For the first second I was awake, I felt okay. Not a single sensation was left in my body—not until I tried to move. As consciousness grew on me, nausea and pain cut through the numbness; my breathing grew heavier as I tried to gasp a breath of air that didn't want to make me throw up. Pins and needles vibrated through my skin. My head began pounding, pulsating in a choreographed beat that meshed with the tips of my fingers.

My eyes closed almost as fast as they had opened, not able to wait for everything to wave in and out of focus. I got smears of the room in my glance, I was on a cream sofa with a window behind it. I groaned, rolling my head into the cushions to dampen the light before it blinded me. As my nose touched the pillow, it shot a pain back and through to my eyes.

"You're awake."

"FUCK!"

I seized up and jolted into a sitting position which shot a pain through my shoulder and down into my leg. I let out a strained yell. My hand came up to cover the wound, add pressure, anything to stop the pain; there was a mixture of rough fabric and bare skin where my t-shirt should have been.

"Easy, muñeca." My eyes shot open at the feeling of a hand on my shoulder, as everything came flooding back to me in bursts. Squatted next to me by the sofa, was the Governor's right-hand man. My heartbeat wrested for control with my heavy breathing in my chest. "You should rest."

I pushed myself away from the sofa but slipped off the side and onto my painful hip. Lifting the other leg up, I kicked it into the man's chest which stumbled him and he fell backwards onto the ground with a pained grunt.

Scrambling away, my back hit the cold surface of the wall behind me. This was when I realised my shirt was gone, and I was left in just my bra, the strap that would've hurt my wound had been pulled down under my arm. The gunshot itself was bandaged over, down under my arm and around my chest.

"Where the hell am I?!" I screamed. "Where the fuck have you taken me?!"

"Hey!" He shot back, pushing himself to his knee but not standing up. It didn't escape me that he did not attempt to come any closer. "You would have died if I hadn't found your busted-up ass!"

"I would have been better off!"

On the coffee table in front of me, I saw the familiar black metal. My gun. I could see him following my eyes, but even as I dashed forward to grab it, he just stayed where he was while I aimed the gun at him and cocked it. I didn't even take a second to consider why he'd leave my weapons in the same room as me.

"Look, I thought you might do something like this . . ." He reached back for something. I pulled the trigger almost immediately, but the gun just clicked. My eyes widened and I looked down at the gun. The man pulled out my handgun magazine from his back pocket and held it up to me. "You shouldn't fire an empty gun," he said. "Just take a second, calm down—"

"Don't tell me to calm down! Don't you fucking dare!" I screamed, and he stopped immediately. My eyes began to tear up as I continued, "Your group rolls through the prison in a fucking tank, kills my family and you think I'm just going to calm down!"

"I'm sorry," he said, raising his hands. "I know what happened. But I wasn't there, okay? I wasn't in the group that invaded the prison."

I frowned, sitting back on the ground. "The Governor shows up and I find you straight after, you're telling me it's just a coincidence?"

"Yes . . . and no," he began, lowering his hands. "I ran the group that attacked you, but the Governor wasn't there. I didn't know he was still alive until a week ago. I found him with this kid, and then her mother and aunt showed up. I gave him a chance—I wouldn't have done it if he didn't have a kid," he said and breathed out a sigh. "He started saying that we should take the prison to get our group a home, and I said no. So, he tried killing me, and I got away. I've been on my own for a few days."

That explained the bruises that I'd been ignoring, he was covered in them. I just assumed that he got beaten badly in the war, that someone got a hold of him. It also explained why it hurt so much when I kicked him because what I did was just to stumble him.

"I'm sorry about what happened, but I wasn't there," he repeated and pushed himself off the ground and back onto the edge of a chair that matched the sofa. "I didn't realise he went through with it when I found you. I drove you back to the prison and saw the walkers and the tank. It belonged to a friend, Mitch. I couldn't find anyone else, so I brought you here and stitched you up."

My first instinct was that he was lying. I didn't remember seeing him at the prison, but maybe that wasn't his job. Maybe his job was to wait around to take any survivors, but then why keep going with the act? He admitted to knowing the people who attacked us, which made me sceptical of his presence.

