FEARLESS ➳ TWD¹ [REWRITE/COMPLETED]

9 ➳ HOSTAGE

"HEY! Easy!" Donnie exclaimed, pushing me off of him to a point that I had fallen back, catching myself on the palm of my hands. "This isn't Operation. Be careful or you'll regret it."

I sighed, jumping right back to work on his arm. Carol had reportedly shot him on sight when he scared her and Maggie back in the woods. Now, I'm paying the price while they were tied-up not too far away from me.

I tried my best to work on his arm with care, so that he wouldn't slap me across the face again like he just did only minutes ago. It took everything in both Maggie and Carol not to jump up. Unfortunately, if it wasn't for those restraints, I'm sure that they would've got up to protect me.

Their weapons had been stripped from them immediately as we were being held hostage in this tense situation. I kept thinking back to Daryl, the look that I left on his face because I made the decision to walk blindly into the woods, right in the arms of these psychotic strangers.

I'm pretty sure that, when we finally get back to our people (if we do, that is), everybody will see my red cheeks that are both being splattered by Donnie's handprints. Daryl is going to be livid while Glenn will sink into a rage of anger from being so pissed-off. We'll all go our separate ways once we're back in Alexandria after today and last night altogether.

Molly, the oldest lady out of the four strangers, was smoking by one of the doors, blowing the smoke in the direction of both Carol and Maggie. They shunned towards such action as Maggie dimmed her eyes away from Molly while Carol seemed to be getting angry.

"Don't do that," I said to Molly, who turned on her heel and looked towards me in surprise. I felt Donnie's eyes on me as he seemed shocked that I had even spoken up. I nodded towards Maggie and continue to say to Molly, "It's not a good idea."

"And... Why's that?" Molly grunted, holding her cigarette in one hand while blowing out smoke from her mouth. She had such attitude to her tone that it seemed almost impossible to hold any sort of conversation with her. No wonder she was apart of the Saviors. They're all disturbed assholes.

"She's with child," Carol claimed, signaling towards Maggie. It was no secret at this point.

Michelle, the young girl of the group, nodded and spoke up, "Yeah, Molly, knock it off." Surprisingly, she was backing us up on this. I couldn't believe it. Apparently, nor could Carol or Maggie, for that matter.

"I'm a dead woman walking," Molly announced, just as she started to cough up blood into a napkin, showing it off to us. "Which puts us exactly in the same boat."

Then, after a moment, the room went silent as I tried to keep my cool while I continued to work on his arm. Before all of this, I had only temporarily worked in a hospital and somehow survived college before that. It hardly took any time at all before I realized that I didn't want to work at a hospital, where there was so much death and such happening at.

So, instead, I changed jobs and started working at a nursing home. Sadly, death continued to happen there, too. One day, I was feeding them medicine and checking their blood pressure; then, the next day, they were gone.

I stuck with it because it was a job and it paid the bills. However, I received such a shock whenever th apocalypse occurred and there was more death than life.

At that moment, Donnie abrutly became frustrated and jumped up, walking across to the other side of the room. He stood close by Paula, who appeared to be looking out in space somewhere. She was really freaking weird, to be honest.

Then, she suddenly came back to reality as she smirked down at me, putting me right on the spot in an awkward position. She kneeled down right in front of me, squatting, as we really became face-to-face.

She squinted her eyes, squeezing in her sharp eyebrows, as she said to me, "You really don't remember who you are?"

Again, I had to play the game that I have already put out there for myself. It was now or never.

I nodded and silently replied, "Like I told you out there before, the very last thing that I remember is waking up in an unknown place. I had apparently hit my head on a rock and bled out, resulting in losing my memory. I don't know anything, but I'm trying here. Really trying."

Paula just sat there for another minute, debating in her head if I was really telling the truth or not. I sounded more sincere than I expected, which helped me a lot in this twisted lie. Either she believed me or she didn't – there was no 'in-the-middle' here.

Alas, she sighed and nodded. "Alright," she finally said, pursing her lips together for a second. "I believe you." I didn't know what to say or do, but that didn't matter as she immediately continued, "Don't take that so lightly. Got it? You don't remember who you are or where you're from... I get it."

"She's lying to yah!" Molly exclaimed from the other side of room, who surprisingly had stomped her cigarette out already. "You can't tell? I sure as hell can!"

"I'm not lying," I quickly claimed, sounding like the truth was slowly about to be revealed. "Why would I lie for? That isn't anything to lie about. I have no idea how to do what I supposedly used to. I'm clueless of how to work on a wounded arm or whatever." Paula slowly was reeling, as she mentally began to question rather or not she believed me now.

Now, I was going to finally do it...

"Look, I even have a scar," I claimed, spinning around on my ass just so I could show Paula, and the rest of them, the shiner on the back of my head. There, towards the bottom of my head, cleverly hidden beneath my dark hair, was a large stitched-up scar that would never go away.

What they didn't know about this specific scar was that, almost a year ago, I had actually had a major accident. I was being pinned down by one of those damn Saviors while my knife was directly beneath my head, which the now-deceased Savior made sure to grind into the back of my head. It sliced the back of my head open to a point that I was bleeding out. Eventually, he had gotten away, but not before I stalked him and killed him when nobody else was around. It took me two weeks to recover from that.

I like to refer to it as being my battle-scar.

So, just as I spun back around to see her reaction to it, it had seemed like I had won now. Paula, along with the rest of them, had sensed that I was telling the truth and were seemingly starting to believe me now. I had actual evidence and there was no reason to challenge that otherwise.

Either way, it seemed like I was going to die today. There was no sense of it otherwise.

At that, Paula stood up and at such an angle where I seen straight through her from her side. She nodded, then gulped, and seemed to be thinking about all that I had just told her.

She was weighing her options...

Paula began to smile, like it all was fun and games, before she took out her shining pistol and kind of just let it just lay in her right hand. She said aloud while briefly staring up at the ceiling, "Well, then, that sucks. I seriously feel for you, Tess, but you're no longer any use to us. I was going to kill one of you, probably the pregnant bitch, but now..."

She paused and looked directly down at me now. "It's you. Sorry for your loss. Again," she breathed out before she aimed her pistol down at me.

Paula squeezed the trigger and it was over before I knew it...