That is to say, she knows how to mind her own business, fall in line and get on with it. Not make waves, and avoid whatever stares she might catch. Catches them, because of course she does. Because she's meant to not let too many people know who and what she is - a lengthy discussion she has with Rick. If preferable, she explains, no one outside of them needs to know. He counters, much like Daryl did the same, about what the blackwater could mean, mean for them all, and it goes, for some time, until she comes down harsh on it. If he wants her assistance, a warrior who could not die, that could walk into walking dead and walk back out without him having to risk anyone else and all she might do for them, he will not question her over it. The warning is clear, she will abide peaceably, but if anyone was fool enough to try and take it from her, they'd find themselves dead soon enough thereafter, and it would be on his head for their mistake. He agrees after that, to keep it amongst themselves, to keep word about is as discreet as possible. The last thing they need is it getting out to other surviving groups less than savoury.
So it means, within an hour, everyone else in the camp knows. The woman with gold in her hair that rode stiff-backed into the churchyard like something out of a story, the queen with no kingdom from a world that's been lost a long time ago. The knights were half myth less than forty years ago, tales that grow tall in each telling and she knows she's no exception. Though she'd rather been hoping most of them would react like Daryl and Rick, just raise their eyebrows and carry on with it. But, rather, she finds the odd feeling of being ghosted like they might touch her and find gilding on their fingers for the experience. Royalty isn't something people really consider anymore, the knights of the blackwater, even less so. She supposes it's to be expected. It stings, wants to spit she has no salvation to give them, only a chance that there was blood to be shed for. But that was the point of the blackwater, and her shoulders roll with it - all hope and none for herself.
So she approaches it as pragmatically as she could. Keeps her head down and puts her hands to work. Her skills, she makes those clear, are on offer to whoever has need of them. Some attempt to counter what is hissed at her back as an insult when it becomes clear she won't be sharing that vial at her neck: Queen, like she didn't have anything to give them if not immortality - what was with these Americans? Did they assume they were all Mad King George and his useless family on their throne? she bristles with the insult. Not of being all glamour and no ability, but being related to them - and she corrects it however and whenever she's able. Whether that's pitching in with cooking or putting a blade into a Walker's head. No task, she makes clear, is too low for her. She doesn't have that sort of pride. She never did.
Once, and only the once, is it settled by a swift knee into someone's stomach with spitting words that if anyone was going to get the jump on her, they'd need to have started three centuries ago. Like dogs snarling, bearing down with her place assured. After that, it becomes much easier to get on with her business in assisting. Shows what she has to give - that is to say, she lived and grew up in times before the world became so removed from its death. A time before refrigerators, easily available ammunition, clean water, for instance. How to stretch a little food a long way or help it keep longer. Things that they had figured out, granted, but just some experience assisted with from time to time from having to live this as ordinary.
Other times, however, she has to be shown. Isolating herself for the last seventy years has its own price. For one thing, she has no idea what to do with most of the electronics, some of the guns they carry, other parts of machinery. Tries not to let her pride sting as she's the one reduced to having to being teased when she doesn't have the faintest as to what they're talking about, or when she speaks of something as normal, and it isn't. When it had happened from her Great-Grandchildren was one thing, and when Carl takes her aside to explain things, she can swallow it - but it's hard to swallow the flustered ire when she's used to be sure and in control of everything around her. ( What even was an - an 'MP3' anyway? File types that weren't - paper? She finds herself missing Tesla to help her make sense of it most of all. )
Times like that, she finds him, to at least centre herself back into something she can do, does know. Helping him with skinning, tanning, helping him make extra bolts in a relative silence of work she knows. Cleaning her weapons with him. If she can't, she's tending the horse that's become so clearly hers in their progress, just liked she promised she would to it the first day. Becomes at least for her, a odd point of stability, between the two processes, of being in his presence, of dealing with words - old woman, grandma, majesty - that she can shove back just as hard when she needs to, it humanizes, stabilizes, keeps her steady where she needs to. Though she'd never say as much, when he goes for her throat, so to speak, where they're all dogs yanking at each other, there's always a breath of relief for the motion. Because he'd seen it, seen her gasping on her pain that ought to be death, wonders if he told Rick about that too, or if he kept it to himself, but it means at least, she can be something of herself. Comfortable, even if perhaps she shouldn't be. Keeps her both feet on the ground where she gets yanked into this and that, into teaching and being taught and what it means to live past the end of the world and have to start again.
Which is to say, all of it, just becomes life, once more. Lived in each and every day, difficult, struggling and she survives in it best, because that is what it had been what life had always been for her. It goes on, she finds her place in it again, and it simply is. Doing just that, when she finds herself face to face, polishing the gold she has worn for near two hundred years down, working out the blood from the links in the chain, looping it over her fingers to flick out the water as she looks up to him and - the rather cross expression on his face that her eyebrows raise for. Her constant art in being mild in the face of other people's ire. Something that is definitely all courtly habit, or as Carl had called it, once, her 'queen' face after she had told him the story about how the Jhansi ki Rani did battle with the British Lycan in a fortress made of stone on top of a great cliffside edge. ( Whatever... that meant. The observation of children could be merciless, sometimes. )
"I suppose that look means I have done something?" What for, however, she cannot think. Sometimes she knows, she teases too much, but he comes back quickly with that, they shove, and it's over with. This time, she can't think of anything she's done.
