Things at the camp remained mostly uneventful. The 'walkers' as they were called, had apparently not ventured as far as the quarry, so it was reasonably safe. Kit was going to take her dinner away from the fire, like she normally did, but Glenn grabbed her arm and plopped her in between himself and an older man named Dale. "No way are you going to sit by yourself. Oh, and I'm only a couple chapters into Sphere and it is already just as good as anything else Michael Chrichton has written."
Kit wasn't very good at small talk, but she tried anyway. "How was your, uh, 'trip' to Atlanta today?"
He shrugged. "Uneventful, mostly. I went by myself, so I didn't have to worry about anyone else's ass and that was nice." He puffed his chest a little. "I am responsible for the chips tonight. I found a bunch of those variety boxes."
"I'll have to grab some Fritos." She then began playing with her hair, feeling a tad awkward. She wasn't very good at meeting new people and so she continually tucked her short, blonde hair behind her ears, though it was barely long enough for that.
The older man, Dale, decided to chime in. "Glenn tells me you have quite the book collection in your minivan. I'm glad that at least someone thought to bring literature for the end of the world," he joked.
"No pandemic apocalypse would be complete without some Bronte or Tolkien," she said with a still uncomfortable smile.
"Indeed. You know, my dear, there really is no reason to be nervous. Glenn and I don't bite. Hmmm, poor choice of words given our present situation," he mused.
"I'm not very good at meeting new people. Mostly because I never talk to anyone."
Glenn and Dale saw that she was joking and both cracked smiles. "I'm sure you'll grow comfortable eventually," Dale told her. The confidence he spoke with even made her feel a little less awkward. "Until then, Glenn and I will be here to help you out."
"Thank you." She really meant it.
"You can thank me by letting me peruse your collection. In truth, I'm very eager to see what you have." The old man's eyes twinkled with such genuine excitement, that Kit couldn't help but offer a genuine smile back. "See," Dale exclaimed. "You're on the right track already."
Daryl sat away from the group, as per usual. The girl didn't eat much. Under normal circumstances, Daryl wouldn't have thought much of it; after all, most women were fixated on keeping their weight down. There were a couple things that weren't quite right, though. Food was carefully rationed, which meant that no one was going to be gaining any weight anytime soon, so she shouldn't be worried about keeping the pounds off. Besides, it wasn't as if she was overweight. He remembered the pills that she took in the woods – the ones that Merle couldn't identify. He figured they might be connected, but he couldn't be sure.
That night, Daryl was sleeping pretty well and having a nice dream involving a little "Southern Comfort" when he heard some leaves rustling outside his tent. He sat up slowly, seeing that Merle was still asleep, but he continued to hear the very quiet rustling of leaves. Grabbing his crossbow, he followed the noise into the woods, thinking it might be a walker. He had a dim flashlight with him, so he could see the bastard if it was there. He heard something in the tree above him and immediately pointed his crossbow towards the noise, almost pulling the trigger. "Damn it, Kit! What the hell is it with you an' trees?"
He pointed the dim flashlight at the woman sitting above him. Like always, her response was brief. "Insomnia."
After nearly shooting one of the only people in the camp he didn't hate, Daryl didn't feel as if he would be sleeping any time soon, either. "Well I guess that makes two of us," he sighed. "Care for company?"
She looked very unsure before slowly nodding. They sat in pleasant silence in the tree together for quite a while and, oddly enough, when she didn't have to say anything, Kit didn't seem to mind being around him. The quiet suited Daryl well enough and he decided that he could definitely tolerate this woman. He hated to admit it, but Merle was right: she was pretty. That, paired with the fact that she wasn't annoying as hell, made for a very pleasant combination. "Read tha' book. Better than the other one, I'll give ya tha', but I'm still not a fan."
She shrugged. "You can't convert everyone, I guess." She remained silent for another moment before, for the first time since Daryl had first encountered her, she actually began a conversation without having to be prompted. "One nice thing did come out of the shitty situation, you know."
"An' what exactly is that?" Now she had piqued his interest.
