Wren could not believe what she was seeing. The world had ended and dead people liked to eat the flesh of living people now, so she had seen some pretty gruesome things recently. Hell, she had watched her brother die not too long ago, but seeing a living man clutching his mangled bleeding stump of an arm while his missing hand sat not too far away, was its own brand of disturbing. Especially when she noticed the bloody handcuffs dangling from a pipe above the disembodied hand. Other than some corpses trying to get in through a chained roof access door she couldn't see anyone else on the roof. A wave of disgust and sadness washed through her.

'Someone left him here to die...'

Wren shook herself from her moment of shock and horror, swung her pack around to her chest and began rummaging through it while she ran toward the man. She dropped to her knees by the man as she pulled out her on-the-go first aid kit.

"Sir? Sir, can you hear me?" she questioned urgently and reached out to touch his shoulder. The moment Wren's fingers brushed the man's shoulder his eyes flashed open and his good arm struck out at her. She let out a startled and pained yelp as the man's fist hit her in the face and knocked her back onto her butt.

"Th' fuck away from me ya dead bastard!" the man rasped out in a thick southern accent as he made a grab for the handsaw laying nearby and struggled to stand up.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I'm alive! I'm alive!" Wren exclaimed in an attempt to calm the man and to stop any attack he may have made.

"Wha'?" the man grumbled confusedly, and swayed to his feet, the saw still raised to fight.

'He must be suffering from major blood loss and possibly sunstroke. I need to bandage that arm asap!'

Without the man holding the stump to slow the bleeding, blood was now pouring out of the wound and Wren knew that without immediate help he would die of blood loss in no time.

"Sir, my name is Wren and I'm tryna' help you out. We really need to wrap up that arm before it's too late, you're losing blood fast!" Wren said as calmly as she could, while internally freaking out. She refused to watch someone else die when there was a chance she could save them, but she had a feeling saving this man was going to be difficult. The man had begun mumbling to himself and was rapidly blinking his eyes as if he couldn't quite see.

"Sir I've got some stuff here to help you. I'm going to come over now, please don't punch me again. Or use that saw." She got up and cautiously walked towards him as she pleaded with him. He started mumbling louder and stumbled back a few steps as she came toward him. She had no clue what he was saying but that didn't really matter to her at the moment, she was more preoccupied with stopping his rapid blood loss than she was with unscrambling his brain. Wren got to him just in time to put her arms out to him as he started falling forward. She caught him around the waist and almost fell backwards as the large man collapsed onto her. He had to be at least a foot taller than her and he definitely weighed a whole lot more. Wren struggled to get him to the ground as gently as possible and rolled him onto his back.

'Well if he's passed out at least he can't hit me again.'

Once she got him settled on the ground she snatched up her first aid kit and set to work on his arm, as quickly as possible she packed gauze into the would then tightly wrapped more around it to hold it in place. The man rumbled as Wren applied pressure to the wound and his eyes flickered open again. She tensed and prepared for any negative reaction from him, but thankfully none came.

"I told 'im I wouldn't beg. I don't need ya." he grumbled at her.

"What? Who?" Wren squinted at him in confusion.

"The asshole up there." he snorted and jerked his chin up towards the sky. Deciding not to question the man who was obviously not mentally or emotionally stable at the moment, she reached for his other hand and brought it to his wound.

"Here, put pressure on it. I bet you could really use some water right now then hopefully you'll be able to help me figure out what to do next." Wren said to him. When he didn't object she reached back to her bag and grabbed her water bottle. She opened the lid then slid her hand under the man's sweaty neck so she could gently tilt his head forward to drink. He drank quickly and greedily until she pulled the water away from him so he wouldn't make himself sick.

"There. Feeling any more clear up there?" she lightly squeezed the back of his neck indicating she was asking about his head. He narrowed his slightly sharper eyes at her.

"Need ta cauterize it." he said gruffly and started to sit up. Wren was surprised that he was making sense and trying to move so soon.

'This guy sure is made outta some tough stuff! The only problem is figuring out how to cauterize it... And if my stomach can handle it.'

She swallowed thickly, "I don't have anything with me to do that."