Rani settles in better than he thought she would, which isn't, probably, that damn surprising. He'd expected more derision, more complaining-- everybody's lost somebody, everybody's afraid of losing somebody, most folks are afraid of dying. He was expecting them to nag her more, and her to spit poison back. Instead, she becomes this strange mythical figure. They sit around the campfire listening to her stories, and it sets her and her life farther apart from them. If it's a tall tale, they're less likely to grasp at it.
She does make a few mistakes, of course. She says what she's not supposed to, looks where she shouldn't see, makes her voice heard where it should be quiet. But all of that is normal for new people. Some of them have been together since Atlanta. They know the rhythms of each other better than most families.
That's what they are, in the end. Brothers and sisters in an endless line, running between the trees and hiding from death.
One night, she says the wrong thing in front of the wrong woman, and she's smart enough to ask, not demand. When you make a mistake, you bounce back. He shakes his head and leads her away from another girl's deepset frown. "Her guy died... ugly," Daryl mutters in a low tone, meant only for Rani. Ugly doesn't half cover it, but he doesn't want to bring up that spectre. "He stole some wine, once. You talking drinking reminded her of it."
The room is dark when the light floods into it. Bare brick walls of a underground basement, that have been strung up to be somewhere removed, somewhere childish. It is bathed in pink and pale yellows, flowers painted onto the corners. Compared to the outside world, this room - this shut away basement at the back of a cellar, is removed.
The girl sitting in it, with candles for light in the depths, is much the same. Her knees are pulled up to her chest as she sits on the bed - a princesses bed or an impression there of. White with netting, all decorative. She is staring into the light, blinking at the figure that in the sudden flood of pure light behind him, she cannot make out. Blinking at it owlishly, her mouth parted. The dark black hair that covers her face that she peers out from behind it - doesn't serve but to make her look more pale. A stretch out - young, looks like, eyes big and blue and staring vainly as she tries to adjust to the figure that she can't - quite - make it out.
She can't tell, she's not used to sunlight anymore. She unfurls, uneasy, of course she is - she could never tell his moods until he opened his mouth, and she pushes her self forward.
It's then that the chain moves. Big and heavy around her throat, long - some grace to its length, she can move everywhere around the room, attached to above the bed in a heavy bolt - something for a dog, not a girl. The chain loops long, from her, to a pool on the ground. Allows her to reach from the desk to the adjoining door, off to the side, and even to the door that the figure is standing in. Frowning, trying still to make the figure as the chain rattles.
"Dad? Has something happened?"
The expectation. It's him - that it would ever be anyone else, is ridiculous. She's given that up, some time ago.
It starts with a supply run, of course. Lately these days, everything is. Living from hand to mouth, he sure as fuck don't miss it, but that's life. Everything's fallen. Keep going or die.
Some jackass had control of this town once. It's clear as crystal he lost it, he lost more than the town. The graffiti, mostly written in mud and dirt and smudged with time, says something about where Jack can shove it. Daryl assumed, idiot that he is, that this Jack bastard died with whatever killed the town, broke the walls. The place is crawling with corpses. It's clear some bad shit happened here. Would it be too much to ask that this 'Handsome Jack' asshole is dead?
If the bullet wound in his leg and the corpse at his feet is any indication, yes, yes, it is.
But the place is clear for now. He'll set off for the group and lead them in-- the houses are nearly empty, and there's probably still good shit in them. But that's after he loots this jackass' house.
Daryl makes his way through, filling a bag with food and bits of string and wire and knives and anything else good he can find. It's all fine until he hears something moving around in the basement. If this place is gonna be safe for the group, he has to really clear it.
Let's just say, the basement isn't what he's expecting. He shines a flashlight in and finds something he never wanted to fucking see. Drops his bag, lowers his bow. She looks scared.
Alexandria is what it is. Safe, fortified, and eerie in how separated it is from the concept of survival. After the Prison, after the Hospital, after Terminus and the long slow walk on the roads-- it's hard not to feel rejected by the clean walls and picket fences. Daryl spends his time scavenging with Aaron, Rosita, Michonne, Rick. He hasn't with Beth, yet. He probably should have.
(She came so close to dying; that scar on her scalp still makes him sick-)
You can see for miles from the top of the shitty strip mall drug store, which is why Daryl and Rosita spent a day making a blind. You can hunt from the top of it too, now, and get out from under the sun. It's not safe-- people can see you for miles, too-- but it's safer than it could be.
Daryl lets out a whistle when he approaches, not wanting to spook her. He's been shot enough times in his life. They both have. "Permission to come aboard?"
He's not really asking, already climbing the rungs of the ladder welded to the back of the building.
It's kind of nice up there, even if it's exposed - and she can see that it is, how the ability to watch the whole world means the whole world's watching you, too. There are some crates that she assumes Daryl dragged up for a place to sit, a piece of sheet metal leaned up against one of those old metal boxes that used to hide air conditioners or something - someplace to stay if it rains, she thinks. If you're going to be someplace out in the wild, this is a good place to be.
