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."
Bad habits - she always talked like she expected to be listened to, without pause and consideration for other's feelings. Used to just swallowing most of it when it's back at her, and that was the price of ruling and then the time afterwards. No one said being immortal made them considerate, made them wise or all knowing, that was definitely the greatest of the myth because it made them nothing but human if but older and more bitter. Her encounters with Galahad had said as much of where she might end up, given enough time.
Seems she'd become just that too.
But it still hits low, breathing out, it hadn't been her intention to drag up something painful in her stories. "I meant only that we drank more often because of the issues with water - that perhaps we could do something the same." Her mouth opens, shuts - it doesn't matter what she meant, did it? She stands, dropping her jewellery into the water she'd been using for cleaning. "I will speak to her. I never intended..." Moves like she's ready to move past him to her.
"Nah, don't." He holds up his hands, trying to ward her away. "Won't appreciate it."
Since her man died, she's been... different. Cold. She was always a hard, especially for a girl, but now she's someone different. Has to get over it for her own self. Won't appreciate kind words from some queen that feels like everything she's lost.
That said, Daryl has no illusions about Rani, either, and doesn't expect her to actually listen. He waves her over, away from the campfire, and the rest of the group that hasn't yet fallen asleep. "And I ain't gonna run off half lit all the time."
Her glance is anxious to it - casting her eyes back to her, then back to Daryl, later, she's maybe thinking. She can give something in apology. About learning to live with these things.
Easy as anything, she rises to the bait, "it's not about being lit." The word is far too proper and wrong coming out of her mouth and done to be mocking. Because it's a joke at this point, something Carl and anyone younger than her - read: just about all of them - like to make her do and say. Force her to say words she doesn't understand.
"Unless you think you can't handle your liquor to stave off, oh, I don't know, dysentery. Because I can assure you that's not a romantic tale."
Daryl shakes his head. "I'm a dick when I'm buzzed. You think I'm bad now?" He sits back on his rolled up sleeping bag, trying to keep her entertained. He has a proposal for her, but he wants her to be in a good mood for it.
Her eyes roll, huffing down at him where he gets himself comfortable on the ground. Realising how quickly he's gotten her off track and that's - she really isn't sure about that. He does it too well, gets her all sharp and distracted where usually she can keep her head. Because as he does, backing down from her even in the same space that he got her worked up, she's just that - distracted from what she'd done.
"Nothing I can't handle." Bites back like he's a small dog she'll just pick up by the scruff of his neck and put him back in his box. Just like he did with her now.
Daryl snorts. "You ain't seen half how bad I can be. C'mon." He pats the ground next to his sleeping bag, coaxing her to sit. Rani, in his mind, is a lot more like wild game than she'd like to think. Whatever she's seen, whatever she's lived through, it's made her wary, and too observant by half. She picks things up, chews on them for ages, and is slow to take orders. Like some kind of wild deer, or maybe one of them big cats.
It makes talking to her hard, if you're impatient. Luckily, Daryl ain't.
"Doing a run tomorrow. Need a place to settle down that ain't just campground."
True to form, she is just that with his offer: wary. Her hand taps by her leg, her head tilts as she watches him before she moves. The bite on the inside of her lip that's consideration as she moves her weight on her feet. Then she settles her shoulders, turns back to what she had been in the process of cleaning and comes back to him. It's quick, in its way, she's nothing if not direct, sometimes.
She drops herself by his side, the bowl of water in front of her, somewhat mollified with his offer of distraction. The brush of her knee to the outside of his leg as she gets herself settled, her head dipping back down over her work, the small scouring brush to work free the grim and blood from the links in the chain. She takes more care over this then she does over herself.
"I'll come with you, should you wish it." Automatic offer that comes forward without even looking. She's better when she's moving, she always has been and she hates to let other people go alone, no matter what she may pretend.
Daryl nods, good. "Some folks here want you going. Say you should have a good eye for it."
She's held fortresses in her name, waved her flags over battlements. When she isn't annoying people or turning people sick with jealousy, she's become some sort of good luck charm. Rick has made it clear, she can't go on every mission, but people feel better when she does. Rani's their damn mascot.
"While back, when things were better, had something like a... council."
It's - well that's a compliment if it's shrouded, isn't it? "Ah," and she peers harder at her work, direct little scrubbing motions on the metal, occupying herself in it rather than meeting his eye where she's aware of it on her.
He sees too much, he always does, whether anyone else ever notices that he is - but a lifetime of being watched in courtly matters, then being hunted, makes her keen on it. Fine, when she's doing the watching, makes her drop her own gaze when it's back at her. Which quite probably, is just a little hypocritical, all the looking she does and how much she never holds her tongue about it.
His second point though, that makes her scrunch her face up. Oh, no, no, no, no. She can see exactly where that's going.
"Well, you would know better than I the kinds of buildings available now, and their construction." Just hang onto that first point and roll with it. "Between the two of us, we can find something... suitable, I am sure."
Daryl huffs. He was specifically tasked with getting her on board with this, which is stupid, because he's no diplomat, and yet... Rick had patted his shoulder and smiled. 'She likes you,' he'd said, 'And our people want this.'