"Department stores got break rooms. Break rooms gotta have a stove." he told her, his tone sugesting he thought she had less sense than a brick. Wren was slightly offended, but figured the guy was having a rough day and probably wasn't in the mood to be nice. If only she knew how wrong she was.

"Right. Do you think you can stand?" she asked him. She was worried that he'd need more help than her aching body was able to give.

"Ya can fuck right on off to wherever ya came from, Angel. Dixon's don't need help from no one. Especially not from no fuckin' God." he snarled at her as he started to heave himself up.

'Okayyy... So maybe that water didn't help as much as I thought it did.'

Wren frowned at him, "How're you supposed to get by those walkers at the door? I'm sure on a good day you could take em' easy peasy, but you're currently missing a hand and you don't have a decent weapon." she said gently. He shot her a dirty look and stalked off to the other side of the roof, handsaw in one hand while his hurt arm was pressed close to his stomach. "Hey! Where're you— oh! Another door." she was surprised to see another door on the other side of the roof.

'Such an idiot Wren. Rushing into this situation without fully taking in your surroundings and escape routes. Carter woulda boxed your ears by now'

The man completely ignored her and kept walking. He was not in the right mind to take care of himself at the moment and she couldn't morally bring herself to leave him now despite her brain screaming at her to run in the other direction, so she quickly stuffed her supplies back in her bag and took off on her short legs after him. Even with his injury her short legs were no match for his long, surprisingly confident, strides. The door must have been unlocked because by the time she caught up with him he was already through it and starting down the stairs.

The man seemed to know where he was going so Wren guessed he had already been through here before whichever monster cuffed him on the roof and left him for dead. That was something she was definitely curious about, 'who just handcuffs someone to a roof and leaves them to bake in the sun!?'. Someone had obviously taken the precaution of chaining the door shut to keep the dead from getting to him, but to Wren leaving the man chained up and at the mercy of the elements seemed almost a worse fate.

'No wonder the dude cut his own hand off. I have no clue how long he was up there but I can't imagine what it would feel like to be abandoned like that for any length of time. I probably woulda gone a bit wonky too.'

The other staircase was packed with corpses trying to get onto the roof, so that meant they had to be inside this building. The odd pair hadn't run into any yet, but Wren was on edge. When it came to the smell of the living, especially the injured living, the dead had great noses. She had no doubt that to the corpses, the bleeding man smelt like a great meal and they definitely wouldn't mind having her for dessert.

Sure enough, they weren't out of the stairwell for more than a few minutes when a female corpse missing a majority of its face shambled out of a room ahead of them. Wren had been keeping pace behind the man, as she didn't really want to piss him off anymore than he already was, so when the dead woman came at them the injured man was her immediate target. Wren cursed herself and was about to duck around the man to take out the corpse with her knife, but before she could the man had already brought the hacksaw down onto the corpse's head with a sickening shunk. He then kicked his leg into its chest and pushed it back while forcing the saw down, using the momentum of the push to create a 'sawing' motion, effectively cutting through its weak skull into its brain and killing it for good.

The stunt had obviously strained the man, he was breathing heavily and leaning slightly on the wall. Wren was worried and even though she was not looking forward to burning this man's wound closed, she hoped they got there soon before he passed out or they encountered more dead.

"How much farther?" She questioned him nervously while hovering by his side, anxiously debating if she should offer to let him put some of his weight on her for the rest of the way or not. Once again he ignored her and continued on before she could make a decision. Wren sighed and hurriedly followed after him.

Thankfully they soon reached a room with a kitchenette running along one wall and a few lunch tables. The man wasted no time making his way to the stove and started to dig around in the cupboards above for what he needed. Wren's stomach dropped when she saw him pull out a saucepan and heard the hiss of gas as he turned the knob on the stove. He pulled a lighter from the breast pocket of his vest and flipped it open, igniting the burner.

"A pan? We're gonna do this with a pan!?" she questioned him with wide eyes.

"There ain't no 'we' Angel." he sneered at her, "So either get out or sit the fuck down and shut yer trap 'cause I ain't got time to deal with ya."