Daryl whistles, and she can't help smiling wetly at nothing. He didn't actually have to come out here, especially not over something as stupid as someone else's dating problems.
"Yeah," she calls back, swiping at her tear-streaked face with the cuffs of her sweater. It's not like she could stop him if she wanted to.
Mia’s sitting at the bottom of the ditch, possibly sulking. Definitely zoning out instead of keeping an ear out for any potential danger nearby.
It might not have taken him long, but she’s still going to give Daryl a hard time because it’s basically her job now. Also his sudden appearance makes her flinch. She’s so jumpy.
She looks up at him, throwing the twig she had been idly playing with into the dirt.
Daryl can guess which ditch it is. The storm last week knocked over some trees, which rolled deep in the muddy earth. Tar is beginning to crack, roads becoming rocky and uneven. Keeping them clear of the dead is one thing, but eventually it's all going to be silt and mud.
The ditch is a mile out on route A, which is good news on the way back; it's mostly downhill. The way there, though, leaves Daryl a sweaty mess, not least because he's hauling a wheelbarrow.
He sees the wreck of the wagon, and assumes Maggie's close, probably protecting the kill. He lets out a long, low whistle, a holdover from the prison. The cardinal's whistle: are you there?
Maggie catches the sound of it, birdsong that isn't. Even without the awareness that Daryl's on the way, she thinks she'd recognize him - but it's hard to tell, knowing as she does. And she whistles back, over here.
When she sees him, she waves an arm. She's sitting at the side of the road, the buck's back hooves just visible.
"Thanks," she tells him, standing up once he's getting close.
At this point, Daryl has memorized Mia's boot prints. Her particular stride, her shoe size, stick out like traffic signs in the wet underbrush of late autumn. Winter is coming on slow, and he appreciates that. Maybe it'll cool whatever hellfire bullshit he'll have to deal with next.
He's still angry, though at this point it's turned inward. He has no logical reason to be pissed with her. It's just more shit, none of it hers. He shouldn't be pissed. He likes it when his emotions are small enough to slip under the surface like fishhooks, gone under the skin. This feels like a harpoon.
Daryl sees her through wet branches, cold with recent rain. He doesn't call her name, just lets out the low whistle that their community knows is a watchword for friendlies incoming.
This girl has baggage. She was upfront to him about it. She couldn't afford not to be - not after everything else that's happened and all the other groups of people she's (literally) gone through in the recent past. Keeping secrets always came back to bite her in the ass. Whether or not he chose to believe her was up to him and him only. He signed up for this when he decided to let her tag along. At least - that's how she attempts to justify things to herself.
She's kept a low profile while waiting for him, crouched and quiet in her hiding spot. They're not stupid. There's a huge chance they already know she's on their tail. But at least she's trying to remain under the radar for the meanwhile.
When she hears the familiar whistle she perks up, then takes a look around to scope out exactly where it's coming from. Once he's in her sight she smiles and gives a little wave, then gestures for him to come meet her.
The Wolves are bastards, and so are the Scars, and everyone's a bastard in Seattle. Daryl counts himself among those numbers, though at least he doesn't have anyone to blame but himself. He's been here about five years, now, watched the skirmishes and the constant, pointless fucking death; there's something to letting people decide your life for you, letting them use your hands to kill, that is a special sort of stupid evil.
He's found that most real, true evil is stupid as fuck.
The WLF thunder dome isn't something you walk up to lightly; Daryl's never truly been. But he knows the wolf kids-- pups, jarheads, whatever you wanna call them-- hang out around the waterfront, constantly wind-whipped with salt and spray. It's an ugly place, and nothing grows there; the buildings lay unused. Perfect place for kids to run off to. It makes sense in retrospect; he didn't go looking for him initially. Fuck, they almost killed him when they found him lurking around. Those kids will kill anything; it's what they're trained for.
No, he said, he doesn't want to live in their compound. Yeah, he lied, he's too old to be a soldier. He knows they got a place for him, if he puts in the work, but he won't work for anyone but himself anymore, and that's something that confused most of them.
It didn't confuse Abby, though. Now when Daryl comes out to the sea, away from the place he calls his own (nobody but Abby knows it, nobody but Abby knows that he sleeps outside in the forest, nobody but Abby knows how to find him), he brings shit to trade. He grows his own tobacco and rolls his own cigarettes-- the kids fucking love that. But he has arrow and fletching as well, animal fur carefully cured and dried, bones from hunts. He doesn't trade for food-- the kids have more than enough of that. But they're kids and love trinkets. A lucky rabbit's foot buys him a cartridge of bullets. A coonskin cap gets him fresh vegetables.
And they all think he's some ancient old man of the woods, when he's barely fifty, and it's kind of hilarious. He wishes he could talk to the scar kids like this, too, but they're something different. When he can talk them down from shooting on sight, they just tell him to run.
But mostly, he can't talk them down from shit.
