The world has ended and there's more people dead than alive, and somehow Andie has ended up completely and utterly alone. Nowhere is safe, but she can't keep running. And after captivity turns to friendship and love, the teenager must decide what di...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Andie's sitting on a large rock near a river, and Daryl's knelt down in front of her as he uses his bandana to wipe blood from her face. He keeps rinsing it in the river, and she's wordlessly staring at the front of his vest.
"How did you get this bad?" He asks, leaning toward the running water to wash the blood out of the black fabric once again. "It doesn't look like any of this is yours."
"Carter was bleeding out... I was out of ammo in the rifle, and he saved me. But the other guy shot at him before I could get my pistol. Hit him in the chest." She tells him, and he pauses a moment as he looks at her; he didn't know Carter was dead, not for sure. "I'm so tired of losing people, and I didn't want to watch him die. I was trying to stop the bleeding... Stupid."
"You cared about him. Don't make you stupid."
"There was no saving him. Not where he was hit." She shakes her head as he starts wiping down her hands now. She knows she should take the bandana from him, finish getting cleaned up on her own, but she can't bring herself to care enough. "People keep dying to save me, and I'm not even worth saving."
"Stop it."
"I'm not." Her eyebrows furrow as she thinks about her old life. "Maybe I'm a decent person now, but I wasn't always. Actually, I used to be a pretty terrible person."
"Don't matter who you were before." Daryl says. "You've saved a lot of lives, done plenty of good. The people who've saved you knew what you're worth."
"I know you didn't like him...but he was a good guy."
"I know."
"He didn't deserve what he got." She grinds her teeth. "Losing his mom, getting sick, getting better just to die with a bullet in his chest. Nobody deserves that."
"The world ain't exactly fair anymore." He says, and she scoffs.
"When was it ever?" Andie looks down at her hands, seeing how badly they're still stained with Carter's blood. "I never should've gone up to him and Zoe that day."
"It wouldn't have changed anything. You said it yourself, he was a good guy." Daryl says as he looks up at her. "He still would've shot those guys to protect a girl from the group who brought him to the prison, still would've died the same way."
"Maybe... Or maybe he would've died to protect a girl who cared for him the same way he cared for her. He deserved to find someone who would've appreciated the things he did for her." She shakes her head. "Any other girl would've understood what he was doing that day on the perch, would've thought the gesture was sweet."