So Daryl sighs and tries again.
"Need a council if we're gonna be in one place. One goes with the other."
Damn it all if he's making it hard for her to be obtuse. She picks another link with another bit of hard stuck grime and mud and blood to continues scrubbing at it fixedly.
"It is rather a hallmark of civilisation, I'd wager." Clears her throat, pointedly. "I am sure Rick will consider it carefully."
Her head dips lower, where was the ground to swallow her up? Perhaps if she willed it hard enough, Shiva or Devi would take pity on her and drag her under before she got stuck.
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.
The second the voice speaks, she cringes, no - not Jack. What had he said before everything went dark? That there were bad men. There were bad men and if they knew she was here, they would hurt her. She pushes back, rapidly scrambling back up the bed. There's a candlestick near her - she thinks she can reach it. Isn't sure she's strong enough to wield it with any force.
Panicked, she curls her knees up into her chest. Breathing rapidly and her voice going desperate. "Don't hurt me."
Okay, yeah, if this is a trap, Daryl would rather die than point a weapon at this kid. He disarms the crossbow and slings it over his shoulder, sheaths his knife, and puts up his hands, the traditional 'mean you no harm' gesture from the world before. The flashlight has confirmed that this kid is chained up.
"Ain't gonna hurt you neither." He takes a slow, gentle step forward. "Hey, you want that chain off?"
She doesn't move, her fingers curling up as tight as they can in the floral patterned sheets. Her toes curling in, and if she could make herself smaller in any way it's clear she would be doing it now.
Take the chain off? But didn't he know - "I could hurt you. That's what - Jack said. It's safer if I wear it."
Kid's fucking terrified. How the hell could she hurt anybody? Daryl takes another slow, cautious step forward. "You can hurt me all you like," he says, not believing for a second he's in danger. "Just lemme get that chain off."
It occurs to him that he needs bolt cutters, and didn't he see some in the hall? But that's not important. He needs to get her to settle down first.
"But what if I bite you?" She knows - he had said that if she was to become like the bad ones, then she would bite. It's why she had to be chained, just in case she hurt him, and she didn't want to hurt him, did she?
It had nothing at all to do with the fact she had learned how to pick locks a week prior.
She shakes her head, her hands moving from the sheets to her legs, sinking into the bare skin. Her breath getting quick and higher as he steps closer. "I never wanted to hurt anyone. But D- Jack said we have to, sometimes. That's how we have to survive."
She sobs in a breath, scared, terrified, of the words that come out - if Jack finds out - if Jack knows, he'll kill him. "If you let me go, Jack will hunt you down."
"Uh," Daryl has a sneaking suspicion he knows how this little tragedy ends, and he doesn't totally care. It can't really be avoided, so there's no use avoiding it. "Jack's dead."
But the air goes out of it. The sky is falling and the world is ending and - she didn't know how she'd really feel when this happened. Maybe she always expected to die first. Maybe she expected it to come with trumpets sounding - she didn't know. She's thought about it. The way that when people invent stories for themselves, they imagine the fairytale ending. The forever after.
She's not sure if that's this - he's bleeding, he looks ragged. He's - not what Jack told her Princes looked like. But fighting dragons wasn't exactly clean work, was it? He'd - had he been the one to kill Jack? Maybe, did that mean she could trust him. She didn't know - she didn't know anything at all about outside, she realises, as she looks at him.
It overwhelms, it chokes, she doesn't know anything and she's chained to a wall, and he's going to do something awful. That's what happens in the real world. That's what she'd been told. Why she has to be kept secret, kept hidden. "Are you going to kill me?" It's hitched, scared, high in her throat. She can be ready for it. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. "It's okay if ... if you have to. Can I just go outside first?"
During this silence, Daryl walks away, a few steps down the hall, back to that bolt cutter. When he returns, it's with the nearest he gets to a smile. More like a grin. "Ain't gonna kill you," he says, holding the bolt cutters. "Gonna get that fucking thing off you."
He's not interested in any more chitchat with someone chained up when they don't have to be.
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pigsfeet's journal
making redneck hobos call u 'ur majesty' in another language
Date: 2016-11-19 02:07 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-19 11:03 pm (UTC)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."
no subject
Date: 2016-11-19 11:46 pm (UTC)Seems she'd become just that too.
But it still hits low, breathing out, it hadn't been her intention to drag up something painful in her stories. "I meant only that we drank more often because of the issues with water - that perhaps we could do something the same." Her mouth opens, shuts - it doesn't matter what she meant, did it? She stands, dropping her jewellery into the water she'd been using for cleaning. "I will speak to her. I never intended..." Moves like she's ready to move past him to her.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-20 12:16 am (UTC)Since her man died, she's been... different. Cold. She was always a hard, especially for a girl, but now she's someone different. Has to get over it for her own self. Won't appreciate kind words from some queen that feels like everything she's lost.
That said, Daryl has no illusions about Rani, either, and doesn't expect her to actually listen. He waves her over, away from the campfire, and the rest of the group that hasn't yet fallen asleep. "And I ain't gonna run off half lit all the time."
