•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

EAT YOUR YOUNG ;
CHAPTER ONE
[ season one, pre-episode one ]

HOW LONG DOES it take for evil to sink in?

Eden already wants to kill, and the world only fell two months ago. She itches to do it. Craves it, even. Has the taint already congealed? Is her heart mottled and ruined?

For her own sake ── and Ed Peletier's ── she has left her knife in her tent, tucked under a pile of folded clothes where she can't reach it. Free will is a tricky thing. Sometimes, it grows bold. Self control crumbles, like a tall structure knocked to its knees. If Eden were to keep the knife attached to her belt like usual, she fears free-will will convince her to use it, and not for gutting fish.

Ed isn't a fish. And yet, there is nothing Eden wants more than to drive her serrated blade through his neck. Only his.

Since the Fall, she has seen more than enough blood to be content with the quantity of it ── the stickiness, the metallic stench, the crimson shade. Ed's will be a sweet sight. Once she plunges the steak knife into his throat, the blood will burst from his severed arteries like a dam broke loose, and with it will go his life, seeping through his sausage-like fingers as he claws desperately at the wound, trying in vain to staunch the endless flow. Good riddance. Ed Peletier will be another name etched into a hastily crafted cross. A dead man. Six feet under the soil ── exactly where Eden wants him to be. 

He is a disgusting excuse for a man. Anyone who lays a finger on their spouse is a disgusting excuse for a human ( as her Aunt once said, after divorcing from her abusive husband ) and Ed is one of them. Every day his breath is wasted on giving him life. Eden would sacrifice anything in the world to syphon the oxygen he retains in his lungs and give it to her father, who lies dead somewhere in Atlanta hospital. She would bring him back, breathing and living.

How can someone like Ed still live while her father, a good man, rots?

It isn't fair. She cannot possibly be evil for thinking so. She can't be evil for wanting to kill Ed, can she? He's the only person she's ever wanted to kill. Ed is a monster, and all monsters have to die. So that means he needs to die.

Soon. Eden's eyes shift to Sophia Peletier by the RV, hunched over a Disney Princess colouring book. Soon. I promise.

She isn't evil for wanting to save a young girl from the grasping claws of a man she is eternally doomed to call father. That, Eden knows. All she needs is a steel sword, a suit of armour, and she fits the role of protector, like one of those gallant knights in fairy tales.

Her steak knife will do. And her armour can be Shane. He always looks out for her.

She finds him in the midst of camp, sharpening his hunting blade against a flat stone. He has the edge of it so sharp that it cannot be touched, not even lightly, unless you want to slice your fingers to red ribbons. It's for the dead ones. One swing, and their heads will slide clean off their shoulders.

Shane is smart like that. She's glad her family are his first priority. No wonder they're still alive.

In the sun, his skin looks almost gold; it's easy to tan in the open plains of the quarry. The wrinkles between his brows are thick and etched deeply, as if gouged into his skin with the same hunting knife he currently holds, and he grimaces down at the glinting weapon like it has personally wronged him somehow. People find him intimidating. Eden is fortunate to have known him most of her life, otherwise she would too.

"Shane," she says, her voice drawn out, holding an inquisitive note to it.

Without invitation, she slumps down on the wooden stump opposite the one Shane occupies. She props her elbows on her knees and leans forward. The hunting knife shines in the sun and his reflection looks warped and funny in the flat surface of the blade.

He doesn't look up. He makes a grunting noise that signals he wants her to continue.

"Have you ever killed someone?" she asks . . . though, perhaps a little too blunt in execution compared to how it had been in her mind. His head snaps up instantaneously, and a look of concern slides over his stoic expression. Eden sighs, "Like, as a cop."

"Afternoon to you, too," Shane mutters. He lowers the stone he'd been using to sharpen his knife and looks at her ── truly looks at her, like he's trying to see into her brain. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugs, "'Cause I want to know."

"You want to know," he repeats slowly, rolling the words around his mouth. He huffs a short laugh, "Alright, I'll bite. No, I haven't. Not once."

"Not once?" Eden doesn't know if she believes him. She's seen cops on TV before, praised for their heroics ── putting bullets in runaway convicts, threats to the general public. Shane is a cop. "So, you never had to shoot anyone? Bad guys, I mean. Thieves and murderers and stuff."

His eyes, brown as tree bark, regard her curiously, "Nah. Been in a few shootouts, had to use my gun a couple times. Can't avoid that. But I ain't ever killed someone, no." 

He resumes his previous task. The knife scratches loudly along the slab of flat stone.

Eden's mind is still running a mile a minute. She's quite renowned in camp for her inquisitive nature. "Do you think it's hard?"

