Chapter Fifteen, You Know If You Hide It Doesn't Go Away.
"DOES IT GET EASIER?"

ᖭི༏ᖫྀ

Does it get easier?

That was always Margo Burrell's immediate thought when she opened her eyes, and had been in the weeks following the deaths of her two brothers — Henry and Sam. If she was lucky enough to full into a deep slumber, and that was often a big if, then when her eyes fluttered open the next morning, and she was met with the cold November sun, she was left with one burning question lingering in her mind. The kind of question that made all the other uncertainties falter in comparison, and in this cold and dark times filled with more uncertainty than she herself could count, that one singular question meant more to her than anything else right now.

     She asked herself again, Does it get easier?

     Margo stirred for a moment, trying to make sense of her new surroundings. They had cleared and took refuge in an old cabin in the middle of nowhere. Joel and Vienna took out two infected that had stumbled into the old pile of rotting wood, and took turns keeping watch so her, Ezra, and Ellie could get some well needed rest. Margo was surprised she fell into a peaceful state of slumber. Most occasions, she would look up at the ceiling above her until the sun came up the following morning. Even after all these months following the death of her brothers, even if she managed to get a few hours of sleep, or she managed to maintain a full slumber with zero disturbance, she was still trying to find a sense of normalcy again without them.

     Waking up every morning without Sam cuddling into her side, his head resting on her shoulder, all while Henry made them breakfast, well, it was a feeling Margo feared she would never grow accustomed towards. Now in the months that followed, she was waking up to a room of people who only stared at her with sympathy. People who wanted to give her space, however, couldn't help but ask if she was doing better than the day before. Ellie, who tried to crack jokes from her pun book to cheer her up, and Vienna who would try her best not to coddle Margo like a mother often would when they see a teenager struggling. Even Joel had been doing his best to make her feel better about the situation, asking every hour if she was okay — the total opposite of the man she had met in Kansas City all those months ago.

For once, she was appreciative of Ezra, who had kept his distance and his head low. She didn't like him, and he didn't like her, and given the circumstances, it worked for them, because Margo felt as if she was going to crumble and break at any second, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. Instead, she just shut down and blocked out any questions about Sam and Henry, and her feelings surrounding their sudden deaths.

Truth is, Margo Burrell wasn't sure about how she was supposed to feel. She was sad, sure. She watched one brother turn into a flesh eating monster, and the other point the barrel of a gun to his temple before pulling the trigger. Of course, she was devastated. The only family she had left were now buried in shallow and unmarked graves a thousand miles away. She could never go back and visit them. She would continue to grow up without them. She wouldn't get to live in peace with them like Henry had promised her. She would never get to watch Sam grow up. So many years of life, and the plans the Burrell siblings had made were robbed from them the second some monster latched its infected canines into Sam's flesh.

     And that harrowing realisation left Margo feeling angry.

     Because grief was a powerful tool, too.

Margo thought about it, just screaming and crying until she choked on the bile in her throat and left her throat feeling hoarse. It may have been the most healthy thing for her to do, to allow the endless cycle of her suffering to take over and steer her down a dark path instead of bottling up and waiting for it to implode on herself. However, Margo didn't know how. In the first few hours that followed her brothers deaths, she sat by their unmarked graves for what seemed like hours, crying, and begging to whatever God that remained up above to wake her up from this never-ending nightmare. But then she left Kansas City with the others, thus leaving her brothers behind for good, and in the days that followed, she chose to just shut down altogether.

     It almost felt as if she had become numb to the feeling of grief.

     Because while she missed her brothers with every fibre of her being, Margo no longer knew the feeling of loss, for she's been forced to experience loss after loss from the moment she took her first baited breath in this world.

     So, she made the collective choice to stop feeling anything at all.

     And maybe one day she wouldn't feel this dull ache in her chest whenever a single thought or memory of Henry and Sam crossed her mind.

     Does it get easier? It had to.

