i will lay down my heart | alex + char
She didn’t need help. Even in the partial safety provided by the shelter, free of infected, and by the numbers surrounding her, some of them even familiar faces from the city, to get help was to reveal weakness. And although she knew some of those present, she was unfamiliar with far more, and in all honesty, she distrusted them all equally. Even Eric, with whom she’d been close to all those years ago. She didn’t know him now, and even if she had, it was far better not to trust anyone but herself, sometimes. So when someone commented on her limp, or another noticed her dizzy spells, suggesting she go to the infirmary, Alex ignored them. There was too much to be done, too much else to concern herself with, and if she could survive four months alone with these injuries, she was pretty sure she’d be just fine here. Especially now that there was some hope.
Hope that if this many from Fall City had survived, and made their way here, then there was still a chance. A chance that Charlotte had made it. Of course, Alex had never once been someone for hope. And though she tried to ignore it, the fact that so many from the city had already arrived and she had yet to see Char was constantly on her mind, putting dark, terrifying thoughts into her head. She ignored them. There was nothing else to do, because to allow them in, to believe in the possibility that after all of this, she was dead, was unacceptable. Which meant that she could not, would not, slow down, or stop to think. If keeping busy was the only way to keep her from thinking the unthinkable, then she would keep busy. It had always come easy to her anyways, though it was more difficult here, trapped in this hospital as she was with no ammo and nothing really to do that was well-suited to her. But she had adapted.
That had been easy enough, until it wasn’t. Eventually she had given up and succumbed to herself, going out on a run with another survivor, armed with only knives. And it went well enough as far as encounters with infected, but her body chose to make its complaints known just as they were returning, a dizzy spell hitting as the approached the outside of the building; so severe that she had to lean on the wall just to keep upright, squeezing her eyes shut at the pain of it.
It would have been far worse, if this had happened while they were amongst the infected, leaving her practically defenseless. So when the other woman reminded her of the infirmary, Alex grit her teeth, and made her way there. Either they could fix her or they couldn’t, but it was worth a try if it could stop the goddamn dizzy spells, and she would be lying if she said she wouldn’t love for something to be done about the constant ache in her ribs when she took breaths, or the seemingly permanent hunch to her steps from the fractures to her pelvis. So she went. Through the door to the infirmary, and . . . oh.
Alex subconsciously sunk to her knees in the doorway as her eyes caught on the woman in the bed before her. Her mouth formed a little ‘oh’ and tears welled in her eyes, but her words were stuck in her throat as she stared, able only to get out a quiet, “Charlotte?” in a raspy voice. All her pains were forgotten, because it was Charlotte. It was Charlotte in the bed before her, looking tired and injured but overall well and most importantly alive. Her hands scrambled at the door frame beside her to pull herself to her feet as she continued to stare at the woman. “You’re . . . you made it.”
