She keeps fucking with the rack, every nerve in her body alight in anticipation of him answering the question, and for somebody who is listening as hard as she can she sure does miss the keychain toss. The thing clatters to the ground a foot or so away. Abby goes to get it and wipes her thumb over the name, scrubbing off the scum from the aquarium floor, frowning. She's only ABIGAIL when she's in trouble.
"No." She puts the keychain back on the rack like she doesn't care about it at all, and turns to look at him. Her arms fold across her chest. She gives him a look. "You know what I mean.
Daryl, still reclining on the floor, lets the scene linger in his mind's eye. He's seen too many people give up, get beat down by this world. Abby refuses to. Abby, who's never seen nothing different, thrives. Even if the only thing keeping her going is destructive, painful spite, it's good to see the brightness in her eyes.
He stands up. The conversation deserves respect. Still, he hates not having something to do with his hands. A moldy plush seal wiggles between his fingers, and he runs his fingers over the seams, the places where silvery fuzz runs thin. He keeps his eyes on it, his head bowed. Hair hangs in front of his eyes. Guilty conscience.
She's actually excited about this, and watching impatiently as he plucks at the seal, pulling on the nose and fins. She can see Owen in her mind's eye, that face he doesn't know he's making whenever she talks about Joel, forced sympathy, unease lurking underneath cuz he thinks she's fucked up. Abby knows it, but she can't stop and Daryl, to his credit, has never asked her to. Abby would have liked him for that alone, but then he had to go and be really funny on top of that. So.
"I'll give you whatever you want." She slings her bag off her back, unzipping it, holding it out to him in one fist. "Anything."
There's all sorts of things in there. First aid kit, bit of rubbing alcohol, length of climbing rope, old paperback (Jane Eyre, well thumbed), and a weirdly cool shell she found on the way in here, still a little damp and sandy from being in the water. Wooden handled knife, in a splitting leather sheath. He might want that. Surely not her WLF jacket, balled up at the bottom...
"No," he says, his voice soft as it ever gets. When it comes to family, it's not about lucre. There are some favors he'll do for free. It's just, no other kid in Abby's dumb little gang has anything they need that's actually important.
Abby does, and it maybe hurts a little that she thinks he'd make her pay for it.
Why wouldn't he? Nothing is for free, right. Abby wants to grab him and rattle him around until the information falls out of him, she can't believe he hasn't said what it is yet. Her body feels weirdly light and heavy at the same time with inevitability.
"What do you mean?"
She's still holding the bag out. She shakes it at him, gesturing, "What do you think I'm gonna do with it? I have to find him. The others said they'll come with me."
She's too hungry for it to think straight. There'll be no reasoning with her, he realizes. He can't help her, he can't save her from what she's about to do to herself. It makes him sick. He really does ruin every good thing out there, every nice moment crumpling into shit.
"Wyoming," he says. "You ever heard of Jackson Hole? Mountains on all sides, flat in the middle. Like god pressed down his thumb there. Fortified as shit, so they tell me. You won't break in."
She stops listening to him at Wyoming, and it fills up her entire brain end to end to end.
Holy shit. He's in Wyoming, how the fuck does she get to Wyoming? It'd take- days weeks months, she can't fathom the distance just standing here, and then she remembers-
She yanks the zip back up on her bag, slings it over her shoulder, and turns to find the stairs to the second level. They wind around and around and up underneath of an old, red octopus that used to hang from the ceiling, and Abby takes the stairs up two at a time, Wyo-ming, Wyo-ming, to come to a screeching halt in front of the giant cutout of the States splashed across one of the crumbling walls.
For a moment she stares at it, breathing hard. Then, she reaches out to touch it with her hand, and spiderwebs her hand left, west, all the way across-
to Seattle.
And stands there for a long time, staring, as if that could bring the two of them any closer together.
Daryl follows her, quiet. He knows what it is to finally get the thing you crave, and feel the horror of it. Christ, he hopes she feels the horror of it. But he can tell, by the way she shuts down, by the way she wanders, that this isn't something he can stop her from doing. He can tell this isn't something he can save her from.
He can't never save nobody, it feels like.
But he's always been good with maps. Daryl draws a dusty line, dull red becoming brighter under his finger. A rough X in Wyoming's western border. "Take you months," he says. "Dunno if the guy's even still alive."
