Your head is pounding. So is your leg. You can barely keep yourself upright, but it wasn’t like you could just allow yourself to pass out in the middle of a forest.
“Just a little bit longer…” You shakily mumble to yourself, for probably the 5th time during the past 30 minutes. You didn’t know where you were going. Just heading straight until you would maybe find a road, or preferably some kind of shelter to take a breather. Adrenaline had long since worn off, and the pain only intensified with every step.
Stopping for just a moment and leaning against a tree, you take a deep breath and look up at the sky. Your vision is blurry, mostly from relentless tears that are a mix of pain and fear. It’s not exactly dark yet, but the sun is setting alarmingly fast.
Mumbling some unsavory words, you continue limping forward with the help of the trees. You whimpered with every other step as quietly as you could. If you drew attention to yourself right now, it would be over.
But as you kept going, walking became seriously unbearable. So unbearable, that your leg just gave up completely and you fell flat on your face into the wet dirt. You groaned and weakly lifted yourself enough to sit and lean back against the nearest tree. You stretched out your injured leg slowly and closed your eyes. Just for a few seconds. You told yourself.
You didn’t mean to fall asleep. Or, maybe you didn’t fall asleep, maybe you just passed out from a mix of so many things. Your mind drifts back to the present moment cloudily, as you feel yourself being poked by something. Considering your condition, it takes a surprisingly little amount of time to get back to your senses enough to flinch awake and defensively look around for the threat.
Next to you, was a boy that was crouched with a stick that was about the length of the average adult arm, it’s probably what you were being poked with. You were expecting much more, so you let out a sigh of relief, before slightly hardening your gaze and looking at him. You decide to wait for him to talk first. It takes a minute.
“... uhm… You’re alive. That’s good.” He says and looks at you. “Are you okay?” He glances down at the small puddle of blood under your stretched leg. He spoke softly. You hoped with all your heart that he was as kind as he seemed.
“I’m…” You took a moment and looked up. It was much darker than you remember it being. It was a miracle you weren’t eaten up by now. “... I don’t even know how to put it into words. Everything aches.” You closed your eyes.
You hear him move and take something out of his bag. “Here,” he says. You open your eyes and look at the offering. It was a plastic bottle of water, half filled, the wrapper long gone.
Hesitantly, you reach towards it, glancing up into his eyes, before shakily taking the water. “You’re sure? …Thank you. So much.” You smiled faintly and drank. It didn’t ease away your headache, but it certainly made breathing easier. It had been a while since you had had water.
“You can have all of it.” The mysterious man assures and watches you. Eagerly, you gulp down the full (half) bottle and hand it back.
“Thank you. I… Thank you.” You stutter out, a little speechless by the show of kindness. It wasn’t common in this day and age. “I wish I had something to repay you with, but… I don’t.” You sigh and look down.
“Don’t worry.” He says. “You can come back to my camp if you would like. It’s not too far.” He offers.
“I doubt I can walk.”
“I’ll help you.”
You get a little suspicious. He didn’t hesitate giving you clean water, and he doesn’t seem bothered at all by leading you straight to his home. “What’s the catch here?” You look around, hoping, but also not hoping, to see more of him- his people. There was no one.
“No catch. I want to help. You’ll die here, if you stay.” He says and offers his hand.
After a few seconds of contemplating, you decide to accept it. Even if it was a trap, he was right that you would die if you stayed around here any longer. Walkers were bound to investigate the scent of fresh blood. “Okay… Thank you, uhhh…?” You take his hand and realize you don’t know his name.
He pulls you up and you put all your weight on your non-injured foot with a quiet hiss. He looks to the side and carefully gets closer so he can walk next to you and aid you. “... I’m James. The camp isn’t far.” He begins to slowly guide you.
At the start of the walk you introduced yourself back to him. The rest was quiet, as you mostly focused on finding the least painful way to walk and James didn’t seem like someone who spoke much at all. It was definitely a much slower journey than you were comfortable with, but eventually you made it to his camp. It was… Really small. So small that he probably lived alone.
“Sit down here.” He sits you down near the unlit fireplace. “How much does it hurt?” He asks.
You stretch out the injured leg again and lean back against the log, looking up at the fast darkening sky. “Like hell.” You sigh heavily and close your eyes.
“Stay awake.” He reminds you. “Do you feel like sleeping?”
With another sigh, you open your head and lower your head to look at him. “No. I don’t.”
He nods and looks down at your leg. “Can I see? The injury.”
You also look down at your leg. “Yeah… I haven’t looked at it at all, actually.”
James glances up. “Not at all? You must’ve been injured pretty recently, then..” He looks back down and gently starts lifting the blood-soaked hem of your pants up.
