Fuck. Kid froze up. He wants more than anything to calm her down, but now isn't the time. He's gotta get through this, or it won't matter how she feels.
She's firing too fast, she isn't aiming. "Stop!" He knows he's a quiet man, has been around her. Hopefully the shock of him shouting will cut through whatever shit she's dealing with.
He stands in front of her. Last resort-- he shouldn't have waited so goddamn long, he's stuck in his habits, idiot, idiot-- he pulls out his gun, a colt python that fits oddly in his hand. One shot, one down. The next he rushes toward, getting between it and the girl, the knife going straight into its face.
If she can shoot the final one, they'll be in the clear.
Works perfect. The sudden shout makes Abby's hands clench so tight on the gun and somehow she doesn't fire it. She stops, like he said, blinking hard through the roaring in her ears, swallowing thickly.
The car. She lunges for it, flying across the distance and she scoots in through the door onto the seat as he puts his body firmly between the car and the infected. It gives her enough time to catch her breath and level the gun up through the broken window, waiting for a chance.
She fires. It catches the last flailing runner in the throat and it gargle-screams around the rush of blood, slipping, falling-
She did as good as can be expected, and he wants to tell her that, but there's no time. Too much sound, all at once; every infected in the area will be crawling toward them. "C'mon," he says, his voice a thick hiss, "we gotta go."
They'll circle round, try and find another way over the bridge, or a safer place to cross. It doesn't matter. They just have to get out of here, and in a hurry.
He starts the engine just as the sound of clicking begins to echo through the trees.
"Right behind you." The shock makes her croaky, and she has to wonder if he knows she just saw him get bit. Or maybe he didn't feel it and he'll realise once they hit safety and have time to catch their breath. Either way he's right, they gotta go. He doesn't wear a helmet on the bike. She could press the muzzle of her gun against the back of his neck and be done with it in seconds if she had to, even though the thought makes her fucking sick to her stomach with dread and grief.
He's got time, before he turns. Time to get them out of here.
She leaves the car, running back toward the bike, and jumps onto the back behind him. The engine snarls in the same tone he did. "I'm good, go!"
They speed up the road, and take a pass Daryl knows but had ignored. The forest presses thick around them, and Daryl leans in, hoping Abby will too. Nothing worse than getting whacked with a branch, or some clicker's arm.
They keep going until they reach the high crest of a hill, bald of trees, and it's a good place to keep watch, catch their breath. He recalibrates the plan in his head. If the area's got this many infected in it, they'll have to sell the bike sooner than he thought. It was a good test, and he thinks they proved they can work as a team.
He gets off the bike, pulls some water out of the satchels, takes a drink.
"Did good, kid." He searches for more supplies in the satchels, squat on the ground.
She leans into him, following his direction, and ducks her head so she doesn't have to see. She presses her forehead against the middle of his back and closes her eyes tight, listening to the whistling of the air and the sounds of them passing things so fast, they could be anything, there's no point in looking. She thinks, with a strange, weightless feeling, that she's never been this far east before in her life. She has no idea where they're going.
Eventually, the bike starts to slow, a relief miniscule in comparison to when Daryl dismounts and turns to the satchels, unknowingly showing her the teeth marks imprinted in his leather shoulder. The bite didn't break through the jacket, she's safe. He's fine.
She feels a little weak at the knees suddenly.
She copies him, looks for her own canteen, and gulps some water down.
"Thanks."
What's he looking for? She watches him rifling around for a few seconds before she leaves the bike standing, stepping toward the lookout over the hill- and winces at the drop off, reeling backward. Her hand finds a tree to touch, something sturdy. That helps. "... Where are we?"
Does he know? Or is he pointing his bike in what he thinks is the right direction?
Daryl pulls a scrap of buckskin out of his pack, a little larger than the hole in his jacket, but nothing insurmountable. The bite missed the angel-winged vest on his back, which is what really matters. That thing's invaluable.
"Jacket saved my life," he says. "Gotta take care of it." He stuffs it in the inner pocket of his jacket for later. He's gotta explain to the kid, or she's gonna lose it. She's been through more, he thinks, than she was expecting, first day out.
