Chapter Text
Quick, nimble fingers grasped the bark in a desperate attempt to scale the thick trunk of a towering pine that lay before a woman with determination in her eyes. With no luck with the tree, she began to grow frustrated with every gaining second, and upon the realization that it was no use, she high-tailed it in the same direction she had been previously headed. Despite the fact that her calves were burning, she refused to be captured by the men in pursuit of her. They had spotted her in a wide, open area, and man, were they fast. She, however, was not much faster.
Just as she was about to double over and vomit from sprinting for such a long and endearing amount of time, she decided to give tree climbing another chance. The tree she stopped at then was littered with branches to scale, so she finally managed to make it up quite a ways, kicking and breaking key branches to prevent the men from climbing after her, before the three men stopped at the base of the tree and stared up at her.
“You come down, Ivy, or we're gonna have to shoot you down.”
Ivy was out of breath, gasping to catch it. She steadied herself on a sturdy limb and failed to see the men beneath her, but she made sure to remind herself that they were indeed in her presence and waiting for her to make her move from down below, rifles at the ready. The men were more than capable of shooting her down from the tree and taking her back to her former leader alive so that he could do away with her himself in whatever way he would see it fit. It would be far too difficult for Ivy to escape from their grubby hands.
“Eat my dick!” Ivy, still gasping for air, shrugged her pack off her shoulders so that she could dig through it for anything she could use to get the goons off of her trail. Her thumb brushed over a can of peaches she had swiped from her cupboard before she took off earlier that week, desperately trying to escape the men who refused to let her run away in peace.
“Fuck this, man,” she heard a deep voice from below mutter. “We can wait you out all day. Just you come on down. He won’t have none of this hide-and-seek bullshit. You comin’ with us.”
Ivy made a mental note of the heavy can of peaches as she began scaling the tree even higher, glancing down every few seconds until she could finally see them clearly beneath her. They seemed so small from above, but they were very strong, stronger than Ivy, and she knew better than to underestimate the henchmen. They could take down a woman of Ivy’s size without batting an eye, and that is what they came to do.
The men chuckled as they watched Ivy struggle to get higher and higher, her weakened legs wobbling with every move she made. “You keep climbing, little squirrel, and we’re gonna have no choice but to start firin’!”
Ivy rolled her eyes, but she came to a halt on the branch she was situated on, making sure it was strong enough to support her weight. She hesitated for a moment, letting her breath return to her lungs before she let out a dry cackle. Glancing down at them, she gripped her branch and began to call out to them. “I really don’t know, guys. I think I’m just a bit too high for y’all to hit me. You dumb bastards shoot like Stormtroopers.”
The most familiar of the three men raised his rifle and fired a single round into the branch that Ivy was perched on. It startled her, making her flinch, and she scooted closer to the trunk of the tree just in case they decided to start shooting even more. Luckily, she was camouflaged by a bunch of leafy green, but that surely would not keep them from hitting her at least once.
Ivy clenched her teeth and slumped back down onto the branch, shrugging her pack of supplies off of her back and retrieving the metal can of peaches. Running her dirty nails across the ribbed exterior of the can, she listened as the men laughed at her expense.
Ivy glared down at the man who shot at her. It was none other than Sam, the same man she had come to the group with. Ivy was disappointed that he had come to track her, knowing he was only doing it to gain the approval of their leader. The young woman had already found it odd that he had not scaled the tree after her, as he was a rather exceptional climber, but she figured that it would be, just as she had planned, too difficult to climb without the branches. “I thought you were my friend, Sam!”
Sam sat on his hip, pondering what he should say to his old friend, knowing full well that their close relationship would be over whichever way the situation played out. “You shouldn’t have left, Ivy! You know you did wrong, you know how dangerous it is out here, and now you have to suffer the consequences!”
Without even bothering to argue with Sam, Ivy chunked her can of peaches down into the forest, landing a perfect shot onto Sam’s sweaty, dark curls. She could hear the cracking sound of the can hitting his skull from all the way up in the tree and watched as he grabbed at his wound in shock, his stocky build collapsing to the ground, cursing her name and searching for whatever it was that she tossed at his head. Ivy chuckled dryly as she watched the men scramble beneath her to help Sam up off the ground. Ivy slung her supplies back and began to climb further up, not daring to look down in fear of falling to her death. She had to calm herself in order to make it up to the top safely.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Sam muttered at his companions, rubbing the side of his head. He noticed the crimson blood quickly staining his fingers as he removed his hand and stood himself up, readying his rifle but hesitating to shoot. He did not want to be the one to bring her down, as shooting her now would more than likely result in Ivy falling to her death. She was far too high up to be brought safely down, and Ivy would most certainly not come down on her own free will without putting up a fight unless she began to run out of supplies.
“We’ll wait you out, then,” one of the other men called up to her.