“Well… Today. But I had been walking for a good minute. I was going to look at it, I just wanted to get somewhere safe first.” You explain yourself and wince as the fabric peels off your wound.
“I see.” He nods as he finishes pulling up the leg of your pants to above your knee. He observes the wound, and so do you. It was a little hard to see the actual severity of the wound due to blood surrounding the area and how red it was in general. But you could guess it was pretty deep even from a glance. “How did you get hurt? If you don’t mind me asking?” James stands up and up next to the little tent in the camp, looking for something.
“Raiders,” you frown. “Took everything. God, what am I gonna do…” You mumble the last part to yourself and lean back against the log before continuing, “they came out of nowhere. First rays of sunlight… I tried to fight them off, but… You know. Not much I could do. There were, like, 6 or 7 of them.”
James comes back with a larger flask of water in a more ecological bottle and a ripped up piece of cloth. He frowns with sympathy. “That’s terrible… Have you seen them before?” He asks and sits down on his knees next to you, facing your wound.
“No. Or, at least I can’t recall. I don’t meet a lot of people out here anymore, though, so I’m sure I’d recognize them if I had seen them.” You glance at James before looking back up at the sky.
James doesn’t say much more, he unscrews the flask open and wets the piece of cloth. “Don’t freak out. I’ll clean it.” He warns you and you nod.
It hurt. The fabric was rough and the water was freezing. But it was also sort of soothing, in a way. You only dared to look down once he announced that he was done. It was a lot cleaner and you could see the severity better now.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have any antiseptic. This will have to do.” He sighs. He stares at the gash.
“It’s fine. Thank you. I feel better already.” You smile weakly.
“I don’t have any stitching equipment either. I do have bandages, though. Here, you can drink the rest of this.” He hands you the flask and stands up to, you assume, go get the bandages.
With just a little hesitation, you sip the water slowly. You probably shouldn’t be so trustful of James, but he seemed to have good intentions. He had done so much for you already. You would be sure to repay him in the future.
Lost in thought about how you could ever pay back for the helpfulness, you barely noticed James walking back until he crouched down again. You placed the flask down next to you and watched as he got to work.
Bandages were a precious resource. You hoped that his kindness wouldn’t inconvenience him in the future. “Really… Thank you so much James. I’ll be sure to remember this.” You thanked.
“No need. I just want to help.” He wraps the bandage tightly around your calf and covers the whole wound. He secures it in place and then lifts his head to look at you. “Uhm… Here. You must be hungry.” He hands you an opened can.
“Ah… You didn’t need to. Thank you. You’re so kind.” You take the can and start eating. It slowly made you feel better.
“You can stay with me, until you feel better.” He offers.
My Current Idea For Lee Everett's Amazing Traveling Orphanage
Spoilers for the story idea if you'd like to avoid those.
Since the poll is over now, I thought I'd discuss a little bit further some of the story ideas that were included, starting with the one that ultimately won the poll.
My basic concept for the story so far is something like this: every chapter will be named after one of the TWDG kids, and will be focused on how Lee ended up adopting them. Obviously Clementine would be chapter one, but after that it gets a bit complicated. I think I'll include Jolene's daughter, Danielle, since I had her in Everetts After the End as well, but I'm a bit less certain about including Adam and Elizabeth, the Stranger's kids. Since, y'know, them dying is extremely critical to the plot of season one. Duck will be saved for season two, which of course means I have to keep him alive through season one.
I'm also debating whether to have Becca join the group between seasons one and two (since she's a 400 Days character) or have her join at some point during or immediately after season two. Sarah of course will join in during season two, as will little AJ. Then there's Gil from Jane's ending.
I almost forgot about them entirely, but there's also James and Alex from the Michonne DLC. I don't know when exactly the DLC takes place in the timeline, the wiki doesn't say as far as I can tell, but based on vibes alone I wanna say it's a little before season two. Maybe Lee could take Michonne's place in the DLC. We'll see. If I do include them, they'll probably share a chapter.
Then there's Gabe and Mariana in A New Frontier, I'll probably give them each their own chapter to represent how one of them is more willing to accept Lee as a father figure earlier, probably Mariana since we all know what Gabe is like. Gabe will be a lot more resistant to the idea.
Not doing season four. Most of them are too old to fit the theme of what I want to do with this fic, and I'm also just not very interested in that season.
There might be a few transitionary chapters here and there to develop some of the kids and their relationships with Lee a little more, but yeah, that's the basic idea. Will take some planning out, but it won't be as long as my other multi-chapter fanfics. Probably less than twenty chapters.
It'll be a long while until The Choices That Make Us is close to being finished, so there's no rush to get outlining on this one. Still, I'll probably end up working on it every now and then whenever I have the motivation.
