Chapter Text
The world is bright for you. Your world has 10k in it.
Of course your body still aches and sometimes even breathing is difficult because your chest doesn’t want to expand enough to suck in the oxygen. Sometimes, as you’re tossing and turning in your sleep, your head banging against the metal of the truck; 10k’s arm tight around your waist to stop you from hurting yourself in your nightmares, your stitches will come undone and blood will slowly seep out onto your skin. Sometimes, you cry and you cry and you cry but you can’t pin point the reason why. Sometimes, you’ll stare off into space, into memories and darkness and shadows amongst the light of day.
But, at the same time, you have Addy’s hand closed around yours, as she breathes slowly and deeply by your side. You have Doc, each and every morning inspecting your bandages and open wounds, and carefully sewing your body back up; making you a little less broken with each stitch. You have Warren, drying your tears and telling you the best of her memories – of the men she used to love, the life she used to live, the moments with her family out on the road in the middle of the apocalypse. You have 10k, too, his hand in yours, anchoring you to reality and bringing you back from the edge; telling you about his life before the world ended, and how he plans for it to go when the world is put back together again.
You also have Murphy – but he only helps when he’s being an asshole, and you start to think that even if you’re bad, he’s probably worse.
-
You ask where your siblings are before you even leave the building; 10k carrying you through the piles of the dead that he created himself.
“They joined a survivor camp,” Addy says, walking along next to you. “Annie’s too little to be out in the apocalypse – she can’t look after herself.” You agree and it was insane that she was ever out there in the first place; that she was never protected. You’re glad your brother and sister are safe, but you can’t express it – can’t smile like you want to because it hurts to even do that.
Later, on that first night away from the pain, your legs aching and your body all put back together again by Doc’s steady hands, 10k holds you in his arms and promises you a future, and a world where you’re together. You cry, you tell him about the darkness, and he sits through it all, one hand stroking at your dirty hair, and the other wrapped around you.
“It’s okay,” he promises. “Or it will be. I know you think you’re something awful – but so am I, y/n. We match. We can do this together.” He swears it to you, over and over and over, through the night and the day – through the moments where you watch from the truck as your friends take on zombies, in the times when people hold your group at gunpoint and yell for you to come from the truck, so you hobble out, your stitches threatening to pop open, and their hollow laughs in your ears. He promises it to you until his throat is dry; swears a life that you can share, and a world without monsters, just you and him and your family.
On the way out of the building you were kept in, Doc and Addy turn back, and only when you’re situated in the truck do they reappear again. They hold out swords for you; all sheathed in familiar leather that you missed being pressed up against your side. Addy slides your katana and machete down next to you, and Doc hands over the Dao swords. When you pull them out, they glint in the light of the dying sun, and the first of a new batch of tears begin to slip down your face. 10k pulls you closer, his lips in your hair.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers. “You’ll be dancing again, soon.” You don’t remember telling him that fighting was dancing, and you heard music in the way the blades whistled through the air, but he knows, because 10k has known you instinctively from the first day you met.
Warren tells jokes and forces the mood to lighten, inch by inch, out on the road. “New rule,” she announces on the drive away. “Killing humans is only allowed after a group-wide vote, and you have to have the majority to go through with it.” Your friends laugh and you would too if you weren’t so tired, so you sleep instead, the feeling of a smile trying to break through imprinted on your skin.
-
Slowly, you get better. It takes time; takes effort to stand and learn how to breathe without hurting yourself. Takes time to figure out the motions of fighting and living and laughing; to let your wounds heal and your body feel new and less broken than before. At night, in the truck bed, 10k traces your scars with his fingertips, just like you do to him, and you tell each other stories. You tell him about Cassidy, about the road and the sky and the alone. You tell him about the stoners and their brownies (you tell, Doc, too), and you say about the world being different without him in it.
He tells you of looking and searching and missing; tells you of the people they met, asking if they’d seen you, and then the ones who actually had – who pointed them in directions that led to you, to the old fortified base where they found you. He tells you of how it felt to kill, and you tell him that you understand, because you do. You understand each other perfectly; and there is no caution in your gaze, no fear of the differences between you, but trust and love and love and love.
You get better, and it doesn’t hurt as much.
Addy tells you of a boy she used to know; of Mack and his jokes. She tells you of how they met, in a hockey stadium on the first night of the apocalypse; of how he was playing for the opposing team and she was screaming at him from the side lines that he pulled a foul, but there they were, only minutes after the world went to shit, hand in hand, running through streets and taking down zombies.
Addy sits with you when no one else is; when they’re all busy and you can’t find the energy to move. She sits with you and tells you that she loves you, because she does, and you love her, and her fingers intertwine with yours.
“Best friends,” she tells you one day, the sun high in the sky and the others checking out a store. “That’s what we are.” You grin at her – it doesn’t hurt to do so anymore, just feels right. It had been missing for so long; the feeling of happiness, but you find it again in the people you care about, with the road and the stars and the sun high above you.
“Who was your best friend before me?” you ask, just to keep the conversation going.
“Mack,” she replies. “I loved him, of course he was my best friend. Who was yours?” You shrug, trying to think back to a time before the apocalypse; before the world starting hurting you over and over.
“If we’re not including my siblings,” you say slowly, glancing up at the clouds. “Then Jane.”
“Jane?”