"Here," he sat up now, sounding less apologetic as he reached into a bag on the ground. "Sorry about the shirt. This will help you cover up for now," he threw a green t-shirt on the ground in front of me. "It's clean. I haven't had the chance to look for girl clothes, but I had to stop you from bleeding out."

I accepted the shirt because it was the only thing I needed at this point to be able to leave. That, and I felt very exposed. Wincing, I managed to pull my hurt arm through the short sleeve, and I sat back against the wall.

"You should drink something." He reached into the bag again, pulling out a bottle of water. "Here, look," instead of immediately placing it down for me, he opened the bottle and took a sip for himself. "Just water."

I still wondered if it was an act, pretending he wasn't with the Governor so I wouldn't be as much of a hassle. He was injured, so any fight I gave would be difficult for him to maintain. The only thing that didn't make sense if he was lying was the injuries, anyone at the prison would have killed him, and he wouldn't have had the chance to get away. We were all too armed for him to get away alive.

All I could do was wait him out.

He took a step forward, which made me flinch, and he stopped. Changing his mind, he placed the bottle on the table in front of me and then backed up so he was sitting in the chair. I crawled forward, grabbed my knife before the water bottle, and backed myself to where I was and sat down.

I put my knife next to me, pulled my knees to my chest and started taking a few sips from the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him watching me, still making no move to come any closer to me. My hurt arm lay across my lap.

"Drink all you want," he said. "There's a stream nearby, I got a few gallons stored up."

When he said that, I just gulped down more. There was no point in being polite, only drinking my share. If he was lying to me, I'd be dead soon and would have wasted his supplies. If not, he could easily get more water as he was saying.

As I finished, I pushed myself forward to the coffee table and groaned. Most of my things were there, the small weapons, the top half of my gear. I reached forward, pushing myself to my knees with help from the table, panting when I finally straightened up.

"Here, let me help you back onto the couch," he stood up.

I shook my head. "No, I'm leaving."

I grabbed the holster first and struggled to hold it in place with my bad arm as the other hand fastened it together. I could see the look he was giving me, confused with a heavily frustrated undertone, probably expecting me to trust him by now, but I wasn't convinced.

"You can't leave," he said, finally.

"Why's that?" I didn't bother trying to attach my axe one-handed, it wasn't worth the effort. I'd have to carry it, leave it behind if it became more trouble than it was worth.

"You can barely walk," he said. "You have a gunshot wound in your shoulder."

"I'll be fine," I muttered and grabbed the clip he placed down from my gun, before slipping it into the gun. I placed the Beretta and knife into the holster. "Where are the rest of my guns?"

"You're not having them," he said. "You're not leaving. I can't let you."

"What the fuck does it matter to you?" I snapped.

"It matters because I wasted a lot of supplies saving your ass," he answered. "Now you're just gonna go out there and get yourself killed."

"Better than waiting around here to get killed, or worse," I pushed myself up to my feet, taking a few seconds to gain an ounce of stability. He wasn't going to give me my other bullets, so I'd have to make do with the things I had.

"He's not coming here, he's probably dead," the guy rounded the coffee table so he was standing in front of me. "Now don't be stupid and sit the fuck down."

"After everything you did to my people, how am I supposed to believe that? How do you expect me to believe that?"

I watched his jaw set, and his eyes turned away.

"This is fucking stupid," he muttered to himself, running a hand over his face. Then his face changed, he took a step back out of my way and pointed to a door. "Guns are in that room there, the rest of your ammo is in a bag."

I was weary at first but moved to the door. I opened it, stepped inside and held it in place with my foot so he couldn't try anything, before grabbing the bag with my good arm. The longer guns were placed in a strap on the side, making the bag impossibly heavy, but I managed to get the strap over my shoulder.

"You're more paranoid than I expected."

Then I walked to the front door and stepped into a hallway. Must've been a block of flats, because I followed signs down the hall to a door with glass windows which led outside. There were footsteps behind me as I made it outside. I heard the door open again behind me, but the footsteps stopped.

"You're gonna get yourself killed!" He called after me, and I ignored him. "Have a nice life!"

I raised my good arm, loosened the grip on my axe and managed to flip him off.

I'd been on the road for maybe two hours before I felt myself starting to slow down. Part of me wished I'd hijacked his car, but he never would have let me get away with that despite his injuries; he was still much stronger than me and a fight would have been a stupid idea.

