𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐒.
chapter thirty-six; Bullet Wound
" You do. . . you do want to live, right? "
VEX WILLIAMS WAS entirely fucked.
She was alone, with a hole through her leg, and nothing but a knife and her rifle that was dwindling on bullets.
She knew she was fucked.
But she also knew it wasn't her time.
Vex had to find Zeppelin. She wanted to find Dean and Daryl as well, but she had to find her daughter. She couldn't die before knowing Zeppelin had made it out.
So, naturally, Vex Williams hobbled until she was deep enough into the forest that silence engulfed her. And then, she took of her flannel, cut off a portion of the bottom, and undid her belt.
Vex let out breaths, placing the belt between her teeth, before winding the flannel tightly, and packing her wound.
Once the pain wasn't nauseating, Vex wrapped another portion of the flannel over the wound and pushed herself to stand, balancing against a tree for a moment.
She needed a house or a store urgently. Antibiotics and clean water, gauze if she was lucky.
And food. She needed food.
Vex knew she could hunt, this was an option, she knew how to and the forest was still full of life. But this required more effort than she had in her-- it required tracking and killing, setting and starting a fire, and cooking.
She needed quick fuel to get her to medicine, and then she could start the real thing.
So Vex wiped her face, starting on the journey that would be long and painful and silent.
Because she had no other choice.
🗡
Day turned into night and night turned into day and Vex had found nothing. She'd hit a store she knew they'd already wiped out and hadn't found anything since.
Until of course, she spotted a shack.
Running low on energy, Vex gripped her knife and started toward it.
She half expected someone to be inside, nowadays she always did.
So Vex peered into windows before cracking the door open, raising her knife as she entered slowly.
It was rundown but looked as though it had been even prior to the world falling apart. Some kind of hunting shed, she assumed by the looks of it.
The woman scanned the dark room, focusing on the figure of a body on the sofa. She approached it slowly, her knife still raised.
She held her breath, ripping the blanket back, ready to lunge.
"Vex, it's me!"
The knife clattered to the ground, and Vex fell to her knees, throwing her arms around her older brother.
He let out a breath as he matched her embrace, cradling the back of her head as tears welled in his eyes.
"Hershel--"
"I saw," Vex said tightly, her own tears burning. "Are you okay?"
"I-- I just ran," Dean admitted, pulling away, "I couldn't find anyone-- I was gonna hole up here for the night--"
Dean stood, cutting himself off when he saw Vex's palm stained red. He looked down, his heart sinking when he spotted the wound on her leg.
"Meds?"
"Nothing," She informed, allowing the man to guide her to the couch, "I packed it, bound it, nothing else."
Dean nodded, squeezing her hand.
"Alright, we head out at first light," Dean said, "We go to that neighborhood, couple miles south. Gotta be some schmuck that left some antibiotics."
"If we don't get anything in the next few days, I'm dead weight--"
"Stop trying to cut yourself loose," He said seriously, "I'm getting you medicine, and then we're finding Zeppelin."
Vex breathed, nodding.
"Now sleep. You need it."
🗡
Dean hardly slept. He stayed positioned, leaning against the sofa with a pistol in his hand. As if what threatened Vex the most was something he could kill.
He woke her at the first sign of sunlight through the boarded-up windows, untying her binding before resecuring it freshly.
"How're you feeling?" Dean questioned, grabbing a faded and empty backpack from the ground, "Fever, chills-- anything?"
"Where'd you find that?"
"House, little while back," Dean noted, "Not much in it. Come on."
Vex accepted his hand, the man pulling her to her feet. She let out a groan but started alongside him despite it.
"You know, I have to say," Dean said quietly, "I'm sort of surprised you weren't with anyone."
Vex walked without glancing at him.
"Not surprised you sent Zep off," Dean continued, "That's normal for you. But. . . nobody found you."
"Yeah, somebody found me," She admitted, "That what you wanna hear?"
Dean frowned, readjusting his pistol.
"Stop being a hero. One day it's gonna get you killed."
