𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢
𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡
𝑂𝑢𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑑 𝑖𝑠 𝐻𝐴𝑅𝐷，
𝑠𝑜 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙

𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑦 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔

Lottie Greene was never meant to be soft, not in the way she was. No one had asked her to be so delicate, so tender, but she wore it like the lace of her skirts—an unintentional statement of who she was. She had always been the one with the smile that reached deep into her eyes, the one who held the weight of the world and somehow made it seem light. It was an innocence, but not the kind one might think. She wasn't naïve; she was aware of the world's cruelty, but she chose, in her small ways, to resist becoming like it. She carried her softness like a shield, as though it was armor against the decay of everything around her.

She used to be the cheerleader, the girl everyone knew, but not because of any great achievement. It was her warmth, the light she exuded, the way she made everyone feel like they mattered for a moment. Lottie knew how to make people laugh, how to ease their burdens, even if she was struggling with her own.

But it had all felt fleeting—the smiles, the small-town dances, the careless chatter. High school didn't prepare her for what was coming. Life hadn't prepared her for it either. The world, stripped of its normality, turned sharp and unforgiving. She hadn't expected the apocalypse, not in the way she thought, and certainly not so soon.

There were times, in the days before everything crumbled, when Lottie dreamed. She dreamed of simple things: of running barefoot through fields, of holding hands with someone who loved her, of books piled high on her bedside table, waiting to be read. She dreamed of a world that wasn't this, where flowers bloomed and hearts didn't break so easily.

Yet, there were other dreams, darker ones, where she was left alone, fading away, the world around her decaying like the very earth beneath her feet. She couldn't always separate the two. The line between what was real and what was a dream was blurred now, more than ever. The world outside was full of rotting things—broken bodies, broken souls—and Lottie had to figure out what was worth holding onto.

She had always been someone who believed. Maybe it was because her faith was the last thing she could count on. Lottie believed in God, in some version of it—quiet, not in-your-face religion, but something softer, something that spoke to her heart. She wasn't the kind of girl who could walk into a church and recite the verses with any kind of bravado. Instead, she was the one who sat at the back, fingers lightly tracing the rosary, whispering prayers only she could understand. It was in these moments that the fragility of her soul felt less terrifying. She felt, for just a second, that maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay.

But she wasn't stupid. She knew what the world had become. And she knew what it would ask of her. Lottie wasn't immune to the fate of everyone around her. The cracks in her gentle nature were beginning to show, but she wasn't sure how to stop it. She wasn't sure how to stop the decay.

She was like the deer she saw grazing on the outskirts of camp. The doe with the soft eyes, so fragile and graceful. She moved so quietly, careful not to make a sound, as if the world's sharp edges couldn't hurt her. But Lottie knew. She knew what happened to the vulnerable. She knew that the doe's heart would one day be torn apart, no matter how gracefully it danced through the meadow. It wasn't just a passing metaphor, it was the truth of the world. She was the deer—delicate, beautiful, but always a target.

She loved in the way that people did before everything ended—full of possibility, full of hope, but the shadows were already falling. She knew that if she stayed soft, if she continued to give, she might be consumed. "If you stay soft, you get eaten," was a thought that buzzed in her mind. It wasn't something she could ignore anymore.

Lottie couldn't decide where the line between sacrifice and self-slaughter lay. She would give everything to the people she loved. She would lay her life down without question. She didn't know if that was noble or foolish. It was just who she was. But she wondered—how long could she keep sacrificing before she began to sacrifice herself to the point of no return? Was there a point at which giving up your soul for others became nothing more than self-destruction?

"I never understood where the line is drawn between sacrifice and self-slaughter," she thought, remembering a poem she read once, and for the first time, she felt the weight of those words. She was no longer certain of the answers. She felt torn between the desire to save everyone and the fear that she would end up losing herself in the process.

Fear was a gnawing thing. It whispered that she wouldn't survive, not this time. Fear eats the soul, she thought, but even so, she couldn't help but continue. It was who she was—brave, even when she wasn't sure she could be. Even when every part of her screamed to run, to hide, she couldn't. Not when others needed her.

Lottie was learning that faith, in the end, wasn't enough. In a world that had no mercy, no kindness, she was going to have to become something she didn't know if she could be—hard. It would tear her apart to do it, but she would. The warmth she held within her, the smile that had once been so easy, was becoming a mask. If she didn't change, if she didn't shed her innocence like an old coat, she might just drown in the ugliness of what was left.

There was no guarantee of a good ending for her. Maybe there never had been. All the dreams she once had—the ones about safety and peace, the ones about holding hands with someone who loved her—would not come true. But she would keep going. She would keep holding onto them, even if they were nothing more than broken pieces of herself, scattered across the ashes of the world.

All flesh rots, after all.

She had to accept it. The world she had once known was dead. And so, maybe, was she. Or, at least, a part of her had died long ago. And if she stayed soft, the world would take what was left. So, Lottie would harden, even if it meant losing everything she had once been.

But for now, she would smile. She would continue to carry the warmth she had, the tenderness, even if it burned her from the inside. She would wear her lace and boots like a silent rebellion against the world that sought to swallow her whole. She would keep hoping. Maybe one day, she'd figure out how to stay soft and survive. Or maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she was always meant to fall apart, one piece at a time.

