[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 414 - Explosive — Heartbreak

Rick and Glenn had bolted.

Leon could almost picture them now, crammed into some corner together, frantically spinning a whole story about the unspeakable "brotherhood" between him and Daryl.

Fuck.

What the hell was any of this.

His temples started throbbing again.

This new ability was like a goddamn Pandora's box. You never knew, after prying open the next person's head, whether an angel or a devil was going to come crawling out.

Daryl's Oedipus complex bullshit was already enough of a headache on its own.

He needed somewhere quiet.

Somewhere he could actually sit down and figure out what kind of animal this new tenant living inside him really was.

Leon skirted wide around the Dormitory Area and headed toward the vegetable garden on the prison's far side.

Thick snow had buried it completely. Not a soul in sight. Silent as the end of the world.

Then he came around a corner.

Soft guitar strings, carrying just a trace of melancholy, drifted down from the nearby guard post. A clear female voice floated with them.

Beth.

Hershel Greene's youngest daughter. Maggie's little sister.

She was sitting alone on the guard post railing, a wooden guitar cradled against her chest, her long denim-clad legs swinging lazily in the air. The last light of the setting sun caught her blonde hair and gilded it, giving her the warm glow of a girl painted into an oil canvas. Clean. Utterly out of place in this shit world.

She must have felt his eyes on her, because the music stopped dead.

The girl spun around.

The second she saw it was Leon, that clean little face went red, fast, like someone had flipped a switch. Her hands tightened around the guitar without her even seeming to notice.

"Leon..."

She said his name barely above a whisper, voice thin as a mosquito's hum. Her eyes slid away. She couldn't look at him.

Like a rabbit that had just heard a twig snap.

Leon stopped walking.

That dangerous thought surfaced again, uninvited.

Daryl's willpower had been like a stone soaked in ice water, dense and cold and stubborn. But he'd still found the crack. Worked it open. Made the man bleed out everything he'd buried deepest.

Rick was sharper. One look, and Rick had felt it, every defense snapping up at once like a wall going vertical.

So what about Beth?

This girl who looked like she'd been raised in a greenhouse. How thick were her walls, really?

Leon knew what he was doing made him a bastard.

He couldn't stop himself anyway.

He wanted to know the limits of this thing.

He raised his head slowly. Those dark-gold eyes found Beth's and held, steady, deliberate, while hers tried to slide away.

"What are you singing?"

Casual. Like he was just making conversation.

Beth's body went still. Almost imperceptibly. Almost.

She felt his gaze settle on her.

And then the thoughts she kept locked away, the ones she didn't even dare put in her diary, broke open all at once. A dam giving way, the flood slamming against the walls of her reason with everything it had.

She didn't want to say it.

She couldn't say it.

If she said it, everything was over.

"I... I was just..."

Her lips trembled. She was going to say she was only strumming, killing time, nothing.

What came out was something else.

"I was thinking about you."

The air stopped moving.

Leon's face locked.

Every drop of color left Beth's in the same instant.

She stared at Leon like she was looking at a ghost. Then she stared at her own mouth like she didn't recognize it.

I... what did I just say?

No. No, no, no—

But that invisible hand was still turning inside her head.

"Ever since the farm..."

Her voice cracked. Tears spilled free from those blue eyes, unstoppable now.

"When you saved me..."

"I thought... you were different. Different from everyone else."

"There's a smell on you. It's nice. Nicer than my dad's tobacco, even."

"Back then I thought — if I could just be held by someone like that... even if the walkers got me after... it didn't seem so bad."

"I feel like you're another father to me. Like you're always watching over me."

Leon just stood there.

Completely blindsided.

Fuck.

Was it possible for one person to be carrying this much?

But she wasn't done.

"That night... I saw."

Her voice dropped. Nearly gone.

But every word hit like a charge going off, one after another, detonating deep inside Leon's skull.

"Maggie... and that Korean doctor... they went into your room."

"I wasn't asleep. I was at the door. Through the crack, I..."

"I saw everything."

"Maggie was loud. She said she liked you. She said she'd never felt that good in her whole life."

"The doctor too. She said things I didn't understand."

"The three of you..."

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