my tears ricochet

Ninety Two

Ivy ran. In the forest the light was devoured by the trees. Shadows threatened to trip her as she sprinted, half blind to the world beyond the narrow stretch of road and branches. Breathing was barely enough; her lungs burned away like a hot iron, pain to match every desperate heartbeat.

The clearing flashed again over and over in her mind. Abraham was kneeling and then it was just his body on the ground. Abraham's hand falling from Rosita's arm. Abraham's mouth snarling up at Negan just before he died. Abraham turning from a man and into a memory; blood and bone and nothing else.

She could barely stand with the weight of grief on her shoulders so it was easier to charge recklessly through the late hour of the day. Running meant that she wasn't sinking down into her losses and it was tolerable; adrenaline lacing straight through her veins so she was nothing more than a blade and a bullet, rushing further.

Men on motorcycles chased after her and she knew she was losing the gap for every second. A bit of blue spray paint flashed from a tree and Ivy made a sharp turn onto a half abandoned pathway and dared the men in pursuit to keep to her heels. She had waited out hours for their little tour to pass through just so she could catch their attention and trigger the chase.

Everything had been mapped out.

Three bikes managed the turn. The fourth kept going and Ivy was running; hoping to never stop. Stars were invisible from beyond the branches overhead.

Abraham's skull split open. The barbed wire glinting in the headlights. Negan's boot stomping down onto the ground as he gave another swing—

Ivy had seen men die before. She had killed for the sake of defence and personal justification.

But Negan had loved every moment of it. His people had loved the process of watching; their little trap snapping shut around their group in a series of blockades, making them watch as a man broke and shattered into pieces.

They were monsters and Ivy was turning herself into their mirror image. If she destroyed herself first, no one else could do that to her. Sometimes bad people could do good things and sometimes it was the other way around, good people doing bad things.

Ivy wasn't sure where she fell in that spectrum. Her shadow was heavy with ghosts and death and she dragged it along as she sprinted along the pathway, direction cut with the sharp headlights of the bikes behind her.

Blue paint warned her from a nearby tree and Ivy hit the ground as hard as she could manage, sliding and tumbling across uneven earth to the side while the men chasing her down hit the wires at full speed. She scrambled to clear the space and knew exactly what scene existed behind her without even turning.

Two bikes had slammed straight into the net of wires. The late hour of the day turned them near invisible and the riders were sliced apart by the stretch of it all; a knife blade strung from the trees. Let Negan see his own people broken into pieces, Ivy thought darkly at the ruin of bikes and men.

She staggered back up and started to run again, narrowly avoiding gunfire as she retreated from the third bike.

Ivy was a monster. Whatever goodness had once existed inside her, people had killed it. Ivy herself had destroyed it.

The night stretched out tight like a string of wire and Ivy vanished beneath it all.

.

The sun burned overhead as Daryl fought one walker backwards to drive it straight through a wooden spike. He speared it through the boney chest hard, straining against arms that flailed out with desperate determination.

The air was loud with the sound of growls from around them. A few trucks slipped through the opening and Daryl was moving to the next target, shoving a loose body away to catch the second one properly, chains rattling as he secured them into place.