A/N:
Trigger Warning: This is a dark chapter. While not graphic and Sophia is entirely safe, it features the Claimers and is told from Sophia's POV.
If that could potentially cause issues, please skip to the summary at the end.
October 6, 2010
Sophia empties the pecan picker into her bucket again, grinning that the bucket is nearly half full. This is some of the easiest gathering she's ever done and entertaining to boot. Duane's halfway across the yard they're in, sitting on the steps to the back porch and drinking a bottle of water.
With Merle out on another search for his brother, and hopefully by conjunction, Sophia's mama, Shane brought them both into town while he gathers supplies. Well, technically, Sophia's gathering pecans. Duane's the lookout for any walkers.
It's a momentary distraction that makes Duane miss the strangers' approach. Sophia just barely catches a glimpse through the fringe of her hair in her eyes. She's not sure what instinct possesses her to pretend she hasn't seen them, but she turns her head enough that her lips can't be seen.
"Duane! Hide! Now!" she hisses. She's been seen, but the younger boy hasn't. Her radio is with her pack, which Duane snatched into the bushes with him. She prays he remembers the emergency code - and to keep it silenced.
He does as she orders, rolling into the overgrown bushes by the steps with easy obedience. Sophia rolls the pecan picker again, keeping her eyes hidden under the shaggy drape of her hair.
"Hey, boy! Where's your people?"
She straightens, glad the guise of being male seems to hold steady for everyone who doesn't know her already, like Merle. Flicking her hair back, she shrugs. "Around. You looking for a camp?"
"Might be." He's acting all friendly, but enough of his tone reminds her of Ed that she wouldn't trust him even without Shane and Merle's constant drills to be paranoid of strange males. The fact that the other man with him ducked into the alcove formed by the next yard's azalea bushes and fence definitely sets off warning bells.
"Well, you stay put right there, and I'll call my dad over to meet you."
"No, I think I'll come over there to wait for him." It's a challenge, because the man keeps coming closer. She drops the pecan picker and draws, getting the Walther leveled in time to fire, but the man ducks.
It doesn't save him entirely. She sees his shoulder rock with the impact of the .22 bullet, and he screams. That's when she realizes she missed one of the strangers, because she's grabbed from behind. There's a painful impact and then… darkness.
When she wakes, her head is throbbing like nothing she's ever felt, and a small hand is patting her shoulder. She can hear a child's voice saying, "Oh, please don't be dead. Please don't be dead."
She blinks, flinching at the light, and hears a little sob, followed by, "He's not dead."
Once she can focus, she can see two small kids, younger than Duane. She's rolled against a large dog crate, the kind used for the really big breeds, like Danes. The reason all the kid is doing is touching her shoulder is because she can barely fit her hand through the gaps in the crate's bars.
Sophia struggles to remember all her lessons. Observe. Learn. Then react.
It hurts like utter hell to move her head, and she can feel the stickiness of what's probably dried blood down the left side of her face. Her hands are bound behind her, but an experimental tug shows her that whoever did it is no expert. There's enough give that she might work her way free, but not while she doesn't know what is behind her. Wiggling her feet shows her that her ankles are bound, too.
Focusing on the kids, she realizes they're wearing dog collars. Both of them are filthy, and their faces tearstained. She fights off the sense of rage that induces and takes a deep breath to steady herself, just like Michonne taught her.
"Hey, kids. Where are we?" she asks. She can smell urine on top of general body odor and the screaming ball of fury in the back of her mind builds.
"I don't know," the kid who spoke before says. Sophia thinks that kid might be a girl, but it's hard to tell for sure with the hair cut short like Sophia's is. "They ran out of gas. Half of them went out looking and came back with you."
Sophia wishes them luck. There's not a drop of viable gas anywhere in the county seat here unless it's squirreled away in a locked garage they haven't accessed yet.
"Do you know where they're going?"
"One of them said something about a town to the south." The kid whimpers. "That buys kids."
Sophia allows herself a minute to mentally run through every filthy phrase she's ever heard. With Merle's mouth, that's a lot. It buys her time to think.
"Was one of them wounded when they came back?"
The kids both nod. "He was dripping blood everywhere. It made Joe really mad, cos he said Uncle Lou is too stupid to live and that Harley and Billy are too for not doing a bandage."
