EDIT: I HAVE CHANGED THE ENDING TO THIS CHAPTER (Thanks, Leyshla! :D)
Hey, everybody! :D I missed you guys, haha :L Sorry this took longer than intended - halfway through the chap, I got intense writer's block, doing multiple redrafts and completely changing the direction of the story as a whole: that's how much was changed, guys. XD Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. You get a bit of action at the beginning, and Daryl and Jeanie getting to know each other as well, so win-win! :) Next chapter will have action beginning, definitely, and Glenn and Jeanie will start their friendship, along with more of Daryl and Jeanie becoming better...whatever they are. Friends? Partners?(that IS the chapter title, after all...) EVERYTHING. THEY ARE EVERYTHING TOGETHER. :D
Hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave a review with your thoughts and ideas on how the story's going if you have the time - I always feel fantastic when I get responses to my fics. :3
-Nelle07 - Thanks, dude! :D I'm glad you're enjoying it, and hope you like this chap C: Thankd for the review! :)
-England101 - Dawk, thanks dude :3 Haha, yeah, I got that feeling :L Don't worry, I'm definitely not a Lori fan, either - even though I shall try to deal with her without outright calling her a BIATCH in the fic. XD Thanks very much, I love writing Daryl cause he's so fun with his standoffishness - and the buck scene was lovely to describe! Thanks again! :)
-eloquent dreams - Oh, thank you very much! :D I'm so glad you like the style I'm writing in, I was a bit worried in case people found it a bit too wordy and were turned off by it, haha. :L Here's your update - enjoy, and thanks again! :)
-Leyshla Gisel - DAWWW THANK YOUUUU :'D Haha, everybody does, my friend, everybody does XD Thanks, I really want to have Jeanie and Daryl bond well through survival and helping one another, so I'm really glad you think it's working. :3 Dawk, thanks so much again, hon, for continually reviewing and giving me encouragement - hope you enjoy the chapter! (P.S. LOVE your profile pic! XD)
-Minty Badger - Oh, wow, thank you very much. :'D That's lovely of you to say, seriously :3 As though it wasn't nice enough of you to leave such a nice comment, your name is also reminiscent of mine (Minty-Nutmeg). Hail, Fellow Minty! You are especially nice, now ;D Thanks for reviewing, and I hope you enjoy this chapter :)
DISCLAIMER: Ugh, you know the drill, guys, stop reminding me that I do not own Walking Dead (unfortunately) ...You mean thing, universe, not letting me own it ;A;
Chapter 4 – Unspoken
Slamming his foot down on the gas, jamming the gear stick forward as he yanked the steering wheel to a sharp right and smashed into the side of a shambling walker, sending it flying into the side of the building, Shane's Hummer screeched as it skidded over the dirt path and bumped over collapsed corpses. Glancing at his rear-view mirror as he rounded a corner, the mob of walkers disappeared from view behind a cluster of trees, their dragging moans echoing around the forest, slowly dropping in volume before finally fading away as the car progressed further and further away from the abandoned gas station. Throwing a glance behind him as he turned the windshield wipers on, a spray of blood catching in one of the blades and smearing across the filthy glass, he caught sight of a furtive Glenn, tightly clutching gas cans in his arms, holding onto stray boxes stuffed with cans of food filling the backseat next to him.
After a long silence, punctuated only with the crunch of bones under the vulcanised rubber of the strong-track tires rolling swiftly beneath the battered Hummer, rays of the slowly retreating sun reflecting off of the side and blinding them both, Shane finally ground out, "What the fuck was that, Glenn?"
He could hear more than see Glenn whip his head up. A quick look at the mirror flashed Glenn nervously opening his mouth, wordless, grasping for something to say. It was only after a long, tense pause filled with the soft, tinny clang of canned food banging together that he replied, sheepish and apologetic, "I-," he stopped, "I'm sorry."
Hands gripping the wheel tighter before carefully relaxing, it took Shane a moment to calm enough to answer, "Not good enough." He threw a sharp glare behind him, the young man in the back possessing enough sense to look ashamed, "You damn near got us killed."
"I didn't – I didn't mean to, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, Shane. I just-" Again, he halted, voice fading away. After a long pause, he mumbled, voice barely audible, "I couldn't do it."
