𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒. Lily hadn’t had a full night of sleep in a long time and since she had arrived in the compound, her sense of alert wouldn’t shut off. She still couldn’t believe she had managed to arrive there. Beaten, battered, bruised, with a gun shot to her arm, but alive nonetheless. Her memories ate her alive behind closed eyes while she prayed she could forget about it all, and she was never a religious person, deities were not her thing. Loneliness always beat losing people, loss was a sneaky thing, it crept up at night and left her incredibly breathless, even though she was used to it, losing people was something that happened her whole life.
𝐈𝐓 took some time for her brain to catch up to the reality of the last few weeks. For how long had she been walking aimlessly around, running, hiding, killing? It was like death followed her. When she arrived in the last group she was in, Lily had promised herself it would only be for a few days a week at most. She didn’t expect to bond, she didn’t expect to feel protective or to be involved in a sense of safety. She had long denied herself any sort of human connection only to let her walls come down this once. It was all for naught. Living in a world like that, it’s incredibly easy to think that the dead are the only menace. Creatures always waiting and willing to take a bite, an infection wanting and needing to progress. Anxiously waiting at every turn. They were the only menace, maybe in the beginning, while chaos and mayhem spread like wildfire, they were. However, with time, as people accepted that life as normalcy, people started being menacing again. In a world with no laws, it was easy to live like a savage, it was needed to fight for food, for shelter and sometimes even for power. She had never bought other people’s fights, except that one time.
𝐒𝐇𝐄 had been on the right side of the fight. Or at least that’s what her conscience led her to believe. Killing was like a second nature to her and she remembered slicing and shooting and bashing people’s head in on her way to that hospital, on her way to safety. There was something to be said about the feel of knife on flesh. About how it was hard to puncture through the layers that protected the human body, but with the right angle and the right blade, it was like butter. She was on the right side, she kept repeating to herself as the mutiny went on. Questioning what kind of person rebelled against someone who was offering food and shelter. She lost count of how many people she needed to fight off insuring the safety of others, she had lost count of how many she was supposed to keep safe that she had lost sight of in the dead of the night. She lost count on how many days had passed since she succeeded in walking away from all of that. Only her, alone. It plagued her the thought that all of her efforts had been for nothing. There was nobody with her by the time she arrived at Crescent the view of the hospital had stumbled on her sight and it was pure luck. She was so deeply tired when she arrived that she did not mean the search for bites, she was so incredibly out of herself that she was not violent, or angry, or dismissive. She was still tired ever since.
𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 by the gates, Lily made home in her favorite spot. It was a tree that overlooked the walls. She found that if she climbed high enough she could see what was happening and no one would bother her and if she sat beneath it, there was enough shade that she could try to enjoy the chill air of the first hours of the morning. One of the girls that slept in the same room as her allowed her to borrow a book, it was weird to think that books had survived it all, but at least there was still some form of entertainment, while she hated romantic novels, the girl had a good selection of thrillers like the one she had been loosing herself in right now.
𝐓𝐇𝐄 sound of her name being said by a struggling voice made her look up. Chesnut hues went wide and her voice got caught in her throat. The thing about living in a world like that is that one never really believes that they’ll see someone again. The night was dark and the bodies mingled when she fled the scene and she didn’t think he would be alive. She was sure that he wasn’t, he was their main target, he was the reason why there was an attack in the first place. He was the one she was supposed to protect the most, but didn’t. ❛ Lily ❜ there it was again. His voice, bringing her back to reality where her mind didn’t want to be now. She scrambled on her feet and rushed to the gates. She was not far away but it seemed like a thousand miles before she could get to them. ❛ OPEN THE GATES!❜ She yelled from the top of her lungs ❛ OPEN THE FUCKING GATES!❜ she yelled again as seemed to not be understanding the urgency of it. There were maybe two undead following Lachlan’s trail and they were catching up, he wasn’t dead, and she didn’t need him to be now.
𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐒, it took ages for the gates to open, she took the knife she kept on herself the entire time and swiftly killed the walkers that were catching up. One slice to the throat and another slice to the stomach, guts spilling out right then and there. She was on him. God, she felt so fucking relieved to see him, even if he was incredibly beaten. She wondered if she would have managed to help him had she stayed, but with a shake of her head, she dispelled every thought from mind, she needed to be sure that he was okay. ❛ Lach? Lach, open your eyes, please, ❜ she felt like she was in a losing battle. There was absolutely no way she would be strong enough to carry him, he was wider and taller than her as it was, even though he seemed frail at that moment.❛ Look at me, you can’t go unconscious right now, can you just fucking wake up? ❜Lily slapped his cheeks lightly and put his arm around her neck, ignoring the pain shooting up from her right arm. One of the guards came up to them and offered his help and she willingly accept it. Lachlan needed medical attention, he needed a shower and she wasn’t going to leave his side no matter what other people said. She had left once and couldn’t protect him and she just about lost the one friend she had in the world. ❛ We need to take him to the quarantine station, can you also get a doctor? Just hurry, ok? Just fucking hurry. ❜
———— When Lachlan was a young boy, he had feared darkness with a passion. There were multiple nights where his small feet had sprinted from his room in an attempt to escape it. His whole life seemed to be that way, running from the inevitable darkness that consumed the minds of every person that once basked in the light of the sun. His mother's words seemed to resonate through his mind as he struggled against the pain that was washing through him. Admire na h-oidhche, is e na thig às deidh an latha. The words felt haunting as he tried to regain his consciousness, his mind fighting as hard as it could against his body's natural responses. If he were to fully relinquish control, he knew that his end would be set in stone. But there was a peace that lingered behind the darkness, tempting him to release himself. It was as if he was merely wandering through a field in Scotland, the air cold and crisp as his eyes admired what he could not understand. As he felt the grass beneath his feet, wet with dew, his mother's voice rang through his head once more. She was calling to him, his head turned to see her standing not far from him - a light emerging from behind her with a ferocity he had never witnessed. Is this my end, after everything? After all of the fighting and suffering, this is where I die? His feet began to carry him in her direction, his hand outstretched for her to grab, when something pulled him out of his dream. He could be free from the agony, from the weight that pulled him towards his demise - besides, without her he was unsure of what direction to travel.
Lachlan felt something on his face, a frantic voice filled his ears as his eyes slowly opened. He saw the fear in her own eyes, the terror that she might lose him - it came as a shock to him that there was anyone left in the world that gave a damn about what occurred to him. Lily had showed her loyalty to him once, when she fought against the rebels. She had tried to fight her way to him, tried to be by his side to help defend him - the infected had stopped her attempts at doing so and knocked her back. It was that moment that he tried to get to her, fight his way through the crowd to save her life. Just as she had entered his settlement though, she had exited - swiftly and without trace. After the battle had ceased, Lachlan searched all the faces, praying she was not among them - that she managed to somehow evade the dead and survive another day. This inkling of her survival had been correct, as she stood above him. Lily could nae be killed so easily.
At her request, he attempted to rise from the ground, his sword grasped tightly in his hand. But alas, his body had become frail, the slashes and bruises too much for him to bear. Once more, he fell towards the ground, his electric hues starring up at her. Those lovely brown eyes... I'm sorry I filled them with fear. How he yearned to see the spark in them that emerged when she was happy. Lachlan had only seen it a handful of times, when he managed to make her laugh, but those images flashed through his mind offering him a bit of comfort. His lips parted slightly as a cough shook his entire frame, crimson liquid slipping out against his will.
"I'm sorry Lily, I cannae move." His words were wet with blood, a physical representation of the ignominy that threatened to emerge. "I failed ye... forgive me." It was the last thing he was able to choke out, a small tear trailing down his face as his hand raised to meet her cheek. His touch lingered there for just a moment before his arm went limp, his head rolling to the side as he faded away.
The memory of Scotland filled his mind once more, the feeling of pain dissipating as he felt himself being lifted from the ground. How he missed the smell of his family’s farm, his father chopping wood for their furnace while his mother made tea as the sun rose above the hills that rolled through his town. It was a beautiful sight, the sunrise in Scotland. The sky would mix hues of pink and purple, it felt almost as if you were in heaven on earth. Perhaps that was where he had gone, maybe his eyes would no longer open and he would rest forever beneath the rays of sun with his family. Yet something stopped this thought in his mind, demanding that it halt itself before it overtook him. There was someone in the world who still needed him, who required his protection - to save her from despair in a horrid existence. If he were to perish, she would surely be alone, and that was a fate worse than death.
Lachlan felt as though he was outside of his body, eyes studying his frame as it laid on the hospital bed. He was battered and bruised almost beyond recognition. Without his ginger curls, one would think he had morphed into an entirely different person. It was almost poetic, such a thing, as he had changed in a sense. He had lost the last person he loved in the universe, watched children be slaughtered by infected simply due to one man’s greed. Their bodies strewn among their parents, blood soaking through his shoes as he had looked out at the scene left behind by those too cowardly to face the consequences of their actions. Innocence was a concept lost on most of the survivors in their new world. As the years passed, more chaos spread through each of their frames and those who had little personal strength were consumed by it. They had a lust for disaster, for power in a way he had never experienced nor expected of his kind.
Yet such things could not allow for him to let go of everything. There was still hope in this world, whether it was in the touch of a lover or the laughter of a close friend, even a white flower losing petals in the fall air. Hope survived because it was human nature to desire a better existence. Lachlan wanted to assist in building a better world order, wanted to strike down those who defied goodness in any sense. They had a chance to reinvent a world that was already corrupt before the pandemic and turn it into something beautiful.
”Lily.” The name slipped past his lips once more, his tone tender in its efforts to display some of his gratitude. His oceanic eyes opened, landing on the woman who seemed to never have left his side. His hand reached in her direction. “Did I give ye a scare?” He asked, a smirk forming across his lips in a feeble attempt to see her smile. Even if he was meant to survive merely to place a smile upon her face, such a purpose sat well within his chest. If he could instill hope in just her, he could die a happier man.