That's good news, because if he was dripping blood, that leaves a trail. She smiles slowly, even though it hurts her head to do so. "My dad will come for me. He will save us."
"You still have a daddy?" the second kid says, looking pitiful. "Ours died and Uncle Lou doesn't want us."
"I do. And he'll come, I promise you." She can tell that her belt knife and gun are missing, just from how naked her hip feels where the gun rides and that she's not laying on any hard items on the other side. She wonders if they found her boot knife, but she can't quite tell. "Are any of them paying us any attention?"
The older kid shakes her head. "No. They tied something on Uncle Lou's arm and then Joe led Dan, Billy, and Len out to look for gas. Harley's supposed to be watching us and Patrick, but he went into his tent."
"Patrick?" Oh, Jesus, is there a third kid around here?
"Yeah. He's older, like you. What's your name?"
"Fee."
"That's kind of a funny name for a boy. I'm Molly, and my brother's Luke."
"Molly, if I roll over, is anyone gonna notice and get mad?" She doesn't want her hands exposed to the camp or whatever this is when she works on freeing herself.
"No. Uncle Lou's already pretty drunk. He wouldn't even notice one of the bad ones trying to bite him right now."
Sophia wriggles and manages to turn herself over despite the throbbing pain in her head. It gives her a good view of the camp, and from the looks of it, they've been squatting here in town a day or two. She knows this yard. It's on their list for future supplies, with nothing urgent they wanted right now. She bites her lip against the pain from the cut on her head being rubbed into the dirt.
Observe. Learn. React.
The dog crate that is holding the two children is against a metal shed, the kind that people stick their lawnmowers in. She's been rolled against it, ignored for whatever reason that passes for logic with these assholes.
The other kid mentioned is definitely older, probably older than Sophia herself. Before she can wonder why he isn't saving the little ones, she spots his ankle - and the chain. He's literally leashed to one of the vehicles, complete with a lock on the damned chain looped around his ankle.
The seething wrath that adds to her already ignited temper helps her ignore the pain as she dislocates her left thumb, just like Merle taught her. When she asked the man why he didn't escape the handcuffs the same way, he gave her the longest, most serious look she's ever seen on him and told her to stay the fuck away from drugs.
It's equally painful to reset the joint, but she can't wait to do it back home. She's certain to the core of her being that Shane's coming, and she needs to be prepared to help him. Easing her hand down to her boot, she grimaces when the knife's gone. She likes that knife. It's Shane's.
Patrick catches her movement and his eyes widen behind the cracked glasses. She raises her finger to her lips, praying he's not somehow brainwashed to like these awful bastards who are caging and chaining children like animals.
He looks down, nodding as if to himself and sits against the wheel of the truck he's chained to. He wraps his arms around his knees and peeks up at her.
She can't get the remaining rope completely loose, but with her hands mostly free, she eases her belt buckle open, finding the little clasp that releases the buckle from the leather. If her luck holds, the little knife Merle and Shane brought back from a local knife collector's house as more of a novelty will give her more advantage than she has right now.
It cuts through the rope easily, and she stuffs the loose rope in her pocket. She sits up, keeping the knife carefully out of sight. When there's no movement or reaction, she frees her ankles too, hiding that rope away in another pocket.
"Hey, Molly? Is your uncle a good man?" Sophia can't imagine he is, not if he allows this treatment of his own flesh and blood.
"No. Not anymore." She sobs, quietly, like Sophia used to when Ed was still alive and being quiet when you cried was the most important thing in the world.
"Alright." She eases to her feet, fighting the urge to vomit from the pain in her head. She knows Shane's going to find her, knows it in her very bones, but he didn't teach her all he taught her for her to sit around like some fairy tale princess. She unlatches the dog crate, feeling unbelievably sickened that it's not even secured. These kids are so petrified they can't even think of escaping.
The nausea passes, and she creeps across the camp to the older boy. He's quiet as she checks the lock at his ankle. "Do you know where any wire is?"
He nods, unkempt dark hair framing gaunt features. "Back of this truck is a lot of junk."
She leaves him to pull two pieces of wire from the debris. Merle showed her this with bobby pins, but the theory is the same. It takes her four tries, because her head hurts and her hands shake, but the lock pops open. His ankle is so skinny she can feel all the bones.
Patrick stares at her in shock. She realizes he didn't expect what she was doing to work. "I need you to grab the kids and take them along that fence to the next house. There's a storm shelter there and those lock from the inside. Don't open the door unless it's me or my dad. His name is Shane."