     Margo sat upright from where she had been previously sleeping, her tired gaze setting her sights on Joel and Vienna, watching as they used a small burner they had scavenged in the last couple of weeks to brew, what she could only guess, judging by the smell, was some cups of hot coffee. Margo would never forget the days of when she used to trade valuable goods, and do extra shifts in the QZ, just for a small ration of coffee beans. Her taste for the bitter flavours stemmed from her father, who used to sneak some sips of the beverage to her when her mother wasn't scowling in disapproval.

     Henry always used to scrunch his nose in disgust when he smelled the scent of coffee brewing throughout their home.

     Margo would always roll her eyes and sip the drink peacefully in response.

     She could almost smile at the familiar memory as it seemed to creep back into the forefront of her mind. However, the realisation that she would never experience those moments with her older brother again left her feeling bitter all over again.

"Hey..." Margo turned her head back to where Joel and Vienna remained crouched in front of the burner.

     She didn't say anything. She just forced a half smile and watched as Joel hold out a full cup. "Coffee, kiddo?" He offered, his eyes softening at the sight of her.

     Margo didn't blame the man for the sudden change in his behaviour, offering her his concern in the process. She was sure she looked like hell. Being on the road and never staying in one place for more than a single night didn't exactly leave room for effort in her appearance. But, also, Margo hadn't smiled fully in weeks since leaving Kansas City. They didn't exactly blame her for her vague lack of emotion. It was just a worrying sight to see that she wasn't getting better, or finding a healthy way of coping with her losses. It had become so concerning that Joel Miller — a man who was hellbent on cutting the Burrell siblings loose the second they met — had grown to care and worry for her.

     Margo even considered taking the cup of coffee from the man's hands, knowing she had missed that bitter taste of the beverage on her tongue. But it would continue to bring back memories, ones she would prefer to forget. So, she shook her head, declining his offer. Joel looked disappointed, but nodded in submission, deciding not to push any further.

A sigh then left Vienna's lips. "Would you at least eat something?" She inquired.

"I'm not hungry," Margo declined, shaking her head.

"You haven't eaten for two days. You have to want something now," Vienna argued. She made a further attempt to speak, but she was quickly cut off by Joel, who told her to leave Margo alone. Vienna sighed again and backed down, both of them leaving the girl alone at last.

Truth is, Margo was starving. Vienna was right. Going two days without consuming anything except dirty water from the streams, it was effecting her body more than she cared to admit. And the growling in her stomach confirmed the weakness she had been feeling. Margo just wasn't up for consuming anything remotely edible. The mere thought of having food in front of her, let alone eating it, made her feel sick to her stomach because she felt as if she wasn't worthy of it. Margo often felt as if she didn't deserve anything she got since Kansas City. It was a rather morbid feeling that would beat hard against her chest, and travel to the darkest depths of her psyche, hammering hard like a distant echo into the base of her skull.

A voice that told her she was undeserving of everything since losing her brothers.

Why did she get to live, and they didn't?

I was strong. That's what she told herself. What happened to Sam was an accident — an unavoidable tragedy. But Henry, she would tell herself he was a coward who took the easy way out.

He even left his sister alone in the crippling aftermath without a single care in the world.

It was so easy for him to leave, Why?

Because he was weak, Margo repeated back to herself, hoping it would silence the whisper hammering hard against her skull.

She was the strong one. She could've been the weak one after everything she endured back in the city, but she continued to persevere.

No, the voice thoughts whispered back. Deep down you know it should've been you.

     It should've been me.

     Margo kicked the ripped up blanket off her body and stood up abruptly, picking up her jacket and her gun to defend herself in case she encountered any infected in her path. Her abrupt departure caught both Vienna's and Joel's attention, watching as she stormed out the cabin without uttering a single word. It left a sense of dread hanging in the air that left the two adults more worried for Margo's wellbeing than ever. There was a vast difference between grief and self-destruction. One allowed an individual to act out accordingly following a tremendous loss. The other was a dark and twisted guide down the wrong path that would only end in another loss at the hand of oneself.

     Vienna knew it.

     But Joel was the one who saw the signs.