Pulling her into an argument, that can't hurt.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-20 12:50 am (UTC)Easy as anything, she rises to the bait, "it's not about being lit." The word is far too proper and wrong coming out of her mouth and done to be mocking. Because it's a joke at this point, something Carl and anyone younger than her - read: just about all of them - like to make her do and say. Force her to say words she doesn't understand.
"Unless you think you can't handle your liquor to stave off, oh, I don't know, dysentery. Because I can assure you that's not a romantic tale."
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Date: 2016-11-20 03:31 am (UTC)That, and maybe, maybe he likes talking to her.
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Date: 2016-11-20 04:03 am (UTC)"Nothing I can't handle." Bites back like he's a small dog she'll just pick up by the scruff of his neck and put him back in his box. Just like he did with her now.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-20 09:26 pm (UTC)It makes talking to her hard, if you're impatient. Luckily, Daryl ain't.
"Doing a run tomorrow. Need a place to settle down that ain't just campground."
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Date: 2016-11-20 10:03 pm (UTC)She drops herself by his side, the bowl of water in front of her, somewhat mollified with his offer of distraction. The brush of her knee to the outside of his leg as she gets herself settled, her head dipping back down over her work, the small scouring brush to work free the grim and blood from the links in the chain. She takes more care over this then she does over herself.
"I'll come with you, should you wish it." Automatic offer that comes forward without even looking. She's better when she's moving, she always has been and she hates to let other people go alone, no matter what she may pretend.
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Date: 2016-11-20 10:10 pm (UTC)She's held fortresses in her name, waved her flags over battlements. When she isn't annoying people or turning people sick with jealousy, she's become some sort of good luck charm. Rick has made it clear, she can't go on every mission, but people feel better when she does. Rani's their damn mascot.
"While back, when things were better, had something like a... council."
He thinks she can see where this is going.
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Date: 2016-11-20 10:26 pm (UTC)He sees too much, he always does, whether anyone else ever notices that he is - but a lifetime of being watched in courtly matters, then being hunted, makes her keen on it. Fine, when she's doing the watching, makes her drop her own gaze when it's back at her. Which quite probably, is just a little hypocritical, all the looking she does and how much she never holds her tongue about it.
His second point though, that makes her scrunch her face up. Oh, no, no, no, no. She can see exactly where that's going.
"Well, you would know better than I the kinds of buildings available now, and their construction." Just hang onto that first point and roll with it. "Between the two of us, we can find something... suitable, I am sure."
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Date: 2016-11-20 10:31 pm (UTC)So Daryl sighs and tries again.
"Need a council if we're gonna be in one place. One goes with the other."
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Date: 2016-11-20 10:38 pm (UTC)"It is rather a hallmark of civilisation, I'd wager." Clears her throat, pointedly. "I am sure Rick will consider it carefully."
Her head dips lower, where was the ground to swallow her up? Perhaps if she willed it hard enough, Shiva or Devi would take pity on her and drag her under before she got stuck.
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Date: 2016-12-06 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-06 08:28 pm (UTC)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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Date: 2016-12-07 12:19 am (UTC)Panicked, she curls her knees up into her chest. Breathing rapidly and her voice going desperate. "Don't hurt me."
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Date: 2016-12-07 12:58 am (UTC)"Ain't gonna hurt you neither." He takes a slow, gentle step forward. "Hey, you want that chain off?"
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Date: 2016-12-07 02:07 am (UTC)Take the chain off? But didn't he know - "I could hurt you. That's what - Jack said. It's safer if I wear it."
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Date: 2016-12-07 02:13 am (UTC)It occurs to him that he needs bolt cutters, and didn't he see some in the hall? But that's not important. He needs to get her to settle down first.
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Date: 2016-12-07 03:00 am (UTC)It had nothing at all to do with the fact she had learned how to pick locks a week prior.
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Date: 2016-12-07 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-07 11:12 pm (UTC)She sobs in a breath, scared, terrified, of the words that come out - if Jack finds out - if Jack knows, he'll kill him. "If you let me go, Jack will hunt you down."
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Date: 2016-12-07 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-08 01:55 am (UTC)But the air goes out of it. The sky is falling and the world is ending and - she didn't know how she'd really feel when this happened. Maybe she always expected to die first. Maybe she expected it to come with trumpets sounding - she didn't know. She's thought about it. The way that when people invent stories for themselves, they imagine the fairytale ending. The forever after.
She's not sure if that's this - he's bleeding, he looks ragged. He's - not what Jack told her Princes looked like. But fighting dragons wasn't exactly clean work, was it? He'd - had he been the one to kill Jack? Maybe, did that mean she could trust him. She didn't know - she didn't know anything at all about outside, she realises, as she looks at him.
It overwhelms, it chokes, she doesn't know anything and she's chained to a wall, and he's going to do something awful. That's what happens in the real world. That's what she'd been told. Why she has to be kept secret, kept hidden. "Are you going to kill me?" It's hitched, scared, high in her throat. She can be ready for it. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. "It's okay if ... if you have to. Can I just go outside first?"
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Date: 2016-12-08 11:41 pm (UTC)He's not interested in any more chitchat with someone chained up when they don't have to be.
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