quinn.

                    ❝   They ALL look like someone. It’s a part of being the undead.   ❞

                    She’s grown too used to the sight of CORPSES lying around by now. They aren’t human in her eyes anymore, and haven’t been since Heaven knows how long. Has managed to detach herself of emotion when it comes to looking at them because what else is she supposed to do ?  She’s a regular FIGHTER; goes out every week or two with her team to pick through the  d e b r i s  and decaying buildings to find something useful, and bringing something as feeble as FEELINGS into it is … messy.

                    Of course, Quinn  u s e d  to care. Remembers the FIRST creature she had killed ——— the sound of its skull caving in and the feeling of KNOWING that it had once been properly, fully alive. Once upon a time, it too, had breathed. It had loved and cared for others, and she’d killed it with an old bat she’d found in someone’s basement. Had to be consoled for at least an hour before she could keep going, and that was only because they were SURE they were being followed. Then, when the whole thing with Finn had happened, she’d learned to keep empathy out of it. Caring wasn’t worth the pain.

                    ❝   Come on, we’ll leave through the back exit. There could be something we NEED in the kitchen, and we don’t want to miss that,   ❞      she instructs with the words and mind of a calculated leader.      ❝   You take up the front, and I’ll take up the back and make sure that that THING’S definitely dead. Just keep walking, okay ?  I’m right behind you.  

❞

      “She looks like my mom..  I don’t even know if she made it or not..”

Blaine walks as he’s told without giving any sort of verbal confirmation that he understood what she was telling him.  Moving was more than enough.  Eyes glued to the person thing on the floor until he had to step around to continue on.  His blood ran cold, fingers that weren’t holding the grip of his gun with a white knuckled tightness balled into a fist at his side. 

“I’m sorry.  I’m good now.  Promise.”  

Quinn’s detachment was something someone like him who lacked it envied. The world would be so much easier to take if he could look at it as all a means to an end that didn’t matter what route you took through a sea of bodies and death as long as he came out on the other side okay.  Maybe someday.  He was trying.  Just wasn’t there yet.  Steps that felt ten times heavier than any he’s ever taken carry him towards the back.  Most important, the kitchen.

“Let’s just get what we need and get out of here,” he squints stopping by the next wall and holding his breath as he steps far enough to glance around it.  Noise, repetitive and quick that only he seems to be able to hear.  A rapid gush of an echoing wet in his eardrums, heart pounding and blood rushing fast.  CLEAR.  “I think that might’ve been the only one..”  Oh God, he hoped so.. A quick, sharp glance over his shoulder checked to see if she was there.  Of course she was.  Quinn was a person he trusted beyond trust.  That’s why he’s here with her, after all. “Was it dead?”  Please tell me it was dead.