I hoped that maybe after a while I would find a house, another town, something that would make my journey less useless. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't useless and that the man was probably lying to me and ignored all the things he did that would have proved me wrong. I had been a wrong judge of character before, and I remembered that Shane called me naive on the topic of choosing whether someone was good or bad.

I didn't kill him, so Shane would still be disappointed.

All I could think now was how I should have stayed long enough to get some pain medication from him so this walk wouldn't have been so gruelling because the sun beating down on my head was making me feel dizzier with each passing minute. I was only a fraction better than what I had been when I got shot.

It was also better now because I stole the bottle of water I had been given, and had to take sips every so often to cool myself down. After a while, the walker just started feeling warmer and warmer and it wasn't worth drinking anymore. I left it in the side pocket of the beige camping bag he gave me and made myself leave it so I would still have some water wherever I stopped.

I heard a noise and looked at the tree line almost immediately.

Walkers . . . fuck.

If I could get myself to walk faster, I could get by them, lose them through a house or town. With my hip that screamed out with every step, I knew there was no way I could keep myself ahead of them for as long as I needed.

I had to kill them, unfortunately. Whether I'd even be able to do that was a huge gamble, but there was no other choice. They'd already seen me, so I couldn't use sound to lure them around as I considered before I even met the group. The large guns clattered against the ground as I dropped my bag; there was no way I'd be able to fight them with that extra weight.

My axe was ready; I had my knife in the holster in case I didn't have the strength to get it back. I tried thinking about what Michonne told me, how to move, how to flick my arm to get the axe back out with the least amount of effort. Even though I struggled to move my hips in the right way, there would be ways that I could make this easier for myself.

As the first walker came closer, I swung the pick around. Normally I would have kicked it off the blade, but my leg would neither hold my weight nor push back against the walker, so I stepped back and yanked the axe out as it hit the ground.

Breathing out a sigh, I looked up at the next walker. Four more. Just four more. Taking the time again, I swung the axe in the same way I had done before, but I felt the grinding as the serrations lodged in the skull. When I pulled upwards, the axe just moved the head back and forth but didn't retract. The body fell forward, towards me, and the weight pushed back against me until I fell onto the ground.

I groaned, everything hurting as my back hit the floor. The world looked like it was moving in front of my eyes, the next walker swaying back and forth as it grew closer. I panicked, grabbing my knife out from the holster, but as the walker fell atop of me, its arm knocked my own and the knife flew out of my hand.

Shoving my good arm up immediately, I managed to push the woman walker back by its shoulder and looked around for my knife. It was just behind my head, handle facing me, and I knew it was going to be a bitch to grab. As I moved my bad arm up a little, I felt it pulling against the wound, the skin feeling like it had no give anymore. I had to push past that, almost screaming as my hand came into contact with the handle and I scrambled to grab it.

There was a sound in the background, something that distracted the other two walkers. As it grew louder I recognised the sound of a car and glanced back just long enough to see it was the one from before, that the man had picked me up in.

When I finally got my fingers around the handle of the knife, I yanked my arm back down and shoved the knife in the walker's head, pushing its body off of me before the weight completely landed down. I took a second to breathe, ignoring the new pain in my shoulder, no longer numb from not being used, but now screaming again like it had been when I had gotten shot.

Remembering that I was not done, I looked for the last two, but as I lifted my head, the man passed me. He'd killed one of them already. He lifted a metal baseball bat over his head and stuck down on the first walker, which fell to its knees in front of him but was still alive. Spinning the bat down and around, he then hit it against the side of the head with a grunt, which was when the walker fell over.

Rolling one of the walkers to the side, I groaned as I was able to push myself up and into a sitting position. The man breathed out a heavy sigh, and I could see him shaking his head as he looked down at the walker's corpse. Finally, he turned around to face me, a scowl on his face.

"Oh, yeah. Looks like you're doing great on your own," he muttered. "Lucky I followed you out here when I did or you'd be dead."

I couldn't tell whether he was talking to me, but it didn't matter. I remained on the ground panting, feeling dizzy and struggling to feel like any air was entering my lungs. It was hard. Everything was hard.

"That's three times now!" His tone was more angry, more frustrated. "Three times I've saved your ass."

Ignoring him, I pulled the gear off, feeling the pain in my shoulder worsen. When I pulled the neck of the shirt down, I saw blood had started seeping through the bandages. I couldn't even feel worried about it anymore.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered.