Months, he says. Winter, the weather reminds her, as a cold wind howls through every hole in the building, threatening snow. Abby stares at that red X and she feels the horror then. What if she can't get there in time? He could move on before she completes the journey east. He might already be dead, a thought that twinges through her, white-hot, makes her breathless with the unfairness of it.
She swallows, thinking. Reaching to touch the spot on the map, she plans aloud. "We- ask for a car. We leave before the snows set in and block the roads. Nobody would expect an attack to come in winter anyway, they won't be waiting for us, we could..."
It's insane. She knows it even as she says it; she is seventeen-going-on-eighteen and still finding her place in the WLF. She's doing well enough in her patrols, but Isaac couldn't pick her out of a crowd. He won't give her a car. He barely gives her the time of day.
Abby trails off, her eyes suddenly huge. She's staring at the X when she whispers, imploring him, "You have to help me."
Her desperation kindles something deep in him: sympathy and bitterness. She's desperate for his help. Revenge for killing her father-- though he doesn't know why, but who needs a reason these days-- is that something he can bring her? Is that something worth bringing anyone?
If someone killed his father, he'd have thanked them. No-- no. He'd have been angry, sworn revenge, because that was what would have been expected.
He feels so goddamn tired, sometimes.
"Abby," he says, "tell me 'bout your dad." Convince me.
Nothing's for free, and Abby works her tongue over her front teeth while she thinks of what to say. She's never talked to him about her dad before. Doesn't talk about him to anybody, really. Whenever anybody from Salt Lake tries to bring him up she finds some way to change the subject, or she makes an excuse to leave the conversation, the table, the room, because thinking about her dad makes her chest hurt, makes her angry and sad all at once, and everybody says time heals all wounds but they can't seem to tell her how long it will take. She's fucking tired of waiting for it to stop, so why are they all so surprised to find out she wants to take matters into her own hands?
Abby gathers up her breath. "I dunno what you want to hear," she says, sharp and defensive, an animal backed up into a corner. "He was a doctor. We were in Utah before we came here, we lived in Brigham."
Daryl nods, though that means nothing to him. He never got up to Utah. He heard the place was mostly cults, though that could have been a lie. Then again, considering how easily Abby's folded herself into the rigor of WLF, making herself a smaller and smaller shape until she can be fired through the barrel of a gun-- maybe that ain't too far from truth.
A thought lights in his mind. She leaves, and she'll get away from this shithole. It might be the only way she'll go. She is, Daryl is sure, the only one worth saving. The rest believe far too readily in this military bullshit, or they just lean in it to fit in. He's never figured out what Abby gets out of it, except being around her shithead friends.
Maybe they go out, she gets her revenge, and she doesn't come back to waste her goddamn life jumping when jarheads say frog.
So he doesn't press for details of the girl's father's death. He could-- he'd be in his rights to-- but it's not about that, anymore. Revenge doesn't mean shit. A chance at life's worth everything.
He leans back against the dusty map, head down, still fiddling with the stuffed animal in his hands. "Abby," he murmurs, "we do this, there's-- there's rules. A way to do it. Gotta be smart."
He looks up, catches her eye. "Gotta listen to me."
He's quiet for a long time after she says it, and Abby can tell she fucked up. She should have told him something personal. That's obviously what he was after, she should have told him about the colourful jungle her dad painted for her on the wall of her bedroom when she was a kid. She should have told him he put music on while he was working because he didn't like looking at reports in silence: Bach, Wagner, Debussy. There's still time, but it feels like her throat has closed up. She stares at him, her skin hurting. Teeth aching. If he tells her no, that's it. It will be all her fault.
Her eyes feel hot when he looks at her and she bites the inside of her cheek so hard to try and keep from crying. Relief nearly knocks her legs out from underneath of her.
She nods, quick and hard. "I will," she whispers, "I'll listen. I promise."
Anything, anything. She needs to do this, or she'll never be okay.
He's got her, he realizes, in the palm of his hand. He hates that kind of power, makes him sick, but it might just save her life, if he doesn't get her killed in the process.
"You know they ain't gonna let you back in," he says. "WLF ain't kind to deserters."
