Rebel || Daryl Dixon

s e v e n t y f o u r

Sometimes we anticipate an ending and it doesn't go the way that we want it to.

Sometimes, upon hearing of the death of a human or seeing it with your own eyes, denial is the first instinct.

Next the screams, the grief, the understanding.

Death is never something that any of us expect.

Sometimes... sometimes it just happens.

But sometimes while we're trying to brace ourselves to expect anything, we find something we weren't even looking for. Sometimes we find the truth in the bottom of the well after we leaned over too far to peer inside. Sometimes we understand a quote while we're on the deathbed after a snakebite.

Aero only understood the importance of connections when she had nothing left but herself and seven bullets.

She never anticipated that she'd ever come to need that understanding, but it was thrust upon her without her asking for it.

- - -

Weeks had gone by.

The wolf prowled through the forest endlessly, her ivy green eyes always glued forward. If she looked back, she'd dwell on the past.

Behind her, stood the angel.

Stood Negan.

Stood Jessie.

NEGAN,

ANGEL,

JESSIE,

WOLF.

They haunted her mind like a shadow. Always there, always judging.

They stepped on the back of her heels and pulled back on her shirt, but the wolf just kept on prowling.

- - -

It wasn't until Aero found herself trapped that she found herself missing the company of others.

No matter the courage of a person, it wasn't difficult to get caught in situations such as the one that she was in. Aero was intelligent and could easily fend for herself, but even the slightest mistake could result in entrapment.

Sometimes it wasn't even the result of a mistake.

Sometimes shit just simply happens.

Aero was walking alongside the road, hidden within the trees as she always was. She wasn't expecting to see the group of biters. When she veered to avoid them, she was led right into another one.

Escaping likely would have been easy, but her boot got hooked in a root. She stumbled and slid down a hill, taking down shrubbery in her haste. She reopened wounds that had been nearly healed and awakened all the previous pain from falling off her bike.

And then the biters came.

One by one, they fell down the hill right after her. She crawled into a half-dead tree, where she was barely small enough to fit in. She stabbed the first dead one that approached the tree and used his body to conceal her hiding spot.

Still, however, she was trapped.

In a tree.

The only escape would be death, surely.
It wasn't how she'd ever pictured herself going, certainly, but again... shit just happens sometimes.