Violent Delights¹︎ | D.Dixon

1.05 ➸

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CHAPTER FIVE
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          "HOLY SHIT, SHANE. COULD YOU put the gun down, please?" She snapped, spooked as she came rushing around the corner to find herself on the wrong end of his shotgun. He did as she asked, and she walked forward, taking in the deer Daryl had shot, all mangled and torn apart from the neck up, then to the beheaded walker laying beside it, it's teeth gnashing at open air. "Daryl's gonna be pissed."

"Lea?" That voice, she knew that voice. She'd know it anywhere. Snapping her head to where it had come from, her eyes widened as she caught sight of her brother standing there, completely alive. No machines, no bandages.

Shoving past Shane, Leona rushed toward him, her bow slipping from her fingertips and into the dry dirt.

In that moment, Leona couldn't pinpoint just one emotion to explain how she was feeling. Her heart was beating out of her chest, she felt like she could faint but also like she'd just drank a dozen cans of Monster at once and her veins were buzzing. And then there was the smile on her face as she wrapped her arms around him, and he did the same to her, pulling each other close like they did when they were little kids.

Leona had been close to her older brother for as long she could remember. Even in high school after her brother graduated, he took her to prom when no other boy asked and her friends all had dates, and he'd been the one to save up and buy her a car for when she graduated. Leona had been the one to cheer him on during sporting events and help decide how to propose to Lori. Sure, they'd had fights, like all siblings, but even with more than 750 miles between them they'd remained close.

Pulling away from him, she took him in. The last time she'd seen him, he was comatose on a hospital bed, bloodied and bruised and in a ridiculous blue gown. Now, he looked completely healed, and there was even some stubble that was starting grow on his chin where he usually kept it clean-shaven. She imagined she looked a bit different, too, and his face told her as much. She'd lost weight from all the hunting she'd been doing, walking off a barely noticeable amount, and her hair had grown from falling just below her breasts to the bottom of her rib cage when she pulled it straight. And yet they were both almost exactly the people they had been more than two months ago when the outbreak struck.

Then his eyes fell to the rope slung over her shoulder, bodies of squirrels hanging from it. Blood was still dripping from a few and polka-dotting the dehydrated grass beside the soles of her boots.

His eyes scrunched in confusion. "What're you wearing?"

She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. "Oh, I was just hunting with—"

"Son of a bitch! That's my deer."

She glanced over at Shane, smirking. "Told you."

He rolled his eyes, dropping the gun so Daryl wasn't at the end of the barrel—the same spot she'd been in only minutes before.

Unfazed by the gun that had been pointing at his head seconds before, Daryl approached the kill, crossbow dropping down to his side in defeat as anger rolled over his face. "Look at it. All gnawed on by this...filthy, disease-bearing, motherless, poxy bastard!" He accentuated each word by kicking the walkers body, and Leona sighed, standing still beside Rick as she watched him let out that anger she knew he and his brother shared.