"What is?" Shane muses. Again, his eyes don't lift from his hunting blade, which means he isn't all that interested. He scrapes it over the rock and then tests its sharpness on a chunk of leftover fish. With very little pressure, the blade cuts clean through the white meat.

"Killing someone," Eden clarifies. "Do you think it's hard or easy?"

Shane meets her stare. He doesn't say anything for a long while, and Eden awkwardly averts her gaze to the ashes of a dead campfire in the middle of the log-chairs. She hates eye contact. It makes her skin crawl and her insides squirm.

"I think takin' a life ain't somethin' you wanna do, Eden," Shane tells her firmly. He's looking at her in that way again, where he seems to delve past her heart and dive directly into her soul. "You steal the air from someone's lungs, it's gon' sit with you the rest of your life. They ain't breathin' no more because of you, because of somethin' you did. You think that's easy to live with?"

Heat is rising in his voice. He's irritated. Why? Eden decides not to question it. She shakes her head quickly.

"No," he says at once, "No, it ain't. And it ain't ever gonna be easy, not even in this world."

Not even to save a little girl and her mother from some cruel beast of man?

Eden presses her fist against her knee, kneading the flesh. No. Listen to Shane. He's the adult in this, she remembers, the knowledgeable one. She's the kid.

At fifteen, she's teetering on the fine line between being a child and a teenager. But she's still naive all the same. She still depends on someone, and that means listening to them.

"Alright, noted," she mumbles, unsure of what else she could possibly say.

Shane makes a gruff noise in the back of his throat, "Good. Go find your Mom."

Reluctantly, Eden pushes to her feet. Disappointment blooms in her chest.

She likes being around Shane. He reminds her of her dad, only taller, broader, and with harder edges. He makes similar jokes, has the same humour as her dad, and possesses a similar quality to him ── a likeable one, a paternal one, a kind one. Carl likes him too. With their dad gone, he's someone to look up to. She thinks he might be Carl's new idol, which is a decent distraction from his grief.

But he isn't her idol. Rick will always be her idol. He's irreplaceable. Shane is just . . . there. He serves as a reminder.

Before she can turn away, Shane speaks again, "Hey, before you go, you wanna tell me who's on your hit list?"

Eden bites hard on the inside of her cheek. This is his paternal spirit coming to life. The protector. The advisor. He doesn't reprimand her, but Eden imagines that if he did, it would be something like this.

Who are you planning to kill? And how can I stop you? You must stop.

"I don't have a hit list," she lies. Or is it a lie? One person doesn't make a hit list. "Just curious, is all."

"You can tell me, Eden."

She clamps her teeth together. Too far. He sounds far too much like her Dad for her liking. She has a limit.

Sure, it's nice to imagine Rick Grimes is back in her life, sitting in front of her with a hunting knife laid across his lap ── but he isn't. It's Shane, and it will always be Shane. Nothing in the world can change that.

He can't be her Dad. Never. It's infuriating when he tries too hard to be. Eden won't let him. She doesn't want the reel of memories she has of her father to realign themselves with Shane Walsh's face in place of Rick's. If she forgets him, she will never forgive herself.

"I don't have a hit list," she asserts, her tone markedly sharper. "Can't I ask you a question without there being a deeper meaning to it?"

"Eden, I know you. Every question you ask has a deeper meaning to it──" He stands to his feet, his hunting knife dangling from his fingers, "──so I hope, for your Mom's sake, you ain't plannin' on using that knife of yours for anythin' other than fish and geeks."

Her torso aches, like an anchor has dropped from her throat right down to her stomach, dragging across her innards as it plummeted.

She can't shake her irritation. It itches. It makes her chest squeeze and ache. Of course. It's always about her Mom when it comes to Shane. What's best for Lori, what can keep Lori's sanity intact.

She sets her jaw, "I'm not."

"Killing people don't make you a hero. Just makes you colder," Shane says.

Eden's fists clench at her sides, "How would you know? You've never killed anyone, remember."

"No, but I know it ain't gon' be all sunshine and roses. You take a life, it'll hang over yours 'til the end. You understand? Don't matter who it is, it'll still stick." After a long pause, he presses his lips into a pale line and looks at the ground. He seems to know he might have crossed a line. "Listen, Eden──"

"──You can stop going on about it," she interrupts edgily. "I'm not gonna do anything. I wasn't planning on it. So you can stop."

Briskly, Eden stomps away before he has the chance to utter another word.

Anger and shame press heavy on her chest. Is she the biggest liar in the world, or is Shane the biggest hypocrite?

───※ ·❆· ※───

Deep in the woods, Eden feels a state of serenity wash over her in pulsing waves, despite the existential threat of undead lingering like a shadow in the trees.