Shaking his head in disbelief, Shane scoffed quietly, turning onto the highway at long last, nudging his blood-splattered shotgun closer to himself as he took sight of the dangerous mass grave of cars lying abandoned on the crumbling, stained path. Eventually, pulling out at a turning point, ignoring which lane he was supposed to drive in – one of the scarce perks of living in the post-apocalyptic hell-hole of the world they were trying to survive in – he replied, "Well, you're gonna have to do it at some point," he tossed a glance behind him, fixing Glenn's averted eyes under a firm stare, "I'm not always gonna be there to pull your ass out of the fire."
A silence descended upon them. Eyebrows twitching sadly, Glenn turned his head down, gaze dark as he shrunk back in his seat, trying to ignore the blood coating his clothes, saturating every stitch of his sneakers and sliding uncomfortably across his exposed skin. Looking across to the metal prisons opposite them as they raced carelessly across the road, Shane determined to make it back to camp before the sun would fully set and cast them in a dangerous shadow, Glenn grimaced. Every few feet, a still corpse would flash up in the windows, decomposing in the humid Georgian heat, baking in the individual stoves of abandoned vehicles, guts bursting forth from their stomachs, maggots crawling round their bodies.
Gulping heavily, nausea settling in his gut and swimming uneasily about with every bump or nudge in the road, Glenn looked away as a walker, weakly banging against a cracked window, gasped out a groan, half of its body torn away at the seams and out of the gaping side door of the large truck it was thrashing feebly about in. Bending inwards on himself, squeezing shut his eyes against the horrendous monsters flaring up in his vision, he, nor Shane, spoke for the rest of the ride back to camp.
A wet slap upon the plate before her, disturbingly reminiscent of the sound of a corpse hitting the ground, brought Jeanie abruptly back from her thoughts.
Glancing down to find a thick, gloopy stew crowded with squashed, canned vegetables, a few chunks of grey squirrel meat swimming sadly about every so often, her stomach growled, prompting her to wordlessly take hold of the plastic cutlery quietly proffered by a woman called 'Carla', if the shout of a child grasping hold of the cardigan on her was any indication. Leaving Jeanie with a smile, silently heaving the child up into her arms, Carla strode away to a Hispanic man with a young boy by his side, lecturing him on the importance of eating one's vegetables.
Pushing her fork down without looking, blankly stuffing a diminutive carrot into her mouth, vaguely aware of the bland and inoffensive taste, she scanned her surroundings. Before her was a low fire, stronger than the flames Lori had used to cook dinner, but weaker than what was usually in the centre of any camp Jeanie had ever been part of. She supposed it was because darkness had fully set in, and any sudden brightness on the dull horizon would drag a mob of death to them. Continuing in quietly devouring the food, she was aware of a pinprick of a sensation of being tightly observed, turning slightly to glance at a wary Lori from the corner of her eye.
Beside her, Daryl scoffed, and she turned back. From the sharp glare he threw over her shoulder, she gathered that he had noticed the unwanted attention too. Averting her eyes, attempting to ignore the tension growing around her, she scooped up a lopsided hunk of squirrel and chewed down on the stringy meat.
After a long period of hushed conversation and relative silence, with a suddenness she caught in the edge of her vision, Dale, the older man that had defended her right to stay before, addressed her, speaking up from where he sat with two young, blonde women, "So, Jeanie," she turned to him, surprised that someone was beginning a conversation with her, "What's your story?"
Abruptly, many different pairs of eyes were directed towards her, curious. Wiping the edge of her mouth haphazardly with her sleeve, she fiddled with the cheap china plate on her lap, replying, "Uh, well," her finger skidded over the edge of the plate, a carrot edging perilously closer to its doom, "I come from further up North." She paused, prompted further by Dale's encouraging nod and warm smile,"I was just running about, really, following the rumours of where refugee centres were," she frowned, "I learned to stay away from them, soon enough - they never stood longer than a week. I ended up just going between slums on the edges of cities, when I found this portable radio in an apartment. It was pretty broken, but I got it working long enough to listen to this automated message a couple of ti-"
From across the circle gathered at the fire, a woman whose name Jeanie couldn't quite grasp abruptly cut in, eyes wide, "-You heard something on the radio?!" Excitement jolted like electricity through her features, rejuvenating what had been a sullen, dark frown.
Slightly surprised at the strong reaction, not noticing the piteous glances thrown in the direction of the woman, Jeanie answered, "Yeah, like an automated thing, telling where evacuation centres were, how to spot signs of infection, survival tips, things like that."
A twitch of discontent flinched on the woman's face for a second before it was smoothed, her eyes still dancing with a kind of manic hope, "But it was still from the government, right? It was still on the air?"
