On the way back from fishing Lu and Kennedy kept playing their 20 question game. Kennedy was curious more about who she was before 'Z-Day' then how she came upon Kallenberg's land. It was sort of a tender topic, about the farm and the fire, so she didn't say much about it. Plus, getting to know who each other were in their 'past life' was more fun then talking about these darker days.
Kennedy told her about him and his son, Issac, always going fishing together. "He would've been nine this September." He didn't mention if he was ever married or about the Sophia-girl on his arm, though. He told her that he went to college for two years before he had to drop out because his mom died. He had to finish raising his little sister. After she herself went off to college he found out he was going to have a baby.
Lu told him completely bogus lie about how she was rasied with a mom and a dad who loved her to death and weren't crazy and losers. She had two brothers quite a bit older then her who were more into hunting and fishing and taught her everything she needed to know how to survive. She told him that they were so close they practically raised her and loved their baby sister and did everything they could to protect her through the appocalypse, failing to protect their parents. They ran into a nice group in Atlanta who she was just separated from after a nasty zombie-attack four months earlier.
"I don't buy it." He accused. "You're way to cold and brutal to have had to survive this long."
"A spoiled girl like me having to fend for herself for a change, it makes someone take a gander at their life a little differently. Makes them stronger, like a soldier."
They didn't see one walker on the way there or back either. It was a personal record of hers, not having to kill one walker in at least three days. They argued back and forth playfully for most of the ride back to Kallenberg's city limits. It brought her back to the day where she and Daryl would do the same thing, both ending it at a draw and leaving it there.
"Did you ever think about leaving your group?" Kennedy inquired.
Lu nodded but didn't tell him the whole story. " Thought I was strong enough to do so. My brothers would have. I almost did at one time..."
It was right after the group and the Greene's burried their dead, right after everyone found Sophia in the barn and Lu smashed her guitar. It was that same day Lu made a decision to press onto Fort Benning whether anyone was going to come with or not.
Actually she secretly hoped no one would even notice she was gone. After Glenn and Rick went off to find Hershel, Lu planned to take one of the horses-since one would be missed less then a whole vehicle-pack up her necessities and press on south-east until she found Fort Benning. Just slip away while everyone falls apart, no one would hardly notice her.
It was better then sitting here mourning over their dead. Everyone was dead.
Lu wrote a note and put it up with the picture of Sophia in the camper.
Dear friends and brother,
Gone to Fort Benning.
Take care of yourselves,
Lu Dixon.
That about sums it up.
She left it in the RV and went to gather up her things. She figured if she left before supper was started there'd be less of a chance for anyone to read the note before she got a chance to run away. When she made her way over to the stalls she thought about Carl. The poor boy didn't need to lose two of his closest friends in one day, but then she shoved that idea out of her head. They'll all be reunited again soon.
Lu sat in the stall with Nelly and the other one with the silly name, Sprout, and thought to write Hershel a note of appologies about taking his horse. She hoped at Benning they'd let her keep whichever horse she was planning to take, probably Sprout since he wasn't as skiddish as Nelly, and they won't plan on keeping him or anything.
Suddenly a shadowy figure threw open the barn dorn, stepped in and shut it with a loud thud. Daryl held Lu's note in his hand up at eye level.
"So this is what you do?" He threw it at her and stomped away only to turn back and charge her again. "You hover over Sophia long after we leave, disappear for forever, skip the funeral to throw yourself a pity party and now you're leaving because you want to redeem yourself."
"What the hell were you doing in the RV? Aren't you suppose to be making Carol cry or wander off by yourself, getting yourself killed?"
"I was looking for you! So I can give you a personal ass-whooping for all the shit you've pulled today. I have to watch you like a hawk because this is exactly what I was afraid you'd pull. Now what's this about leaving for Fort Benngin? Why am I the last to know?"
"You're the first to know!" She shot up off of her bench. "I was going to slip away quietly, have no one notice me until I'm hours down the road. I would be long gone doing what we should've done weeks ago. I wouldn't have been your problem anymore."
