AN: I keep trying to update Life & Death, but this story continues rattling around in my head, making it impossible. Thought I'd put it down and maybe it'll become something, or maybe it will leave me alone. Hope you like it, at the very least.
She woke up one day.
She woke up.
Herself and a man. An abandoned church. She woke up wanting to swing; out of the darkness, to find another darkness inside of her. She wanted to die. To have died. Not this. She saw the creatures - walkers, he had called them - and felt jealousy. They were free, or at least, they weren't aware they were trapped inside their skin, which knew enough itself to try to leave its bones and rot.
"Go," she managed, trying to pull herself out of his grasp.
"You're not going anywhere. You'd die out there!" the man snapped at her. He called himself Morgan. She called him nothing. "Don't you get that? You're barely healed."
"Die," she countered, eyes narrowing on his face.
"You're in no shape to make threats," he threw casually over his shoulder, walking over the window to stare out into the wilderness.
"Die," she tried again, pressing her hand against her chest. Me, she wanted to say, let me go crawl away somewhere to die. "Go! Die!"
"Stop it," Morgan snapped at her. "I've got enough blood on my hands. I'm not adding yours to the list, and I sure as hell haven't played nursemaid for the past two months to have you go off yourself. You hate your situation? Join the club! Focus your anger. Help me clear! We're here to clear! To find Rick and to clear!"
She snorted. There was no one left. Didn't Morgan get that? And even if there were, would the people not be like them? Morgan, barely holding it together, and her - unable to remember anything, brain at risk of getting sunburned through a bullet hole that blew her head open? Did he not understand it was over.
"No - no," she pushed out. "No one."
"Rick isn't dead," Morgan said with an air of finality. "You don't know him. Hell, you don't even know your own name. What made you the authority on this situation? Maybe figure out how to string a sentence together and I'll let you have a say."
Her response was cold and calculated - in one easy movement she knocked the crate that had been doubling as a table over. Wood slammed into wood, loud in the silence, water spilling around them - wasted. Morgan growled low in his throat, fisting his hands at his sides.
"You want to bring the walkers to us, huh?" Morgan spat at her. "You might want to die, but I don't, and I'll tie you up again if I have to. You don't have to like me, or agree with me, but you're coming along for the ride. Once you're better, I can train you. Have you fight like I can fight. You won't feel so bad then. Not once you start clearing. Clearing them - clearing your head. It gets better, kid."
The man was stubborn. Stubborn and terrible. Possibly crazy, but never violent - not towards her. He barely spoke to her. Avoided touching her when he could, especially since she hated it. Was he a good man or a bad man, she didnt know. Couldn't remember enough of anything to make a judgment like that. Maybe he was a bit of both.
"Stup -" she tried and failed. "Stup - stup -"
"Stupid?" Morgan asked, and watched her nod, as she smirked at him almost hatefully. "I agree, you are acting awfully stupid today. Maybe tomorrow will be better, huh?"
2 months later:
"Tired already?" Morgan mocked her, swinging his fist out as she ducked.
"Ha!" she exclaimed simply, kicking his knee and swiftly knocking his feet out from under him. Before Morgan could blink she had her knife on him, pressing against his throat, eyes glittering cold and hard. "You. Dead."
"Thought we talked about the full sentences," Morgan said, pushing her off and standing up himself. "If you talk like that, people are going to think you're slow and easy to take advantage of."
"And they'll be wrong," she ground out. "And then they'll be dead."
"Better not to get into it," he said. "We're not warriors here. You're not invincible."
"Got a big scar that might prove otherwise," she said, clucking her tongue.
"You would've died from that had I not found you," he responded, handing her a gun to clean. She had learned quickly. Her hands were small and thin and sure. She was faster than him now. Part of her wondered if she had done this before. She must have.
"Did," she said pointing at him, then she turned her finger at herself, "didn't."
"You're doing it again," he reminded her.
Learning how to talk had been a slow and frustrating process. She had the words, could hear them inside her head, but when it came to pushing them out - sometimes the fat got trimmed off her sentences without her knowledge. Words got stalled, or stopped, or dropped completely. It still took a concentrated effort, and she didn't bother most of the time. She didn't have much to say, after all.
"Just us," she said indifferently.
"It won't always be just us," Morgan reminded her. She felt her body tense up at his words. Morgan was the only person she had met - the only person she knew. Or could remember knowing. The thought of more people, alive people, made her nervous in a way that she hated and mostly tried to ignore. "We're leaving in a couple days."
"I know," she bit out.
"You still need a name," Morgan told her. "It doesn't bother me much because you aren't exactly chatty, but I need something to call you - when we get there, I'll need to introduce you."
"Phoenix," she joked. "Not dead, not dead. I have risen!"
"Would you take this seriously?" he asked. "Just pick something simple. Like Hanna, or Amber."
"Phoenix," she said again, knowing it bothered him. She had no intention of ever having a name again. She was no one. Nothing. A shadow, armed and ready to kill. When Morgan turned to look at her, she flapped her arms. "Phoenix."
"You won't always be so lucky," Morgan warned her.
And in the place where this or that would sometimes float up inside of her, wisps of somethings small enough to be nothings, she quoted: "I am the resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."