Today, Daryl has bolts for a crossbow, a rabbit bone buttons, and a coat-hanger made out of deer antlers. He sits in the shitty aquarium, wondering how long it took the dead fish to rot to nothingness, and he listens. People coming. The gait is regular, so not infected. It's plodding and heavy, which means it could be a few people. He hopes it's Abby, who has quickly become his favorite of the WLF kids. She actually thinks.
He picks up his crossbow and shoots a rope on the wall, effectively disabling a trap that would have snared anyone coming through the wall of the gift shop. It makes a clattering noise as it falls to the ground, announcing his presence. And then he closes his eyes, and reclines in a bed made out of a hundred stuffed sea creatures.
Abby always finds him like this. Doing something weird. She wonders if he postures so she can never figure out what's actually going on with him, and sometimes she cares about that and other days she doesn't; either way Daryl is good to hang around. He's chill. He's far less annoying to hang out with than men her age, not that she likes him like that or anything, just that it's refreshing to be around somebody who says what he fucking means instead of being weird and coy and flirty. Or whatever. Maybe that kind of behaviour has been pissing her off lately, but it's nothing she's ever spoken to him about.
No, her and Daryl, they trade. He brings weird little things and she knows that they impress the other people in her unit because she sees them wearing them around the place. Baubles, decorations, patches. It's not that Abby doesn't care (they are cool), just that she wants something else.
So she finds a way to ditch her group near the old aquarium and she swims in there, pinching her nose shut against the smell of dead fish. The water is cold. She shakes herself out on the other side, leaves her braid sopping, dripping a little trail of water down the middle of her back, and hunts Daryl down into the gift shop.
For a guy who is so shifty about keeping hidden he's kinda easy to track...
"Hey," she says. Stops. Takes him in where he's lying, spread out across a bed of stuffed animals, looking like road kill, "Should I come back later? You look like you need your beauty sleep."
Winter's always bad; you get separated from your people, and can't move for the snow and the frozen rain. They have a place they've all agreed to meet up in if this happens, and they know how to survive in the meanwhile. Daryl isn't strictly pleased, but he's been through this before. They find each other. They make do.
Daryl's rigged half a cul-de-sac to his liking. The traps are all walker-traps, easily avoided by the living. Visibility will be low, some days, and he needs to be able to easily skip through traps while bringing in kills. It means it'll be easy for living humans to get through, though, but that's a risk Daryl has to be willing to take.
It'll snow tomorrow, he's sure of it. It's important to bring a kill back, and he's spent all day on it. The day was bright, clear with the cold sterility of coming chill; he caught a buck, and is butchering it when he hears the sound of someone creeping by. A survivor; their footsteps are too regular to be anything dead.
The house he's butchering the deer in has a patio; the wood creeks as someone light-footed steps over it. He draws open the curtain to see out, and realizes two things very quickly: That's a kid, a young woman, someone he really doesn't want to fight if he can avoid it; he is absolutely covered in deer blood, and the carcass is almost certainly out of view from her point of view. He must look like a fucking murderer.
Their eyes meet, and he can't think of a single thing he can do to reassure her.
This far in, like most people, Julie's lost just about everyone. And it hurts, but she's not bad at this, she's learned. At being on her own. Or maybe she's just too good at ignoring the pain of it all. But she's also smart, resourceful, and people typically only have one of two reactions to seeing a white teenage girl with mousey hair and green eyes and both of those are easy to exploit.
She prefers it on her own though, on the move. Finds a weird kind of joy in scavenging sometimes, which is what she's planning to do when she comes up on a house that looks unoccupied from the woods, though spotting the traps gives her pause. Julie kneels to inspect one, looks out on the others, and decides they're easy enough to step around.
What she's not expecting though, is some dude in the house covered in blood. Julie stops suddenly, eyes wide as she stares through the window, her hand immediately flying to push her coat away and reach for the knife sheathed at her hip.
Would you believe how goddamn easy it is to hunt on college campuses? The wide open spaces, the gardens and the quads, all of them overgrown, make great eating for wild animals. Most of the trees are there to make the place pretty-- there's not a ton of coverage. It makes shooting a breeze, and the only difficult part is to resist the urge to kill more than you can use.
Daryl spends half the day doing what he likes best, when he's alone. He sets up a blind, tracks the deer, doesn't get too close. He scopes out a target, and sets up near the running track, watching the deer in the distance.
They scatter.
Someone comes through the trees, up to the blind Daryl's made out of plywood and pallets. It's nothing fancy, but it'll do, draped in sack cloth with a little slit for seeing through. It's a girl, roughly college age, and she jumps from foot to foot like she's trying to keep warm for a race.
The world's ended, but some people still want to run.
Daryl puts his crossbow down, and comes out from behind the blind with both hands up. He's not going to start a fight with someone thirty years younger than him, though the knife in his belt says he'll finish it if necessary.
"Hey," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say. "Uh, hi."
He fucking hates Haddonfield, so coming here when there ain't even a trial on feels like shooting yourself in the foot. But Zarina says she can teach him some shit worth learning, and Daryl-- despite appearances-- is always eager to learn practical knowledge. He's not much of a reader, can't sing, can't remake the world into a better place full of hope and promise, but he can sustain it. Anything that keeps life trudging forward a little longer is good. Lock-picking, sure. He'd love to learn about lock picking.