“Shouldn’t take long,” said Sam, glancing back up at the tree, eyes locked onto Ivy’s figure as she began to get further and further away from his sight. “She’ll just keep throwin’ stuff ‘til we finally bounce. It’s in her nature. She’ll throw everything she has,” Sam paused, facing his comrades once more, “thinkin’ we’ll eventually leave. She’ll be comin’ down before dark, hungry and dehydrated, no doubt.”
“You better be right. Boss ain’t gonna have us comin’ back empty-handed.”
Ivy was high enough to where she was able to view far beyond anything they could see from the ground, and she noticed something in particular that sent chills down her spine. A relatively large hoard consisting of approximately thirty dead ones were stalking the sound of Sam’s gunshot across the woods. Ivy decided to use to her advantage the oncoming threat and grinned as she watched them slowly approach their area. The dead were indeed too far away from the tree for anyone to hear them, and they would take about twenty minutes to get to where the tree itself was. This gave her the perfect amount of time to rest her burning legs up before she had to run again. Ivy intended on climbing down as soon as the hoard surpassed the tree, but she was afraid that at least a few stragglers would be awaiting her long trek in the woods, and she had no weapons, thus, she came to the rather harsh conclusion that she would be doing even more running than she had originally anticipated.
The group began to set up camp around the base of the tree, slinging their packs to and fro and shouting insults up at Ivy every now and again, but she ignored what they had to say about her. She kept a smirk on her face all the way as she quietly observed the corpses drawing closer and closer to the tree, wondering if Sam and company would ever hear, smell, and finally, see them approaching the camp. She heard a ticking sound as the biggest man began to chuck rocks at the trunk of the tree, trying to aim higher and higher without it backfiring and hitting his fellow comrades. He aimed for Ivy, but she was far too high in the tree for any of them to hit her, unless they began shooting again, which they knew was not the best of ideas what with their area being so wide open. Little did they know they had already compromised their position.
Ivy gritted her teeth and fished around in her pack for her water bottle, her throat growing more and more dry with every passing second. She stretched her back muscles before finally taking a rather large swig, feeling relief as the liquid trickled down her throat. It felt good to finally hydrate after everything she had been through in the past few hours. Glancing over at the hoard of corpses, now growing ever the more close, would surely ease her troubled mind, but she noticed that the hoard was breaking up and feared that some of the dead were beginning to forget about the gunshot, and she did not want to be attacked by more stragglers in the woods than she could handle without any weapons on hand. Provoking the men would be one of the only ways to avoid any more trouble than she would already have to face, ironically enough.
Ivy began to sing an old jazz tune, and she belted the lyrics out loudly and obnoxiously out of tune, enough to piss off the trio below. She planned on irritating them just enough to where they would shoot at her at least once again.
“Say, it’s only a paper moon,” she sang, her lyrics out of tune and slurred together as if she was a drunk up in that tree, “sailing over a cardboard sea.” Ivy craned her neck downwards and watched as her would-be captors glanced upwards, glaring in her general direction.
“The hell she singin’ for? That in her nature too, Sam?”
“And it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me!”
Sam grew irritated of her chanting, which was doing nothing but painting a big fat target on his back in more ways than one, and decided to form his own response. “Hey, you keep singin’ up there, little songbird, and I ain’t gonna miss this time!”
The corners of Ivy’s mouth quirked upward, knowing exactly how to press her old friend’s buttons. “Sam, you can’t not miss. I’d like to see you try and prove yourself for a change!”
Sam began to raise his rifle again in anger, trigger happy and eager to plant a bullet in his friend, but one of his team members perked up, forcing Sam to lower his weapon. “Wait,” he muttered under his breath, his face twisting in confusion and intense focus.
Observing all the hitmen standing still, Ivy realized that the walkers were getting close enough to the tree that she could make out the beginnings of their moaning and snarling, which meant that the men below were more than likely listening for their sounds as well.
“Shit,” Ivy mumbled to herself, knowing that the men would have enough time to escape and would still be able to come back and capture her before she had time to get as far away as possible. She began to sing again, hoping that it would distract them.
“Yes, it’s only a canvas sky--”
Ivy was not able to manage another lyric before a gunshot rang out from down below and a bullet zoomed just past Ivy’s boot and planted itself into her pack. “Shut the fuck up!”
The bullet narrowly missed Ivy’s foot, and she knew they were shooting fairly close to her. Still, she had a distraction to create. “Hanging over a muslin tree--”
“Son of a fuckin’--you schemin’ little bitch!”
