sapphirestiel:

Every time Jo smiles, it’s like the world gets back a piece of its long lost beauty.

The apocalypse destroyed everything they ever stood for. It shattered their very foundations, sucked the Grace out of Anna’s body until she felt like nothing but a burnt-out shell, something to be thrown away in disgust.

Jo didn’t throw her away.

She still looks at her with this mixture of awe and surprise, like she can’t figure out why Anna bothered to stay with her in the first place. Anna never told Jo that she reminds her of everything they lost. It’s a good ache, the kind of ache that comes from a healing wound. Anna relishes it, welcomes it like one presses the edges of a bruise.

Anna never told Jo she loves her. She feels like it would make it real, somehow. More real than this huge clusterfuck of feelings, of shivers, of smiles. More real than her trust and her friendship.

Love is a dangerous word, these days more than ever. More than ever, when a second is enough for you to lose everything.

 Their cabin smells of wax and bad coffee. It smells of mud, too, and Anna can already feel it. Her knees protesting when she wakes up in the morning, gnawed by humidity and too-long hours spent guarding the gates of the camp. Her human body is decaying, aging slowly. She hates it.

Jo is humming under her breath, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she cleans the barrel of her gun. I love you, Anna thinks. It is a fleeting thought, one she tries to shove back desperately. But it’s too big for her empty body, resonates in the cavities of her chest, rings out at her ears like a heartbeat.

I love you, she mouths silently, and bows her head. Tries to forget the end of the world, the devil roaming the Earth. I love you, ‘till death do us part. Hell, it may come sooner rather than later.