"I don't care." She means it, barely has to think twice, "They're a means to an end." The WLF has only ever been a place for her to eat and rest her head, she can find that again somewhere else. Her and the rest of the people from Salt Lake have never fit in here anyway, not really.
Good. Perfect. So she's freed, at the price of killing a stranger. There are worse things, and if he does this right, she can do whatever she wants, afterward. If he teaches her to survive without people... it'll be something to do along the way.
"Two days." He's sure she'll want it to be quick. He wants it to be, as well. It has to be as quick, so she doesn't lose her nerve. "Meet me 'round my place, this time. Take as much gear as you can. Bullets, ammo, food. We ain't gonna need gas."
He crosses his arms, hurriedly making a plan. "Scratch that. Take anything. We're gonna trade it."
"Okay." She can do that, it's plenty of time. She can pull the rest of them together in two days easy, she'll tell them they're gonna be left behind otherwise. They want this too, Abby knows it. They want it for her.
"Mel can get extra supplies from the infirmary." Those will trade well. She already uses her spare key privileges to sneak them bottles of alcohol afterhours, all the time.
Daryl frowns, and holds up his hand. "Abby, you-" He shakes his head. "You can't tell nobody. They'll try'n stop you."
Abby is willing to leave to get revenge, but these people, these kids? They're all trying to work their way up in this shitty outfit. They'll turn her in.
She scoffs. "No they won't. They want Joel to pay for what he did just as much as I do."
... Well, maybe not as much. They seem just fine to go about their lives, letting everything in Seattle start to wash over them like rain. Abby is the only one out here chasing up leads. She never stopped.
Still, "They're my friends." Of course they're coming.
She really is sixteen, sometimes. Abby's got a sort of cleverness beyond her years, but a lot of it, Daryl believes, has been stomped on from too many years following orders. Or maybe he's just still bitter about what the Marines did to Merle.
"Abby, dunno what you think I was agreeing to," he says, having dropped the stuffed toy so he can hold both hands up, palms out, some kind of placating gesture. "I ain't herding teenagers 'cross the country."
Abby purses her mouth, shakes her head once, no. She's staring at him in disbelief.
"What am I supposed to tell them?"
Goodbye? Just like that? They're the only people she has left, her last, tenuous link to any of the Fireflies. But she knows, suddenly, with sickening clarity, that they really will try to stop her if she goes alone. She feels pinned under his pitying gaze.
"It's your choice," Daryl says. God, he hates this feeling, stretching her out, making her choose between two things that must, he's sure, seem impossible for a teenager. When he was her age, it felt like every day was the end of the world. Now that the world's ended, it can only feel worse.
"I can do what you want me to," he says, "because I can trust you. But- you really think Owen'll do what I say? Mel?"
He's seen the way they look at him, and that's another reason why he likes Abby best-- she doesn't judge him for shit. Sure, he's weird, whatever, but he never got the sense she thought he was beneath her, just different.
It is her choice, and yet there isn't one. She has to tell him yes or find another way there with everybody else in tow, and the more he talks the more uncertain she feels about that. He's right, Owen probably wouldn't listen to him. Mel definitely wouldn't. She thinks he's dangerous, and "using you for something", Abby's had a dozen fights with her about it already, and now she feels a little shocky, like she's standing to the left of herself as she realises: it's gonna be her and him, right to the end of it. The two of them, or not at all.
"Okay," she says. It sounds unsteady, so she repeats it, "Okay. I'll– find a way."
All she has to do is pack, and leave. No need to say goodbye. She doesn't even have to break up with Owen and deal with him being whiny and upset at her for it, she can just... go. That probably shouldn't be so appealing.
His expression thins into a frown. His hand lands on her shoulder, awkward with compassion. He hadn't really had friends, at her age, but he reckons he'd have wanted to hold onto them.
He'll make it up to her. He promises himself he will. She deserves that much-- someone actually looking out for her, not just trying to use her for a weapon. If she has to kill some guy to sleep at night-- fine. She'll manage. She's tough.
"M'sorry, kid," Daryl mumbles. He removes his hand, dirty and stubby. "Can always change your mind."
Until they head out. Then, he won't let her go until he's taught her to live off the land, so she doesn't have to fall in step with operations like WLF.
