Instincts (Daryl Dixon FF)

f o u r

[Season 4, before Internment]

Margo's P.o.V

I could hear walkers growling in the distance but I didn't care, I couldn't. Everything that mattered was getting back to Nico and Dad and finding them alive. I didn't know what I was gonna do without them, this whole thing was just..pointless if I wasn't able to hold on that little piece of past the two of them gave me. It was my memory, my identification and I had to protect it to protect myself.
Giros fur glistened with sweat, the white spots standing out of the black mess like the stars in the universe and I was right there, lost and captured in its endless widths, swimming. A piece of dust swimming in a sea of fictional opportunities. The apocalypse always was an opportunity and I considered it, even wished for it but now that it took all the other chances from me, I wanted to return.

We had to slow down even if I strained against it, my heart stuttering at the thought. We'd become easy prey for the biters.

Back when everything was normal I used to run off into the forest nearby. My hands brushed the shining green leaves, catching the little droplets of dew on my fingertips. I tried to enjoy the silence but I just..couldn't seem to do it. All there was, were those horrible, horrible screams echoying in my head. The screams of the caretires on the freeway, the screams of my parents fighting over some moot shit and again the tires, the fucking tires on the fucking road I couldn't find. Where is the goddamn road?!

I stopped. There was a small mound a few feet away where the woods seemed to diminish into a few lonley trees. I exhaled. It was the same place where I entered. So the road must have been parallel to us the whole time.. which kind of made me pretty damn angry because I just wasted a whole lot of energy into getting all churned up about that piece of tarmac.

Just when I was about to signalize Giro to trott again he released a horribly high-pitched neigh. It rang through my ears like an alarm, finally shaking my distracted brain awake. A single walker had his teeth stuck in the buff flesh of my stallions thigh, the fur surrounding his chapped lips like a layer of poison, his eyes glistening with pure death. I could hear the ligaments and tendons rip and if it wasn't for the past few months I would have vomited and probably even fainted over the disgusting picture forming in front of me. But now I was different, different in strong and trained, different in closed off and broken, different in how a place like this would unavoidibly turn a helpless women into a fighter. So I jumped off my horse, took a few large steps to the walker, fumbled one of the sniper guns off of my back and blew the bullet through his head. The second one hit Giros skull, ending his agony. It stung, yes, but just so much that I couldn't care. Sometimes I wished that I still could, I missed crying, I missed my thoughts, because I felt like they made me unique once I threatened to sink into the mass. But uniqueness was indifferent now. Just as a horse's death.

I petted him one last time, "good boy", before I stood up and started heading towards the forest border. With every step the dark green entity faded away revealing the night sky and the wide fields. Our tent was only a few miles away, the anticipation tingled down my spine and I started running, no, sprinting towards the road. My legs burned and I hadn't really eaten enough lately to speed around for fun but I couldn't help myself. Even when I reached the dark asphalt, feet thudding loudly on the material I continued running.

It was hard to see, my eyevision was pretty bad, which was one of the main reasons my other senses started to get so strong but still, I tried to foccus on the end of the street and the small orange home.

Running. Running. Breathing. Running .

That's how I survive. That's how we survive, we run, we flee, we fight and we forget. We forget about the past, because it makes us weak. We forget about the present, because it makes us predictable and we forget about the future, because it makes us diverted. We survive because we function, we run, we flee and we fight.