She gestured towards the sky. "We can finally see the stars." For Daryl, the stars were nice to look at and all, but not anything to fuss about. He turned to Kit and saw that she received an entirely difference experience from the night sky. She was captivated, and it was her enchantment that caused the sides of his mouth to turn up a little. The wonder that she had was enchanting all on its own.
"I s'pose," he agreed. They sat there in silence again, listening to the cicadas, and Daryl had to wonder to himself why in the hell he found this woman so interesting. The way things used to be, they probably would have despised each other! From what he'd gathered, she was some sort of educated hippie. She didn't like hunting, she ran around camp making sure that they would 'leave no trace', and she read pretentious books. On top of all that, he was sure that she had been a democrat. She probably looked at him and saw an ignorant southern hick, undoubtedly a complete turn off to her. Why did he even bother?
He began to get down from the tree. "Look, Kit, don't go sneaking off to the woods, again. Next time I might actually shoot ya and then there would be all sorts of trouble. It'd be awful inconvenient to me to have to explain that away."
"I've been coming out here almost every night," she informed him.
Damn, he thought, this girl is quiet! "I'll keep that in mind next time I hear somethin', then." He nodded at her. " 'Night, Dex."
"Goodnight, Daryl," she replied softly.
It was early morning, before people actually had to start working and Kit was eating breakfast with Glenn and Dale. She supposed this would become a regular thing, but she found that she actually kind of liked them. She was nibbling a very small muffin, pondering how many preservatives must be in it to keep it from going bad for this long. "I used to have tea in the mornings," she informed them. "A nice earl grey to start the day."
"I always enjoyed always enjoyed a hot cup of coffee," Dale recalled.
"I miss actually being able to put milk on my cereal," Glenn said, a sad look forming on his face.
"Come on, guys. Let's get movin'!" Shane, who had somehow become leader, was cutting breakfast short this morning, much to the dismay of the majority of the group. Dale went to his lookout position on top of the Winnebago while Glenn scurried to his task for the day which left Kit a few moments to herself.
She took a little more time, cracking a few of her joints when she felt something hit her face out of nowhere. She looked at the ground and discovered it was a small bag of Fritos. Picking up the bag, she looked in the surrounding area to see Daryl looking at her. He passed her on his way to the woods. "You don' eat enough," he said flatly, giving her no chance to respond.
Her task for the day was relocating and organizing the supplies that Glenn had brought back from Atlanta the previous afternoon and it was a much more daunting task than she had originally imagined. Going through all the boxes took a great deal of time, but as she did so, she crunched on the Fritos that Daryl had given her.
Daryl returned from the woods around noon with various mushrooms. He would have to teach people which ones were edible and that was a thought that didn't exactly improve his mood. He would probably have to double-check what people brought back anyway. These thoughts were stewing in his head when he noticed Kit was having trouble lifting a box, which puzzled him. After all, this was the woman who could scale a tree with no problems. He strolled over and dropped the bag of mushrooms on the ground before taking the box from her because her legs were shaking and she looked like she might drop it. What concerned him even more was the fact that her legs continued shaking after he took the box.
She grabbed them, trying in vain to prevent the shaking, but it died down after a minute or so. "What the fuck was that?" he asked.
"Nothing." She quickly grabbed the box from him – quite the task as her forehead barely reached his chest – and she carried it to its destination with no problems this time.
"That wasn't nothin'." He followed her as she carried the other boxes over to the original one. "Ya looked like ya was abou' ta fall over."
"I didn't and I'm fine now."
The pieces of the puzzle were finally beginning to fit together in Daryl's head. She didn't eat much, she didn't sleep much, she had weird muscle spasms, and then there was the medication. He put it all together and came up with only one answer: she was sick. He didn't know what she was sick with, though it obviously wasn't the walker fever, but it was enough that it was affecting her. He didn't know what to say, or what help to offer and she saw the momentary look of helplessness on his face. "Soon, my legs won't be doing that anymore, so it doesn't matter anyway. Besides, I have things under control, so stop looking at me as if I could drop dead at any moment. I really am fine." He could see in her eyes that she was telling the truth and she genuinely wasn't concerned.