     Joel was all too familiar with that feeling of overwhelming loss. He witnessed it firsthand because it was once his experience, and his own personal hell. He didn't just grieve. He shut down altogether. He pushed Tommy away and suffered alone — in silence. He bottled up all those emotions and refused to let them out, or lean on his own brother for help in the wake of his grief because he didn't know how. He just suffered until he knew he didn't want to suffer no more. He remembered picking up the gun and attempting to pull the trigger. He believed it would be so fast and he wouldn't feel a thing. However, Joel hesitated and flinched at the very last second, and for that, he was still standing here today.

He knew that if Margo Burrell kept going down this dark and twisted route, she wouldn't be around much longer.

"I'm going to give Ezra and Ellie another hour, then we should get moving, especially if we want to try and reach Tommy before winter ends," Vienna explained. She then made an attempt to stand up from where she was previously sitting. But Joel was quick to stop her.

"Aren't you worried about her?" Joel asked, his low and southern voice breaking through the split second of silence.

Vienna frowned, turning her head towards the door where Margo had previously exited from before she turned her attention back to Joel. "Margo? Of course, I'm worried about her. But there's nothing we can do," She replied.

"Vienna—"

"She just lost her brothers, Joel." Vienna had cut him off, their gazes finding each other in a matter of seconds. "She's grieving. We have to let grieve in a way that's right for her. The last thing we outta do is coddle her to the point of suffocating her. That's going to only make things worse."

Joel let out a sigh, his eyes leaving Vienna for a moment while he looked down at the cup of warm coffee in between his hands. "I know...but this is more than just grieving, Vienna. Starving yourself isn't exactly normal." He stated, and Vienna knew he had a point.

"What are you saying?" Vienna inquired, watching as Joel's eyes met her gaze once again.

"I just don't want to see another kid die," Joel admitted.

And for the first time in a while, Vienna had sensed some sort of humanity in the man's voice, the kind she thought was long forgotten in the weeks following their escape from Kansas City. They all shut down or changed in some way after the day Margo lost her brothers. They also coped in their own ways. Joel had shut down, not completely, but he wasn't himself. Vienna was just relieved that Joel hadn't resorted back to his old ways when they saw each other again in the Boston QZ.

     The realisation was enough to make Vienna's entire composure fall apart from beneath her. She believed she had hardened herself just enough on the outside to prevent that feeling she felt when she watched Sam and Henry die from creeping back in. However, no matter how much time passed — whether it was twenty minutes or twenty years — there was just something about Joel Miller that shattered the woman's resolve and allowed her to feel human again. Sometimes she didn't know if she should hate him for it, or thank him for bringing her back to that same woman she thought she abandoned in Texas when the world fell apart.

The same woman she thought had died when the world ended.

Vienna's gaze peered deeply into Joel's once again, a sense of understanding being silently communicated between them. She could see that he understood her pain. Vienna wasn't sure how he could find such empathy in a situation when, to the best of her knowledge, neither of them have experienced a loss on this scale before. He had lost Tess, and in some way, she had lost Jack. But it was never a loss that caused for them to shut down the way Margo had. Vienna hoped neither of them would have to witness one in their lifetime. However, it was because of Joel's strange understanding of Margo's feelings that left her with no choice, except to be vulnerable right back.

     "She'll be okay, Joel," Vienna reassured, offering him a warm smile in the process. "She's going through so much, and she's still standing. That makes her strong. And she isn't alone. She has all of us, and we'll continue to support her in any way we can."

Vienna wasn't sure what forced her to do it, but she gently placed her hand over Joel's for a moment, leaving it there before she made an attempt to retract her hand. However, Joel was quick to latch onto her hand with his own, the feeling of the rough skin of his palm pressed warmly against the roof of her hand, all while his fingers curled around her hand and caressed her soft skin with a careful touch. It came to Vienna as a surprise at first, not believing for a second she would ever feel this kind of affection from Joel again. But she was starting to think what happened to Henry and Sam changed him too, and in some twisted way, while it pained him to have witnessed their deaths the way it hurt all of them, it changed Joel for the better.

     It allowed the man to be vulnerable in a way Vienna never thought she would see again.