I didn't move. Part of me wanted to just lay there on the road and die, but I doubted that the man was going to let that happen. It didn't matter what I did anymore, I would die if I travelled alone, and I didn't trust this man. It was getting easier though, he'd done nothing to harm me.

I could hear him muttering to himself for a little while before he blew out a long sigh. "We have to reach some kind of middle ground here, kid." He knelt on the ground in front of me. "I'm sorry for whatever happened. I'm sorry for whoever you lost yesterday, but we have to find some way to get along."

Yesterday. It felt like the same day, but I'd been out overnight. The sun was in the middle of the sky now, midday. Had I been unconscious for that long? If he was keeping me alive for the Governor, he should have been there by the time I'd woken up.

My eyes welled up when I remembered what happened, seeing Hershel down there on the field. My nose tickled, and I clenched my teeth, trying not to let myself cry in front of him. It didn't matter though, and I looked off to the side as I wiped my eye with the back of my hand.

"I know you don't trust me, and I know why. I'm not gonna pretend like I didn't do any of that shit before, because I did. But I promise you, I wasn't there this time. We lost to you before, I wasn't gonna let my people get hurt doing it again."

I believed him, mainly because I lost the will to keep fighting. He didn't deserve any of my trust, he was still one of the people who kept my friends prisoners, who shot at us—but I couldn't do this. Travelling alone in the state I was in, was going to get me killed.

"Let me help you," he said but still waited—waited for me to give some kind of answer.

After playing with the idea, I nodded wordlessly.

"Okay." He held out a hand for me to take, which I did. That was when he stood up and held one of my feet down with his own to steady me. "Ready?"

When I nodded, bracing for him to get me onto my feet, he pulled me up by the arm. I squeezed my eyes closed, hurting the bruises on my face. His other hand came up and rested on my good shoulder, holding me in place as my injured hip threatened to make me fall over again.

Looking down, I could see the bag he had given me. He followed my gaze and held my shoulder tighter when he felt me leaning down to grab it, "Get in the car, I'll grab your things."

I stopped, thought about it, and nodded.

We barely talked when he got us back to the apartment building I'd woken up in. He dumped a small first aid kit down on the table, and said he'd deal with it when he finished fortifying the flat; he still wanted to stay here for the night. He wasn't too worried about fixing my shoulder right away, because only a small amount of blood had leaked into the bandages, so only one or two stitches had broken.

The room was a little different now, the windows boarded up because it was a ground-floor flat, something he must have done after I'd left. If he'd only chosen this place the night before, I wondered why he didn't choose one on the first floor, because he wouldn't have to make all the noise hammering boards up. I chalked it up to the fact that he was injured, so him carrying me this far was probably hard enough on him. After that, maybe he didn't want to move his stuff upstairs after I left, and that's why he was still here.

As he had finished with his fortifications, making sure we could escape out the back of the building if the front became blocked off, he took a seat across the room and rifled through his bag, pulling out a small lantern. He placed it on the table illuminated as the room grew darker from the sun going down, and he moved on to light some candles he found.

I decided to fix my stitches myself. I'd never done it before, but when Hershel was teaching Carol about C-sections, they practised stitches a lot together and I remembered some of the tips he'd been giving her.

Pushing the memories down, I opened the box with one hand and grabbed the thread, a needle and some wipes. Ripping the packet open with my teeth, I cringed as I pulled the antiseptic wipe out with my lips and dropped it in my hand. I'd use that to clean the needle.

The man had moved across the room, sitting down on the seat beside the sofa and continued looking through his bag. He pulled out some clothes for himself, before dropping the bag and walking into one of the bedrooms to change.

I had to lift my second arm onto the table physically with my good hand because threading the needle was going to be a bitch one-handed. After wiping the needle, I held the thread in my bad hand and tried pushing it through the whole of the needle. Of course, that wasn't good enough and it just moved to the side.

Footsteps came out from the bedroom as the man pulled the new shirt down over his head, and I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye. I thought his staring would put me off, so I halted my actions and waited. He seemed to get the idea because he moved back to take his seat on the chair.

The more I tried with the thread, the more frustrated I became. When I couldn't get the thread the in needle, I just threw it down on the table completely frustrated, "Fuck's sake!"