So he finds a locked door in this suburban mist, this place that reminds him painfully of Alexandria, and he waits. In the sitting, he nearly falls asleep, eyes half-closed. If a trial starts, he thinks, it'll be over quick. That masked bastard can get him right between the eyes. Take him down like a walker; it's how he'd like to go.
But that doesn't happen. He wakes up on the porch to the sound of padded footsteps; Zarina, usually so sharply dressed, is in some kind of costume. It looks like a penguin.
"You look ridiculous." But the corner of his mouth twitches up, not quite a smile.
When Daryl calls her ridiculous, all Zarina does is raise her brows and reveal an amused smile.
"What, has the Entity never made you wear something silly for a trial? Can’t resist these adorable slippers to wear for running."
There’s a shrug of her shoulders as she continues smiling, walking over towards the hunter with her usual satchel tagging along. To wear a cute penguin onesie in a world full of bloodshed and unapologetic sadism is strange, but as much as she obtains clothes from back home and some that aren’t even hers — something Greek and gold, something that tears her eye out — the entity decides in the end. Some can be changed, but others stay for long periods of time, whether she likes them or not.
Like "Karina’s" soft, bright blonde mane — a contrast to her usual brown waves — which is revealed as she pushes the hood of her onesie off. At least it keeps her warm with the cold weather of Illinois and the fog, like it does back home.
"Maybe one day you’ll wake up in one too. Elodie did." teeth show as she lets out a chuckle, and her hands raise up into her hair and easily pulls out two black bobby pins. "How did you guys break into places quietly back home?"
With that said, she also opens up one of the smaller, outer portions of her satchel and pulls out a small black case.
[ this is probably not the appropriate medium in which to have this kind of conversation, and somehow it's also ideal, because it means there's no ten yard stare on either of their parts, and the awkward pauses can be written off as just being busy, or getting distracted.
it takes Laurie awhile to reply as well, because she really doesn't know what to say. for anybody else she'd just shoot off something crass - who cares - but for once in her life, she actually mulls over the correct response.
if there even is one.
that sucks gets deleted, thankfully, but what she settles on isn't much better. ]
well how am i supposed to say 'its all fucking pointless' now
Pass on the medkit, seconds please on the compliments, and I'm pretty sure thanks to you are in order for using that as a diversion and not an opportunity to laugh at me
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
making redneck hobos call u 'ur majesty' in another language
She settles into the camp easily.
That is to say, she knows how to mind her own business, fall in line and get on with it. Not make waves, and avoid whatever stares she might catch. Catches them, because of course she does. Because she's meant to not let too many people know who and what she is - a lengthy discussion she has with Rick. If preferable, she explains, no one outside of them needs to know. He counters, much like Daryl did the same, about what the blackwater could mean, mean for them all, and it goes, for some time, until she comes down harsh on it. If he wants her assistance, a warrior who could not die, that could walk into walking dead and walk back out without him having to risk anyone else and all she might do for them, he will not question her over it. The warning is clear, she will abide peaceably, but if anyone was fool enough to try and take it from her, they'd find themselves dead soon enough thereafter, and it would be on his head for their mistake. He agrees after that, to keep it amongst themselves, to keep word about is as discreet as possible. The last thing they need is it getting out to other surviving groups less than savoury.
So it means, within an hour, everyone else in the camp knows. The woman with gold in her hair that rode stiff-backed into the churchyard like something out of a story, the queen with no kingdom from a world that's been lost a long time ago. The knights were half myth less than forty years ago, tales that grow tall in each telling and she knows she's no exception. Though she'd rather been hoping most of them would react like Daryl and Rick, just raise their eyebrows and carry on with it. But, rather, she finds the odd feeling of being ghosted like they might touch her and find gilding on their fingers for the experience. Royalty isn't something people really consider anymore, the knights of the blackwater, even less so. She supposes it's to be expected. It stings, wants to spit she has no salvation to give them, only a chance that there was blood to be shed for. But that was the point of the blackwater, and her shoulders roll with it - all hope and none for herself.
So she approaches it as pragmatically as she could. Keeps her head down and puts her hands to work. Her skills, she makes those clear, are on offer to whoever has need of them. Some attempt to counter what is hissed at her back as an insult when it becomes clear she won't be sharing that vial at her neck: Queen, like she didn't have anything to give them if not immortality - what was with these Americans? Did they assume they were all Mad King George and his useless family on their throne? she bristles with the insult. Not of being all glamour and no ability, but being related to them - and she corrects it however and whenever she's able. Whether that's pitching in with cooking or putting a blade into a Walker's head. No task, she makes clear, is too low for her. She doesn't have that sort of pride. She never did.
Once, and only the once, is it settled by a swift knee into someone's stomach with spitting words that if anyone was going to get the jump on her, they'd need to have started three centuries ago. Like dogs snarling, bearing down with her place assured. After that, it becomes much easier to get on with her business in assisting. Shows what she has to give - that is to say, she lived and grew up in times before the world became so removed from its death. A time before refrigerators, easily available ammunition, clean water, for instance. How to stretch a little food a long way or help it keep longer. Things that they had figured out, granted, but just some experience assisted with from time to time from having to live this as ordinary.