"I call this bald head hill," he says, "dunno what it's really called, if it had a name. But you can see anything coming from a half-mile off, any direction."
A good place to stop, a good place to regroup. He pulls out the map, unfolds it on the bike's seat. There's a pencil-marked line charting their path; Daryl runs his thumb over it, smudging some of the road ahead. "That bridge's out. Be easier to switch to a horse, now. Gonna go south a little-- here."
He points to a spot on the map. "Issaquah Free Zone. They know me, we've traded. You up for that?"
"Bald head," Abby echoes under her breath, snorting, but then she shuts up and lets him explain the rest. Show her the map. It makes her feel better to know what's going on anyway, like she has a modicum of control over the situation. She hopes he doesn't notice her attention going straight to where Wyoming is marked out the moment he shows her where they are.
Her eyes flicker back and forth between the two points. They've barely moved any closer. Something frantic twists up on itself in Abby's chest at the thought of going south instead of east; they have to though, she gets that. Acknowledging that does hardly anything for her sudden and antsy impatience.
"Sure." What else can she say to that. They have to make a trade. Maybe she can surreptitiously ask around about Joel while she's there too, somebody might have more up to date information. Considering the possibility makes her feel a little less anxious, anyway. "How many of these places have you traded at?"
Daryl takes his jacket off, takes out a bone needle and begins sewing the buckskin onto the hole in his jacket. It'll be good to take a breather. Today hasn't gone how he wanted, but he wants to make sure Abby knows it ain't her fault. The rains must have brought out more infected than expected, on top of fucking over the bridge.
"A few places," he says. "Made myself known before I settled. Still get out there sometimes, when it gets too crowded."
Seattle, a largely abandoned wasteland of warring factions-- but sometimes too loud, and the knowledge of creeping fighters shakes his dreams. He remembers so much, from the first ten years, and then everything slowed. He can't countenance it. He has to run.
But that doesn't matter.
"Issaquah's got good people." He murmurs while he sews his jacket together. "But... we get there, tell 'em you're my niece or something. Few years back, they had a problem with a guy kidnapping kids."
Abby raises an eyebrow. "But he doesn't kidnap nieces?" She's watching him methodically patch that hole in his jacket, silently judging the tension and length of his stitches: they're good. She understands that Daryl is falsely linking them together for her safety, but that doesn't mean she has to like it or anything. She's going to make one unruly niece.
She pauses, then decides to just ask him. "Where'd you come from?"
She's never bothered to wonder this about him before. For all Abby knows, Daryl just walked out of the woods one day fully formed, as he is now. Or maybe he was born inside of a flower like in Thumbelina, and grew a little every day.
"He-" Daryl grimaces, and his face colors briefly with an old anger. "He didn't go after families. Only orphans'n stragglers."
He sits, remembering that incident, the kid's bodies strewn up like dolls, and nobody noticed for so goddamn long because it wasn't their kids disappearing. In the years since, Issaquah's gotten extremely protective of people without people, but he'll never quite forgive them for having to learn. There's a reason he didn't settle there, for all the bug-out bags and blinds he's got scattered in the woods around their territory.
But Abby asks a question, and it's a fair one. He lets out a sigh, and tries to think on better things. The rare times Merle praised him. The days out and alone in the woods. Taking down his first kill, all by himself-- it was a squirrel, but it was his, and he ate it raw.
"Georgia," he says. "In the mountains. You're looking at genuine redneck trash."
Do people even say those things anymore? Will Abby know what they mean? He's curious to find out.
Abby doesn't say anything, but the line of her mouth gets thinner, and she clenches her jaw up tight. Creep. She wonders if they ever caught him, killed him, got justice for what he did to the kids. She hopes so.
She feels a little hot, sweaty in the crooks of her arms, but it's probably just the jacket.
"Georgia," she repeats, looking at him, trying to judge him by this new information. She's heard older survivors say things like of course you are, and could'a guessed that myself, and she still doesn't really understand what they mean by things like that, thinking they could tell where somebody came from just by looking at them. Daryl doesn't look like he's from Georgia. Abby privately thinks he looks like he came out of a hole in the ground, and wonders if that's why he just called himself trash.