I dropped my head into my good hand and squeezed my eyes closed, not allowing any tears to fall from the sadness and frustration I was feeling with my current situation. I breathed a deep sigh out through my nose, clenched my teeth and wiped at the wetness with the side of my hand.

"Here," there were footsteps as his voice grew nearer. "I'll do it."

He instantly threaded the needle, which annoyed me, before muttering something about remembering to breathe as I put my head back in my hand. I ignored him, clenched my teeth and yelped as he pushed the needle under my skin.

"It's just a flesh wound," he said. "It should be good to use again in two weeks. It's just in an awkward place where your shoulder moves, so you have to stop moving it or it's just going to keep breaking the wound. You lost a lot of blood yesterday, so you need to take it easy."

I didn't listen as he explained, just staring off across the room at nothing in particular. It hurt much more than I expected it to, making me appreciate the fact that it was done while I was unconscious last time.

"We'll find another place tomorrow," he started, maybe trying to take my mind off the stitches. "I don't know whether you believe me now, but moving to another place should at least give you some peace of mind that the Governor isn't coming. I don't blame you for not trusting my word, but you'd think after saving your life three times you'd start to believe me."

"Would you?" I muttered.

"I suppose not," he agreed. There was a long moment of silence before he continued, "We gotta figure this shit out, kid. You don't like me, and I'm not particularly fond of you either. I don't want to have to babysit your ass, but you can't travel on your own."

He was right, as much as I hated to admit it. He was right earlier, but my mind was so fogged with fear and adrenaline that I couldn't clear my head enough to trust him. I still didn't trust him, but he had gone so far out of his way to show me that he wasn't working with the Governor at this point that my theories were merely a fog in the distance at this point.

If he was still working with the Governor, he honestly deserved to kill me.

"So, what's the plan?" I muttered out, hissing as the needle went through my skin.

"I was thinking that we stay here until you get better, but I don't know if I can make rations last that long," he said. "We'll be okay if we keep moving."

I thought for a second but realised there was one thing he hadn't mentioned. "I need to find my people."

"I hate to break it to you, kid," he started, "all of your people are dead."

"No," I shook my head. "I made it out."

"And look at the state of you."

"Exactly," I said. "If I lived after all of this, then some of my people have to be out here too."

"The prison is gone, it was surrounded by hundreds of walkers," he told me, his voice harsher now. "Even if they survived the war, they couldn't get past the walkers. I'm not wasting my time, my supplies, looking for dead people."

"They aren't dead!" I snapped. "And it's not like you have anything better you could be doing anyway."

I watched his jaw set, but he didn't look at me in my eyes. He breathed in so deep that his chest rose, but he just tied off the thread and reached for the scissors on the table. I could see the contemplation on his face; he was thinking about it.

"We'll come up with something," was his final response.

He snipped the thread, grabbed another white cotton pad from the first aid kit, and put it securely under the bandage that was still wrapped under my arm and across my chest. He untied it in the back and tightened it so it would stay secure.

"You need a sling or something," he was saying as I pulled the shirt back up over my shoulder. "Something to stop you from moving your arm. We're going to run out of supplies if you keep ripping the stitches."

He thought for a second.

"Go lay down, get some rest," he said. "I'll come up with something."

"Do you have more comfortable trousers?" I asked.

"None that are gonna fit you," he said. "Got some spare sweatpants in the bag. There might be some more in the bedrooms. I haven't looked."

I nodded and headed for the bedroom first. In one of the drawers, some grey jogging bottoms looked to be in a women's size. It was a little big, but it was far better than wearing his trousers.

When I came back out I was shocked to see that the man had found a white bedsheet from somewhere, and he'd laid it out across the table before drawing a wonky square in the middle. I ignored what he was doing and went to lie down on the sofa while he worked.

"How about this?" He asked from across the room, taking the scissors he used to cut the thread of my stitches. "I drive you around, see if we can find anyone and we'll part ways when you can take care of yourself again," he said. "If we find someone, great. You can go with them instead. That sound okay?"

I thought for a second and gave a nod. "Yeah."

"Good, we got a deal."

It's here, and a new TikTok went out recently. A Governor one I had for a good year or two. There's some good ones lined up for season 5.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed and let me know what you thought :)