"Yeah," Abby says, and knows she won't. She can't let this opportunity pass her by, she'll never forgive herself otherwise. Daryl takes his hand back before she can shrug it off her shoulder, and she hitches her bag up a little higher on her back.
Time to go. She has a lot of planning to do; her training block starts in roughly forty-five minutes. For the first time since she joined the WLF, she thinks of skipping it.
She's distracted from giving him any proper goodbye. She forgets to stop and ask if he has anything physical to trade with her, or if he needs anything. She says, "I'll- see you back at your place. Two days." She turns her back on him, to leave.
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"No." She puts the keychain back on the rack like she doesn't care about it at all, and turns to look at him. Her arms fold across her chest. She gives him a look. "You know what I mean.
Have you heard anything?"
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He stands up. The conversation deserves respect. Still, he hates not having something to do with his hands. A moldy plush seal wiggles between his fingers, and he runs his fingers over the seams, the places where silvery fuzz runs thin. He keeps his eyes on it, his head bowed. Hair hangs in front of his eyes. Guilty conscience.
"What'd you do if I had?"
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She's actually excited about this, and watching impatiently as he plucks at the seal, pulling on the nose and fins. She can see Owen in her mind's eye, that face he doesn't know he's making whenever she talks about Joel, forced sympathy, unease lurking underneath cuz he thinks she's fucked up. Abby knows it, but she can't stop and Daryl, to his credit, has never asked her to. Abby would have liked him for that alone, but then he had to go and be really funny on top of that. So.
"I'll give you whatever you want." She slings her bag off her back, unzipping it, holding it out to him in one fist. "Anything."
There's all sorts of things in there. First aid kit, bit of rubbing alcohol, length of climbing rope, old paperback (Jane Eyre, well thumbed), and a weirdly cool shell she found on the way in here, still a little damp and sandy from being in the water. Wooden handled knife, in a splitting leather sheath. He might want that. Surely not her WLF jacket, balled up at the bottom...
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Abby does, and it maybe hurts a little that she thinks he'd make her pay for it.
"I mean, what'd you do with it. The information."
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"What do you mean?"
She's still holding the bag out. She shakes it at him, gesturing, "What do you think I'm gonna do with it? I have to find him. The others said they'll come with me."
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"Wyoming," he says. "You ever heard of Jackson Hole? Mountains on all sides, flat in the middle. Like god pressed down his thumb there. Fortified as shit, so they tell me. You won't break in."
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Holy shit. He's in Wyoming, how the fuck does she get to Wyoming? It'd take- days weeks months, she can't fathom the distance just standing here, and then she remembers-
She yanks the zip back up on her bag, slings it over her shoulder, and turns to find the stairs to the second level. They wind around and around and up underneath of an old, red octopus that used to hang from the ceiling, and Abby takes the stairs up two at a time, Wyo-ming, Wyo-ming, to come to a screeching halt in front of the giant cutout of the States splashed across one of the crumbling walls.
For a moment she stares at it, breathing hard. Then, she reaches out to touch it with her hand, and spiderwebs her hand left, west, all the way across-
to Seattle.
And stands there for a long time, staring, as if that could bring the two of them any closer together.
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He can't never save nobody, it feels like.
But he's always been good with maps. Daryl draws a dusty line, dull red becoming brighter under his finger. A rough X in Wyoming's western border. "Take you months," he says. "Dunno if the guy's even still alive."
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She swallows, thinking. Reaching to touch the spot on the map, she plans aloud. "We- ask for a car. We leave before the snows set in and block the roads. Nobody would expect an attack to come in winter anyway, they won't be waiting for us, we could..."
It's insane. She knows it even as she says it; she is seventeen-going-on-eighteen and still finding her place in the WLF. She's doing well enough in her patrols, but Isaac couldn't pick her out of a crowd. He won't give her a car. He barely gives her the time of day.
Abby trails off, her eyes suddenly huge. She's staring at the X when she whispers, imploring him, "You have to help me."
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If someone killed his father, he'd have thanked them. No-- no. He'd have been angry, sworn revenge, because that was what would have been expected.
He feels so goddamn tired, sometimes.
"Abby," he says, "tell me 'bout your dad." Convince me.