Like... she might think it, but she wouldn't say it or anything. She's not that fucking rude. "What do you mean?"
Daryl smiles for that, though it's awkward, lop-sided. What a strange world they've built, on the back of the new, that the insult that haunted his childhood no longer have any meaning.
"White trash-- poor folk-- that work in the sun," Daryl says, and reaches toward the back of his neck, tilting his head forward, "gets certain tans."
Of course, he doesn't have that tan anymore. He's lived too long in cloudy Seattle, buttoned up against the cold, his hair long. He reckons he's lost his farmer's tan, but he hasn't looked at anything but his face in a dinky shaving mirror for years. "Back before, you could tell... my accent, my fuckin' name. Didn't come from nothing, probably an addict. Weren't raised right. Hick, hillbilly."
He shrugs. It's all ancient history now, covered over in thirty years of death and mud. It'd still hurt his soft underbelly, if someone said it with real intent, but Abby doesn't know any of this shit.
That's her first thought, how do you get a tan on your neck if your hair is that long?, and then she wonders why the fuck anybody would actually care about something so insignificant anyway, hair or not. It's not like there's a whole lot of sunscreen to go around any more. The stuff they have, expired like everything else, probably doesn't work like it's supposed to anymore, such is life in the apocalypse.
He was around before it all went to shit, though. Of course he was, he's- older. Abby had never considered this about him before. He blends so seamlessly into the world that it's hard to imagine him existing in any other capacity.
Suddenly, she's hungry for information.
"How old were you?"
When it happened.
Abby didn't exist. She wasn't even 'a twinkle in your daddy's eye', another fucking weird thing older survivors like to say when they're talking about the before times.
A brother, huh. Abby is having to reevaluate him entirely. Somehow she's only ever thought of him as a lone wolf, but the moment he cops to having siblings she can see it. Having a brother suits him. "Did you?"
Older, or younger? Only one? He's probably going to think that she's pestering him if she says that, and besides, it'll only give him ammo for asking about her dad later anyway.
"Get him out? Shit." Daryl pulls a hand-rolled cigarette from the inside of his jacket, lights it with an ancient match. It's story-time now, apparently. Hell, if it'll calm the girl down, he can talk about Merle. "Time I got there, he'd taken over the station, shootin' people on the roof. High as a fuckin' kite off the evidence locker."
He turns to her, conspiratorial, the way Jude used to like. "If you're my niece, you ain't his. Wouldn't wish that on anybody."
Abby wrinkles her nose up when he lights the cigarette. She doesn't actually say anything but she doesn't really need to, especially when she folds her arms across her chest sanctimoniously. One eyebrow raises in reaction to this story.
"Me'n Merle? Nah, I loved him, back then. I was... different. Just as much a sumbitch as him."
Daryl ignores Abby's disapproval; it's kind of funny, in a way. Jude used to give him shit about cigarettes, too, but these ain't got no tar in them, and more cloves than he strictly enjoys. He just likes having something to do with his hands.
"Fourteen years older'n me, and a marine, and in a biker gang, taught me how to hunt, how to survive. Treated everybody like shit, but I didn't know no better."
A long drag on the cigarette leads to a low, slow exhale of pure smoke. "You learn plenty about the world, when you move out from where you been."
She likes the way he says Merle, his accent drawling. It's how you'd say Daryl in his voice too, taking a drag on the r, the yl becoming almost nonexistent in the process. Fourteen years older than me- so Daryl is a younger brother.
Abby doesn't know anybody who has a sibling. Anybody who has a kid during the apocalypse usually isn't dumb enough to repeat the same mistake twice.
"Where is he now?"
And, "Is that why you brought me out here? So you could have a turn at teaching people things?"
"Got bit," is all he says, all he has to say. The entire incident is decades past, at this point; it doesn't hurt as much as it used to, to talk about. Still doesn't mean he wants to go into detail.
He blows some smoke into the wind, watches it dissipate. He thinks about how to answer her.
