Teegan hated depending on other people. She hated feeling weak. She hated not knowing how to protect herself or those around her. With Jackson, she knew he didn’t need her protection. He was strong enough, but if the time ever came where he did or someone else at their camp did, she wanted to be able to do what she could. She had a knife, and she had access to a gun. She was pretty handy with the knife, but sometimes she had to take a shot from a distance, and a knife just wouldn’t cut it even though it was her preferred weapon. Before the walkers, Teegan had never even seen a gun, let alone fired one. But Jackson had been helping her, and if she had time to take a moment and get her aim perfect, she could kill a walker with one or two shots to the head. She wasn’t so great under pressure though. Jackson had also been helping her learn to track things, whether it be a deer or a walker. They went out into the forest everyday and stayed out there for a little while, just the two of them, trying to get Teegan at the top of her game. She liked to act like she was bold and powerful, so she needed to actually be powerful.
“Going out on my own today, Jax,” Teegan said, knife and gun both tucked at her side. Unlike Nina, a recent addition to the group, who had been terrified to even leave the motel she’d been shacked up in and only left camp when forced, Teegan wasn’t scared so easily. If she was, she never showed it. She wanted to prove to everyone, and to herself, that she could handle herself. She was a big girl, even if she was the youngest of the group. “Be back in a couple hours.” With that, she was off, slipping out of the gates that surrounded their camp and ducking out into the nearby forest. She wanted a deer, or something they could kill and eat. They were always in need of meat and food.
Instead of deer tracks, she found footprints. They were fresh, she could tell, and definitely not from any animal. Fuck, she thought to herself. Surely it was a walker out there. Gun in hand, aimed to shoot, she followed the steps. There was a rustling in the bushes ahead of her and she stayed alert, moving in that direction. In the same area, she spotted something. It looked like a body, and assuming it was a walker, she pulled the trigger. But when the bullet hits the body in the arm - Teegan didn’t even think it hit the body, just grazed it, awful aim still, unfortunately - the noise that came from them was not the noise of a walker. “Shit,” she whispered to herself, rushing over to the body. It was certainly not a walker, but a very alive girl, who was bleeding from the arm. She bent down to inspect the wound she’d caused. It wasn’t fatal, not nearly, but it still didn’t look pretty. “I thought you were a walker,” she explained quietly. Why was she being quiet? No idea. The gunshot had been loud enough, and sent a signal to any nearby walker that people were there. And yes, just as she’d feared, she heard more rustling coming from ahead and she could see the walkers this time as they slowly made their way over to them. It was time to run.
Teegan was a vengeful, independent person. Before Teegan met up with Jackson and his fiance, Melissa, Teegan had the chance to save a girl. One shot and the girl would have been able to make a run for it. But Teegan let her die, because they’d had a bad history. The girl had made Teegan’s high school life miserable and she wasn’t about to go out of her way just to protect her. It was karma. But Teegan wasn’t cruel to those who didn’t deserve it. She was the reason this girl was bleeding. It’d be wrong to just leave her, as tempting as that sounded. It went against everything she always told Jackson, that they shouldn’t bring new people in especially if they were weak or injured, because they’d just take their rations and supplies and hold them back. But, she just couldn’t abandon this girl. “Come on if you’re coming,” she said as she grabbed the girl’s good arm, pulling her up just before she started to run.