"Aren't you coming with us?" He sounds so terrified of his pending freedom that she feels tears prick her eyes.
"Not yet. I gotta help my dad. He's going to be coming to find me." And she can't leave two men as bad as these to maybe follow them or to hurt Shane.
"Okay. Storm shelter. Lou's in the truck and Harley in the blue tent. They put your gun and other stuff in the other truck." He creeps across the camp and coaxes the kids out of the crate. When Luke can't seem to believe he's free, Patrick lifts him into his arms and carries him to safety. Molly follows, darting worried looks back at Sophia.
In the distance, Sophia hears a muffled gunshot. She prays it's Shane and not one of the other men firing a weapon. Uncle Lou is passed out in the seat of the truck Patrick was chained to, doors open for a cross breeze. From the blood soaking the bandage, she can tell none of these monsters know anything about first aid. She considers taking his pulse before remembering he kept his family in a fucking dog crate.
Plunging the buckle knife into his unprotected eye should be horrifying.
Instead, it doesn't feel any different than when she lays a walker to rest.
There's another gunshot and then the best sight Sophia's seen since that night at the cabin in the woods.
Shane's found her. But she can't run to him and cry out that she knew he would come, because there's still another man alive in this camp.
But she eases to the rear of the truck, making sure he sees her. He stiffens when she points at the tent, signalling one. His enraged expression reminds her of the cartoons they show of a bull about to charge at a matador, but he nods, acknowledging her warning. His clothing is covered in blood, and she thinks about the fact that she only heard two gunshots with four men out of the camp.
It's probably the same as the blood on her hands, sticky with goo that isn't just blood, isn't walker blood, and she's going to just not think about it being in someone's eyeball less than five minutes ago.
The next gunshot isn't muffled, too close to be confusing about its direction.
"Sophia!" His voice sounds awful, like he almost can't manage to speak, and she runs to him, folding into the crushing bear hug with enough relief that it almost fades away the pain in her head.
"I knew you would find me." Her grip on his sturdy frame is equally tight.
"I would search to the end of the world to find you, baby girl. Let's get out of here before the gunshots attract walkers. Duane's locked in the storm shelter at the house we were in."
She laughs a little hysterically that Shane hid Duane away the same way she hid away the other kids.
"Fee? Are you okay?" Shane lets her go to start looking her over for injuries. She sees him swallow hard at the gash at her temple. "They died too easy," he says, voice raw with anger.
"They did. I rescued kids. I sent them to the storm shelter." She points a trembling hand at the open dog crate. "Two of them were in that."
"Fucking bastards."
Sophia agrees with that completely. "My stuff is in the other truck," she mumbles. She wants it back, because it's hers.
He doesn't let her go when he goes to retrieve the bag. She stuffs her holster in her waistband, not wanting to rethread the buckle knife while it's covered in the monster's blood and goo.
"We'll go get Duane and the truck, then your foundlings," Shane explains. She nods, flinching when the motion hurts her head.
She's held tightly to him again, a kiss pressed gently to the top of her head. He's shaking, and his voice is thick with unshed tears. "This was too close, Fee, too damned close."
"You came for me."
This is what she trusted he would do, when he told her the awful thing he did to save Carl. If Shane would sacrifice a mostly innocent man for someone he loves, she knew he was coming for her.
She knows now that she's capable of the same.
A/N:
Sophia is spotted by the Claimers while in town with Duane and Shane. She wounds one of the men, but is captured and carried back to their camp. When she wakes, she's tied up next to a dog crate with two other children. The kids tell her that the group catches children to sell to another group, so she escapes, frees the children, and kills one of the two men left to keep watch over the children. Shane eliminates the men who went out searching for supplies and the other man left behind.
While this is the group that had at least one rapist and a pedophile, Sophia is claimed under their rules by one of the other men, thus why she's left to the consequences of her concussion and generally unharmed. The Claiming is not explained in this chapter, but will come up in the followup chapter with Shane and Michonne as they care for the children Sophia rescued and Patrick explains life among the Claimers.
All three children are canon children from the prison era, with different backstories. Like some of my other stories, this one has gone pretty much rogue from canon for season three/four, so expect in this and its partner story to see characters appear out of order for seasons or even geography. :)