pigsfeet | OPEN POST.

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.

"When can we leave?"

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.

Two days, which is mostly spent planning. His first urge is to hunt, to start the entire process with ceremony, but that would just be a waste. He's going to do the first hunt with her, and show her how it works. So he packs supplies instead, everything he can carry on his bike. The poor kid is gonna have to ride bitch for a while until he can trade it, which limits the amount of shit he can strap to it. He's been stealing or trading ethanol from WLF for years; he sends out the last of his held-back trinkets for as much fuel as he can get.

And a leather jacket, roughly Abby's size.

Twine, maps, jerky, water skins, all that, he already has. So he plots a course that will get them there by the time deep winter hits. A rough plan forms; if what he's heard of Jackson's Hole is really true, they'll have to infiltrate. They'll have to make nice, and that could lead to retribution down the line. He'll have to figure out how to shield her from that, but right now, he just doesn't know how things will shape up to be. So he plans for everything else, spare crossbow bolts and a real bow and arrows, a silencer, knives. He trades all his books-- manuals he's memorized by now-- except three, a guide to archery, an introduction to what wild plants are edible in North America, and a comprehensive rundown on how to use every part of a deer. Those, he'll give to Abby. Girl's always reading something.

And around mid noon on the second day, he's ready. She's never actually seen the motorcycle before; he's always kept that hidden. She probably never realized the tatty thing he still wore was a motorcycle vest. The bike itself has seen better days, but it's clear he's kept it in fine working condition, even if he's ignored the particular aesthetics. There's a gym bag hanging on each side, carefully balanced.

"You ever been on a bike before?"

Abby is, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly loyal soldier. Once, she overheard a little snippet of gossip passed around some of the older survivors: the Salt Lake kids were "a good find". It's not exactly hard to understand why when they're young, fit and capable, and willing to work hard for a spot at the table. There is no plan B. From now on, they're Seattle kids.

All this means is that nobody expects for Abby to up and leave abruptly in two days time. She does show up for training, but only so she can linger behind afterward and palm bullets out of the storerooms, marking the equipment off as she goes in the log book under a different name, and with her wrong hand. They won't look into it if they think it's gone on purpose. It's so easy. Should it be this easy?

She takes double rations from the kitchen. ... Okay, Manny actually takes double rations from the kitchen, 'cuz he thinks he's helping her out when she asks him to get her a couple extra things, citing her crazy schedule at the gym. Tells him she's a growing girl with her mouth full of five-bean chilli, just to make him laugh and fetch her seconds, and she feels bad about lying to him, but she'll make it up to him. Once Joel is dead she can do whatever she wants. She can come back here and slot herself right back in like nothing happened, and the thought is terrifying, and liberating all at once.

Manny will forgive her. He has a dad too.

When she comes out to the forest the day of she's late to join him by five or ten minutes, and she arrives quiet. Her eyes are red. In the interest of not drawing any attention to herself, she allows her full pack to slip from her back and into the grass so she can come and look at the bike.

Clearing her throat, she says, "No," and skims her hand up the side of it. Skeptically, "Is it safe?" Kinda looks like it could fall apart at any second...

The girl looks like shit, but it ain't his business. Teenagers cry all the time for all sorts of reasons, and Abby has more reasons than most. He pulls Abby's jacket out of one of the gym bags and tosses it to her. He's already wearing a larger version underneath his vest, though the leather is older, cracked and patched over again.

"Safe as it can be," he says. "Safer with this."

Abby barely slept. Those two nights were spent lying wide awake in bed, splayed out on her back, grinding her teeth. Now her jaw aches and her mouth tastes like blood, so she's just glad he doesn't point out how tired and quiet she is, that he lets her stand there and touch the bike with her hands.

The jacket she catches out of the air, clutching it up in her fists.

"It's okay," she says, turning to show him: she ripped the WLF patches off her clothing already, "But thanks. It's cool."

Daryl shakes his head. He points to his leather jacket, the patches of deer leather along one arm. "You fall off a bike, you put your arms out on instinct. The road'll eat your skin right up. Might as well be somebody else's skin."

He sits on the bike, trying to go about this. He remembers Beth, but Beth was so different from Abby, it was like day and night. Still, she could be riled out of bad moods with distraction, and learning's a good one.

"S'why bikers wear leather. You'll be safer wearing it, 'til we trade the bike out."

Abby wonders if Daryl knows that she grew up around doctors and medical settings, where people were always more careful than not. Then she realises he doesn't really know anything about her. That wasn't them. Daryl wasn't there to trade for stories.

So she takes the jacket and pulls it on over her own windbreaker. It'll probably be cold on the bike once the wind starts whipping up. The jacket is big across the shoulders but aside from that it fits well, only smells a little weird, like the animals it used to be. The straps of her bag slide back on over her arms. There is a holster around her waist for her handgun, resting at the small of her back.

She's nervous. No hiding that she shifts her weight back and forth while they're standing there, she clearly wants to go.

"What are we trading it out for?"

"Depends," he says, "wanna keep it as long as we can. Bike makes better time, but it can only do roads. We'll get as far as we can on it."

Daryl, being an anxious creature at the best of times, can read it well enough in others. He knows the routes out of Seattle, the way to do it without getting too close to WLF or Seraphites. It's a long, circling path, but it'll be worth it.

"You ready?" He thinks she is. He sits on the bike, properly now, and moves his backpack around the front, to give her room behind him.

Abby pulls a breath, and glances back over her shoulder, thumbs pressing underneath the straps of her pack, but you can't see the stadium from here. That's probably why Daryl lives in the forest. Out of sight, out of mind. From the way he's spoken about the WLF here and there it's pretty clear he's got a bone to pick, but Abby's never asked. Well... they've got a long drive ahead of them. Nothing but time.

"... Yeah," she says eventually, on the heels of an exhale. Think so.

No turning back.

She joins him on the end of the bike, shifting her weight until she finds her balance, gripping unsteadily at the back of his leather jacket. "Ready when you are."

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