Halting for a moment, a feeling of dread creeping up at the desperate hope lain plain on the woman's face, suddenly noticing a man sitting next to the her, eyes boring darkly into the side of her raptly focussed head, looking enough alike to be related, Jeanie tried to think of what to say. Eventually, finding herself tiptoeing for reasons unbeknownst to her, she answered, voice hesitant, "Yes, but-" she stopped, unsure. After a long pause, she continued, "But I heard later on that the transmissions have ceased."
The woman's face fell. A tragic, exposed look of fear engulfed her features, and the man beside her seemed to take that as his prompt to step in, muttering for her to come with him and sit down for a while, away from the group. She shook off his comforting hands, eyes wide and sharply dug into Jeanie's own, voice quiet and wavering, "What?"
"...The transmissions aren't on air anymore. They're gone."
There was a long, painful pause, filled with heads turning away and uncomfortable fumbles. The woman stared at her, mouth agape, eyes dulling and unblinking. Finally, with an abruptness that made Jeanie tense in her seat, moving an inch closer to a halted Daryl, who sat, silent and uninvolved, in one motion, the woman dropped her plate to the floor, stood, and walked away, the audible crack of porcelain sounding in her wake. The man took a moment, dark eyes boring into the shattered plate with an intensity that spoke volumes in regret, then followed her off without a word.
Eyes fixed on the spot where the woman had disappeared into the shadows, Jeanie felt guilt – she understood with a horrible clarity that she had precipitated the long-time teetering mental collapse of another human being. Pausing for a long while, no-one else willing to speak first, Jeanie took a deep, steadying breath before asking, "What happened to her?"
Dale looked across to her, his piteous gaze fading as he turned back to the fire, answering, "She doesn't really talk to any of us, but we know that her husband works in the Government, in communications," he sighed, "she's been holding out hope for a while that there's still a Government left for him to be alive and part of."
Jeanie's eyebrows furrowed, her head turning down and hair becoming ruffled as she dragged her hand heavily across it, muttering lowly, "Damn."
She sat for a minute, undisturbed, until she heard Daryl suddenly speak up from her side, "She was gonna find out at some point – nobody's seen even a fuckin' policeman in at least a full month. Maybe the government assholes got away before shit hit the fan, but they won't care about us." He shook his head, scoffing, "Not as if they did, before."
Shaking her head, fingers tightening on her skull for a swift moment, she mumbled to herself, "I'm such an idiot." She laid her hands on her lap, knees bobbing up and down as her eyes bored into the ground. Abruptly, she made to stand, hastily moving aside her plate, a slip of meat tumbling out onto the dirt, "I should go apologise."
"You can't say anything to make it any better." The suddenness with which Lori inserted herself into the conversation surprised Jeanie, turning her to the opposite side of the fire where the untrusting woman sat with her son, passing him some of her vegetables, not looking up as she scraped a canned pea-pod onto his stew. The slight shock was enough for Jeanie to stay quiet as she continued, finally turning up and wiping her hands on her jeans, "What do you think you could say that would make everything alright again?" She fixed Jeanie under a sharp gaze for a moment before turning away again, voice falling slightly, "She's lost her husband – nothing'll make that any less horrifying."
Standing stiffly, hands falling as she took in Lori's detached gaze at the floor, a distracted hand reaching up to stroke the back of a suddenly despondent Carl's head, Jeanie felt a twinge of pity – she had seen enough lamenting, dead-eyed stares filled with guilt to recognise a woman deeply entrenched in regret. It took her a moment to loosen her legs enough to sit again, food forgotten.
A kind-looking man with a basketball jersey loosely thrown over him saved her from the unbearable silence, sitting down next to a gently smiling woman with dark, curly hair and bright eyes, handing her a glass of water before turning to Jeanie with a friendly smile and asking, "So, you heard somethin' on the radio. Anything in particular, or was it all just warnings to stay inside?" The woman at his side scoffed as she took a drink, clearly thinking back to the early days when the infection was spreading to rural towns only, and the advice was to barricade your home against wandering assailants – a tactic that would end in countless of thousands of people trapped and slowly starving to death as their only escape was blocked, or had their amateur blockades breached, leaving them completely at the mercy of the unfeeling dead, ensnared by their own defences.