Pressed together, they hide any possible clues to what lies beyond her cognisance. If she were standing on an open road, she would be able to see far, far down it, giving her every opportunity to run from a threat long before it could reach her. But in the woods, she can only see trees and bushes, and they provide ample cover for the dead ones to traipse their way up to where she stands. Unlike an open road, she has no forewarnings here.

She likes the trilling melody of the birds though. They're comforting. They distract her from imminent doom.

It's a bad idea to be on her own, sure, but she is within Dale's line of sight ── it's imperative she always is. He looks like a bug, hovering over the expanse of trees. He's so small from this distance, she can almost imagine an eagle swooping down from the sandy cliffs and snatching him up in its claws. She snorts at the thought.

He's standing atop his RV, as always, with an advanced pair of binoculars pressed to his eyeballs. Every day, he scours the perimeter for dead ones, and every day, he sees nothing but sand and dust and greenery. They're safe here. Dale only wants to ensure it . . . again and again and again.

When his binoculars swivel around, gliding over the area where she currently stands, Eden gives a little wave. Dale returns it, grinning, and swiftly moves on. He pores over the quarry now, into the lake where Amy is fishing for dinner. He'll linger there a while, making certain she's safe. Her and her sister, Andrea, are like daughters to him. 

So Eden takes the chance.

She runs for it.

There's a family of rabbits deeper in the woods, which she has only had the fortune of seeing once, when Shane tried to teach her how to hunt. He gave up. She's too loud, and scaring the game away is entirely the opposite of their goal. Besides, the thought of killing the family of rabbits didn't sit right with her. She didn't let Shane bludgeon them, and still they lived, thanks to her.

She slides down the sloped edge of a hill, her fingers grappling with the grass to save herself from plummeting too fast.

Her hunting skills are bad, but remembering directions is a talent she has possessed for years. She recalls the trees and hills she passed with Shane last week, and moves through them, past them, where the area is most familiar. The rabbits live close by. They were shadowed under a huge tree with gnarled roots that bulged from the dirt, she remembers, and their nesting holes had been bordered by tufts of wild lavender.

Not much further.

As she walks, her gaze drifts to the sky. Eden finds clouds beautiful, the way they slide and mingle and swell with rain, or darken with storms, or swirl into twisting tornadoes. They take form quickly. Today, they're sporadically dotted in a sheet of pale-blue ── white and fluffy like cotton candy.

She misses candy. Her mouth salivates at the mere thought.

Carl ate all the candy they packed in the first two days. He doesn't tend to share very often. On the highway, while waiting for instruction from the military, he gave her a single bite of his Big Cat to "help with her nerves." He ate the rest without hesitation.

Eden let him. She pretended to be mad at the time, but seeing him crack a devilish grin was far better than the despondent frown he'd donned after hearing their father was dead.

She wishes she could bring him to see the rabbit family, but her Mom will absolutely never allow it. Eden isn't even meant to wander this far into the woods herself . . . but what Lori doesn't know won't kill her.

She spots the first bunny fairly quickly. It hops over a patch of wild lavender, sniffing at the ground and blinking into the distant wilderness, ears twitching. Soon, another two join it. One is significantly bigger than the others, so Eden suspects it's the female ── the mother of the little bunnies. The others are tiny in comparison. Newly born, she assumes.

Quiet as a mouse, Eden drops to her knees in the foliage and presses a hand over her mouth. Rabbits are timid creatures, and the slightest noise sends them scurrying for cover. Sophia reminds her of one. She jumps at any minor provocations and bolts to duck her head inside her tent, trembling like a leaf.

Living under the same roof as Ed for years is undoubtedly the reason why. Sophia has been walking on eggshells long before the dead clawed their way out of their graves. 

Poor girl. She's lived in fear for years.

Eden inches a little closer. Her shoe crushes a stick underfoot and it snaps in half with an audible crunch. The large rabbit's ears prickle. Apprehensively, it scans the woods with rounded, beady black eyes ── any threat to her is a threat to her bunnies. Eden sinks lower, shrouding her face in the surrounding foliage. She isn't a threat.

Soon, the rabbit visibly relaxes. Ears flopped down, it hops through the overgrown lavender and settles closer to the bunnies. They're so cute she wants to scream.

And then she does. Scream, that is. The sound glides up her throat, spilling into the palm of her hand in a muffled crackle of despair.

A green-fletched arrow has sunk into the large rabbit's fluffy stomach, and it drops dead in the patch of wild lavender, unmoving and stiff. All morsel of light is sapped from its beady eyes. Death embraces it coldly.