Other times, however, she has to be shown. Isolating herself for the last seventy years has its own price. For one thing, she has no idea what to do with most of the electronics, some of the guns they carry, other parts of machinery. Tries not to let her pride sting as she's the one reduced to having to being teased when she doesn't have the faintest as to what they're talking about, or when she speaks of something as normal, and it isn't. When it had happened from her Great-Grandchildren was one thing, and when Carl takes her aside to explain things, she can swallow it - but it's hard to swallow the flustered ire when she's used to be sure and in control of everything around her. ( What even was an - an 'MP3' anyway? File types that weren't - paper? She finds herself missing Tesla to help her make sense of it most of all. )
Times like that, she finds him, to at least centre herself back into something she can do, does know. Helping him with skinning, tanning, helping him make extra bolts in a relative silence of work she knows. Cleaning her weapons with him. If she can't, she's tending the horse that's become so clearly hers in their progress, just liked she promised she would to it the first day. Becomes at least for her, a odd point of stability, between the two processes, of being in his presence, of dealing with words - old woman, grandma, majesty - that she can shove back just as hard when she needs to, it humanizes, stabilizes, keeps her steady where she needs to. Though she'd never say as much, when he goes for her throat, so to speak, where they're all dogs yanking at each other, there's always a breath of relief for the motion. Because he'd seen it, seen her gasping on her pain that ought to be death, wonders if he told Rick about that too, or if he kept it to himself, but it means at least, she can be something of herself. Comfortable, even if perhaps she shouldn't be. Keeps her both feet on the ground where she gets yanked into this and that, into teaching and being taught and what it means to live past the end of the world and have to start again.
Which is to say, all of it, just becomes life, once more. Lived in each and every day, difficult, struggling and she survives in it best, because that is what it had been what life had always been for her. It goes on, she finds her place in it again, and it simply is. Doing just that, when she finds herself face to face, polishing the gold she has worn for near two hundred years down, working out the blood from the links in the chain, looping it over her fingers to flick out the water as she looks up to him and - the rather cross expression on his face that her eyebrows raise for. Her constant art in being mild in the face of other people's ire. Something that is definitely all courtly habit, or as Carl had called it, once, her 'queen' face after she had told him the story about how the Jhansi ki Rani did battle with the British Lycan in a fortress made of stone on top of a great cliffside edge. ( Whatever... that meant. The observation of children could be merciless, sometimes. )
"I suppose that look means I have done something?" What for, however, she cannot think. Sometimes she knows, she teases too much, but he comes back quickly with that, they shove, and it's over with. This time, she can't think of anything she's done.
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She does make a few mistakes, of course. She says what she's not supposed to, looks where she shouldn't see, makes her voice heard where it should be quiet. But all of that is normal for new people. Some of them have been together since Atlanta. They know the rhythms of each other better than most families.
That's what they are, in the end. Brothers and sisters in an endless line, running between the trees and hiding from death.
One night, she says the wrong thing in front of the wrong woman, and she's smart enough to ask, not demand. When you make a mistake, you bounce back. He shakes his head and leads her away from another girl's deepset frown. "Her guy died... ugly," Daryl mutters in a low tone, meant only for Rani. Ugly doesn't half cover it, but he doesn't want to bring up that spectre. "He stole some wine, once. You talking drinking reminded her of it."
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Some jackass had control of this town once. It's clear as crystal he lost it, he lost more than the town. The graffiti, mostly written in mud and dirt and smudged with time, says something about where Jack can shove it. Daryl assumed, idiot that he is, that this Jack bastard died with whatever killed the town, broke the walls. The place is crawling with corpses. It's clear some bad shit happened here. Would it be too much to ask that this 'Handsome Jack' asshole is dead?
If the bullet wound in his leg and the corpse at his feet is any indication, yes, yes, it is.
But the place is clear for now. He'll set off for the group and lead them in-- the houses are nearly empty, and there's probably still good shit in them. But that's after he loots this jackass' house.
Daryl makes his way through, filling a bag with food and bits of string and wire and knives and anything else good he can find. It's all fine until he hears something moving around in the basement. If this place is gonna be safe for the group, he has to really clear it.
Let's just say, the basement isn't what he's expecting. He shines a flashlight in and finds something he never wanted to fucking see. Drops his bag, lowers his bow. She looks scared.
And all he can think to say is, "ain't your dad."
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8247440.html?thread=3570869904#cmt3570869904
Alexandria is what it is. Safe, fortified, and eerie in how separated it is from the concept of survival. After the Prison, after the Hospital, after Terminus and the long slow walk on the roads-- it's hard not to feel rejected by the clean walls and picket fences. Daryl spends his time scavenging with Aaron, Rosita, Michonne, Rick. He hasn't with Beth, yet. He probably should have.
(She came so close to dying; that scar on her scalp still makes him sick-)
You can see for miles from the top of the shitty strip mall drug store, which is why Daryl and Rosita spent a day making a blind. You can hunt from the top of it too, now, and get out from under the sun. It's not safe-- people can see you for miles, too-- but it's safer than it could be.