Turning her head up, Jeanie replied, "Only one thing that really stuck out. There were plenty of warnings and things like that, like I said, but the thing that really caught me was this theory they were testing that that those biters decompose faster in greater heat." She shrugged, "It made sense. They're – uh – 'dead', after all – and dead flesh breaks down faster in summer than it does winter because of the heat. So I just kind of decided to come down here, to see if I could just wait all this out." She glanced over at Daryl, quieting slightly, "I didn't really have a plan."
Rubbing a hand over his stubble, Dale gave her a nonplussed look, "Seems a good enough idea. Maybe we can just wait for a while until they rot away." There was a pondering silence before a friendly grin flickered across his face and he asked amicably, "You call them 'biters'?"
Blank for a moment, she replied, "Well, yeah." She paused, looking around at the interested faces surrounding her, "You know, because they – bite. Why, what do you guys call them?"
Daryl offered the reply to this question, unconcernedly devouring his meal, "Geeks."
Eyebrow rising, she turned, "...'Geeks'?"
He nodded, jaw tightening as he tore through a hunk of meat, a splatter of sauce hitting his lip, "Like 'carnival geeks'. Freaks."
"Oh," slowly, she turned back, "Ok."
Hastily, Dale jumped back in, "Well, that's what Daryl calls them, but most of us call them 'walkers': they were dead, but now they're up and walking." He smiled good-naturedly, "It makes a lot of sense that there'd be other names for them, when you think about it – there wasn't any set title for what was happening to people before the TV went dark, so of course people would make up their own. In the end, though, the things are the same no matter what name you call them."
Just as it looked like Dale was about to start speaking again, what looked like the younger of the two women next to him abruptly spoke up, leaning forward from her seat on the floor, a forgotten chunk of meat being absently played with by her fork, "What were you going to do when you got down here?"
Shrugging vaguely, Jeanie chewed her lip, the chapped skin stinging in the heat, "Survive, I suppose. Not much else I could do, really."
The girl suddenly stopped playing with her food, moving back slightly, "You weren't going to see somebody or something, no family or anything like that?" The older woman at her side frowned lightly, shaking her head, a mumbled 'Amy' floating through the humid air, muttering something Jeanie couldn't quite pick up, softly scolding what she assumed was her sister. Sighing quietly, the younger girl turned back, smiling apologetically, "Sorry. You don't have to answer that - that was rude of me."
Shaking her head, Jeanie assured her hastily, "No, really, it's fine, I don't mind at all!" She settled back in her seat, receiving a kind smile from the girl, "I didn't have anybody down here to see. I was just kind of wandering around, going from one place to another, really – no real goal in mind besides not getting bitten by those things and eating enough to get me further south."
A frown faded in on Amy's youthful features. After a while, she asked, quieter and less boisterous, "You didn't have anyone with you this whole time?"
Halting for a long moment, Jeanie answered, nodding slowly, her fork absently edging across her abandoned plate, "Well, when I ran, I..." She paused, grasping for what to say, "It happened so quickly, I just-" she stopped, looking away. A few uneasy moments passed before she continued, fidgeting, "Yeah. Yes, I didn't have much contact with anybody for a long while, and never had any companions to travel with. Just me."
The group stayed quiet, the only conversation coming from the fire across the way, belonging to Carol and her family, as her strange husband unconcernedly ordered her to get him more water before walking back to their shared tent, apathetic to anything happening with the group parallel. Furtively twisting her hands between each other, biting her lip, Amy spoke again, "Do you...have anybody left?"
This time, Amy's sister was far more to the point, immediately turning, muttering insistently, "Amy, leave her alo-"
"It's fine." The woman halted, her words dying as she looked up with Amy and saw Jeanie's face turned down, eyes turned away, shoulders tensed, her plate crumpling in her hands as they tightened and clenched. Eyes still intently boring into the dirt at her feet, Jeanie answered an immediately regretful looking Amy's question, "No. I don't have anyone left."
A deeply uncomfortable silence fell over them then, tense and unsure. Amy floundered, her mouth opening and shutting as she tried to think of something to say to make it any better, her sister simply staring at Jeanie, completely silent, Dale sitting behind them both with a sadly sympathetic, forlorn gaze directed at the young woman. Lori looked up, her hawk-like eyes darkening before turning away again, a sorrowful looking Carl gazing at the woman with a harrowed, disjointed stare. Carol, pausing in picking up a box of toilet paper, stared at her for a moment before taking her daughter's hand and walking away into her tent without a sound. Turning about to face everyone around them, holding the hand of the ones they loved, no-one could formulate any words to say.