But, all of a sudden, the pair quickly jumped away from each other when they heard footsteps, forcing Vienna to quickly rise back to her feet as she initially intended. The woman then turned around to see Ezra was now entering the room, throwing a winter jacket over his shoulders. "Hey..." Ezra trailed off, his suspicious eyes darting between Joel and his mother for a moment, before he parted his lips to speak again. "Where's Margo?" He asked, then looking around the old cabin to see the girl was nowhere to be seen.

Vienna pulled herself together in a matter of seconds, shaking her head and tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. "She went to get some air," Vienna replied. "Is that what you're doing?" She then inquired further.

Ezra didn't say anything at first, his gaze still shifting between Vienna and Joel for a swift moment. Ezra knew deep down there was history between them that he hadn't quite picked up on, and it was more than just being friends before the world ended. But neither of them liked to speak about their lives from before. And why would they? It was a whole lifetime ago.

     "Uh, cool..." Ezra paused, his gaze slowly finding the door. "I think I'm going to head out for a bit. This plays gives me the creeps. And Ellie's snoring kept me up most of the night so I need to clear my head."

     "I do not snore!" Ellie called out from the other room, the sounds of her protests being enough to make Vienna crack a small smile.

     Vienna nodded her head. "Just make sure to take your gun and holler if you need help."

     Ezra didn't say anything else in response. He just sent his mother a nod and a forced half smile before he began to make his way out the door. That was until he was stopped again. "Hey, Ezra, Honey..." The boy stopped in his tracks and turned around to face the woman, now standing right in front of him.

"I'll be fine. You don't need to worry," Ezra sighed in annoyance.

"Believe it or not, I know you'll be fine. It's actually Margo who I'm worried about," Vienna explained. "I know you want to give her space, but I was hoping you could go and talk to her."

Ezra shrugged his shoulders. "Why me?"

Vienna cocked her head slightly to the side, a shaky breath leaving her lips. "Because you're the same age with a better understanding of each other more than either of you care to admit. Joel is also worried that she's going to do something to hurt herself...and so am I. She's not eating, barely drinking. I just think she needs someone to talk to—"

     "And you think that person should be me?" He asked in disbelief. "Because the last time I checked, Margo hates me."

     "Which is why I think it'll be easier to open up to someone who doesn't want to coddle her," Vienna pleaded. "Please, Ezra. I'm just asking for some help here."

Sighing in defeat, Ezra adjusted the collar of his gray coloured jacket, sparing his mom one last glance before he walked out of the door and into the cold and crisp winter air.

     Does it get easier? Margo asked herself again.

     There she was, sitting far away from the desolate cabin, making sure she was out of sight from any prying eyes. The cold breeze combed wistfully through the frost covered leaves, grazing harshly against her cheek and nipping at the bare parts of her skin. A chill ran down her spine as she shuffled uncomfortably where she was sitting on an old, fallen tree log in the middle of the woods. For a moment, her hands that were cold to the touch remained tucked deep into her jacket pockets, all while she allowed her solemn gaze to travel aimlessly around her surroundings. It was quiet, peaceful, and yet, she didn't feel an ounce of tranquility in her weak body. She hasn't known peace since her brothers died.

     Does it get easier?

     Margo removed her hands from her pockets and turned head to the side, looking down at the pistol placed on the wooden log directly beside her. The sight of the weapon was enough to make Margo swallow thickly, for the gun wasn't just any gun to her. It meant something, because it was the same gun Henry used to take his own life. Margo wasn't sure why she held onto it afterwards. Any sane person would have buried it and prayed to God that they never saw the weapon responsible for taking their brother's life again. But Margo was quickly starting to learn her sanity was slowly but surely slipping away from her.

Maybe she wasn't the Living Dead Girl after all.

All that whimsical optimism was now lost.

Margo held onto the weapon for this long because she wanted to feel closer to her brothers in some sick and twisted way. Henry used the gun on Sam before turning it on himself. The bullets were the last thing to touch them before death ripped them from her fingertips. On the other hand, deep down, Margo always knew she had held onto the weapon for another reason. What started as wanting to feel closer to her brothers became something totally different — something harrowing — something that resembled death in its deadliest form.

     Because Margo was starting to think there was only one way to end her pain.

     She had to join her brothers.

