There's the river, right on time. True to its name, the banks are red with clay. It's only waist deep. Daryl crouches down next to it, running his fingers through the gentle current. "There you go."
She nods the once, had - quite enough feelings for one day, easier to be quiet now. Nods to him the once and passes him the wrapped up jewellery. "Don't lose it." Because she trusts him - now more than ever.
But it's been far too long till she felt moderately clean, and she's eager in the way she wraps the scarf around her waist, peels off the coat that she'd hung onto half as close as the gold.
After they're off, she comes back to his side, an amused laughter, as she looks at him - how strange this, how reminiscent of something she had not done in years. Not that it stops her particularly until she's down to pants and the under-shirt someone gave her to replace the silk that had ripped beyond use in one attack or another. Had some name for it - or whatever, they'd given her a funny look when she'd said it, which was normal - and an insistence that 'women didn't have to dress like that anymore.'
She'd been good, and only grumbled slightly at the changes that had gone by without her noticing.
They're bundled up and she kneels to the water's edge and begins to rinse them. Letting the water wash off the blood, half dried. Letting them soak before she lowers herself, splashing water up over her face and shoulder, a relief from the sun, letting it splash over her and cool her, find her face and hair under her blood as she cups it in handfuls and splashes it up and over herself. Running damp hands up over across the back of her neck and across her shoulders, brushing over an ugly entrance wound that sits a white scar on her dark skin.
Daryl takes her things and sits quietly on the bank of the river, back turned to her so she can clean as much as she likes. He's got no interest in peeping on bathing women. It's a courtesy, one of the few he gives freely, without comment.
"Keep an eye out," he says. He can only play half the lookout. "Don't get distracted."
"Yes, Ganesha." It's a teasing admonishment, tossed over her shoulder - glancing a look where he's all turned around. Like they'd all been living in the close quarters of a camp.
Which is as much warning as he gets before there's a loud splash. Happily sunk into the water and dipped herself backwards into. Washing the blood off of her hair, her face. Not deep enough to truly submerge herself but - enough when she leans back at the right angle to get her head under the water. Feel it all just run off and that's more than enough right now.
Daryl frowns and wonders if he's just been called an idiot in Indian. He cocks his head to one side, then the other, wondering if he should ask. Once, he wouldn't have. But they know each other better now, especially after that scene at the mall.
"Ganesha - the God." She's happily letting the water run over her. Raking her fingers through it in long motions. "The Goddess Parvati, Goddess of love, fertility and devotion, wanted to bathe, but she could do not do so safely, as her husband, Lord Shiva, the God of creation and protection, was not there."
More splashing, and she goes to gather up her clothes. Scrubbing them briefly, easy enough that in that it hadn't settled into dry long. Talking as she cleans it. "Shiva had left on his many wanderings. So, to protect herself, she shaped herself a guard - her son, Ganesha. She made him brave and strong."
Gently, still sloshing about in the water, pulling it up and twists it between the two hands to ring the water out, watching it run red and red less each time. When it comes out clean that last time, she drops it back again. Watching his turned back. "But then when Shiva returned and found a strange man standing outside his wife's room, he cried out in rage. Who dared try to stare at his wife bathing?"
She creeps up behind him, not that quietly, mind you, clear that it's her and not and walker, the wet clothes in her hands. Dripping between her fingers, until she was close enough behind to him to lean the sodden clothes over his head. "And he attacked Ganesha, his own son, with all the fury and might he could muster, with his armies of demons, and cut off Ganesha's head." Her little story complete, she viciously squeezed the water out of the the clothes, splashing water over his hair.
Daryl leans back just slightly, squinting and hiding behind his forearm in a feeble attempt to shield himself. He doesn't seem to overly mind, but puts up the facade mostly for his own sense of pride or purpose.
"Sounds like an asshole," is his frank appraisement of ancient Indian spiritual tradition. "Away so much he didn't even know his own kid." Who would worship a deadbeat dad? Then again, their God wasn't much better, with what he let befall his son. It seems, in Daryl's opinion, a good idea not ever to be related to anyone all-powerful.
She's sodden as she peers over him, shirt wet and hair clinging, grinning wide and easy before she gasps - mocking and high. "Daryl? That's blasphemy." She scrunches up the material again and splashes more water on him. "Lord Shiva is the destroyer that allows new beginnings."
And she splashes more water on him. Watching his face uncovered from the blood and muck as it runs off of him.
Daryl scrubs at his face, ignorant of what she's doing. "Don't mean I'd want him judging my lineup," Daryl mutters, flicking a spare drop of watery mud off his brow.