Daryl lets out a whistle when he approaches, not wanting to spook her. He's been shot enough times in his life. They both have. "Permission to come aboard?"
He's not really asking, already climbing the rungs of the ladder welded to the back of the building.
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Daryl whistles, and she can't help smiling wetly at nothing. He didn't actually have to come out here, especially not over something as stupid as someone else's dating problems.
"Yeah," she calls back, swiping at her tear-streaked face with the cuffs of her sweater. It's not like she could stop him if she wanted to.
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8264682.html?thread=3574809578#cmt3574809578
"Told you I'd find ya."
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It might not have taken him long, but she’s still going to give Daryl a hard time because it’s basically her job now. Also his sudden appearance makes her flinch. She’s so jumpy.
She looks up at him, throwing the twig she had been idly playing with into the dirt.
“Wow - my hero! It’s about time you showed up.”
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8264682.html?thread=3575508202#cmt3575508202
The ditch is a mile out on route A, which is good news on the way back; it's mostly downhill. The way there, though, leaves Daryl a sweaty mess, not least because he's hauling a wheelbarrow.
He sees the wreck of the wagon, and assumes Maggie's close, probably protecting the kill. He lets out a long, low whistle, a holdover from the prison. The cardinal's whistle: are you there?
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When she sees him, she waves an arm. She's sitting at the side of the road, the buck's back hooves just visible.
"Thanks," she tells him, standing up once he's getting close.
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8281487.html?thread=3582389903#cmt3582389903
He's still angry, though at this point it's turned inward. He has no logical reason to be pissed with her. It's just more shit, none of it hers. He shouldn't be pissed. He likes it when his emotions are small enough to slip under the surface like fishhooks, gone under the skin. This feels like a harpoon.
Daryl sees her through wet branches, cold with recent rain. He doesn't call her name, just lets out the low whistle that their community knows is a watchword for friendlies incoming.
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She's kept a low profile while waiting for him, crouched and quiet in her hiding spot. They're not stupid. There's a huge chance they already know she's on their tail. But at least she's trying to remain under the radar for the meanwhile.
When she hears the familiar whistle she perks up, then takes a look around to scope out exactly where it's coming from. Once he's in her sight she smiles and gives a little wave, then gestures for him to come meet her.
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He's found that most real, true evil is stupid as fuck.
The WLF thunder dome isn't something you walk up to lightly; Daryl's never truly been. But he knows the wolf kids-- pups, jarheads, whatever you wanna call them-- hang out around the waterfront, constantly wind-whipped with salt and spray. It's an ugly place, and nothing grows there; the buildings lay unused. Perfect place for kids to run off to. It makes sense in retrospect; he didn't go looking for him initially. Fuck, they almost killed him when they found him lurking around. Those kids will kill anything; it's what they're trained for.
No, he said, he doesn't want to live in their compound. Yeah, he lied, he's too old to be a soldier. He knows they got a place for him, if he puts in the work, but he won't work for anyone but himself anymore, and that's something that confused most of them.
It didn't confuse Abby, though. Now when Daryl comes out to the sea, away from the place he calls his own (nobody but Abby knows it, nobody but Abby knows that he sleeps outside in the forest, nobody but Abby knows how to find him), he brings shit to trade. He grows his own tobacco and rolls his own cigarettes-- the kids fucking love that. But he has arrow and fletching as well, animal fur carefully cured and dried, bones from hunts. He doesn't trade for food-- the kids have more than enough of that. But they're kids and love trinkets. A lucky rabbit's foot buys him a cartridge of bullets. A coonskin cap gets him fresh vegetables.
And they all think he's some ancient old man of the woods, when he's barely fifty, and it's kind of hilarious. He wishes he could talk to the scar kids like this, too, but they're something different. When he can talk them down from shooting on sight, they just tell him to run.
But mostly, he can't talk them down from shit.
Today, Daryl has bolts for a crossbow, a rabbit bone buttons, and a coat-hanger made out of deer antlers. He sits in the shitty aquarium, wondering how long it took the dead fish to rot to nothingness, and he listens. People coming. The gait is regular, so not infected. It's plodding and heavy, which means it could be a few people. He hopes it's Abby, who has quickly become his favorite of the WLF kids. She actually thinks.
He picks up his crossbow and shoots a rope on the wall, effectively disabling a trap that would have snared anyone coming through the wall of the gift shop. It makes a clattering noise as it falls to the ground, announcing his presence. And then he closes his eyes, and reclines in a bed made out of a hundred stuffed sea creatures.
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No, her and Daryl, they trade. He brings weird little things and she knows that they impress the other people in her unit because she sees them wearing them around the place. Baubles, decorations, patches. It's not that Abby doesn't care (they are cool), just that she wants something else.
So she finds a way to ditch her group near the old aquarium and she swims in there, pinching her nose shut against the smell of dead fish. The water is cold. She shakes herself out on the other side, leaves her braid sopping, dripping a little trail of water down the middle of her back, and hunts Daryl down into the gift shop.
For a guy who is so shifty about keeping hidden he's kinda easy to track...
"Hey," she says. Stops. Takes him in where he's lying, spread out across a bed of stuffed animals, looking like road kill, "Should I come back later? You look like you need your beauty sleep."