     No. Margo thought. I'm the strong one. She survived losing her parents, leaving her and her brothers to fend for themselves underneath the crippling weight of FEDRA's dictatorship and extremism. I'm the strong one. When that FEDRA soldier forced himself onto her petit body and stripped her of all her innocence until she was just a hollow shell, touched brutally and violently in places no grown man should ever touch a teenage girl, she didn't let it destroy her. She couldn't. I survived that. When FEDRA fell and Kathleen's men hunted her and her brothers down like predators in search for their prey, she refused to give up. I can survive this.

     But could Margo truly overcome the grief that had consumed every fibre of her very being?

     Could she survive losing the only family she had left?

     Does it get easier? She asked herself once again, picking up the gun and cradling the heavy metal in her cold and trembling hands. It has to get easier.

     She thought about them — Henry and Sam. She imagined their smiling faces, waiting for her in the next life. She imagined Sam signing to her and she could finally sign back to him again, and she imagined Henry, bringing her into his embrace and welcoming her home where she belonged. They would bring her to their parents and their family would be whole again. The mere thought of being with them all again left a feeling of hope beating hard in her chest, and she knew better than anyone that that feeling was something she had missed deeply, and the only way it found its way back to her was when she contemplated death as a way to cure her of her pain.

Could she really do this? Just end it all?

Does it get easier?

No. It doesn't.

Margo bit down on the inside of her cheek, so much so that she tasted blood. She then tightened her grip around the butt of her pistol, her hand continuing to shake as she lifted the weapon to the side of head, pressing the cold barrel of the gun to her temple. Just like Henry had. It was twisted, and yet, she found something about her undoing weirdly poetic. Margo's bottom lip began to quiver as a stray tear trickled down her cold cheek. Her finger slowly started to hover over the trigger, her finger twitching with each movement she took to try and apply pressure to the switch that would end her suffering for good. Her hand started to tremble again, this time more violently than before, so much so that the gun began to shake uncontrollably in her hand.

"Come on, Margo," The girl cried quietly, speaking through gritted teeth. "Just pull the damn trigger."

But the second her finger touched the trigger, she let out a gasp of horror and dropped the gun to the ground, a quiet sob filled with defeat escaping past her quivering lips. She couldn't do it. She couldn't kill herself, even if it meant reuniting herself with her brothers again, she just couldn't do it. Margo didn't know if that took immense strength, or if she was still that weak little girl everyone saw her as.

It reminded the girl that Kathleen had been right about her.

     You don't have the guts to pull the trigger.

     The woman's words started to echo in the back of her skull, drilling into her bones, and poisoning the marrow, until she was left feeling beaten down like a sick dog. Moments before Kathleen's death, she told Margo she couldn't pull the trigger because the girl was no killer. Even if it meant saving her brothers, Margo couldn't do it. And now, even if taking her own life meant she could see Henry and Sam again, the girl still couldn't do the impossible, because she wanted to live. She wanted to keep going. She just didn't know how to do that alone.

Little did she know, she wasn't.

When Margo Burrell heard the violent snap of a twig, she quickly picked up her gun and looked ahead, pointing the weapon in the direction where the sound came from. But when she got a closer and more accurate glimpse, she saw it was only Ezra, standing in front of her with his arms raised. She noticed the shocked look in his eyes, but also the sheepish grin that tugged at the corners of his lips. Margo sighed in frustration and lowered the gun before she sat back down on the fallen tree log, not uttering a single word to Ezra at first, who just continued to approach her carefully.

"I don't want to talk," Margo told him. She wanted to make it perfectly clear she was uninterested in carrying any sort of conversation with him.

"Why?" Ezra asked in a rhetorical manner. He then stopped in front of Margo for a moment before he took a seat beside her. "So you can blow your brains out?"

Those words surprised Margo the most, forcing her to turn around and face Ezra with her brows furrowing together in bewilderment. She didn't expect such a deadpanned response from the boy, however, Ezra's bluntness was something she was starting to like about him. "You saw that?" She questioned.

Ezra didn't say anything in response. He simply shrugged his shoulders, and Margo let out a scoff. "Wow...you hate me that much that you were just going to stand there and let me pull the trigger?" She exclaimed in disbelief.