"What, so you just plan to do this on your own? That's insane! Listen Sir, you may have made it through cutting your own freaking hand off, but I really don't think you're gonna be able to make it through this without passing out halfway through. You might as well let me help so you can get it done in one shot." She tried to reason with him as calmly as she could. Something in her gut told her that anger would get her nowhere with this stubborn man. She would just have to try and keep her cool and appease him as much as possible in the process of trying to help him.

"I ain't no pussy, I don't need help from a little girl. I've given ya yer options so take yer pick because yer gettin' on my last nerve." the man snarled at her. His face was extremely pale and his shoulders were hunched in pain, but that didn't make him any less intimidating. Wren knew it would be best to leave like the man obviously wished she would, but even though he was rude and intimidating she couldn't leave him like this. The thought of doing so didn't sit right with her. He had already been abandoned and left to suffer a torturously slow death by other so-called humans, she couldn't do the same. Despite her fear and complete distrust of other humans, they had both been grievously wronged by their own kind and it strangely felt like they were on the same side of this horrendous equation.

Wren let her instincts make her mind up for her. She quickly took a seat at one of the lunch tables and when the man narrowed his eyes at her she simply made a zipper motion across her mouth and gave him a timid nod. The man turned around and mumbled something nasty about her, which she was pretty sure he meant for her to hear, while he adjusted the gauze she had sloppily used to staunch his bleeding earlier.

Wren sat attentively and watched the man closely as he went about preparing for the boat load of pain that was coming his way. He twisted up a hand towel that was hung near the sink, presumably so he had something to bite down on, and restlessly hovered over the stove mumbling to himself. She couldn't hear exactly what he was saying, but judging by the tenseness of his shoulders and the upcoming event it probably wasn't anything good. After waiting for a bit the man seemed to decide the pan was hot enough because without much warning he shoved the towel in his mouth, snatched up the pan, and sat down at the table before pressing the hot metal to his flesh.

Wren was frozen in wide eyed shock as the smell of sizzling flesh assaulted her nose. The man's eyes were clenched shut and a guttural groan escaped from around the towel in his mouth. She focused on his face because if she didn't she knew she'd be focused on the burning flesh of his arm. The smell was enough to almost make her hurl, seeing what was going on would have sent her over the edge. Wren sat there, eyes locked on his pained face, for what seemed like an eternity before he growled and dropped the pan to the ground. He then promptly passed out. Again. A small smile spread across Wren's face despite her worry.

'Well. I was right about him passing out. But he was right about being able to get it done without my help.'


Wren was exhausted beyond belief. After the man had passed out at the table she set to work securing the room, which they honestly should have done beforehand. She was throwing all her rules out the window today. Once she had quickly made sure the break room door was securely locked and reinforced with a table, Wren set to work rewrapping the man's stump with the last of her clean bandages. It took all her willpower not to dry heave as she took care of the wound, the sight of his melted flesh twisted her stomach up in knots and she couldn't even begin to imagine the pain he would be in when he woke up.

When she finished taking care of the man's wound Wren finally had time to take a minute to breathe, and all the events of the day hit her like a ton of bricks. Her body ached all over from the climbing and jumping she did earlier and her cheek was swollen and throbbing from the punch the man had hit her with. With the adrenaline no longer keeping her going she leaned against the wall across from the kitchenette and slid to the cool floor.

'Today has been wild.'

She let out a long sigh as she ran the day's events through her head. A simple, but dangerous, supply run had turned into something not so simple and a lot more dangerous. Wren wasn't stupid. She knew that helping this man was really risky. Once he woke up again and gained some strength she doubted it would be hard for him to overpower her, even with his injury. She didn't know what type of person he was and if he would try to steal all her supplies or do worse to her, but all her life her stupid heart and instincts had always reigned over her brain, and this situation was no different.

Leaving this man behind while he was passed out would be the smart thing to do. She had given him medical supplies and helped him with the immediate dangers of his arm, and she didn't owe him anything so for her own safety it would be logical to leave. Unfortunately there was a tugging at Wren's heart that she knew all too well and it refused to leave the man behind despite the threat he posed. They had something in common, they were both outsiders suddenly alone in this world, and as strange and nebulous as it was Wren knew in her gut that on some level he would feel it too.

