A surge of sharp pain and a sensation of squeezing brings you to, your eyes fluttering as an orange dim light invades your vision. As your eyes adjust to the light, your body aches as your heart thumps with each breath you take. A low moan rumbles in the back of your throat as your eyes open fully and the pain continues to soar throughout your body.
Your surroundings are unfamiliar. Four walls encompass you, faded and scuffed up wallpaper peeling from each of them. To your right is a small front door, and to your left is a door that leads to what you suspect to be a bathroom. The carpet is an old and quite disgusting grey color, and the ceiling is stained with water spots and other unidentifiable marks.
You realize you have woken up in a musty dank motel room, as you look to see the single bed you lay upon. The covers are patterned in ugly flowers that have faded with time, and a spring from the mattress pokes at your lower spine. But the movement of someone in front of you captures your attention.
His body is tall and casts a dark shadow over you, and as your eyes follow down his tan toned arms you spot his hands pressing down on your left thigh. Towels bundled around your leg and he's pressing down hard. That's the squeezing sensation you felt. The man's hands that apply pressure to your thigh are stained slightly, his fingers more red than flesh colored. With his pressure, blood soaks through the towels and sops onto his hands.
Startled by the amount of blood flowing from your injured leg, you try pushing yourself upward into a sitting position. But grunt as it causes a sharp pain to shoot through you.
"Don't sit up." The man applying pressure to your leg says, and his voice is low. A deep southern accent bleeds into his words, and somehow his tone is calm. His voice keeping still even as blood pools between his fingers.
Laying your head back on the flat pillow, you stare at the man who has yet to look anywhere else other than your wounded leg. His hair hangs low over his face, his dark brown locks barely touching the tips of his shoulders and sweat makes them stick to the tan skin of his face. His arms are smudged in sweat and dirt, and splatters of your dried crimson blood. Leather covers his chest, and you can't help but wonder if he's sweltering in the summer heat from it.
"Where am I?" You croak, and after a few more seconds of eerie silence, his eyes flicker up from his hands to your face.
His eyes are a shade of blue that stuns you, not knowing there could be a set of eyes that beautiful. Bags are evident beneath the blues, and his skin is slightly sunburned from too much exposure to the sun. He's older than you, but he doesn't necessarily look old. He just looks tired.
"Motel." His answer is kept short, looking back down at your leg.
"How'd I get here?"
The man doesn't look up at you again, but answers your question. "Ye were bleedin on the side of the road. Dragged ye here for over a mile and a half."
His answer takes you by surprise. His gruff voice is honest and it's the honesty that surprises you. He found you bleeding to death, and he stopped to help you. Most people in this day and age would keep on walking, or strip you of all your possessions you carried, but this man... This stranger didn't.
"Why?" You ask, coughing through another surge of piercing pain. "Why'd you help me?"
The man is silent for some time, as if at a loss himself for the reason why he helped you. His hands remain firm on your leg, and his eyes are casted downward as he thinks in the quiet.
"Don't know, still askin myself that same thing." Is his response, and although it isn't exactly reassuring, the way his blue eyes finally look to yours is.
There was something in his eyes that spoke to you, something in his faint expressions that told you this man was good. You didn't believe that there were men like this stranger out in the world anymore, yet here one stood.
"What happened to ye?" The stranger asks you, adding another towel to your leg. Not taking long to change from a beige color to a dark red.
"I was running," You say, shifting your gaze from the man beside you to the spotty ceiling above you. "I was running for my life. That's all I can really remember."
"Runnin from walkers?" The man asks you, and still staring up at the ceiling you shake your head.
"No." The monsters that roam the Earth aren't just the dead anymore... Its the living too.
"Then what?"
The stranger pushes for an answer, and turning your head to look at him you find that he's already looking back.
Swallowing, you run your tongue over your dry chapped lips. "Men."
"Men?"
You nod slowly, "I was running away. I had to leave, I had to or I didn't think I'd make it. Of course now," You glance down at your bleeding leg. "I guess it didn't really matter."
"These men..." The stranger begins and you cut him off.
"Are dangerous. Even more so than the dead out there. I guess that's just how life is now, those living have everything to lose so they become more dangerous."
Except looking over at the blue eyed stranger, you know that he isn't.
"Those men were your group?" The man asks.
You shrug, for a lack of a better word.
"We uh," The man clears his throat, looking down at your leg for a moment. "We have a community. A place that's safe and a place that's secure."
Your eyebrows raise slowly, you had let go of the belief of a "sanctuary" long ago.
"Why are you telling me?" You ask wearily.
"Cause I can take ye back with me." The stranger says, his eyes lifting to meet yours for a short second.
"You're doing a hell of a lot for someone you hardly know." You point out, before coughing at another surge of sharp pain.
"How do you know I'm not a terrible person? How do you know that I'm not like those men I used to be with?" You question. And as the inquiry leaves your lips you feel a rush of regret. This man offered you safety and here you were trying to make him rethink his offer.
The stranger with stunning blue eyes clears his throat, and stands up. His shadow casting over you as he stared down at you.
"How ye know I'm not a terrible person?" He asks in a low voice.
Shrugging your shoulder gently, you shake your head. "I think I just know."
The man stays silent, yet nods his head. After a few seconds he retreats to the bathroom and comes back with more clean towels for your bleeding leg.
"Maybe I jus know too."
His reply makes hope blossom inside of your chest. A sensation you hadn't felt since the very beginning. And watching as the man who has yet to tell you his name work carefully to wrap your injured leg, you see that evil has not overtaken all of this life. That good still exists.
For goodness still exists in this blue eyed man's helping hand.
A/N: I'm happy with this one!💙
