Sorry for taking forever to update! I was going to before I went on a holiday over Christmas but never got around to it. I'm back now though and nothing will get in the way of me updating. Thanks heaps to the new followers and faves, and also to Archangels Consort2011 and Dalonega Noquisi for reviewing, you guys are lovely.
Don't own The Walking Dead, or any of the characters or anything and please don't sue me because I already owe enough people money that I don't have.
When Holly emerges from her tent the next morning after an almost-sleepless night, Merle is sitting in his camp chair in front of the brothers' tent and Daryl is wandering around the clearing, stopping every ten or so paces to peer into the woods. She wanders over to her self-appointed piece of ground near the fire pit with a box of crackers and a bottle of water in her hands. "How did you sleep?" She asks Merle after sitting down and crossing her legs. She figured she at least owed him some pleasantries, considering, even if Daryl told him to, Merle was the one that did stop the truck to pick her up.
"Woulda been better with you cozyin' up to me, darlin'," he grins, eyes alive with amusement and something darker weaved in. He takes a drag of a cigarette in his hand, blowing it out back in Holly's direction. She gets a smell of the smoke and sighs; a zombie apocalypse was definitely not the right time to reconsider quitting smoking (for the fourth time).
"I'll stick with my tent, thanks." Even though she has no blanket or pillow and an awful crick in her neck from lying on the shitty air mattress all night, her tent is like heaven compared to what she imagines a night next to Merle Dixon to be like.
Daryl comes over and sits down in his own camp chair after what feels like an eternity of stifling silence while Merle sat there smoking and grinning and smoking. Daryl takes the packet of cigarettes out of the cup holder on Merle's chair and takes one and a small lighter out. As soon as he lights up, Holly can't do it anymore. "Give me one."
The brothers both look at her, Merle still grinning and Daryl with raised eyebrows.
"Please can I have a cigarette?" Holly sighs. The brothers continue staring at her for a long moment before Daryl throws them and they hit her in the chest before landing in her lap. The lighter comes next, but it misses her and hits the dirt a few meters behind her. With the cigarette hanging between her lips, Holly rolls onto her back and then sideways to the orange lighter, not bothered about both getting up or the state of her already dirty clothing. She shuffles back to her spot and lights up. Merle is still watching her, more amused than before, but Daryl is looking into the trees again from his chair.
"Seeing anythin' Darlina?" Merle grunts at his brother. Daryl just shakes his head, looking perplexed. Holly thinks he should be relieved, both of them should be, but the Dixon brothers aren't exactly normal. Holly knew about their family, her mother had sat her down and explained it to her when she was ten and she couldn't understand why Daryl never had - or seemed to want - any friends. Grizzly home life: mother dead, father an unkind alcoholic. They lived in a tiny house in the wrong part of town, and the older brother who she'd never met before yesterday was always in and out of juvenile detention for this and that. They're the kind of boys who only know conflict and survival and this is almost status quo for them, in a weird way.
"How old are you?" Holly finally asks Merle, after taking the last, long drag of her cig. So she knows some things about them but not much, and if she's going to spend the rest of this damn apocalypse just the three of them then she may as well get to know them.
"36," he answers straight away, leaning forward in his chair to look over at her again. She feels small, weak under his gaze, but then that's probably how he intended her to feel, so she leans forward just a small bit herself, to show she's not intimidated by him. "How old are you girly?"
"27," she tells him after a beat. She knows Daryl is 29, a bit under two years older than her, so she doesn't bother asking him; he probably wouldn't hear anyway, still scanning the tree line for movement.
"My turn," Merle says, drawing Holly's attention from his younger brother back to him. Before Holly can object, tell him that she didn't want to play 20 fucking questions, she just wanted to know his age, he's leaning forward further, to the point that she thought he might fall out of his chair. "Killed any of them geeks yet?"
Holly leans back again, stretches out one leg in front of her and starts gently kneading her calf, aching from all the running of yesterday. "Yes." She's looking down at her dirty jeans clad leg as she says this, doesn't want to look at Merle who's probably grinning again, at Daryl who doesn't give a shit what she says about anything, probably doesn't even care if she's even there or not.
"What with?" It's surprisingly Daryl who asks her. Holly looks up and his eyes are trained right on her, not on the tree line anymore. She doesn't feel small and weak under his gaze like she does Merle's. He isn't asking for his own sick pleasure like Merle would, she can see it. So she answers him, even though for the split second she thought it was his brother asking the question, she was set on not answering. "With knifes, from my mom's kitchen."
He sighs, shakes his head and goes back to looking at the tree line. She thinks he's done looking at her, talking to her, for the day, and she belatedly remembers the crackers she brought over with her. The box was kicked away in her lighter-expedition but she only has to reach to grab them. Then finally Daryl speaks again, a small hint of amusement in his tone but not the same dark kind as Merle's. "Fuckin' kitchen knives. Blunt, right?"
Holly shrugs. "Well I'm alive, so they did their job." She shoves one of the crackers into her mouth, they're plain and a little bit disgusting but it's not like she can just pop down to the shops and get some dip or anything.
"Do you know how to shoot a gun, or how to use a knife properly?" Daryl asks again, glancing back at her to unnecessarily show he's talking to her.
"No, never needed to, and I'm pretty sure when it comes to knives you just…" she makes a stabbing motion with the cracker box in her hand, aiming towards a hypothetical head. He just shakes his head again and rubs a hand over his eyes. She's scared for a moment, a very long moment, because she thinks he might tell her that she can't stay with them anymore if she can't do anything to defend them or something like that, but he doesn't. In fact he doesn't speak again for some time, and she figures the conversation really is done now.
The sun is high in the sky by the time any of them make a move to do anything other than eat, drink or smoke. Merle gets up, says he's going down to take a bath in the quarry, invites Holly to join him but she shakes her head and ignores the small wave of disgust that crashes through her stomach. Daryl chucks his most recent cigarette on the ground and crushes it under his boot when he stands. He doesn't offer an explanation as to where he's going, just wanders off in the opposite direction Merle went, and Holly decides to go back to her tent.
She sits down on her naked air bed with a weary sigh. Once again the feeling of being completely alone creeps back in and Holly's eyes well up. She sat at the fire pit all morning, defying her body and minds' wish just to break down and weep for all her lost loved ones. Thoughts of them crept into her mind when silence took over the clearing, which was most of the time, and she was now glad for an opportunity to just be alone with her thoughts. After a few long minutes of staring at the floor of the tent, she picks up her blackberry from the corner of the tent where it was thrown the night before; the battery isn't going to last even until the next day, but Holly figures she's not really going to be messaging any of her friends to go out for coffee together or calling her mom to see if she needs anything from the supermarket anymore, so it doesn't matter. Her hands shake as she goes into her voicemail and lies down to listen to the only message she had saved on there.
"Hi honey. Just letting you know I'm staying at Josh's house tonight, so you don't worry about me," her mothers voice is light, pretty, and she chuckles a little when she says the last thing; Holly sees the irony in it and doesn't find it the slightest bit amusing. "I'll see you tomorrow, don't do anything I wouldn't do. Love you."
Holly weeps.
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Still trying to set up the story at the moment, it will pick up haha. From my introduction of stuff you can probably already tell that it's going to be a bit of an AU story, but not super AU. I don't wanna give anything away though.