Abruptly pushing his food away, Daryl turned to her. For a while, he just sat, looking at her, before, quite suddenly, she pre-emptively halted any attempt he might have made to converse with her by calmly placing her plate on the ground, standing, and walking away without a word.
The camp suddenly burst into a flurry of activity. For those less warm inhabitants of the site, they sat to one side, casting their hard gazes to the leaving woman as they began to trade thoughts on what had happened to her, reprimanded by the Hispanic family and the friendly couple who sat opposite, frowning at the harsh conversation. Lori immediately made to leave, telling her son that he'd had enough for the night and taking him along to their tent, against his protests to stay up later. Anguished, Amy took off after Jeanie, a distraught, thoroughly guilty slant to her expression as she wriggled free of her sister's arms and tried to catch up to the swift woman, calling for her to come back, ignoring Dale's advice to leave her alone. Daryl sat for a moment before pulling himself up, eyes boring into the quickly disappearing form of the woman he had brought into the camp a mere few hours ago as she steadily made her way up the path to their separated tents.
Finally having caught up to Jeanie, Amy was ready to offer a desperately sorry apology when she suddenly fell into the stiffened back of the woman in question, who had abruptly stopped, hand flying to her belt and the weapon that lay at her hip in her instinctual fright. Amy, taking a grasp of Jeanie's shoulders in her fright, shuffled forward, peeking round to find a broad mass of muscle that belonged to the chest of Shane, who stood before them, as surprised as Jeanie looked, eyebrows high and gaze pointed questioningly to the woman in question, who lowered her hand, eyes shifting over the man. Abruptly, the sound of a car door shutting rung out, and both Amy and Jeanie looked round in reflex to find Glenn, arms filled with boxes of cans, standing to the side of Shane's Hummer, eyes turned to the floor.
"Well, hello, miss. Who might you be?"
Turning back, Jeanie found she was being addressed, the man's rugged exterior betraying his polite and friendly question, his warm eyes gently prodding forth an answer. At this, the boy beside the newly parked car looked up, a bemused frown pulling at his mouth before he caught sight of her, his jaw falling slightly with shock at seeing another person in their midst, his surprise growing when Jeanie replied, "I'm Jean. Jeanie Hepburn." From behind, she heard Amy hasten to explain, before she continued, her carefully calm exterior masking a slight jolt of fear when she realised, looking down at the stained t-shirt declaring 'Kentucky State Police' that he was Lori's aforementioned Shane, the so-called leader of the camp that held the power over whether she would be condemned to the outside world or allowed into their sanctuary, "Daryl found me a little while ago and took me up here," she paused, "to stay and, uh-"
"-To live here in the camp."
The absorbed group, hunched together round the dirt path looked up, finding Daryl trudging over to them, a new scowl etched into his face as Lori trailed behind, softly murmuring for Carl to wait by the fire as Daryl continued, "She's staying here with us." On that word, he came up beside them, feet planting in the ground as he stood beside Jeanie and Amy, hands hooking into his belt as he flashed a steady look at the man in front of them.
Footsteps finally halting, Lori placed herself at the side of Shane, Glenn standing awkwardly off to the side, clumsily shifting the boxes about in his hands, looking up at him and confirming, "She's pitched her tent beside Daryl and Merle."
Shane's eyebrows shot up further, something Jeanie hadn't thought possible, glancing back to the camp and finding that, indeed, there was a new spread of marquee at the Dixon's little hideaway to the side, a large hiking bag and assorted belongings piled beside it, ready to be unpacked. Taking a moment, he turned back, fixing Jeanie under a scrutinising look, carefully murmuring, "That right, Miss Hepburn? You want to stay here – next to the Dixon brothers?"
Feeling Daryl bristle slightly beside her at the underlying implication there, she answered steadily, "Yes, Officer Walsh," He took pause at that, clearly surprised she knew who he was without introductions, "I'd love to stay here and live with you all." She halted for a moment, ignoring the irritatingly certain look on Lori's face as she turned slightly to Daryl, "Daryl is a kind man," Shane's eyebrows were practically lost in the blackhole of his hair, "and I would be very happy to stay beside him and his brother – Merle?" Daryl nodded slightly at her unspoken question, his own face raised slightly with surprise at the steadiness with which she made her assertion, "- and help out the camp in any way possible."
Running a hand through the thick mass of curls on his forehead, Shane took a moment, surveying her with uncertain eyes, prodded by Lori's silent disagreement, "Are you good at cooking?" Jeanie's face fell at this, as he continued, undeterred, "Lori and the girls could always use help making dinner for the camp – it takes a while. Or, if you prefer, you could help the kids with reading their textbooks, if you like that sort of thing."