Even before The Fall, Wren never handled being alone well. After Carter's death she had decided that she couldn't trust anyone; other survivors posed more of a threat than the corpses. The corpse's only motivation was food, and because of this you could essentially predict their every move. Humans weren't like that. They lied, and they schemed, and they hurt. Sometimes they even did all that just for their own sick pleasure. Wren had learned that long before the dead ruled the earth, but she had also learned that living without human connection was extremely difficult. The last few weeks spent in fear and solitude proved that. Maybe this man would be different. Maybe she wouldn't need to be alone anymore…

With that reassuring feeling soothing her mind, the last trickle of energy left Wren's body and she joined the gruff man in deep dreamless slumber.


A loud crash jolted Wren out of sleep and her hand flew to the knife hanging on her belt. When her hand hit her hip instead of her knife handle her heart skipped a beat and she froze.

"Lookin' for somethin' there sweetheart?" the smug voice of the man came from across the room.

She whipped her head up so fast that pieces of her long hair fell loose from the disheveled bun piled atop her head. When her eyes locked onto the man, panic started bubbling up in her chest. He was leaning casually against the countertop, with Wren's backpack slung over the shoulder of his injured arm while he twirled her knife in his other hand.

'His only hand.' She reminded herself.

There was a pot on the floor and she guessed that was what woke her up. He didn't look too pleased that she was awake, which led her to believe he had been trying to sneak out while she was asleep. He must not have been able to resist searching through the cabinets though and must have knocked pot to the ground in the process. It couldn't be easy adjusting to having one arm, and trying to be sneaky at the same time obviously wasn't working for him.

"My knife, but I found it." she narrowed her eyes at him, "You were planning on taking all my stuff and leaving me behind, weren't you?"

"Tha's how the world works Angel. Yer even more stupid than I thought if ya didn't already know that." he sneered at her and started walking to the door.

Wren's panic increased. She couldn't let him leave without her. He had her supplies, but more importantly she wasn't ready to be alone again yet. Wren's logic and emotions were at war. 'You can't trust him!' He had just admitted he was planning to steal all her stuff and leave her high and dry, but he hadn't done anything to her while she was asleep and vulnerable either so that had to be a point in his favour right? Sure, their minimal time together wasn't the greatest and he was a bit of an ass, but Wren was willing to deal with that if it meant having a companion in this world that wasn't going to slit her throat the moment she turned her back. Constantly looking over her shoulder and never having a moment to let her guard down was exhausting and not sustainable long term. She needed someone, someone who understood what kinds of monsters lurked beneath people's skin. He understood, she could see it in the way he held himself, and in the way his eyes continuously bounced around the room analyzing every minute detail. Wren needed him, now she just had to convince him that he needed her as well. She scrambled to her feet after him.

"Wait, please! Let me come with you. You've obviously proven that you're more than capable of handling yourself, but adjusting to having one arm in this world is going to be difficult. Please don't take this the wrong way mister, but I think you could benefit from having me around just as much as I could benefit from having you around." Wren tried to keep her voice steady, she didn't think showing anymore weakness in this moment would earn her any points with him.

The man turned around with an angry look on his face. "I may be missing a hand, but I still sure as hell don't need no ones help. And I ain't no fuckin' kiddie fiddler so there's no reason to keep ya around." he gave her a genuinely disgusted look.

'Well it's good to know he's not a pedophile at least.' She thought.

Wren snorted back a small giggle, "I know I look young, but I swear to you that I'm twenty-two. Not that it matters, I wasn't offering to help you in that way. I know a place that can help you out with rigging that up though." she jutted her chin toward his injured arm. "And I know all the safest routes to get there." She declared proudly.

He stared at her for a moment and Wren could picture the wheels turning in his head. She had planned to show him the medical supplies warehouse on the outskirts of the city anyway, but at this point it was the only bargaining chip she had. Helping him with this was an opportunity to prove her worth, and show him that she wouldn't hinder him. Hopefully he wouldn't be as opposed to coming back to camp with her afterwards. After that she didn't know what would happen, but she hoped that he would let her stay with him nonetheless. She would figure out all the "and then what's'" later. For now she just needed to prove her worth to him.

