This is my first time writing an established relationship fic, so I am excited and nervous to see how it goes! I also haven't watched most of TWD in a while, so I hope I won't be too inaccurate with canon, but I'll try my best. I hope you enjoy this and I would love to hear any thoughts in the comments on any of the chapters! Thanks for reading my fic!
After running for what felt like hours, Camila finally found a safe spot to stop and catch her breath. She squatted down and ran her hands over her face and through her hair in shock. She was all alone and didn't know what to do. She tried to find somebody after her initial run, but it was too dangerous to stop for too long to actually find anyone. After the Governor killed Hershel, it was nothing but chaos back at her old home.
She heard a tree branch break off to her left and all of her attention snapped in that direction, ready to fight whatever had followed her there. It was just a squirrel, but that didn't alleviate any of her anxiety. She was still alone with only her knife and a gun containing only 4 bullets. It was also getting close to sunset, and she knew there was no way she could safely search for her family until morning. She had to find somewhere safe to stay for the night.
Camila was on a street of abandoned houses, and after finding one that was open, she went inside and searched the entire place. Once it was cleared, she locked every door and made a bed for herself to rest for a few hours after setting some noise traps out of empty cans in the kitchen so that she'd wake up if anyone tried to get into the room she chose. Once laying down, she finally had the chance to really process the day. Just that morning she was treating people with the medicine Daryl had brought back to the prison. They were finally starting to feel better after so much sickness and death. She wasn't even outside when the Governor rolled up with his new people and his tank.
She thought about Hershel, and how his life was taken too cruelly and too soon. Back when her group first arrived at his farm, he had been rightfully apprehensive of the new people. However, he did everything he could to help Carl when he was shot, and Daryl after his own injuries. She was especially grateful to have him, because despite her medical training, it was a million times harder to save the life of someone she cared so deeply for.
"I was a doctor, emergency medicine at the trauma center in Atlanta," she told Hershel when he asked what her experience was. She was in shock as the little boy she practically helped raise was unconscious in the bed before her.
"Alright Dr Ruíz, I know this boy means a lot to you, but you have to treat him like any other patient you've seen enter your ER. It's the only way you'll be able to help me save his life. Do you have surgical experience?" He asked.
"A little, but very limited, I don't know if I really can help much," but he cut her off.
"Yes you can, you can help more than you think. We're gonna do everything we can to save his life." She nodded quickly in response, gathering the confidence to do what he said.
He was kind to her, and he became even kinder as they got to know each other over the months. Camila was a natural at getting to know new people quickly. It came from years of practice being comfortable sparking conversation with patients, and so it easily crossed over to her personal life.
Saving Carl's life was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. He was her godson as Camila and Lori had been friends since their early years of undergraduate university studies. Camila was new to the United States at the time. She spent most of her life in the UK with a few scattered years or summers in her second home in Monterrey. Her and Lori lived in the same dorm hall and had one class together in all of their four years there.
Their friendship stayed strong as Camila went off to medical school and eventually began her residency while Lori met Rick and the two of them formed a family with Carl. The three of them lived not too far from Camila in a small town outside of Atlanta when the world fell apart. They were together when it really went south. She had been spending more days with Lori and Carl up to that point anyway because of Rick's hospitalization.
It had been her, Lori, Carl, Shane and Mark who drove together in two cars to Atlanta, hoping for refuge and answers but witnessed the bombing from the highway. They found the rest of their new family in the nearby quarry.
Camila thought back to that time and couldn't believe how much her life had changed since. Even after her old pre-apocalyptic life was over, everything was different from the very beginning. Rick had found them a month later after they all thought he was dead.
Lori's pregnancy was a shock to Camila, and she comforted her friend who did not have confidence in the baby's father. Camila also witnessed the fall of Shane during those months. Camila never really liked Shane. He was aggressive in a way that made her feel unsafe even before everything happened.
Then there was Mark Richardson, her fiance. She had no idea if he was even still alive. The last time she saw him was when he left the farm. She hadn't even cried when he left, she was surprised he hadn't done it sooner.
Their relationship was never real, and it took a while for Camila to realize that she deserved more than him. She deserved someone who actually loved her and didn't just do it all for show. Camila met Mark at one of her parent's charity galas. He was a lawyer, practicing at his father's firm and training to eventually take over. He was a wonderful match for Camila in her parents' eyes, so of course they played the parts they needed to play. He was nice enough that Camila felt like she could try and develop a life with him. She learned her lesson before that she would never be able to live without her parents' input and authority.
She spent her entire life trying to please her parents, but nothing seemed to work. They both came from old money, her father's family owning a lot of land in Mexico and her mother's family linking to some of the biggest industrial names in the UK. Camila had been micromanaged by her parents every day of her life growing up, and that was her driving force to find a university in the US to attend. However, that only gave her parents an excuse to branch their own endeavors more into American culture. They visited frequently and when they found she ever did anything that wasn't up to par with the family reputation, she was quickly put into place.
Camila never really fell in love with someone during undergrad, med school or residency. So when she met Mark, and her parents raved about Mark's family having the most successful law firm in the entire greater Atlanta area, she thought she'd give him a chance. It wasn't until she met Daryl and slowly fell for him that she truly realized that her life with Mark was nothing but an empty shell of pretending. She spoke to him honestly about her feelings for the first time in their four year relationship, he was angry at the time wasted together, and then he was gone the next day.
That change in her life felt more like a final weight lifted off her shoulders. One more way that she was able to free herself from her parents' expectations. No, the hardest change she had to go through wasn't Mark leaving. It certainly wasn't Shane dying, and it wasn't the fact that she hadn't seen her parents since three months before the dead started walking. The hardest change was the death of her best friend.
Lori died during childbirth, it was Maggie who had to perform the emergency C-Section in the prison with Carl there. As they walked out, Maggie holding the new born baby, it took Camila a second to process what that meant. Rick broke down when he knew his wife was gone. Carl was left there to cry over his mother. Camila pushed her own pain aside in order to wrap her arms around her godson and let him feel his pain first. It wasn't until that night when she was safely in Daryl's arms did she let herself silently cry harder than she had in her entire life.
Camila didn't let herself think about who else might be gone after the Governor destroyed their home. Her heart ached for Hershel, and she prayed that he was the only one to lose his life that day. She had to find her family again. She didn't know how long she could survive on her own. That was never something she was very good at. She was their doctor, and her survival skills beyond that were very minimal so that she at least didn't put herself or others in more danger.
Daryl taught her how to properly use a gun and get comfortable with it and with a knife, but she knew she would be near defenseless against too many walkers or any living people she'd encounter. She also had to find her family because she needed to make sure they were still alive, that they were still okay.
She worried for Carl and Judith, the two children that basically she saw as her own. She worried for Rick, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie, Beth, the people she had cared about for so long. She worried for the newer members of the prison that she had gotten to know over the months they stayed there. And as she fiddled with the ring on her finger, she worried for her husband, Daryl, the most. She knew he was more than capable of keeping himself alive, but she also knew that he would be worrying himself sick over her. She hoped he wasn't alone, that someone could help him keep a level head through it all until they found each other again.
She didn't sleep much that night, anxious to begin searching as soon as the sun rose in the sky. Her top priority became finding her family again.
