First fanfiction.

Here we go.

*I do not own The Walking Dead. It belongs to its rightful owner.*

Sometimes we're holding angels

And we never even know."

~ Ross Copperman: Holding On and Letting Go

Prologue:

I woke up today even though you didn't. It's another summer day in August and I thought you should know because you half paid attention when Mrs. Ellington would make one more tally in her book of days gone by. Funny how she always knew the date but never the time, funny how I'm not positive if the month is still August because Mrs. Ellington does not keep track anymore . . . she doesn't even talk to me. It is just comforting to be stuck in August because then all the nights I am spending alone, holding myself, are not as lonely, as dark.

The soil under my feet is still Georgia. And I can tell by the constant sensation of syrup being poured down on me that the heat is still there. A less dangerous form of "bite" from mosquitoes reminds me that I'm alive, too, and the sudden shift in mood from the weather has not changed, granting us with the gift of rain – except you're not here. I know you never will be again, either.

But that's the same as before, right?

I'm only talking to you – the you I made up in my head – because I am now alone, which can be a scary thing. I guess you could be scary sometimes on those bad nights back home, too, but you weren't them. No one knows what kind of monsters those things walking around are. At least I knew you – I learned all about what kind of person you were in school; think they called it "morals" or something. Before, you had always smoked – which I thought for sure was bad because it smelled stale and smothered its surroundings – but after Mom, you hurt your lungs even more, hurt my heart when you didn't say I love you back or you couldn't even think of the words.

Alcohol didn't make you hurt, you said.

And I believed you at first.

Until I noticed sometimes you couldn't sign something without holding your arm to calm the shaking. Until I heard you turn the shower on once to cry about just how much life sucked – I'm not supposed to say that word but I don't think you're listening – and you'd cry so hard I could hear you, despite your efforts against it. Until things would break and they wouldn't go away like they used to. Until everything smelled like smoke, but not the good campfire kind, and empty bottles and a few bags of what looked like a sample of the blue sky above became our everyday sights. Until you'd act wrong and get big and mean. Until.

Until I realized you wanted to forget the "I love you"'s and birthday cards, until I realized you wanted to go back further than before and even more.

Back to death.

You told me, over and over, to grow up because you knew – one day . . .

Self-destruction.

Like the model volcano in the science room at school.

The alcohol hurt you even more when you'd wake up and notice the marks you made. Those marks I see every day because they're a part of me, engraved in me. I never spoke a word of them to another soul because I spent two years after Mom scared. The worst fear was ending up alone and you were all I had, so I lived. I lived like the imprints in my arms, they showed I lived.

"You need to grow up."

You would tell me that but you never explained how like I think guardians as you were supposed to. I still don't know if I got it or if I ever will, but I'm trying. I'm trying to follow those one or two paths you created in the short time when you could not get your hands on what drove the pain away. It's okay to live in the now until you realize you are, that's when you'd get scary again.

But, honestly, I am pretty sure it is no longer August anymore because I have counted seven days – a week – since you screamed and became a ghost; I hope you aren't any more of a monster than you already were. And I'm still terrified of this world and long nights, and I don't think I can grow up even though I looked one monster in its cloudy eyes, and I maybe still love you.

That's the truth.

That's what you were – are – afraid of.

Dad.