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Abby gathers up her breath. "I dunno what you want to hear," she says, sharp and defensive, an animal backed up into a corner. "He was a doctor. We were in Utah before we came here, we lived in Brigham."
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A thought lights in his mind. She leaves, and she'll get away from this shithole. It might be the only way she'll go. She is, Daryl is sure, the only one worth saving. The rest believe far too readily in this military bullshit, or they just lean in it to fit in. He's never figured out what Abby gets out of it, except being around her shithead friends.
Maybe they go out, she gets her revenge, and she doesn't come back to waste her goddamn life jumping when jarheads say frog.
So he doesn't press for details of the girl's father's death. He could-- he'd be in his rights to-- but it's not about that, anymore. Revenge doesn't mean shit. A chance at life's worth everything.
He leans back against the dusty map, head down, still fiddling with the stuffed animal in his hands. "Abby," he murmurs, "we do this, there's-- there's rules. A way to do it. Gotta be smart."
He looks up, catches her eye. "Gotta listen to me."
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Her eyes feel hot when he looks at her and she bites the inside of her cheek so hard to try and keep from crying. Relief nearly knocks her legs out from underneath of her.
She nods, quick and hard. "I will," she whispers, "I'll listen. I promise."
Anything, anything. She needs to do this, or she'll never be okay.
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"You know they ain't gonna let you back in," he says. "WLF ain't kind to deserters."
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"When can we leave?"
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"Two days." He's sure she'll want it to be quick. He wants it to be, as well. It has to be as quick, so she doesn't lose her nerve. "Meet me 'round my place, this time. Take as much gear as you can. Bullets, ammo, food. We ain't gonna need gas."
He crosses his arms, hurriedly making a plan. "Scratch that. Take anything. We're gonna trade it."
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"Mel can get extra supplies from the infirmary." Those will trade well. She already uses her spare key privileges to sneak them bottles of alcohol afterhours, all the time.
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Abby is willing to leave to get revenge, but these people, these kids? They're all trying to work their way up in this shitty outfit. They'll turn her in.
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... Well, maybe not as much. They seem just fine to go about their lives, letting everything in Seattle start to wash over them like rain. Abby is the only one out here chasing up leads. She never stopped.
Still, "They're my friends." Of course they're coming.
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"Abby, dunno what you think I was agreeing to," he says, having dropped the stuffed toy so he can hold both hands up, palms out, some kind of placating gesture. "I ain't herding teenagers 'cross the country."
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"What am I supposed to tell them?"
Goodbye? Just like that? They're the only people she has left, her last, tenuous link to any of the Fireflies. But she knows, suddenly, with sickening clarity, that they really will try to stop her if she goes alone. She feels pinned under his pitying gaze.
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"I can do what you want me to," he says, "because I can trust you. But- you really think Owen'll do what I say? Mel?"
He's seen the way they look at him, and that's another reason why he likes Abby best-- she doesn't judge him for shit. Sure, he's weird, whatever, but he never got the sense she thought he was beneath her, just different.
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"Okay," she says. It sounds unsteady, so she repeats it, "Okay. I'll– find a way."
All she has to do is pack, and leave. No need to say goodbye. She doesn't even have to break up with Owen and deal with him being whiny and upset at her for it, she can just... go. That probably shouldn't be so appealing.
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He'll make it up to her. He promises himself he will. She deserves that much-- someone actually looking out for her, not just trying to use her for a weapon. If she has to kill some guy to sleep at night-- fine. She'll manage. She's tough.
"M'sorry, kid," Daryl mumbles. He removes his hand, dirty and stubby. "Can always change your mind."
Until they head out. Then, he won't let her go until he's taught her to live off the land, so she doesn't have to fall in step with operations like WLF.
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Time to go. She has a lot of planning to do; her training block starts in roughly forty-five minutes. For the first time since she joined the WLF, she thinks of skipping it.
She's distracted from giving him any proper goodbye. She forgets to stop and ask if he has anything physical to trade with her, or if he needs anything. She says, "I'll- see you back at your place. Two days." She turns her back on him, to leave.
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furiously mangles timelines.
you're so brave for this
thanks i feel valid now
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returns from the grave sorry i was dealing with the agonies.
i understand completely
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