bullseye ➵ daryl dixon

t w e l v e - find

CHAPTER TWELVE | f i n d
08/11/17

Daryl stood up as hastily as he could, shaking off his coat and picking up his crossbow. He recognized the voice that screamed; it was Adira. And she sounded rather far away, which didn't make sense. Why would she have left the camp?

He didn't have time to ponder, though. He had to find her. So instead of getting angry at the silly girl, he ran out into the woods to see what trouble she'd gotten herself into. The leaves crackled underneath him with each step he took, the chilly air causing his puffy breaths to be visible. All was silent; since the scream, he hadn't heard a thing. Either she was just fine or completely the opposite.

Though he remembered his promise he'd made to himself only days earlier, Daryl found himself hoping for the former. He didn't know why, but he didn't want that girl dead. Well, he didn't really want anyone dead, but he just didn't want to lose her. He told himself that this was because she was the reason he'd gotten separated from the group; losing her would void any purpose he had leaving his family.

All of a sudden, he stopped moving after hearing a twig snap just feet away. Daryl lifted his crossbow and aimed it through the low branches in the general direction of the sound. He waited a few moments, straining his ears. Nothing.

He'd just lowered his weapon when yet another twig snapped. This time, he raised the crossbow with no intention of putting it down without shooting something. The evergreen leaves rustled for a few seconds as something clearly struggled to move between the branches. Seconds later, though, a walker stumbled out, blood dripping from its half-torn face.

Daryl immediately shot it, and went over to rip out his precious bolt. Upon doing so, however, he noticed how recent the blood looked. Clearly, the corpse had just eaten something and was wandering around searching for its next meal.

Adira.

The realization made Daryl leap into action, no longer caring how his loud footsteps in the crackling winter leaves would draw more walkers in his direction. He had to find her.

He ran through the trees, looking everywhere he could. He must've taken out about a dozen walkers looking for the girl, and he was starting to lose hope. Last time he'd looked for a girl, it had been pointless. She was dead before he'd even started searching. So what made this any different? Maybe he should just give up, so he wouldn't put so much effort into something he couldn't change.

"Daryl?"

The shaky voice made his legs stop sprinting as he turned around to see Adira lying beside a bush, leaning against a tree. She seemed to be in pain as she hugged her left leg, of which the ankle seemed to be twisted in an incorrect way. It was the same one she'd hurt before. He rushed over and almost asked if she was okay before catching himself.

Sending her an icy glare, he huffed. "What the hell do ya think you're doin' out here? Playin' tag with some damn walkers and braidin' leaves?" Sure enough, the girl had some leaves in her lap, weaved through each other to make a short little chain. It was the dead of winter - they were long dead and crackling apart. But that didn't stop her as she wove them together with the evergreens.

She looked down in shame, not having expected such a harsh reaction to her very apparent injury. "I hurt my ankle, I couldn't move and I got bored, so I took the leaves and did...this. I don't really know what I was thinking, just that my foot ankle like hell and I didn't know what to do. I mean obviously I could've maybe limped back but when I tried that it hurt a bunch to walk so I decided to stay here," she rambled on and on, only taking a breath at the end of that last sentence.

Daryl only scoffed and turned his back on Adira. He'd just run nonstop for fifteen minutes to find her, and she had been sitting there calmly, playing with plants. The sound of a small scuffle in the bushes didn't even faze him. All he knew was that he'd spent too much time and effort trying to save this girl.