Beside her, Amy tensed – unwillingly used to a woman of tougher grit than wanting to wash other people's clothes, she knew as soon as she saw Jeanie that she was a fighter rather than a housewife, and felt the answer coming before it was said, "Actually, I was planning on helping scavenge out of Atlanta and things like that."
Taken aback, Shane halted, Lori similarly surprised, a jolted breath leaving her lips as they numbly formed the words that had just passed Jeanie's own. At their side, Glenn perked up, suddenly interested in what was being said rather than the concept of a new person joining them, interjecting, "Wait, you want to go into the city?" He shook his head in disbelief at her tentative nod, "Have you been in there?It's not easy going, you know – there's geeks everywhere, and it takes a long time to get there and back, never mind finding everything on the list-"
"-I know, I've been doing it for weeks, myself."
Abruptly, he halted. Then, "...You have?"
She nodded, fidgeting awkwardly, "Yes."
He paused again, stunned into silence, the boxes shifting about quietly before a grin slowly formed on his face, a deeply impressed 'cool' drifting through the air.
It took Shane a moment of careful consideration before he joined the conversation once more, uncertain, "I'm not sure about that, Miss Hepburn-"
"-You can call me Jeanie, it's fine-"
"-Fine, well, I'm not sure about that, Jeanie." He shrugged his broad shoulders, looking over her quietly, "No offence, but you're not very hardy looking-"
"-She's tougher than Glenn."
Daryl's harsh assertion flicked Glenn's head up, a vaguely affronted keel sounding from him, "Hey-"
"-Maybe they're about the same in all that, then," Shane snapped, irritation growing, "But she's still a woman." A shiver of offense ran through Amy and Jeanie at the implication, Lori standing off, unaffected, before Shane continued, voice falling to a more solemn pitch, "Things can be done to her that wouldn't really be done to Glenn...Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Silent, Jeanie looked up at him, the group remaining quiet. Looking away, cheek twitching with a frown as her fingernails bit into her hand, she replied, soft and barely audible, "Yes."
Nodding slowly, Shane remained quiet. Leaning back, his hand coming down to be shoved in his back pocket, he sighed heavily. Flicking his eyes down to hers once more, they softened a bit as he began to speak again, "Listen, I understand you want to help out, but we have to be realistic – I may have been a police officer before all of this happened, but if you get trapped out in the city, I can't get you out. You don't have a SWAT team to jump in on wires and shoot anything that might hurt you, anymore: they're all dead. You don't have backup. You don't have a safety net, 911, or even a hospital for if you get injured. You're on your own, and you can die with one slip up. So, I'm sorry, but I just can't let you take such a giant risk – we only get Glenn to do what he does out of absolute necessity, but we never, for one single moment, think he's not in danger of never coming back."
Abruptly, Glenn turned, shoving the boxes out of his face as he spoke, tentative, "I dunno, Shane, maybe you should just give her a chance."
Turning to him, struck for a moment by the sudden turn of support against him, Shane bit out disbelievingly, "What, you're on their side now, too?" Glenn shifted, clearly uncomfortable with the conflict, mumbling something that Shane ignored, striving ahead with a harsh cut, "You can barely defend yourself, as you've shown today, Glenn," flushing with shame, Glenn shut his mouth, eyebrows denting as Shane continued, "Besides, you don't even know her, so you can't speak for her."
"She seems nice!" Glenn had a sudden spurt of courage to speak back after the damaging point that pierced him before, "She seems like a good person, Shane, and I think you should just let her try to help!"
"It's not about if she's a nice person, Glenn, it's about survival! It's about whether or not she'll not be killed when she goes into a city filled with things trying to devour her, and whether she can handle the pressure of staying alive in Atlanta – and I can't trust that she can, so I can't let her go, in good conscience." He shook his head, "She should stay here and help where she'll be safe-"
"-Nowhere's safe, and you know it." Daryl's growl cut through his rant, sharp and harsh, "At least with Glenn she can be of some use, instead of sitting about here and fixing the holes in your pants for you."