Panicked, the bunnies scurry to hide inside the gaping hole burrowed in the ground, just as another loose arrow strikes the dirt nearby, aimed to pierce their hearts too. Once they have successfully skittered away, silence falls over the clearing. A whisper of wind trickles over the foliage, slithers across the ground, and kisses the rabbit's fluffy brow, and gluttonous Death claims His spoils.

How is His appetite not yet sated?

Furious, Eden rockets up from the ground. Her eyes comb the woods for the archer responsible, her shock fading into anger.

Daryl Dixon steps into the clearing. The green-fletched arrow lodged in his crossbow pins him as Death's accomplice; he's caught red-handed. He already has a string of dead rabbits attached to his back, and a few fat squirrels. Monster. Squirrels cannot possibly taste nice.

She thinks he might be deranged. He looks a little crazy. He probably is.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she demands furiously.

Daryl glances at her, looking almost bored. He ignores her and picks his way across the clearing, trampling the violet tufts of lavender under his boots. He grabs the poor rabbit by the ears and lifts it up, inspecting his work.

"Yeah, it's dead," Eden grumbles.

He grunts in approval, dislodging the arrow from the rabbit's stomach. It squelches, the pointed end swathed in blood. He attaches it to the string of other dead creatures, and it hangs there by its feet, swaying from side to side.

"Good," is all he says.

A breath of disbelief bursts from Eden's mouth, "Good? It had kids! Those little bunnies are gonna die now, all because of you."

"Ain't that a good thing," Daryl says, heading back the way he came. "Gon' need 'em when the starvation kicks in."

She storms after him, "You mean when Merle's starvation kicks in?"

He frowns at her, "What?"

"You never feed the rest of the camp. Only Merle."

Daryl scoffs at that, his pace quickening, like he is determined to put some distance between them. He never has been very good at communicating with anyone other than his brother. Especially not the children.

"Y'all do just fine on your own," he mutters indifferently.

Eden purses her lips. The camp is living on slimy, grilled fish ── day in, day out. Sure, it keeps her belly full, to a certain degree, but it's becoming increasingly harder to swallow Andrea and Amy's catches without forcing down a retch. She never has been fond of fish. Too slippery. But to survive, Eden is willing to do and eat anything.

Just . . . not rabbits, if she doesn't have to.

She kept them as pets when she was younger. It'd be like she's eating her family.

"And what if we aren't? Doing just fine, I mean," Eden says, trailing after Daryl like a bad smell that he can't shake. "Would you help us then?"

He rounds on her, pointing a dirty finger in her face. She digs her heels into the ground and comes to a sudden halt. Mud and blood is caked under Daryl's nail, and she isn't entirely sure if her disgust makes itself known on her expression.

"Y'all didn't want us here in the first place. Old man o' yours threatened to kick us out, said we don't fit in here ── us thieves and rednecks. 'Course we don't. Bad news, ain't that it?" He is seething, eyes narrowing to thin gashes in his dirt-speckled face. He lowers his jabbing finger, scowling, "The rest of y'all ain't my problem. I ain't gonna help people who ain't gon' help themselves. Don't work that way."

Petulant, Eden lets out an irritated huff, "Shane isn't my old man. He's a family friend."

"I don't give a shit," Daryl says. He turns sharply on the heel of his boot and begins walking away again. "Leave me be. Don't wanna be responsible for no kids. I ain't no damn babysitter."

Eden doesn't move. She is rooted to the spot, watching him go, but calls out the question pressing on her brain, "Why stay here if you hate us so much?"

He doesn't answer. The trees engulf him, and Daryl disappears into the woods, lugging his rabbits and squirrels around behind him. Merle will be eating well tonight. But will Daryl? Probably not. Merle is a selfish man.

Nobody in camp likes the Dixon brothers. They tolerate Daryl ── he isn't all that bad in truth ── but they draw a line when it comes to Merle. All Shane talks about is throwing them out. He thinks they're trouble. They are the kind of guys he is accustomed to arresting all the time, and he can't find it in himself to trust them. Bad news. He and Merle can't have a single conversation that doesn't end in yelling. He and Daryl tend to avoid one another.

In Eden's opinion, it's probably bad news to deliberately distance them from the rest of camp. It puts them all at odds with each other without any real reason. Merle seeks vengeance where he can, and Daryl is his dog; he's loyal through and through, and drops everything to answer his beckons.

The last thing they need is the Dixon brothers raining vengeance down on them for petty squabbles. It's been two months. Two months of hell, and the gates to the cesspit of burning doom only seem to be getting wider.

If they can't survive the living, how are they meant to survive the dead?

━･❪ ❁ ❫･━

word count: 3795

eden is a contortion of so
many different inspirations in
literature and i cannot decipher
who. she's like all my favourite
fictional characters (bad & good)
blended into one. you'll either love
her or hate her, it depends.

personally i love her 🫶