"Your many crimes mount." More water, and she'll run out soon - eventually - but not yet. Endless supply where teasing him is apparently concerned. "Shiva saved his son. You will know Ganesha, his image was adopted by many. Even if they had no idea what it is. He has the head of an elephant, which was given to him in replacement for the one he lost."
She straightens, flicking out the fabric, all its creases, the blue striped linen that's finally starting to show its wear. Dark with being wet, the black ornamentation blending into it. "But judging has nothing to do with it. Your soul knows its own weight and you will contemplate it accordingly. Or so the priests say - " a grimace, brief " - said, at least."
Daryl finds he likes that idea. Not the one about an elephant's head-- that's just flourish, a side story to embellish the point, like being nailed to a tree so you can learn about forgiveness. "That how it work? Nobody can judge you but your own self?"
It is of course, more complicated than that. It's religion, it always is. "Self-enlightenment I always found is accomplished that way." This time, where she's standing, she doesn't splash the water on him. Her bare feet where her shoes are left by the river bed sink into the earth. No longer do the anklets chime like bells on her feet where she spoke her morning prayers, praising Mahalakshmi by her husband's side. "Each time you die, you contemplate, and as you lived your life and the lessons that you learned, you are born again into another body - human, animal, plant, anything that has life, they all have something to teach, and so you learn new lessons."
A memory, fond, careful, the water running up her arms as she twists the fabric round and round again. "When my husband passed, he said to me - in the next life, all would be righted. The next time, he would Queen - and I would be Raj." Hard to recall him now, her dying husband, a man she had known since childhood, who she had loved, born a child too, and then lost it all in but a few months.
She watches him stand, doesn't move away so far, the damp clothes held in one hand as she pulls it up, that chain that sits heavy on her throat. Hooked around her littlest finger, it slides as gravity pulls, clinking on the heavy set silver. Old in design, held up to the sun and his inspection. Not hidden from once, where she's stripped down to pants and an under shirt. "If I had done what a good wife should, I would be burning on his funeral pyre with him. Like the Goddess Sati."
But she smiles, it's something she had come to terms with. "But... I realised that I did not serve the world as a burning widow. After all, someone had to teach the English a lesson."
Teach Lord Hastings that there were still things worth fearing, and she would be all of them.
"Fuck burning yourself," he says on instinct. Fuck anybody who says you shouldn't live. "Can't help nobody if you're dead."
He takes a few steps and leans against a tree, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket to fiddle with. He's real damn careful about lighting the things, making sure to savor them. To wait. Never know when you'll find another carton.
"Shit. Guess you really like helping people." Why else live forever? Daryl couldn't stand it.
"My thoughts exactly." Her nose wrinkles at the smoke, dropping away from him to go and lay the clothes out on a rock nearby to let them dry in the sun.
"Perhaps - once." She shakes her head, old memories, an old role, things she cannot afford ( literally and figuratively ) to be anymore. "I did not take the black water up immediately. Sir Bors de Ganis gave it to me, when he died on the walls of Jhansi. He... said to me, he asked me if this fight would never be done. He said he was too tired for it. That I had a fate, that it was obvious." She shakes her head, swallowing. His face bathed in blood, and maybe a sip would save him though it seemed unlikely in how the cannonball had ripped through his chest and the lycan that was dead at his feet, but he pressed the vial into her hands and told her to make that choice herself.
She hadn't buried him, there had been no time. She had to flee, had to get everyone out that she hadn't already. She would lose her father that night, too. "It wasn't until Gwalior that I drank it myself. Not for immoralities sake. I was bleeding, I knew I was dying. All I could think was - I could not let the English have my body. I could not let the Half-Breed's devour the whole world. So I didn't." It's all very serious, and she tries to lighten it. "Devi - my... second in command. She said it was because I didn't know how to die. That it would be like giving up and I didn't know how to bend. Not that ruling is anything but bending, just... differently."
And Daryl listens. This isn't the first time she's told this story, but it's the first time she's told it so completely. Usually, he only gets it in bits and pieces, a scrapbook where he knows she's got a novel. It's a long story, he knows that. It must be tiring to tell, twice as tiring to live. He appreciates her sharing anything. Christ knows he's not the giving type.
He waits until he's finished to ask his only question. "You regret it?"