"Out here 'cause you asked," he says, but that's not entirely true. If he wants the girl to be straight with him, he's gotta be straight right back. It don't guarantee nothing, but it's the best he can do.
"And... want you to have options. You know how to live out here, you don't gotta fall in with nobody. You don't need nobody. You can choose."
Abby makes a face when she hears that, a sort of pinched, sad expression, her jaw locking up. She doesn't say anything because what is there to say, exactly. Nothing he hasn't heard before from a thousand other people, and she hates pity besides, so. She just nods, and lets him drop it, watches his smoke curlicue into the wind and away. It stinks.
"Yeah," she says, a little scoff of a word, like she thinks he's joking. "But I can't just leave my friends."
Or maybe she could. They might be a lot better off there without her anyway, because the WLF will keep them safe, and... well, she knows that Manny likes it there, and his dad has found a good routine, and Mel is doing well in her labs.
Abby looks lost for a moment, a hesitation coming across her. She says (perhaps stupidly), "Don't you get lonely?"
He looks at the sky. From the position of the sun, they've got time to get somewhere safe. They've got time to talk. But instead, he tries to blow a smoke ring, because the smoke is clearly pissing her off. It takes three tries, but he gets it.
"Everybody gets lonely," he says. "I take up with people, sometimes. They leave, or I do." Or they die.
"Ain't nobody can make it alone no more. But I always got plenty of time to choose who I fall in with."
Abby would like to know: does he think that she is going to leave, eventually? Once all of this is done? Or does he think that she will stay? Because it sounds like that will make him leave, so, really, she has to resolve right now that, no matter what happens, she won't try to fall in with him.
She's not like Daryl anyway, not really. She can't imagine being alone like that, relying on nobody, it would be... sad, and too quiet.
He's forgotten the cardinal rule of kids: they always wanna know how things apply to them, how they fit into the big picture. Sometimes, Daryl wonders if he ever was a child. He can't remember ever wondering about this crap, but then, he's pretty sure he knew the answer to most of these questions. He just wished he didn't.
At least the answer to Abby's question is simple.
"You wanna leave, I ain't gonna crowd you. Gonna make sure you know how to live first, that's all. But I ain't gonna take you outta your whole damn life just to leave you by the side of the road."
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She's firing too fast, she isn't aiming. "Stop!" He knows he's a quiet man, has been around her. Hopefully the shock of him shouting will cut through whatever shit she's dealing with.
He stands in front of her. Last resort-- he shouldn't have waited so goddamn long, he's stuck in his habits, idiot, idiot-- he pulls out his gun, a colt python that fits oddly in his hand. One shot, one down. The next he rushes toward, getting between it and the girl, the knife going straight into its face.
If she can shoot the final one, they'll be in the clear.
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The car. She lunges for it, flying across the distance and she scoots in through the door onto the seat as he puts his body firmly between the car and the infected. It gives her enough time to catch her breath and level the gun up through the broken window, waiting for a chance.
She fires. It catches the last flailing runner in the throat and it gargle-screams around the rush of blood, slipping, falling-
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They'll circle round, try and find another way over the bridge, or a safer place to cross. It doesn't matter. They just have to get out of here, and in a hurry.
He starts the engine just as the sound of clicking begins to echo through the trees.
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"Right behind you." The shock makes her croaky, and she has to wonder if he knows she just saw him get bit. Or maybe he didn't feel it and he'll realise once they hit safety and have time to catch their breath. Either way he's right, they gotta go. He doesn't wear a helmet on the bike. She could press the muzzle of her gun against the back of his neck and be done with it in seconds if she had to, even though the thought makes her fucking sick to her stomach with dread and grief.
He's got time, before he turns. Time to get them out of here.
She leaves the car, running back toward the bike, and jumps onto the back behind him. The engine snarls in the same tone he did. "I'm good, go!"
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They keep going until they reach the high crest of a hill, bald of trees, and it's a good place to keep watch, catch their breath. He recalibrates the plan in his head. If the area's got this many infected in it, they'll have to sell the bike sooner than he thought. It was a good test, and he thinks they proved they can work as a team.
