Tessa skilfully twisted around her contraptions, leaping and bouncing over every deadly and every innocent. The bag hanging off her shoulder jumps with her body, and the arrows peeking out clash together.
Her legs beat against the dirty ground, hoping, praying the woman she left hanging in the net was still alive, that her baby hadn't died and killed its mother.
She has to help Lori, it is the only way she won't have a small group that managed to take over an entire prison coming after her. She may not know the full extent she is willing to go to survive, but she knows it won't include letting a baby die, Lori just happens to be attached to the baby.
The child heard the woman before she saw her, Lori could no longer silence her screams and was letting them freely rip through the air, no longer caring for the bodies it brought. In her mind she has been left to die, so what does it matter if other dead people have come to join her?
Tessa, with her hands too full of food to grab her bow when she sprinted out, quickly tossed the items to the ground before whipping an arrow out and impaling it into the head of the nearest biter.
There's a cluster of them standing under the net, reaching up and skimming the screaming woman's arms with their talon-like nails, the blood that falls from the cuts egging them on.
Deciding that there's no time to unhook her knife from the bobbles holding it in place, she sticks with arrows, one in each hand, and abandons one whenever it gets stuck and reaches for another.
Lori doesn't react to the girl's presence, but then Tessa decides she probably didn't even know she was there. She isn't sure how the baby gets out of Lori, but it has to hurt, like when she stood on Lego and the only way out was to keep standing on more Lego before finding a safe place to land.
Once all the biters are unmoving on the ground, and Tessa does a search for any others that are close, is when she bolts over to the rope that is holding Lori up. She slowly unties it with one hand gripping the rope, preparing to take the big woman's weight, and the other hand undoes the last knot, her other hand shoots up to the rope once it is free and her legs dig into the ground to help her stabilise, but the rope slips causing Lori to scream in surprise before Tessa regains her grip.
The woman has snapped out of her pain-induced daze, and is now staring at the girl with her jaw slack and her eyes won't stay still, trying to understand the scene around her. Tessa's hand burn as she steadily releases the rope to not send the pregnant woman crashing to the ground, and once she deems her at an acceptable height she lets the rope go to examine her red hands.
Lori landed with a thump, though the leaves under her had cushioned the fall, her body was in such pain that the slightest jostle sent a shock through every nerve she had. She's lying on the ground, her arms wrapped around her stomach as if it will ease the agony her child is causing.
Tessa ran back to retrieve the snacks and water before dropping next to Lori and wordlessly offering her the items in her arms, which she took with a grateful smile. As Lori guzzled down the water and shoved the pretzels in her mouth with so little chews the girl was afraid she'd choke, she got up to collect the arrows left in the corpse's brains.
"Thank you," Lori says once the food has slid down her throat with the help of the water. Her gratitude cannot be expressed with words, so she places her hand over the girls once she is back at her side, making Tessa go ridged at the sudden contact.
The young girl hasn't felt human touch in so long it feels foreign, unnatural. She had unknowingly replaced the memory of her people's soft skin on hers with the leathery, cold skin of the dead.
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Torn Apart • TWD
FanfictionThe day the prison was attacked with walkers, Lori Grimes ran. She fled to the forest and she didn't stop running, determined to get to safety she didn't let anything stop her, not the dead, not nature and not even the contractions. The only thing...