Lottie often thought of herself as something delicate—like a deer, soft and graceful, stepping through the wreckage of a world that seemed intent on eating away at everything pure. The world had shown no mercy, and yet, she had survived. Or maybe, it was more accurate to say she had been allowed to survive, for she was too innocent to understand the rules of this new life.

But Daryl Dixon—he wasn't like her. He had lived a thousand deaths, seen the world twist and break in ways she would never grasp, and yet, here they were, together. His eyes—dark and unreadable—watched her sometimes with a kind of wariness, a mix of something he couldn't name and something he couldn't escape.

They were years apart, years that pressed against the fragile skin of their connection like the weight of a thousand worlds. He was thirty-five, a man carved from the stone of loss and bloodshed. She was twenty-one, still holding onto dreams she hadn't yet abandoned, still capable of feeling things—big things—like joy, love, hope.

There was something about the age difference that tangled between them like a knot that could never be undone, something that felt both fragile and irrevocable. in the quiet moments between them, it felt like an eternity. She was still in the bloom of youth, still reaching for something she could never quite touch, while Daryl had long since learned that reaching was a mistake. He had learned the hard way that love was a kind of death, that giving yourself away would leave you shattered, hollow. It was easier to kill, to be numb, to stay distant.

But Lottie? She was the healer. Or she believed she was. She still believed in the possibility of good, in the power of kindness, in the ache of being vulnerable. She was a fawn, tender and unsure, her heart wrapped in fragile hope. But the world had never been kind to those who wore their hearts on their sleeves. And Daryl? He had learned to survive by becoming the killer, the one who had no space for softness, no place for vulnerability. He had become stone, had let his heart turn to ice.

And yet, there was something in her that called to him, that cracked through the hardened layers of his isolation. She couldn't help it. She was drawn to him, pulled by something she couldn't name. And, sometimes, she caught him looking at her with an unreadable expression, like he was both afraid of her and drawn to her, like he wanted to protect her and yet knew that she was beyond saving.

It was a kind of irony, really. She—the girl who was soft enough to feel everything—was drawn to a man who had learned that feeling was a kind of curse. There was a dangerous dance between them, one where love was both a weapon and a wound. She had seen it in the way he moved, in the way he would hold her at arm's length, never allowing her to get too close. He was a man of violence, a man who had learned to survive by doing the things she couldn't imagine. But she wasn't like him, not yet.

Still, she understood something now that she hadn't before. Love, in this world, wasn't something clean. It wasn't pure. It wasn't even a promise. Love was punishment. She had learned this the hard way, through her own quiet sacrifices, through moments when she had given everything—her warmth, her kindness, her care—and felt the sharp sting of rejection in return. And yet, she still believed. She still wanted to believe that love could be something that healed, something that saved. But she wasn't sure how long she could keep that belief alive, not when every day felt like it would tear that hope apart.

The Lolita complex lingered on the edge of her thoughts, like a shadow she couldn't shake. She wasn't unaware of the way men like Daryl looked at her, not just as a girl, but as something else—something to be kept safe, something delicate, something fragile. She could see it in the way he kept his distance, in the way he held her gaze like it might burn him. She wasn't blind to it, but there was a deeper truth beneath that surface. It wasn't about age. It wasn't about her being young. It was about something darker, something that existed between them—a tension, a line that neither of them could cross.

She could feel it now, like a quiet understanding that settled deep in her chest, pressing against her heart like the weight of a thousand broken dreams. She was the healer, yes, but the world had shown her that even the healer could be consumed. Even the soft, delicate things could be torn apart. And there were moments when she wondered if that would be her fate. If she stayed soft—if she stayed pure—would the world devour her? Would Daryl, with all his scars and all his darkness, be the one to do it?

She didn't know. But she had learned, in the silence between them, that she couldn't stay this way forever. Not in a world like this. She couldn't remain the tender, fragile thing she was, not without losing everything she held dear. The thought gnawed at her, a slow realization that love, as much as she wanted it, would never come without cost. And sometimes, when she thought about it, she felt a kind of sorrow deep in her chest, the kind that whispered that perhaps love itself was the thing that would destroy her.

Daryl, with all his hardness, with all his violence, was not the savior she hoped for. He wasn't the knight in shining armor who would rescue her from the world's cruelty. He was the hunter, and she was the prey. She could see it now, more clearly than ever before.

Love was not kind in the apocalypse. Love was punishment. And maybe, just maybe, that was the price she would have to pay.

"No, stop. You're being unfair," Lottie says, lowering his hands from her face, where they held her as if she were something fragile, something on the verge of breaking.

But if you listened closely, if you pressed your ear against the quiet space between heartbeats, you would hear the sound of something already cracking.

"Lottie, I—"He doesn't get the chance to finish.

"Why?" she interrupts, her voice unsteady.

"Why are you doing this?"Her breath stutters, and tears pool in her eyes.

"You promised."

("Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them.")

—John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

But he had understood. He had meant it, every word, every syllable. He had taken the weight of that promise into his hands, and now it was slipping through his fingers, dissolving into something that felt an awful lot like regret.

And as he looks at her, he wonders if the ache in his chest belongs to him or if he's only borrowing hers.

Maybe a man his age doesn't know anything at all.

"Lottie, I know it hurts, but—""No."

She shakes her head violently, stepping back.

"No, stop. You don't know shit."Her voice rises, sharp and unsteady, before she shoves him—once, twice, again and again—like she could push the pain right out of her