He gets off the bike, pulls some water out of the satchels, takes a drink.
"Did good, kid." He searches for more supplies in the satchels, squat on the ground.
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Eventually, the bike starts to slow, a relief miniscule in comparison to when Daryl dismounts and turns to the satchels, unknowingly showing her the teeth marks imprinted in his leather shoulder. The bite didn't break through the jacket, she's safe. He's fine.
She feels a little weak at the knees suddenly.
She copies him, looks for her own canteen, and gulps some water down.
"Thanks."
What's he looking for? She watches him rifling around for a few seconds before she leaves the bike standing, stepping toward the lookout over the hill- and winces at the drop off, reeling backward. Her hand finds a tree to touch, something sturdy. That helps. "... Where are we?"
Does he know? Or is he pointing his bike in what he thinks is the right direction?
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"Jacket saved my life," he says. "Gotta take care of it." He stuffs it in the inner pocket of his jacket for later. He's gotta explain to the kid, or she's gonna lose it. She's been through more, he thinks, than she was expecting, first day out.
"I call this bald head hill," he says, "dunno what it's really called, if it had a name. But you can see anything coming from a half-mile off, any direction."
A good place to stop, a good place to regroup. He pulls out the map, unfolds it on the bike's seat. There's a pencil-marked line charting their path; Daryl runs his thumb over it, smudging some of the road ahead. "That bridge's out. Be easier to switch to a horse, now. Gonna go south a little-- here."
He points to a spot on the map. "Issaquah Free Zone. They know me, we've traded. You up for that?"
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Her eyes flicker back and forth between the two points. They've barely moved any closer. Something frantic twists up on itself in Abby's chest at the thought of going south instead of east; they have to though, she gets that. Acknowledging that does hardly anything for her sudden and antsy impatience.
"Sure." What else can she say to that. They have to make a trade. Maybe she can surreptitiously ask around about Joel while she's there too, somebody might have more up to date information. Considering the possibility makes her feel a little less anxious, anyway. "How many of these places have you traded at?"
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"A few places," he says. "Made myself known before I settled. Still get out there sometimes, when it gets too crowded."
Seattle, a largely abandoned wasteland of warring factions-- but sometimes too loud, and the knowledge of creeping fighters shakes his dreams. He remembers so much, from the first ten years, and then everything slowed. He can't countenance it. He has to run.
But that doesn't matter.
"Issaquah's got good people." He murmurs while he sews his jacket together. "But... we get there, tell 'em you're my niece or something. Few years back, they had a problem with a guy kidnapping kids."
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She pauses, then decides to just ask him. "Where'd you come from?"
She's never bothered to wonder this about him before. For all Abby knows, Daryl just walked out of the woods one day fully formed, as he is now. Or maybe he was born inside of a flower like in Thumbelina, and grew a little every day.
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He sits, remembering that incident, the kid's bodies strewn up like dolls, and nobody noticed for so goddamn long because it wasn't their kids disappearing. In the years since, Issaquah's gotten extremely protective of people without people, but he'll never quite forgive them for having to learn. There's a reason he didn't settle there, for all the bug-out bags and blinds he's got scattered in the woods around their territory.
But Abby asks a question, and it's a fair one. He lets out a sigh, and tries to think on better things. The rare times Merle praised him. The days out and alone in the woods. Taking down his first kill, all by himself-- it was a squirrel, but it was his, and he ate it raw.
"Georgia," he says. "In the mountains. You're looking at genuine redneck trash."
Do people even say those things anymore? Will Abby know what they mean? He's curious to find out.
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She feels a little hot, sweaty in the crooks of her arms, but it's probably just the jacket.
"Georgia," she repeats, looking at him, trying to judge him by this new information. She's heard older survivors say things like of course you are, and could'a guessed that myself, and she still doesn't really understand what they mean by things like that, thinking they could tell where somebody came from just by looking at them. Daryl doesn't look like he's from Georgia. Abby privately thinks he looks like he came out of a hole in the ground, and wonders if that's why he just called himself trash.
Like... she might think it, but she wouldn't say it or anything. She's not that fucking rude. "What do you mean?"
