Songbird sighed and leaned back against Freddy's headboard, looking at the file she'd opened on her computer. One of the long winter days when there'd been nothing to do, she'd hassled Daryl into letting her play reporter. She wasn't reading the words on the screen as much as relieving the conversation.
"So, I say the questions and you answer them," she grinned at him across the bunk bed.
Daryl shrugged and said, "All right, but I'm sayin' there's a better way to use the time."
"We can do that after. Question one: who was your best friend growing up?"
"Didn't have one."
"You had to have had a friend! Everybody has friends!"
"Not me," Daryl replied adamantly. Then he looked thoughtful and amended the statement, "I guess Bo. Bo was kinda my best friend. That count?"
"Sure! Why?" Songbird gave him an encouraging smile.
"I don't know. He didn't knock me around like the old man…he talked to me…told me a lot of shit about tracking and survivin'. I guess you could say he's the reason I'm still alive."
"What's one of your favorite memories of him?"
Daryl rubbed his chin and then said, "We went huntin' right after I got Mary Jane…before he got to where he couldn't walk real far…I brought down a buck. He said he was proud of me. That I was the one who was gonna make somethin' of hisself. It was the only time he ever said anything like that."
Songbird could tell Daryl was uncomfortable so she said, "Okay. On to other matters! Who was the first person you ever had a crush on?"
"You darlin'," Daryl grinned at her and reached out, dusting the tip of her nose with her braid.
"Be serious," she pretended to be mad, but she knew he didn't buy it.
"Where you gettin' these questions anyway?"
"It's an old quiz thing I found on the Internet and typed up," she admitted. "Me and River were quiz addicts."
"So you've filled it out?" his interest was piqued.
"Yeah. If you answer all my questions I'll let you read mine," she bargained.
"How many questions?"
"30"
"Fuck that! I'll answer 5."
"Dang. Okay, that's actually more than I figured I'd get out of you," she smiled at him. "So? First crush?"
"Miss Malone."
Songbird arched her eyebrow.
"She was my first grade teacher. Nice ass."
"Tell me about her," she poised her hands over the keyboard.
"Hell I don't remember much about her. Lookin' back on it, I reckon she was young…it was probably her first job. She had black hair and brown eyes; she always wore skirts. Pretty smile."
"Did you get in trouble in school a lot?"
"That a quiz question?"
"No. It's related to the subject at hand," she answered primly.
"I didn't get in trouble for a lot of the shit I actually did. Got a lot of stuff pinned on me…the Dixon curse. Guilty until proven innocent…which I ain't never been," he grinned at her.
"What do you dream about?"
"Nothin' usually," he answered honestly. "When I dream it's usually about you…and it's usually nightmares."
"That's not flattering," Songbird was surprised.
"I mean somethin' bad's usually happenin' to you. Like when I was sick I kept dreamin' you were dyin'. Before you I'd have a random dream every now and then, but I never been the type to dream every night…at least not dreams I remember."
"Aw. I wasted a question."
"Damn right," he gave her another smile. "Two more and we can get down to somethin' way better."
"I'm typing all this," she informed him. "History will know you're a horny bastard."
"I'm good with that. I'm 36, my wife's 18…history should understand just fine."
"A person you always wanted to meet and never did."
"My Great uncle Jake. Bo said sometimes that I reminded him of his brother. I'd like to know how."
"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"
"What the hell you mean? I see my reflection. This ain't a bad vampire movie."
"So go for some symbology."
"The word you're lookin' for is symbolism. What is the symbolism," he wriggled his eyebrows at her and she grinned back.
"I still don't know exactly what you're talkin' about."
"How do you see yourself? What do you think about the man in the mirror?" she persisted.
Daryl shrugged and said, "Sometimes I think I'm gettin' old," then he corrected himself, "I know I'm gettin' old…and hell, I ain't never been happier to think about dyin' of old age…"
He cleared his throat and looked down at the blanket, picking at it in one of his many nervous gestures.
"How'd you answer this question?" he asked, looking up at her.
Songbird read him the response she had typed in, "When I see myself in the mirror I see someone who has no real skills. I don't see how I'm going to live this life forever. I don't see how I'm ever going to be normal…how I'm ever going to find a good guy who doesn't mind dating a circus freak. But…I also see someone who loves her life. I love the big top, Papa Tony, River…and Ben. I can't move forward and it's impossible to go back. I see someone who wonders a lot about where the journey will take her and whether it's the direction she wants to go in. I see someone who isn't quite in control of the life she's living."
"I see a man who ain't never been in control till now," Daryl said slowly. "A man who don't know what's it's like to look at a woman and see love on her face. A man who don't know what to do when people depend on him. Someone that maybe nobody really likes…that maybe people just wanna use. Somebody that ain't never been part of a team; somebody that ain't sure that's what this is. A man who ain't never felt at home. Somebody who don't really know his place."
In the quiet that followed those words Songbird remembered saving the file, closing the computer and getting to her knees in front of Daryl.
"With me," she'd said. "Your place is with me. You're my normal and I'm your home."
She closed the computer when Freddy walked in. She wondered what Daryl would think about her and Freddy sharing a bed. He probably wouldn't be super happy about it…but what else was there to do? She couldn't sleep alone and it wasn't as if she could ask Freddy to sleep in a bunk bed just so she didn't have to be in a room alone all night. She didn't nurse any illusions about not telling Daryl when they found him…if she didn't blurt it out in an unguarded moment Freddy would be sure to do it for her.
"Ready for it?" Freddy asked, sitting on the side of the bed and leaning over, unlacing his boots.
"Ready for what?" she idly watched his back muscles contract under his skin and the slight flex of his spine as his fingers worked at the knots in his boot lace.
"Hell," he said cheerfully. "The hoard. The masses. The walking dead."
"Now that's poetic," she replied. "I'm ready to hit the road, sure."
He lay down with a sigh. She hadn't so much as cracked a smile.