She never gives specifics, not if she can. When Carl asks, or Tyrese or Glenn or any of them ask - she gives grandeur, she says it like she always knew she was going to win, some day. She tells it like the Lord was at work in it, and she always could be sure of each step. That in all that suffering, there was a point. It's banner's raised and trumpets blaring. Oh she had stood on the ramparts and yelled her men encouragement. It was cannonade and cavalry. It was feast tables of dishes made with turmeric and oranges and when she ruled, she could feed them, she could feed them all and they would all have a place at her table. Caste nor religion would be turned away.
She never shares the screams, the pain, the blood. They have enough of that. What do they need an old woman's stories of that? Let them think that the world was better, once.
But here, this, now? Her eyes are down, and it's all she remembers. "I regret... it did not leave me kind." A sigh. "Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, any of them that live this long, it becomes true. Men were not made for this life, but we lived it anyway."
The clothes she still wears. The gold he is guarding close to him. The fact they have lost their life, but she has lost it many times. She was born to a world that no one remembered.
Then she looks at him, then away again. Enough. "But... I would not wish it undone. No, no I would never wish that."
During this, Daryl straightens himself up, collecting what scant supplies he has in order to go. If she's done, he's done. They work in tandem.
"Just don't ever give that shit to me," he says, making his revulsion of the idea known for the first time, "and we're square." He's not going to say that he doesn't believe her. Everyone has regrets. Some people are walking monuments to them. Daryl often feels as though, after all the violence and the loss, they are all that exists of him anymore.
She doesn't respond - of course she wouldn't, she had made it clear. But it's something else. With eyes turned down, gathering up the clothes. Bundling them tight. She'll hang them by the fire tonight. For now, she wraps the sash back around her waist, tying of the red material sharply, slinging her holster over her shoulders again.
He will be gone, one day. Just like all the others. It didn't matter if it was to a walker, one of the bandits for lack of a better word, roaming around, or in his bed thirty years from now.
She is going to lose him. She needs to adjust to that, now, she needs to not count on him, she needs to distance herself from all of them. He will be gone, she will put him in the earth like all the others before him and keep him locked in tight and away.
She is going to lose him.
"Ready when you are."
Her wet clothes hung over her arm, looking away from him now, begin now and she can get used to him being gone.
After all, she has a counsel to stand on now. She'll have plenty enough to keep her busy so she does not have to think on it. Keep this - whatever this is - as long as she can.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
There's the river, right on time. True to its name, the banks are red with clay. It's only waist deep. Daryl crouches down next to it, running his fingers through the gentle current. "There you go."
no subject
But it's been far too long till she felt moderately clean, and she's eager in the way she wraps the scarf around her waist, peels off the coat that she'd hung onto half as close as the gold.
After they're off, she comes back to his side, an amused laughter, as she looks at him - how strange this, how reminiscent of something she had not done in years. Not that it stops her particularly until she's down to pants and the under-shirt someone gave her to replace the silk that had ripped beyond use in one attack or another. Had some name for it - or whatever, they'd given her a funny look when she'd said it, which was normal - and an insistence that 'women didn't have to dress like that anymore.'
She'd been good, and only grumbled slightly at the changes that had gone by without her noticing.
They're bundled up and she kneels to the water's edge and begins to rinse them. Letting the water wash off the blood, half dried. Letting them soak before she lowers herself, splashing water up over her face and shoulder, a relief from the sun, letting it splash over her and cool her, find her face and hair under her blood as she cups it in handfuls and splashes it up and over herself. Running damp hands up over across the back of her neck and across her shoulders, brushing over an ugly entrance wound that sits a white scar on her dark skin.
no subject
"Keep an eye out," he says. He can only play half the lookout. "Don't get distracted."
no subject
Which is as much warning as he gets before there's a loud splash. Happily sunk into the water and dipped herself backwards into. Washing the blood off of her hair, her face. Not deep enough to truly submerge herself but - enough when she leans back at the right angle to get her head under the water. Feel it all just run off and that's more than enough right now.
no subject
"What'd you call me?"
no subject
More splashing, and she goes to gather up her clothes. Scrubbing them briefly, easy enough that in that it hadn't settled into dry long. Talking as she cleans it. "Shiva had left on his many wanderings. So, to protect herself, she shaped herself a guard - her son, Ganesha. She made him brave and strong."
Gently, still sloshing about in the water, pulling it up and twists it between the two hands to ring the water out, watching it run red and red less each time. When it comes out clean that last time, she drops it back again. Watching his turned back. "But then when Shiva returned and found a strange man standing outside his wife's room, he cried out in rage. Who dared try to stare at his wife bathing?"