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"White trash-- poor folk-- that work in the sun," Daryl says, and reaches toward the back of his neck, tilting his head forward, "gets certain tans."
Of course, he doesn't have that tan anymore. He's lived too long in cloudy Seattle, buttoned up against the cold, his hair long. He reckons he's lost his farmer's tan, but he hasn't looked at anything but his face in a dinky shaving mirror for years. "Back before, you could tell... my accent, my fuckin' name. Didn't come from nothing, probably an addict. Weren't raised right. Hick, hillbilly."
He shrugs. It's all ancient history now, covered over in thirty years of death and mud. It'd still hurt his soft underbelly, if someone said it with real intent, but Abby doesn't know any of this shit.
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He was around before it all went to shit, though. Of course he was, he's- older. Abby had never considered this about him before. He blends so seamlessly into the world that it's hard to imagine him existing in any other capacity.
Suddenly, she's hungry for information.
"How old were you?"
When it happened.
Abby didn't exist. She wasn't even 'a twinkle in your daddy's eye', another fucking weird thing older survivors like to say when they're talking about the before times.
furiously mangles timelines.
He gestures to the wide expanse of forest around the hill, the animals hiding from them even now, the wide-open sky.
"It was always like this. Spent more time outdoors than in. Just how it was."
you're so brave for this
Older, or younger? Only one? He's probably going to think that she's pestering him if she says that, and besides, it'll only give him ammo for asking about her dad later anyway.
thanks i feel valid now
He turns to her, conspiratorial, the way Jude used to like. "If you're my niece, you ain't his. Wouldn't wish that on anybody."
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"You guys didn't get along, huh."
No shit. He sounds kinda wild.
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Daryl ignores Abby's disapproval; it's kind of funny, in a way. Jude used to give him shit about cigarettes, too, but these ain't got no tar in them, and more cloves than he strictly enjoys. He just likes having something to do with his hands.
"Fourteen years older'n me, and a marine, and in a biker gang, taught me how to hunt, how to survive. Treated everybody like shit, but I didn't know no better."
A long drag on the cigarette leads to a low, slow exhale of pure smoke. "You learn plenty about the world, when you move out from where you been."
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Abby doesn't know anybody who has a sibling. Anybody who has a kid during the apocalypse usually isn't dumb enough to repeat the same mistake twice.
"Where is he now?"
And, "Is that why you brought me out here? So you could have a turn at teaching people things?"
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He blows some smoke into the wind, watches it dissipate. He thinks about how to answer her.
"Out here 'cause you asked," he says, but that's not entirely true. If he wants the girl to be straight with him, he's gotta be straight right back. It don't guarantee nothing, but it's the best he can do.
"And... want you to have options. You know how to live out here, you don't gotta fall in with nobody. You don't need nobody. You can choose."
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"Yeah," she says, a little scoff of a word, like she thinks he's joking. "But I can't just leave my friends."
Or maybe she could. They might be a lot better off there without her anyway, because the WLF will keep them safe, and... well, she knows that Manny likes it there, and his dad has found a good routine, and Mel is doing well in her labs.
Abby looks lost for a moment, a hesitation coming across her. She says (perhaps stupidly), "Don't you get lonely?"
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"Everybody gets lonely," he says. "I take up with people, sometimes. They leave, or I do." Or they die.
"Ain't nobody can make it alone no more. But I always got plenty of time to choose who I fall in with."
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Abby would like to know: does he think that she is going to leave, eventually? Once all of this is done? Or does he think that she will stay? Because it sounds like that will make him leave, so, really, she has to resolve right now that, no matter what happens, she won't try to fall in with him.
She's not like Daryl anyway, not really. She can't imagine being alone like that, relying on nobody, it would be... sad, and too quiet.
No gyms out the wilderness either, so.
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At least the answer to Abby's question is simple.
"You wanna leave, I ain't gonna crowd you. Gonna make sure you know how to live first, that's all. But I ain't gonna take you outta your whole damn life just to leave you by the side of the road."
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returns from the grave sorry i was dealing with the agonies.
i understand completely
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