ENDURE.
❝I know how to fight,
and I know how to win. ❞
THE WALKING DEAD.
DARYL DIXON.
BOOK THREE of the LANCASTER SAGA.
[ SEASONS 7 - 9 ]
*****
*I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I simply write to write. Astrid, any additional...
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[ iv. coward ]
october 28th, 2012
➸➸➸
"JESUS CHRIST, SIMON! I didn't mean to shoot the damn kid. What the fuck's the matter with you? Look at the mess you've made! I am sincerely sorry, miss. I really fucking am."
Astrid Dixon barely heard Negan as he addressed her. His low, taunting voice was rippling, lost beneath invisible waves.
In a distant corner of her mind, a place severely turned numbed and hollow, Astrid vaguely, of all things, recalled her days before the end of the world. The long days she had spent wasting away in nursing school, in a career she did not want. Her instructors from that time had not taught her about healing in the beginning; rather, they had drilled into her the harsh reality of death. How to confront it, accept it, or be consumed by it.
Death, with its insidious fingers, crept into every single life, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. It was a force that knew no mercy, no discrimination. People still reacted to it in myriad ways, either hardened or shattered under its weight.
Some embraced the inevitable of dying, while others clung desperately to denial, suffocating in its cruel illusion. There were those who valiantly fought against it, defying the Reaper with every breath, and then there were the resigned ones, accepting their fate, letting death consume them without resistance.
Astrid had seen each approach. Both before and after the world's ending. And yet, she still grappled with those dying around her ceaselessly. Each death, each accident, each murder—she found only pushed her closer toward an eroding cliffside. Soon, she would fall. Perhaps, she already was. Because no longer could she breathe. No longer did this life feel like one she wanted to exist in.
She wished, oh how she wished, that she could—for just once—defy death's choice. That she could reach into the cold earth and pull her friends, her family, back into her, back into the warmth of life.
But wishes were fragile, pitiful things in the face of such finality. Countless faces Astrid had cherished, had known so intimately, were now just shadows. Her mind a mess of memories and echoes. Memories and echoes that could not ever fully remake a proper voice, a beautiful face. A person she loved.
Negan and his Saviors had taken one too many people away from Astrid. Now, her grief consumed her. It was as though a woven, irretrievable part of her had been violently ripped away. The hole in her heart was not just a metaphor. It was a tangible ache, with no sign of healing.
Not from this.
The death of a child was a gaping wound that would never close for Astrid Dixon.
"Welcome to a brand-new-fucking-world, you sorry shits!"
Negan's ensuing shout tore Astrid from the buzzing that was deafening in her ears. Her eyes still overflowed with tears as she lifted her head, her body still quaking with tremors as she cradled Bailey to her chest. Bailey, with her eyes shut, her once rosy skin now pallid as snow. Despite the pool of blood staining her clothes, still wet and seeping, the young girl appeared almost serene, her tiny hands clutching securely to Astrid's sweater. Her blood-splattered cheek nestled against Astrid's chest as if only in sleep.
