Finding Sophia (The Walking Dead Fanfiction)

Seventeen: Survival and Living

Walking away isn't the hardest part of losing somebody. At least then you have something to do. It's the days after that are the worst. I didn't know what to do with anything now...I just walk, living. I wasn't even living...I was only surviving.

The difference between surviving and living is so goddamn big, it's hard to believe people actually consider them to be synonyms. Survival is just barely making it to the next day, your heart beating, your blood running through your veins. Survival is lonely, survival is living in constant fear, constant motion.

I guess that's the one similarity they actually have. Constant motion. Survival, you run from everything, but living...I'm alive, but I'm not living. Not out here. Not since the beginning.

Living is being whoever you want with people who make you smile, trying, not running from fear. It's facing your fears and following your dreams. Dreams seem irrelevant now, considering I can hardly ever sleep, but I still want to love. I want to be happy and find people I care about.

I had my family. I had my mom and brothers and sisters and I ran away. I had Caesar and I left, running away because things got hard. I had Sophia, my little damn chipmunk, and I ran away. I left too many people with arguments, just stupid little disagreements.

That's what I realized standing here in the middle of the abandoned street. I shut my eyes and just stood there, the smell of smoke still evident in the air. As I listened and waited, all I could think about was everything I'd given up. I'd been happy, I'd been in love, I'd been safe, and I threw it all away.

I pull out my sketchbook from my bag and begin to flip through the pages. Rebecca. Gone. Anna. Gone. Michael. Gone. Jonah. Gone. Mom. Gone. Caesar. Gone.

Grabbing a pencil from my bag, I sat down in the street and started to sketch, the ever present sound of geeks in my ears. I was crying and didn't realize it until they hit my paper. I wiped my cheeks off and let the pencil guide my hand, and before I knew it, there Sophia was, staring back at me with her cute little smile.

At the bottom, I wrote in large, cursive letters: NOT GONE.

I shut the book and smiled softly, tears still welling in my eyes. Holding my middle fingers up at the sky, I yelled, "Fuck it!" I didn't care who or what heard me. All geeks here had burned mostly to death, if not completely dead.

Everyone I'd ever loved, everyone who ever showed any interest in me, I'd pushed away rather than stick it out and care. I'd run away from everything, everyone. I was sick of it. I was sick of hiding and not caring about anything.

"Anthea?" Mom called out to me. She was crying. I know she was. Her voice wavered and I heard her. "Annalise, boys, come here."

I was only seventeen at the time. Anna was 15. My brothers, Michael and Jonah, fraternal twins, were 18. We were Irish triplets, only eleven months apart. It wasn't too weird, except for a month out of the year, I was considered the same age as them. Major bragging rights there.

I walked down the steps of our house slowly, anticipating what was happening. When I finally reached the living room, the boys sitting opposite each other, my mom sitting in my father's chair, and Annalise sitting on the love seat, her legs tucked in front of her, holding onto them like they were her one lifeline.

"What happened?" I asked, my voice cracking.

"Your father." My mother says slowly. "He...Rebecca called...he didn't make it."

My father had been diagnosed with stage two lung cancer a few months ago, even though he'd never smoked a cigarette a day in his life. He was at the hospital for chemotherapy this week. My older sister, Rebecca, was with him. And she was the one who called in the bad news.

My father and I had always been close. While Rebecca and Anna were close with mom, the twins and I were always with dad. He was ex-military, and that may have been why he had the lung cancer. I didn't know. I didn't even know how that made sense, but I needed a reason.

It wasn't fair. Nothing had been fair. When I didn't respond to anything, Michael stood up and hugged me. I just stood there, stiff and let him hug me. I didn't cry. I didn't accept it. They were lying. They were playing some sick joke on me. There was no way James Piper was dead.

James Piper was dead.

Rebecca was the star child a surgeon who had two kids at that point, twins, Natalie and Nathan, and some snobby nosed husband, George, I think. He was an asshole, but he cared about Dad. He was the main source for the funeral expenses and for the chemo.

And when I was eighteen, I had developed the role of 'black sheep' in the family. I was the mistake, the one who smoked, despite my father's death, and drank under aged and painted, despite my mother's wish for me to be a doctor. I was smart, I'll admit, but I didn't want to be a doctor. She wanted what was best for me, but after dad, she sucked at being a mom. It became what was best for her, not for me.

I got my tattoo, and moved from my hometown of Harrison, Tennessee and went on some big road trip to Atlanta. My biggest plan was to head to New York, but Georgia was closer and I knew the way. My dad brought me there for sight seeing before.

I met Caesar when I was nineteen, working in some crappy little cafe that barely passed as an establishment. My boss was a, uh, a sexual harasser, but I needed the money, so I ignored it for the most part. Caesar was twenty, working in construction. And he sort of saved me from that ass, telling him off when he walked in, acting like he was my boyfriend, getting all angry that some stranger was touching 'his girl'. And eventually, I did become his girl. His girl.

I missed love. I really, really missed living.