"What? No," Ezra begins shaking his head, his sheepish grin beginning to falter. "I saw what you were going to do. I thought, I could stop you, but you should be allowed to make the decision whether you want to stay in this world or not," He elaborated further.

Margo chuckled, struggling to comprehend the words leaving Ezra's lips. Not because they didn't make sense, because they did. But it was because he sounded like he cared, like he had experienced what she was going through now, and that was a hard thing to believe. "Yeah? Like you understand what I'm going through." Margo looked down at the gun in her hand again, a shaky breath leaving her quivering lips.

     "Believe it or not, I actually do." Margo avoided Ezra's eyes the second he decided to open up his mouth again. She didn't believe him for a second. He's always given her a reason not to. But that didn't stop him from continuing. "I tried to kill myself too."

That was what caught Margo's undivided attention. She quickly snapped her head to the side so she was now facing him, her eyes meeting Ezra's in a matter of seconds. "It's that hard to believe, huh?" Ezra chuckled, pausing for a moment while he sighed. "I...I killed a man. I didn't want to ever take a life, and it took me a while to realise that in this world, killing people is just a necessity in order to survive. I didn't know that back then, and so I took a gun, pointed it to my head, and I pulled the trigger because I couldn't live with the guilt of what I did." He explained, swallowing thickly shortly after he spoke.

Margo shook her head. "How did you even—"

"Survive?" Ezra interjected, cutting the girl off while he looked away, lowering his gaze towards the brown leaves beneath his feet. "The guy that sold me the bullets failed to mention they were faulty. So, when I pulled the trigger, nothing happened. And I didn't try again after that because someone gave me a reason to keep going, but if you were to ask me, it takes more strength to not pull the trigger than it does to do it. So, between us, I'm the coward."

Margo's gaze began to soften, her eyes glassy with tears that threatened to fall. "I don't know if that's true. I don't even have a reason to keep fighting. I'm, like, completely and utterly alone," She replied harshly, her voice beginning to crack slightly.

     "That's not true. You have Vienna, Joel, Ellie, and as unbelievable as it may sound, I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere." Ezra didn't know why he said those words. He didn't even like this girl, but somehow, he was still showing compassion towards her, even though he was sure he had lost that part of himself a long time ago. "Besides, Henry and Sam wouldn't want you to sit here and kill yourself."

"You didn't even know them," Margo corrected.

"No. But I know that they loved you," Ezra retorted. "And I know that they would want you to keep going. Look, what happened to Sam was unpredictable, and Henry took the easy way out. But you still have a chance to keep going despite it all."

     Margo went quiet for a moment, sniffling to herself as she tried her best to wipe away her tears for a moment. Once she got her tears under control, she turned to glance back at Ezra once again. "Does it get easier?"

     "Not really," Ezra replied in a deadpan manner again. "But what I do know is that you're not alone, and that feeling of not being alone, is what you keeps you going, because in this world, Margo, there's always something worth fighting for, even if it's just yourself."

     Margo didn't say anything in response. She just, without hesitation, threw her arms around Ezra, shocking the boy a little, before she pulled him into her embrace. Ezra hesitated at first, but he slowly raised his arms and wrapped them loosely around her girl, giving her that sense of security she needed in that very moment. Margo realised a sigh of relief, sniffling once again and she rested her chin comfortable on Ezra's shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut. It was strange, how the one person she hated, ended up being the one person who could understand her, and that level of understanding is what coaxed her from the gun, or the possibility of trying again.

"Thank you," She whispered in Ezra's ear.

Then the girl started to wonder again, Does it get easier?

And maybe it can.

━━━━━━━━

authors note.
WE ARE SO BACK...and what better way than to welcome back this book than with one of the most painful chapters in existence???
Also I'm sorry if this chapter is a little boring, I really wanted to highlight Margo's grief and build up the relationship between her and Ezra and show that development. And we're going to see more of it in the next chapter which will make up for the Vienna and Joel angst coming because it's the Jackson episode next guys and there will be drama!!

But until then I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and I'll update again soon!!