conceivably everyone else that he had been dismembered from. Isiah felt an utmost disconnection from himself, and now he was only willing to sacrifice the reciprocity. Even if there was that unchurned verdict rising up from the apex of his chest.

⠀People have died... Isiah considered himself one of those now.

⠀Rick meets his sister halfway, reaching out a hand and attentively grasping her shoulder. He pressed his chapped lips into a thin line, and eyes the girl's brother as he pressed them cordially to her hair. He ushers the teen, and sends a regretful, and apologetic gander to Isiah, who only ducks his head once more.

⠀Isiah turns away from them, only now hearing them as they outset their leave. All with the small, alienated voice from Beth Greene ― begging them to turn back.

⠀The officer they had exchanged takes her flustered bearing next to him, and the only view he has anymore of his family is the reflection of knowing in her glassy brown eyes.

⠀This doesn't seem like it's meant to happen this way.

⠀"Glad we could work things out," Dawn calls out to the absconding silhouettes caked in dirt and sweat; the very essence of her aspirant. The very dissentient of all that Dawn was, a clean cut, yet ragged and trying woman. Riddled with the works of OCD.

⠀That's what Isiah could read.

⠀Without, seemingly, another word except a whisper from Rick Grimes; "We'll get you back, I promise," they almost make it to the door. Isiah thinks it's the promise, that tiny, unripe affiance that makes everything turn still as Dawn decides to extend their welcome.

⠀"Now I just need Noah!" Dawn hurries out. Then he could finally put a name to a face. Noah, the boy he spots as he rigidly teeters his body once more the the crowd bedizing his line of vision.

⠀"No... don't." Yet again, pathetically but intelligibly his voice doesn't leave his body. His mouth doesn't even vie for to open.

⠀When the boy's family doesn't up and run, except turning towards the icy contention, Isiah wants to scream and cry for them to leave. His hands feel heavy as his lungs burn lightly.

⠀"That wasn't part of the deal," Rick endowed with a slow grimace curling in his cheeks. Isiah could see the officers around him nervously fondle their weapons, and he swallows laboriously. He perilously wants to open his mouth, and even just sibilate a few words for them to take their chances and leave. But their heading footsteps tells him it's no use.

⠀Dawn let's out a heavy breathe, even though Isiah is sure her stony virtue couldn't handle the piddling movements of a diaphragm. Yet he hears it. "Noah was my ward," she explains in a tone as if she was talking to a four-year-old. "Beth took his place, and now I'm losing her, so I need him back."

⠀The impetuosity inside Isiah is percolating from his skin, and he needs to speak up.

⠀Noah takes a sharp step forward, almost toppling from his once balanced stance, and Isiah spots the familiar limp. But he doesn't get far as Daryl presses a palm to his chest, lightly desisting his vacate. "No," he take the steps forward himself. "He ain't staying."

⠀And then, in abrupt way, Daryl advances withal, becoming almost parallel to the woman he faces off against. "And he ain't staying - he's coming with us." He points a soiled hand to the woman.

⠀"You have no claim on them," she says guilessly, craning her neck calmly to the redneck. Isiah doesn't feel the need to repudiate on his behalf, but still, that cogent determination to speak still splutters in the bottom of his throat.

⠀"The boy wants to go home so you have no claim on him," Rick tilts his head dangerously. "And Isiah... he's one of us. No one has a claim on him, but himself. He decides where he wants to go, not you. Not anybody."

⠀"And he wants to come home."

⠀Isiah's heart soars, and then pitifully sinks.

⠀There are a few more exchanged words, but the once Rick says still drowns them out. he wants to come home. But he doesn't really now, he doesn't know where he belongs.

⠀Isiah mutters words in his head, nowhere for them to go.

⠀"Lord where do I go? I have no unexpurgated self. I have no hands of great evenness on these plains. My legs stand irregular across these walls. I cannot poise. Hardly twist to these trepidations. I don't belong in my own skin so where does my skin befit. I think things of sin ― please Lord, as you may have done before, without need for anything in return, tell me where my home is. I need my home. Is it even a home if there's nothing to walk within. Dear God, don't leave me here, in this skin. But where does my skin reside itself?"

⠀The prayer is sent in a few seconds, and Isiah feels nauseated as he always does after he prays ― like it's the wrong medicine and he keeps taking it anyway. In large doses of hope, as he wishes, anytime of day, with no anticipation of overdose.

⠀"It's okay," Isiah catches Noah's words as he once again casts his eyes recurrently glance over to the clique.

⠀Noah doddered his way to Dawn, with her beckoning stare. Only when Rick curls his fingers to the Greene son, does he realise they have done another exchange. It's obvious, and Isiah is ever observant.

⠀Himself for Noah.

⠀Isiah's digits trace the wall, as a scanty simper wants to make its way across his face; as undemonstrative as he is, it doesn't make it. Except he walks lamely, coming up beside Dawn just as Noah does the same.

⠀But his uneven vestige falters asudden, just as his sister swiftly curls her hands over Noah's neck and curls her face into his shirt, shouting a "Wait!" to the taller teen. Her brother longs for the same type of embrace he couldn't help but notice he had been missing. Ever since they had reconvened, she kept her words and affection assuredly away from her own brother, casting away her familial role to focus on an escape that cost her clear skin.