As she ate lunch with Dale and Glenn, Daryl approached her and handed her a granola bar. Their eyes met and they came to an unspoken agreement. If she took care of herself and ate more, Daryl wouldn't pester her. He left without a word, leaving Glenn and Dale absolutely baffled. "What was that?" Glenn asked.
Kit shrugged and claimed ignorance. "Who the hell knows? Daryl is weird."
That night, as she returned from a glorious bath in the quarry, finally feeling clean, she heard herself called by the last person in the world that she wanted to talk to. "Hey Sweet Cheeks, get that cute ass of yours over here." Kit reluctantly walked over to the area where Merle and Daryl spent their evenings, hoping that this would be brief. As she approached, Merle noticed her wet hair. "Damn! Too bad I missed that show, Sweetheart. Let me know next time you plan on skinny dipping in the quarry and I'll be sure to make a captive audience," he promised. The disgusted look that Kit gave him said it all.
"Tha' ain't why I called ya over here for. Take a chair. We haven't talked in a long time."
She sat down in a shitty folding chair across from the brothers, wary of the constellation of holes that adorned it. She began wringing her hands under Merle's gaze. "So how things been, Petite?" Merle used the name 'Petite' for her more often than any of the other nicknames and typically when he called her that it meant that he wasn't going to say anything too horrible.
"Fine."
"Only fine? I would have hoped that you would be having a dandy time here, just like that cop." Merle indicated to his right and Kit followed his stare to the edge of the woods where she saw Shane and Lori slipping away. "Now wha' do ya s'pose they up to?" he asked with false curiosity.
"Well they're not playing tiddlywinks," Kit replied.
This comment received laughs from both brothers. "Ya see Petite that is exactly why I miss ya."
"I hope her kid doesn't know," she said sadly.
"An' why is that?"
"Her husband, the kid's father, only died around the time when everyone was heading to Atlanta."
"I do love me a whore," Merle whistled. "I wonder if I'll get to ride."
"I'm going to bed." She hurried away, hoping that her next conversation with Merle would not be in the near future. Besides, she hated gossiping about people; it made her even more uncomfortable when talking with others. Besides, Lori seemed nice enough.
That night, Daryl had dreams about drowning in warm pools of mercury which just so happened to be the same color as Kit's eyes. He shot up from his dream, thankfully not waking up Merle, before deciding to take a walk.
Damn it all! Why couldn't he just forget that bitch? That pansy-ass college snob was a distraction, not to mention that Merle had noticed a couple of the glances Daryl had given her. He had never heard the end of it. She just wasn't worth it, plain and simple. Besides, she would never be interested in Daryl and they would never work together; they were too different.
He nearly had a heart attack when he heard someone ask "Can't sleep?"
There was no mistaking that voice. "Insomnia," he growled at her. Daryl looked up and, sure enough, there was Kit sitting a handful of branches above him.
"Care for company?"
He wanted to leave. He wanted to leave and never see her face again. But, silently cursing himself, he began climbing the branches again.
He wasn't going to say anything, but the events of the day were eating away inside of him and he wanted answers. "What did ya mean when ya said that your legs wouldn't shake no more?"
"Today was my last does of meds. I'm out."
"That chink is going back to Atlanta soon. Couldn't he get more?"
He heard a small huff escape her lungs. "It's not worth the time or the effort." She shot him an irked look. "And his name is Glenn."
He was done trying to help this girl so he wasn't about to argue with her, but he did have just one more question. "So what'll happen?"
Her face pulled a nonchalant look. "I'll have some mild withdrawal symptoms for a few days."
"An' then what?"
"I don't know. I might be perfectly fine, and I might not. I've been on this stuff for more than a year now. Regardless, I will be okay. It's not going to impair my ability to work because I found ways a long time ago to deal with this. It's in the past."
Daryl accepted what she said for the time being, and they both enjoyed the view of the night sky in companionable silence, their thoughts very far away from the world they currently lived in.