Snapping slightly, Shane scowled, "Well, even if every single place in the world is dangerous, at least here she'll be surrounded by people that can help look after her, helping Lori and the girls instead of out there without a paddle up shit-creek." Pausing for a moment, bristling slightly at the aggressiveness of Daryl's body language, he turned back to the girl they were so vigorously discussing. Unmoving, she looked back up at him, face drooping with an intense sadness that actually gave him a twinge of regret at his steadfastness. Looking away, finding it too disheartening to see her looking so utterly forlorn, he concluded, "You can stay here– but you can't go into the city; that's my final word. I'm sorry."
The faint, apologetic smile he gave her failed to comfort her, and seemed only to further agitate Daryl, who looked ready to start an all-out brawl over the injustice he had borne witness to. Instead of proving the bad reputation he had been undeservedly given by the rest of the camp, however, he surprised them all when his face straightened and he loudly stated without any malice, "I'll take her with me."
Turning to the man, Shane frowned, "Where?"
"Where do you think - the moon?" He scoffed at Shane's unamused face, "Hunting."
Jeanie looked up, eyebrows raised, a glint to her eye forming once more even as she kept quiet for the conversation to continue, Shane replying with an unimpressed grunt, "You think, after all I just said about not letting her go into the city, that I'll just let her go with you to hunt?" He let out a heavy sigh, "As good you are with that crossbow, I don't think it's a good idea to have you both go out – she could get hurt. Anyway, she doesn't know how to hunt."
Throwing his shoulders back, Daryl replied steadily, "I'll teach her. And she can defend herself just fine: how do you think she got by out there for so long – with her pretty face and good intentions?" He shook his head, "She's good at staying quiet and getting around quickly, and she can swing her machete hard enough."
There was an unconvinced pause from Shane as Jeanie stared at Daryl, a deeply absorbed intensity in her expression as she tried to process the fierceness with which he was defending her, arms gesturing with his words, "Look, if I was her, I would just go, fuck your permission – but she doesn't want to cause trouble for herself, not after being out there for so long, so she won't go into the city or with me if you tell her you don't want her to. But, I'm telling you, if you make her sit about like a little housewife and prepare your fuckin' meals, it won't help the camp, and it won't help her. If she comes with me, we can bring in extra food and stop any stray geeks from wandering up the path - and we'll stay out of the way."
The whole group stared at him, wordless. Shane's eyes hadn't shifted from him for the entirety of his proposal, studying him with the sort of disbelieving carefulness that is shown in a zookeeper when a lion suddenly rears back from a roar to a mewl. For a moment, they were all convinced that he was going to question Daryl on the stoutness of his defence for this woman he had known for all of a few hours, when, instead, he said, "Alright."
Moving away slightly, Lori looked up at him, taken aback, "What?"
Glancing at her from boring steadily into Daryl's eyes, he answered, "Fine, she can do it." He gestured to Jeanie, whose eyes and mouth were wide in her disbelieving surprise, "You can go with him – but he'll be responsible for you." His gaze sharpened, and he turned to the man, a low growl biting through the air, "If anything happens to her, it'll be on your head. Got it?"
Scoffing derisively under his breath, Daryl asserted, "I'll look out for her."
Shane held his gaze for a moment more before backing off slightly, nodding slowly, satisfied. The tension began to drain away, leaving a lightness in the air as Jeanie's face brightened, her posture straightening as she grinned widely. As a sort of conclusion, a peace-offering after such a furious debate on her new life, Shane came forward to her as conversation began to ease back to normal at the camp-fire, everybody pretending they hadn't been sitting for ten minutes solid listening in on the argument as a few walked round to the parked Hummer and started to unload the boxes.
Just as he began to speak, Jeanie abruptly stuck her hand out, at which he stared for a second in surprise before grasping it and shaking it firmly, a relieved smile breaking on his face at the lack of bitterness in her expression as he spoke, "Welcome to our camp, Jeanie – I hope you find comfort here."
Releasing his hand with a good-natured smile, she replied, "Thank you, Officer Walsh."
Laughing slightly, he corrected her, "I'm not with the Police Department any more, as you could probably guess – call me Shane, and feel free to speak to me any time."
Nodding, she answered, "Sure, Shane. Thanks again."
He nodded, taking one last look at her before turning and going to Lori, who stood off to the side, Carl at her hip and talking with her as he glanced round at Jeanie. Behind her, she felt Amy's hand leave her arm as the young blonde came before her, quietly offering her apologies for any offence or upset she may have caused earlier, which Jeanie absolved her of, smiling kindly at her before the relieved girl gave her a soft hug, walking off with a wave to speak to her sister and Dale by the fire. Grinning gently at the Korean boy holding the box – Glenn, if she was right – as he awkwardly smiled at her, waving haphazardly as he unloaded some more boxes, she looked to Daryl, who was leaning back on his haunches, silent, as he looked out at the activity bustling around them.