“She was my best friend in the world, all my life,” you tell her. “On the first day, we passed her house as we drove out of town – I could see her through the window, completely zombified with her parents.”
“Sucks,” Addy says. You nod. It does suck. But it doesn’t hurt you anymore, to think of her gone like that. There’s no stab of pain, just is.
-
When it rains, it pours, and you all crush inside the truck, streaky windows and grey skies. You sit in the front, next to Murphy, with Warren driving on his other side, and he tries to teach you a card game that you’ve never played before.
“It’s called Bullshit,” he tells you.
“That’s really the name?” you ask with a frown. He shrugs.
“I’ve heard it being called Watermelon,” he admits.
“Can we call it that, then?” Murphy looks at you carefully for a moment, freezing his hands from dealing out the cards.
“Since when have you been against swearing?” he questions. “You’re practically a sailor.” You shrug, thinking briefly back to your promise as you sat through hell, waiting for the devil to come and save you.
“Call me a nun, now,” you reply and he rolls his eyes.
“Think you need a be a virgin for that,” he points out, handing you the rest of your cards. He mutters as he goes, “not swearing, what’s that about?”
“You have a potty mouth,” Warren agrees, glancing over. “What happened to it?” You finger through your cards, trying to remember the rules that Murphy outlined for you.
“I made a promise to myself in there,” you admit after a beat. It feels like the car goes silent, all knowing where you’re talking about. “If I made it back to you guys, I wouldn’t swear anymore.”
“Really?” Addy asks, and you glance back. It’s a lie, you guess, and as you meet 10k’s eyes, you know that he knows it, too. It was about making it back to him, and he smiles, just a little, because he understands.
“Yeah,” you say, swallowing and turning back to Murphy. “We can call it Bullsugar if you want?”
-
Then there’s a day, after you leave hell, where the sun is bright and the moment is good. Your friends are laughing all around you in the truck, there’s still plenty of supplies to go around and Doc is trying to explain how he once got high with a Z, and you’re not believing it in the slightest, wedged in between him and 10k.
Your bones don’t ache like they used to, and your cuts are neatly scabbed over, healing slowly and simply decorating your skin in red rather than smothering it.
The group stops for lunch at the side of the road, Warren going to the truck bed and trying to find some supplies to hand out, and everyone stretches outside of the vehicle. You raise your arms above your head, feeling your bones click into place, and there isn’t pain anymore – not really. There’s a wince every now and again but nothing damaging, nothing that scares you or reminds you of the past and the darkness.
There is light ahead and you feel it in your veins.
You take a sip of water, before adjusting the straps that hold your blades, when your eyes catch on the herd of zombies, maybe twenty strong, ambling down the road.
“Guys,” you say, “elephants and giraffes.” Your friends look past you, to the Zs, as you place your water back in the truck.
“Who’s got ammo?” Warren asks, glancing around. She’s not even wearing her gun since she ran out.
“I’ve been out for days,” Doc sighs.
“I’m empty,” 10k agrees.
“Knives it is,” Addy huffs, pushing herself away from the truck. You slide your Dao blades out from its sheath and swing them slowly about your hands. You haven’t fought with them in a long time; haven’t felt the stretch of your limbs, and the way they slice through the dead skin so smoothly.
“y/n,” Warren says, looking at you carefully. “Are you sure you’re up for it?” You smile, glancing back at the herd.
“I miss dancing,” you shrug, turning to the zombies at hand.
“She’s gonna get herself killed,” Doc drawls, and you hear the sound of 10k’s boots hitting the ground as he jumps down from the truck bed.
“She won’t,” he replies. “I’ve got her back.” He stands next to you, knife in one hand and catapult sticking out of his back pocket. You smile up at him, as Addy stands by your other side, raising her metal baseball bat with spikes at the end.
“Same,” she agrees. “I’ve got you.” Warren unsheathes her machete and nods as Doc swings his crowbar about. Murphy climbs back into the car, rolling his eyes.
You glance up at 10k, and he smiles at you, a mixture of a smirk and a grin, before he ducks down, pressing a chaste kiss to your lips.
“Go get ‘em,” he says lowly, and you lead the group forward, Dao blades twirling around your fingers. They land themselves in the eyes of the first zombies, and you push them forwards, into the brains before shrugging the bodies off the swords.
Immediately, you sink into the motions. It’s simple in your mind, like your heart beat, as you fight against the Zs – your body and the blades are one; three parts to the same weapon, and the zombies don’t stand a chance. One after another, they receive mercy, falling to the ground in your wake. Your family and you fight and fight and fight, like you were born to do it.
Warren, with her National Guard training; her machete and her glare, and Doc with his meds and his laugh – his crow bar and the fun of it all, fight by your side. Addy is ruthless and violent, with jerky motions and eyes watching the Zs crumple, and 10k is precise and accurate with every movement he makes. With them, you dance like it’s a part of you; your hair flies about your face and your swords match every movement.
At the end, you stand amongst the corpses and you grin, chest heaving.
“It’s puppies and kittens,” Warren tells you, and you let out a surprised bark of laughter, clambering over the bodies to get back to the truck.
“I prefer elephants and giraffes,” you reply. “But we can agree to disagree.”
-
The world is bright around you; 10k’s hand clasped in yours and Addy telling a joke but stopping to laugh half way through. The world is bright, bright, bright, and you sit in the bed of a truck, headed down a long, empty and winding road, headed to California.