"Ugh!" He threw his fist down in anger. "You're so stupid, Lu! You never think this stuff through! First of all what makes you think after you forsake this group for your own naive game that they'll ever take you back? Even if you thought about leaving for Fort Benning, let alone actually packing up for it and ready to take Hershel's horse and… What happens if you go down the road? You actually leave without telling a soul and you run into another heard of walkers, or you get bucked off of ole Nervous Nelly leaving you stranded or for fuck's sake you-"
"Okay mom," She sneered. "Quit worrying about me, you're not my daddy. Hell, you're not anything but somebody I used to know. We may share the same blood type but that doesn't make us family. This is the most you've talked to me since you got shot in the head, and I made that attempt, and you were higher then a kite! I can't recall anything before that because living with YOU and MERLE…" She stepped back and put her hands up in front of her, "makes me want to forget."
"Forget what, Luie? All we've done for you?"
"All you've done to me. You may not realize it because that's what you grow'd up with. Raising a girl to believe it's fine to be pushed around by her father isn't right, Daryl! These people we're with now, that's a family and I see that now… I'm going to do right for them by leaving, to help them."
Daryl looked down at his rough hands and started picking at something on his thumb like he didn't care. "Forsake your last brother for a whole new family, eh Emma?"
The last time Daryl called Lu 'Emma' without 'Louise' behind it, it before they met with Shane's group. It was the time she fell off that hill cracking her ankle, Merle carried her to their camp all banged up and bleeding and set her in the box of the pickup. She specifically remembered Daryl calling her Emma a few times, sometime in there, as she was fading in and out of sleep that night. There was a good chance they'd loose her. They almost lost her.
Lu took a breath. "You could come with."
Daryl gave her a look.
"You should come with." She said casually. "Daryl. I need you to come with. I'm not loosing everything completely, not all in one day."
"You may have not grown up the way a kid should have but you're not a kid anymore. You've been the best father you coulda been looking at the way your daddy raised you and Merle. I can see it, my granddaddy, still living in Merle pushing ladies around and drinking until he can't see straight. I'm proud of you for that and it took me until the apocalypse to realize… everything. It took me til just now when you called me Emma to realize I don't want to loose everything."
He still wasn't convicned. She could see it in the way her looked at her.
"When I yell 'daddy' I yell it at you. When I run away form something I'm going to run to you. I don't want to be your niece or just another relative. I'm not your wife and I'm not your sister, I'm what you've raised me to always be. Your daughter... But I'm not yours." She backtracked as she saw his eyes lighten. "I shouldn't be your problem and I'm probably just wasting my breath telling you all of this. Spare me your childhood horrors and tell me if you're coming or staying."
"At least stay for supper." He replied after a long moment of consideration.
Daryl ended up coming to Lu later that evening after she failed to come join the group for supper. He told her point-blank that if she was leaving he was leaving too, just not with her. He'd go his own separate way, better that way. They'd probably never see each other again. If she'd stay though, he'd stay.
"If you get on that horse and ride away then I've failed as a father to you. If you stay I can finish raising you. Raise you right this time." He said. "Don't mean we're not going to have our differences though."
Those words was what kept Lu around.
Shane returned with Lori to the camp without Rick and Glenn. She didn't like Shane that much. He was a cop, for one, and knowingly looked down at her. Who and what she was; An unstable, redneck teenager whose 'brother' cut off his own hand. He mostly looked out for himself, though he claims to live for Lori and Carl, and didn't care for the group much, in her opinion. She was tempted to go out and finish the job he failed to complete: Bringing Rick and Glenn back.
Daryl told her to just cool it and just keep watch for them. It's what she was good at, waiting and watching.
"I stayed around though. Mostly for my brother. He, uh, sort of removed himself from the group after that though."
"Did that bother you?" Kennedy leaned forward while riding Nancy to look at Lu's face.
"I was sort of ticked at first but it's just the way he is. It's the just the way we're wired. Dixon's survival instinct you could call it. I'm just as guilty of it."
They rode on. "That's too bad."
"Not entirely."