After a pause, they both turned and began to walk to their small section of the camp, Daryl able to tell from the bags forming under Jeanie's eyes and her small, withheld yawns that tiredness was sinking its hooks into her. By the time they reached their separate tents on the edges of the little community they now both inhabited, she wasn't even bothering to hold them back anymore, her face stretching and falling intermittently when she let loose a low breath, Daryl glancing back at her every so often when she trudged round the small pile of rocks arranged in a circle around a burnt patch of grass, used as a fire-pit.
Reaching the outside of both their adjacent tents, they heard the low, garbled words murmured by Merle in his drug-induced state drifting out, directed either towards some imaginary busty blonde or the haunting ghost of their father punctuated every so often with a loud, howl-like snore that sounded frayed at the edges from all of his years of abusing cocaine. Paying no attention to the self-assured whine of 'Merle'll make you scream, baby', she turned to him.
In all her young years, Jeanie had never liked to beat around the bush – and she had felt herself doing it today, much to her guilt. Thinking back to all the times she had spoken her mind, getting straight to the point, she frowned sadly into herself, wondering if all the things she had went through, all the things she had seen out there, had forever damaged who she was. It was with a hint of shame that she met his eyes, furrowed her brow and mumbled a soft, "Thank you."
There was a silence. It seemed as if she was never going to get an answer when his distinctive drawl suddenly pierced the air, blunt, "Say what's on your mind."
She looked up, uncertain. Moving forward again, coming slightly closer to him, she fidgeted before speaking, voice louder and more to the point this time as she came right out and asked, "Why'd you do all that?"
He didn't pause in his reply, "What."
Taking pause, her head came back slightly, "Defending me. Deciding to take me with you hunting."
His silence weighed heavily on her. Eyebrow furrowing slightly, his eyes maintained their hold, "Why do you need to know?"
This halted her. Shutting her mouth, blinking at the realisation that she didn't really have an eloquent reason, her shoulders twitched up, "I don't know. I just-" She paused. Looking back up at him, her voice dropped slightly, "I just didn't think anyone would do something like that, anymore."
The sounds of rattling tin cans and conversation over new discoveries in the boxes in the Hummer started to wind down behind them, conversations strolling slowly to a stop as people retired for the night, a symphony of yawns harmonising around them. They remained where they were, standing outside their canvas homes, staring at each other, wordless. Jeanie's brow dented as she stood, uncertain of what to say, the sound of a few, careless birds gently swooping through the trees overlapping with the faint whispers of night-time farewells as her thoughts deluged over one another, worthless and vague.
"You deserve a chance."
Her eyes flicked up, struck by his exposed affirmation, catching in the glow of the otherworldly moon hanging ominously in the sky, illuminating them in a barely telligible glimmer, the fire at the centre of the silent camp now a smouldering pile of dying embers. He was staring at her still, his eyes never having seemed to move since they had arrived at her eyes, studying her for something she couldn't quite grasp.
After what seemed like an eternity of silence, he finally removed his gaze, moving away as his vague enigma of a continuation drifted through the thick night air, "That a good enough reason for you?"
She didn't respond. The unshakeable feeling of missing something important overwhelmed her as the niggling whisper of words being left unspoken slithered through her mind, holding her mouth shut and her eyes focussed.
Looking back to her, his eyes shaded, Daryl gave her a nod. Without another word, he turned and walked away, pushed aside the material to his tent and closed it behind him without a backwards glance. Standing still, watching after the spot where he had studied her so intently, Jeanie smiled.
Turning away, she retreated to her tent and the hope of dreamless sleep.
Well, I hope that was to your liking everyone. :) Have no fear, it's not gonna become one of those fics with a female Daryl carrying around a crossbow and being, for all the world, exactly like a Mary Sue - things won't turn out like you think (hopefully, haha :L). Next chapter shouldn't take so long, cause I know the direction I'm going in for sure now - like I said, everything's changed from what I had in mind before - and, unless another bout of writer's block hits me, you'll have your next fix soon enough.
Did you all like how things are going with Jeanie and Daryl? Think things are going at a good pace? Like how they interact? If you have any comments or pointers, please feel free to leave a review and give me some sweet, sweet encouragement (it's like a drug, I tell ye!) :D
Til next time, everybody
Minty-Nutmeg