As he stared her down she attempted to hold his gaze as long as she could, but his fiery eyes were powerful and intimidating and she wasn't able to hold out for long. She quickly lowered her head. Then while wringing her hands nervously in front of her she braved one more look up at him from beneath her lashes.

"Please. I promise I won't slow you down. Please let me come with you Sir." Her voice came out weakly and she hated how close to begging she had already come.

Wren knew the moment he came to a decision because the scowl that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face deepened.

"What're ya hoping to get outta this Angel?" he questioned her. Wren felt her cheeks flush with shame, and not being able to look him in the eyes again, her gaze flicked down to his dirty boots. Admitting the truth to herself was easy enough, but admitting it to this tough and seemingly stone cold man made her feel exposed.

"Honestly, a friend. I don't want to be alone anymore…" she answered timidly, and then in an attempt to cover up her vulnerability she added, "Plus, you seem like the kind of tough guy who can handle anything that's thrown at him, and that's a major bonus in our current predicament." a little honest flattery seemed like it would work with this guy, and sure enough Wren watched him puff up as if her words had infused him with pride.

"Fine, but I ain't mollycoddling ya or none of that other girly shit. You fuck up, you deal with it, I ain't no babysitter and it don't matter to me if ya wind up dead or not. Ya got that kid?" he said gruffly and pointed threateningly at her with the knife, her knife, in his hand.

"Yes Sir!" Wren saluted and she couldn't stop the gleeful smile from spreading across her face. Relief flooded through her and her anxiety was quickly replaced by hope.

"Grab yer shit and let's get a move on then." he ignored her enthusiasm as he turned away from her and started to work on moving Wren's improvised barricade away from the door.

"You have my stuff." Wren replied confused, maybe the blood loss was affecting him still. Had he eaten anything since he woke up? He probably should.

"Use yer damn eyes girl." He grunted at her with obvious annoyance; he was probably regretting letting her come with him already. Nervous about already annoying him, Wren looked around anxiously and quickly spotted three granola bars and her water bottle sitting on the table they had sat at the day before. Huh, so he hadn't planned on leaving her completely empty handed after all. Thankfully her bottle was one of the sports ones with a clip on the lid so she could attach it to her belt loops, and two granola bars were able to fit in her pockets easily enough. She tore open the third bar and began scarfing it down. She hadn't realized how hungry she was until now.

"Can I have my knife back please? There's another one in the front pocket of my bag you can have, but the one you took off me is special and I'm going to need to be able to protect myself. After all, you're not a babysitter, remember?" she reached her hand out imploringly with a small friendly smile that she hoped would show him that she didn't intend to stab him in the back with it. He only seemed annoyed though as he rummaged through her bag and found the second knife exactly where she said it would be. He then shoved her knife in its sheath and efficiently undid it from his belt then tossed it to her. He turned on his heel and made for the door again without another word. As Wren followed after him a sudden thought hit her and almost made her laugh.

"Hey one more thing, I told you my name earlier–" she stopped for a second and her nose scrunched up at the memory, "its Wren Lindel by the way, things were really hectic so I'm not too sure if you remember or not–" she added in before continuing with her original thought, "but I never caught your name?"

"Merle Dixon. Now shut yer mouth and be quiet, yer gonna attract walkers." he snapped.

"Walkers?" the question came out before she could stop it, "Is that what you call the corpses?"

All he did was narrow his eyes at her in equal amounts of aggravation and warning as she tried to keep up with his long legs. Wren smiled impishly at the gruff man and mimed zippering her lips and throwing away the key again, she received a glare in return which only made her smile wider. Carter had always talked about how annoyingly positive and hopeful she could be, but she'd been having a hard time doing that while being alone in this world. This was the first time since losing him that she truly felt hopeful about what the murky future held.

'Be grumpy all you want ol'man, I can already tell you'll learn to love me eventually!' Wren thankfully kept that thought to herself as she followed closely on Merle's heels.