"Rather die a hero than live as dead weight," Vex grumbled, "Dixon wouldn't have left me. I had to cut him loose before he did something stupid."
"He cares about you. That's not stupid, V."
"Depends who you ask."
"Knock it off," Dean said seriously, "Your life can matter, too."
They walked in silence for hours. Until they came to the neighborhood Dean had set out to find.
They made short work of it, even with Vex's limp, scavenging the little that they could. Food, cans and snacks, half a bottle of water here and there-- hell, Vex had found a handful of bullets and it made her day.
"No meds?"
"Couple houses left," Vex nodded, "Hit 'em up."
"Go it, you stay here, clean that thing," Dean said, checking his gun, "How many you got?"
"Seven," Vex noted, "My lucky number."
Dean rolled his eyes, starting to leave before pausing.
"Hey, V?"
"Yeah?"
"You do. . . you do want to live, right?"
Vex blinked.
The man turned, worry in his brow as he stared at his little sister hunching over an unworking bathtub, pressing a hand to a wound that would kill her if she didn't fix it.
"I'm just playing the hand I was dealt," She responded quietly, "Tryna be a better person than I was."
"You were never bad."
"I was weak, that's worse," Vex said dryly, "Couldn't stand up for myself. For my kid. I was naive. I married Paul and lost Dad for it. Lost you for a while, too. . . I don't. . . want to die. But at this point, living is about you guys more than it's about me."
Dean swallowed the lump in his throat.
He'd spent more time around Vex since the world fell apart than he did when they were children. He learned more about her than he thought possible, and within the past few months, Dean had begun to pick up on things.
He had just hoped they weren't true.
"You deserve to live for yourself," He said thickly, giving the woman a tight smile before shutting the door behind himself.
Vex stared at the door for a long while.
She hadn't even thought about it. Not since she'd left Paul, and surely not since the world went to shit.
Vex lived for Zeppelin. For Dean. Eventually, she started living for Carl, and Rick. For Daryl and Michonne. She lived for the Greene family and Glenn, and everyone she had met and helped.
It had not been about her. Not for a long time.
The last time it was, Vex made the wrong choices.
Her eyes burned with unshed tears, and the woman decided it was time to stop her train of thought. She looked down to her leg, clenching her jaw as she untied the bandana from her thigh, before peeling her jeans from her legs.
Vex grabbed a bottle of water from the ground, hating to waste it but knowing it mattered, unscrewing the cap and pouring it sparingly over her wound.
It didn't look great, but what could one expect? She'd been shot and had no treatment for three days.
She grimaced, tying the bandana around the wound before pulling her jeans back on.
The woman sighed, approaching the small window in the bathroom, leaning on the windowsill, and peering between the blinds.
She watched for a moment, before spotting Dean exiting a house to enter another. He looked defeated, so Vex thought it safe to assume he was still coming up empty-handed.
She pushed back, ready to sit on the ground and wait for his return, but paused when she saw movement. Vex peered through the window, watching the forest surrounding the homes.
And then she saw one. And another. And another.
A group of men, careless and loud-- Vex had no doubt Dean had already heard them.
She turned quickly, grabbing her rifle from the ground, forcing the window open, and resting the barrel of the weapon on the windowsill.
Her heart raced as the men spread out, entering multiple homes at once-- two entering the one she had just seen Dean go into.
The woman waited for a moment, before gathering the bottle of water and wrenching the bathroom door open, limping down the stairs and toward the back door-- she wasn't in shape to be fighting, but there was no choice.
Vex pushed back the curtain that covered the sliding glass door, only to be met with Dean Williams.
"Oh thank God," Vex whispered as her brother opened the door, "I thought--"
"Slipped out a window," He said quietly, holding up a bottle of pills, "Few left in here. We gotta go."
Vex nodded, allowing Dean to wrap an arm around her waist and guide her around the home, away from the men.
They disappeared back into the forest without so much as a whisper between them.
WORD COUNT : 1602