She creeps up behind him, not that quietly, mind you, clear that it's her and not and walker, the wet clothes in her hands. Dripping between her fingers, until she was close enough behind to him to lean the sodden clothes over his head. "And he attacked Ganesha, his own son, with all the fury and might he could muster, with his armies of demons, and cut off Ganesha's head." Her little story complete, she viciously squeezed the water out of the the clothes, splashing water over his hair.
no subject
"Sounds like an asshole," is his frank appraisement of ancient Indian spiritual tradition. "Away so much he didn't even know his own kid." Who would worship a deadbeat dad? Then again, their God wasn't much better, with what he let befall his son. It seems, in Daryl's opinion, a good idea not ever to be related to anyone all-powerful.
no subject
And she splashes more water on him. Watching his face uncovered from the blood and muck as it runs off of him.
no subject
no subject
She straightens, flicking out the fabric, all its creases, the blue striped linen that's finally starting to show its wear. Dark with being wet, the black ornamentation blending into it. "But judging has nothing to do with it. Your soul knows its own weight and you will contemplate it accordingly. Or so the priests say - " a grimace, brief " - said, at least."
no subject
no subject
A memory, fond, careful, the water running up her arms as she twists the fabric round and round again. "When my husband passed, he said to me - in the next life, all would be righted. The next time, he would Queen - and I would be Raj." Hard to recall him now, her dying husband, a man she had known since childhood, who she had loved, born a child too, and then lost it all in but a few months.
no subject
"What about you, huh? Holding the line up." He gives the flask around her neck a significant look.
no subject
But she smiles, it's something she had come to terms with. "But... I realised that I did not serve the world as a burning widow. After all, someone had to teach the English a lesson."
Teach Lord Hastings that there were still things worth fearing, and she would be all of them.
no subject
He takes a few steps and leans against a tree, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket to fiddle with. He's real damn careful about lighting the things, making sure to savor them. To wait. Never know when you'll find another carton.
"Shit. Guess you really like helping people." Why else live forever? Daryl couldn't stand it.
no subject
"Perhaps - once." She shakes her head, old memories, an old role, things she cannot afford ( literally and figuratively ) to be anymore. "I did not take the black water up immediately. Sir Bors de Ganis gave it to me, when he died on the walls of Jhansi. He... said to me, he asked me if this fight would never be done. He said he was too tired for it. That I had a fate, that it was obvious." She shakes her head, swallowing. His face bathed in blood, and maybe a sip would save him though it seemed unlikely in how the cannonball had ripped through his chest and the lycan that was dead at his feet, but he pressed the vial into her hands and told her to make that choice herself.
She hadn't buried him, there had been no time. She had to flee, had to get everyone out that she hadn't already. She would lose her father that night, too. "It wasn't until Gwalior that I drank it myself. Not for immoralities sake. I was bleeding, I knew I was dying. All I could think was - I could not let the English have my body. I could not let the Half-Breed's devour the whole world. So I didn't." It's all very serious, and she tries to lighten it. "Devi - my... second in command. She said it was because I didn't know how to die. That it would be like giving up and I didn't know how to bend. Not that ruling is anything but bending, just... differently."
no subject
He waits until he's finished to ask his only question. "You regret it?"
no subject
She never shares the screams, the pain, the blood. They have enough of that. What do they need an old woman's stories of that? Let them think that the world was better, once.
But here, this, now? Her eyes are down, and it's all she remembers. "I regret... it did not leave me kind." A sigh. "Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, any of them that live this long, it becomes true. Men were not made for this life, but we lived it anyway."
The clothes she still wears. The gold he is guarding close to him. The fact they have lost their life, but she has lost it many times. She was born to a world that no one remembered.
Then she looks at him, then away again. Enough. "But... I would not wish it undone. No, no I would never wish that."
no subject
"Just don't ever give that shit to me," he says, making his revulsion of the idea known for the first time, "and we're square." He's not going to say that he doesn't believe her. Everyone has regrets. Some people are walking monuments to them. Daryl often feels as though, after all the violence and the loss, they are all that exists of him anymore.
no subject
He will be gone, one day. Just like all the others. It didn't matter if it was to a walker, one of the bandits for lack of a better word, roaming around, or in his bed thirty years from now.
She is going to lose him. She needs to adjust to that, now, she needs to not count on him, she needs to distance herself from all of them. He will be gone, she will put him in the earth like all the others before him and keep him locked in tight and away.
She is going to lose him.
"Ready when you are."
Her wet clothes hung over her arm, looking away from him now, begin now and she can get used to him being gone.
After all, she has a counsel to stand on now. She'll have plenty enough to keep her busy so she does not have to think on it. Keep this - whatever this is - as long as she can.