kalopsia. { the walking dead / daryl dixon }

35

As the morning sun rises over the miles of trees only visible from the rooftop of the cell block, my mind wonders back to everything that has happened since the world ended. From the start I had no idea what was going to happen, but I didn't expect this. I have to understand how I got to the point I am in my life. I started out alone and afraid, traveling south in search of an answer. Maybe instead I should have went north to Richmond and I never would have ended up here in the prison. I want to believe that I would have been better off if I had just went home in the first place but I wouldn't have met Maggie. I didn't have a best friend like her until I ended up on that farm last fall and there is not anything I wouldn't do for her or Beth. They're the sisters I never knew I needed.

At the same time, I wouldn't have met Daryl either. I know that everyone always says in romance novels and movies that just because things don't end the way you want doesn't mean you regret it happening. It's true I don't regret anything involving Daryl but I would have been better off never knowing him. I will spend the rest of whatever life I have on this Earth wondering if he was where my happy ending began. What if he was the answer to finding my family? What if he was the man I was searching for before all of this happened? What if I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with Daryl Dixon? Now I have a million questions that won't get an answer because I will never see him again. He was hateful and emotionless, or so he pretended to be, but he could have been mine. I will never be able to explain it but he made this dark world seem bright.

All he left me with was anger.

That's just what I have to accept and move on. I sigh heavily, letting the warm rays from the sun sink into my skin one last time before removing myself from the concrete roof and take my time returning to the cell block.

"Good morning." I am greeted by Glenn who is sitting at the table, eating whatever food he salvaged for breakfast.

"Oh it's another day in paradise." I joke and he lazily smiles at me. I plop down next to him and lay my bow down on the table in front of me.

"You wanna target practice?" He asks.

I look down at my bow, tracing the wooden outline with my pointer finger. "That's all I've wanted to do for weeks but honestly Glenn, I'm not really in the mood."

Glancing up to meet his exhausted eyes and bruised face, I can tell he doesn't either but it's not like Glenn to give up so easily.

"With Rick living in Crazy-town and Daryl gone, I've got to have you out there with me." He states and he's right. We haven't been this short-handed in months.

I sign in defeat. "Fine. After breakfast I'll spend the day out in the field."

"Atta girl." He pats my shoulder.

Once everyone else has joined us in the corridor, Glenn calls a meeting as expected. I couldn't keep my complete focus but I was listening. Sometime over the past two days another breach has opened in the prison and walkers are flooding in. The whole front of the prison is insecure and there isn't enough of us to clear it.

"Why are we so sure he's going to attack?" Beth rests her hands on her hips, hovering over Glenn on the floor. "Maybe you scared him off."

"He has a fish tank full of heads; walkers and humans. They're trophies" Michonne tells us. I'm not sure on how much I want to trust her considering the unsettling amount she knows about the governor. "He's coming."

Glenn thinks we should attack Woodbury now. He doesn't seem to think the governor won't be expecting it but how could he not? He kidnapped and attacked us. He has to know there is retaliation. Glenn doesn't want justice though, he wants to kill him and as much as I want to see that bastard dead no one here is an assassin. Glenn has too much rage inside of him and it's going to get him killed if he doesn't stop and think clearly. Michonne agreed to help him break into Woodbury but Hershel talked him into holding off.

"If he's really coming we need to get out of here." Hershel tells Glenn.

"And go where?" He asks. His features tensed up the longer they bickered back and forth over this.

"We were on the road all winter." Hershel reminds him.

Glenn still wasn't having it. The longer they bicker, the more tense he gets. "Back when you had two legs and we didn't have a baby crying for walkers every four hours."

"We can't stay here." He shakes his head.

"We can't run."

From behind the two men I watch Maggie walk back in the cell block and isolate herself in her cell. Everyone notices and Glenn finally gives up.

"Fine, we'll stay put." He surrenders.

Glenn storms out of the room and everyone returns to their daily tasks, running in different directions around the prison. I didn't realize I was still standing in the same spot against the wall until Beth asked me if I wanted to start my laundry first.

I can't think about any of this right now. I can't think about anything.

"If anyone needs me, I'll be in the back field." I ignore Beth's question and manage to dodge the strange look she was giving me in return. I begin to think someone would protest against me going out alone but no one did. I would like to think the group would know better by now.

Besides this is something I have to do alone. Glenn could stand around in the grass twiddling his thumbs or hum to one of those songs he used to sing along to in the farm house, but he can't help me. He can't regain my focus for me and that is what I need.

As I hold on tight to the strap of my bow and stand alone on this beautiful, but bare field, my mind finds itself on the timeline of events that was my childhood.

The first time I learned how to properly shoot a bow and arrow, I was barely in elementary school. My father who was a lot less gray than he was the last time I saw him, in one of those infamous suits he always wore, took me to my uncles house where they had built their own shooting range in the basement of their living quarters. It took me hours just to figure out how to hold the bow steady enough to shoot an arrow, and that's when I first realized that it was a puzzle. The first piece was to hold a bow, feel the wood in your hands, and find your own rhythm.

So that is where I start. I allow my heavy eyelids to close, latch tight onto my grip, inhale and exhale slowly, and snatch an arrow from the quiver. I adjust my arms to eyesight and hold position.

My mind keeps reassuring my body that there is nothing different, and that everything is the same as it has been for the past 12 years, but it isn't. Not a single detail feels the same because the fact is, nothing is the same.

That's when the sick reality of it all hit me like a bag of bricks. I don't know if I will ever be the same or if I could ever put this puzzle back together.

••••

Hi guys! Sorry this chapter is short but it's kind of the announcement that I am going to start writing again. Thank you for all of the support, comments, and votes I have been receiving over the past few months. It means the world.

All the love,
Ashley.