⠀"It's okay," he says reassuringly. But Beth's mournful eyes leer downwards.

⠀"I knew you'd be back," Dawn hisses, almost with a tantalising resonance. Beth's brimming cerulean eyes snap up to the woman, as she fixedly releases Noah.

⠀Something inside made Isiah want to scream.

⠀His sister advances to the woman, her lip trembling.

⠀"I get it now."

⠀Everything seems to blur just as the brink of the second, and Isiah feels as if this is a dream. Beth Greene lurches a hidden pair of medical scissors into the opposite woman's shoulder, lodging the miniscule weapon right below he collar. And then a gunshot rings out, vibrating Isiah's teeth as it rings in his ears. A small strike of blood, red speckled across his cheek like the moles starkissed on his back. Except these were red.

⠀Red. Red. Red.

⠀Isiah was afraid of God, but he was always afraid of man.

⠀Beth's body buckles, and her hair sails backwards. Her eyes fall shut, leaving her once tussled ponytail a mere wound. Gaping, and dark... now emitting her own blood onto the previously, blue speckled floor. And Isiah would know, because he was standing there just yesterday.

⠀For another second, Isiah is mute. He isn't able to communicate with the outside world. He's a sheltered voice, a whisper in the surely always going to just disappear. Isiah is a stray stone, he's nothing and he cannot speak a single word. Only for a second too late. Or maybe it's minutes, hours ― he doesn't know what his words could have done. But he's able to say one thing... only all too unpunctucal. All too quiet, but he's still able to drawl.

⠀"Beth?"

⠀He's normally a good observer, and apt listener but all he can hear is his sister's name and the hurried breathes leaving his lungs in such a worrying way, he feels the need to pray once more.

⠀The people around him don't move, they don't speak, and are just astounded by the whisper that escapes the Greene boy.

⠀Dawn shakes her head, uttering words but he cannot hear. And he forgets... he forgets his legs, his asthma, the inability to speak and the hollowing grief that starts to crawl it's way up his skin, and snake tightly against his bruises. The ones that turn green across his neck, the ones that connect his freckles like constellation art, and the ones that outline his bones. Isiah is a purple, green, and blue masterpiece. The anguish only seems to make those bruises darker.

⠀Isiah's fingers find the collar of Dawn's jacket, and despite his weaknesses, he pulls her to the ground and into the blood she had created. He doesn't say a word because he can't, he only splutter and cries against her forehead as he tightly presses the ends of his fingers into he windpipe.

⠀He squeezes tighter, straining and keening in short bursts. He can't catch his breath, and Dawn herself is having a hard time. He feels as if he's smothering a child, as of this is unjust yet he can't seem to take his hands away.

⠀They shake and shudder, his hands constricting her airways as her legs struggle against the hard floor.

⠀The others simple watch, still caught in the coda.

⠀And soon enough, with enough pressure and time, Dawn's contending arms and legs stop kicking, and she stops spluttering. Her eyes once turning purple, descend into an emptiness that Isiah is far too familiar with.

⠀Only then... just then, does he take his hands away.

⠀Then there's the blood, so much of it he swims it like a river as he helplessly crawls over to the limp body of his sister. He feels the need to crawl out of this darkness, but he falters when words escape him and he cannot let go of her tiny hands.

⠀"Lord... Dear God, help me." He repeats this like it's his final mantra. "Help her."

⠀The world is warmer as the blood pools around his knees. It layers his hands as be brings her wrists to his neck, holding them gently. As if she might break once more, like fragile glass within his palms. The rows of tears escape his eyes like a shining cascade, a silver foundation building the foundation at the nape of his collarbone. It pools unevenly, red and shining.

⠀And then he has no more words; he used them up. He plainly holds his sister's hands, and prays.

⠀"Hold your fire!" he doesn't know who says it, to atuned to his own sobs to care. It's quiet, and just like that harrowing gunshot, it echoes.

⠀He's having either a panic attack, or an asthma attack ― it seems he's having both.

⠀"It's over. It was just about her. Stand down."

⠀Isiah's indifferent to whether he's shot or not. All he can do is kneel and cry.

⠀He cries, and he prays, and he sees red.

⠀"You can stay. We're surviving here. It's better than out there."

⠀"No," Rick doesn't hesitate, as he loses the confident pose he once had in exchange for the tears protruding from his eyes. His eyes are glassy, and the same color as the girl now gone. "And I'm taking anyone back there who wants to leave. If you want to come with us, just step forward now."

⠀Not a single footfall is heard, and no one approaches. Isiah wants to laugh, and he wants to mock them. He imagines himself spray painting the walls in spite of the cleanliness, of yelling at the top of his lungs in condescension. But he can't.

⠀He cries, and he prays, and he sees red.

⠀But it isn't long before he shakily gathers his arms around her legs, hauling her minor weight in his arms and hissing in pain as he stands. He's too focused on the stillness beneath him, but he knows it's time to go. He wasn't every leaving without her, this way or another. Her brother pushes his arms into the blood, unable to open his eyes as his face screws up in frustration and bereavement.

⠀He limps, and he walks.

⠀He cries, and he prays, and he sees red.

━━━━━━━━━━

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ note.
this was a long and arduous and hurtful chapter. i am admittedly very proud of it. i feel this is the best i have ever done for a chapter. thank you isiah greene for giving me this
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