Suddenly, a whole stream of gunshots rang out like fireworks crackling just beneath the tree. Snarls and moans grew louder and more audible as the gunshots increased. Ivy, knowing she would have to be quick about her escape, and knowing she would have to make it down without one of the goons firing at her, flung her pack across the woods, away from all of the commotion. Thankfully, none of the participants in the bloodbath below had enough time to pay attention to Ivy anymore, so they more than likely had not seen her soaring supplies. There was simply too much happening for Ivy to make her great escape, though, so she decided to just keep to herself up in the tree until the trio fled the scene. She watched intently as the hoard began closing in on the group rapidly. In the middle of pondering whether or not they would come to their senses and finally just run away, the trio split ways and each took off into a different direction, leaving their supplies behind. The corpses each settled on a target and ventured off in search of their prey, breaking the hoard up.
“Shit,” muttered Ivy, riddled with sweat and anxiety. With them all split up, it would be more difficult for her to find a safe path out of the forest. If she chose to climb down and try her hand at fleeing just as her former group members had, she would have to risk being caught by one of the three and risk getting turned into a corpse’s three course dinner. If she chose to wait it out in the tree, the group would eventually return in search of her up in the pine, and even if they decided not to come back for her, she would never know for sure if they would pin her with a surprise encounter. Starving to death in a pine tree was also not an option for Ivy. She came to the conclusion that she was inevitably screwed either way.
After sitting on the fence, or branch, rather, for a few minutes, waiting on the herd to finally clear out, Ivy finally made her decision. “Down we go.”
Ivy descended the tree safely until she met with the branches she had snapped earlier to make sure no one would climb after her. Dropping down to the ground from about eight feet above, the pine straws crunched beneath her boots. Her legs were still weak from all the running she had done a few hours before, but she pressed on nonetheless. Picking through the abandoned packs they had left behind, she managed to salvage a six-shooter and a couple boxes of ammunition with her name quite literally written on the outside. The can of peaches she had thrown earlier was the second thing she retrieved. The determined woman also pocketed some trail mix, a bowie knife, three other handheld blades, some water, and a Polaroid camera, along with a gorey photograph that she wished did not exist.
“Sick bastards.”
Trailing over to where she had thrown her own supplies, Ivy focused on finishing the song she sang earlier, even if she had to whisper it to herself. It was, no doubt, one of her favorites, and as she gripped her pack of goodies and scanned the area for any hostiles, she flipped a bullet into the chamber of her new six-shooter and continued down the path that she remembered seeing Sam take. If any of the goons were to capture Ivy, Sam would have been the one she would personally choose to struggle with.
“And it wouldn’t be make believe,” she began, her thoughts and voice trailing off as she thought of her old group and her friend Sam. Sam played the tough guy almost all his life, but Ivy knew better. Now, as she fled from him in a forest full of flesh eating corpses, she felt as though she was in the wrong place, and she felt as though Sam was in the wrong place, as well. The two of them had been through thick and thin together in their godforsaken world, and she knew he was far better than what he displayed just to get in the good graces of their morbid leader. Ivy knew that Sam was capable of stooping low enough to get into a position of power. Before the world fell apart, he was just as greedy for money and treasures. He was always good to her, though, risking his life to shield her from the dangers of the world, until she turned away from the facade that their leader and his men had posed, and after she made her own choice, he decided that she had made the wrong one in his eyes. Seeing Sam in the forest in a compromising position would pain Ivy to no end, but she remembered that he was betraying her for his own benefits, so pressing on by herself was the best option to make in order to save herself.
From hearing crunches in the leaves not far from where she was standing, Ivy’s song was interrupted once again by a familiar face emerging from trees that were blocking a clearing. Thankfully, she was out of sight long before he had fully emerged, but she had seen him nonetheless.
“Fuck.”
She cocked her revolver, shielded by her hiding spot, terrified of the person she had witnessed, her breath hitching as she realized that he may be able to hear her if she breathed too loud. Breathing was simply not an option.
“Ivy, I know you’re in these woods,” the man spoke out in a confident tone, his voice sending frightful sensations throughout Ivy’s sore body with every word he spoke. “You know I’m a damn good shot, so if you’re really idiot enough to run, which, I’m sure you still are, you’ll be dragged back to Negan with lead in your perfect little thighs.”
Ivy bit down on her bottom lip, hard, hard enough to where she began to taste metal. Sam or one of the other two, had called for backup from a nearby outpost. Negan’s right hand man was in the area to do his bidding, and he really was a damn good shot.
“I do not want to ruin those. Come on out, sweetheart. Simon says.”
Ivy’s song was dying to be finished in the back of her mind, but finishing a song solely for the sake of completing a hole in her mind was not at all worth compromising her position, risking being kidnapped by Simon and being brought back to Negan on a silver platter, or being killed on the spot. She, instead, mouthed the words to herself as her eyes stalked Simon’s towering figure, glaring as he scanned the treetops for any sign of a woman who bore even the slightest likeness to Ivy. Her mouth formed the words as she stood in crunchy leaves, desperately searching for any opening to allow her one fighting chance in this world.
“If you believed in me.”