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Daryl's rigged half a cul-de-sac to his liking. The traps are all walker-traps, easily avoided by the living. Visibility will be low, some days, and he needs to be able to easily skip through traps while bringing in kills. It means it'll be easy for living humans to get through, though, but that's a risk Daryl has to be willing to take.
It'll snow tomorrow, he's sure of it. It's important to bring a kill back, and he's spent all day on it. The day was bright, clear with the cold sterility of coming chill; he caught a buck, and is butchering it when he hears the sound of someone creeping by. A survivor; their footsteps are too regular to be anything dead.
The house he's butchering the deer in has a patio; the wood creeks as someone light-footed steps over it. He draws open the curtain to see out, and realizes two things very quickly: That's a kid, a young woman, someone he really doesn't want to fight if he can avoid it; he is absolutely covered in deer blood, and the carcass is almost certainly out of view from her point of view. He must look like a fucking murderer.
Their eyes meet, and he can't think of a single thing he can do to reassure her.
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She prefers it on her own though, on the move. Finds a weird kind of joy in scavenging sometimes, which is what she's planning to do when she comes up on a house that looks unoccupied from the woods, though spotting the traps gives her pause. Julie kneels to inspect one, looks out on the others, and decides they're easy enough to step around.
What she's not expecting though, is some dude in the house covered in blood. Julie stops suddenly, eyes wide as she stares through the window, her hand immediately flying to push her coat away and reach for the knife sheathed at her hip.
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warning linked image is, uh, blood.
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Daryl spends half the day doing what he likes best, when he's alone. He sets up a blind, tracks the deer, doesn't get too close. He scopes out a target, and sets up near the running track, watching the deer in the distance.
They scatter.
Someone comes through the trees, up to the blind Daryl's made out of plywood and pallets. It's nothing fancy, but it'll do, draped in sack cloth with a little slit for seeing through. It's a girl, roughly college age, and she jumps from foot to foot like she's trying to keep warm for a race.
The world's ended, but some people still want to run.
Daryl puts his crossbow down, and comes out from behind the blind with both hands up. He's not going to start a fight with someone thirty years younger than him, though the knife in his belt says he'll finish it if necessary.
"Hey," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say. "Uh, hi."
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So he finds a locked door in this suburban mist, this place that reminds him painfully of Alexandria, and he waits. In the sitting, he nearly falls asleep, eyes half-closed. If a trial starts, he thinks, it'll be over quick. That masked bastard can get him right between the eyes. Take him down like a walker; it's how he'd like to go.
But that doesn't happen. He wakes up on the porch to the sound of padded footsteps; Zarina, usually so sharply dressed, is in some kind of costume. It looks like a penguin.
"You look ridiculous." But the corner of his mouth twitches up, not quite a smile.
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"What, has the Entity never made you wear something silly for a trial? Can’t resist these adorable slippers to wear for running."
There’s a shrug of her shoulders as she continues smiling, walking over towards the hunter with her usual satchel tagging along. To wear a cute penguin onesie in a world full of bloodshed and unapologetic sadism is strange, but as much as she obtains clothes from back home and some that aren’t even hers — something Greek and gold, something that tears her eye out — the entity decides in the end. Some can be changed, but others stay for long periods of time, whether she likes them or not.
Like "Karina’s" soft, bright blonde mane — a contrast to her usual brown waves — which is revealed as she pushes the hood of her onesie off. At least it keeps her warm with the cold weather of Illinois and the fog, like it does back home.
"Maybe one day you’ll wake up in one too. Elodie did." teeth show as she lets out a chuckle, and her hands raise up into her hair and easily pulls out two black bobby pins. "How did you guys break into places quietly back home?"
With that said, she also opens up one of the smaller, outer portions of her satchel and pulls out a small black case.
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8392586.html?thread=3617224330#cmt3617224330
mighta been
https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8408272.html?thread=3624370640#cmt3624370640
kinda got that
cause you always act so damn surprised
aint your fault
whats fwiw
RUDE i value
For What Its Worth
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8527636.html?thread=3668523796#cmt3668523796
dont know where he gets a razor round here
cant grow nothing more than what you seen meg
i hope with a flashlight
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Do you get jealous when you look at Jeff?
Yeah. With a flashlight. [ Yeah! Totally! ]
Dad.
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8542160.html?thread=3674580432#cmt3674580432
when you from
knew a kid who thought i was
homicide cop
still dont fucking know why
https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8562341.html?thread=3682307749#cmt3682307749
younger than you
i
[a long pause.]
almost died a few times
my dad
he
[and longer. this is more than he can force himself to type out.]
after he died
just kept thinking
lived through that
cant let it own me
you know?
if i stop what was the point of getting through all that shit
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it takes Laurie awhile to reply as well, because she really doesn't know what to say. for anybody else she'd just shoot off something crass - who cares - but for once in her life, she actually mulls over the correct response.
if there even is one.
that sucks gets deleted, thankfully, but what she settles on isn't much better. ]
well how am i supposed to say 'its all fucking pointless' now
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https://tinyurl.com/yye3java
<3
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https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/8661877.html?thread=3711703669#cmt3711703669
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