MarionArnold - Haha! Yeah, those damned turkeys...elusive and shifty birds.
Violeta27 - I can tell you're enjoying this silly little fanfiction, because you're actually reviewing. Means the world to me. ^_^
Ehehe, getting curses in my chapter titles past the fanfiction censors pleases me...
Chapter Four: Fils De Putain
**Daryl**
He didn't know what the hell had gone wrong exactly.
If he had to make an assumption, he'd say things went sour the instant Rick decided to take the prison.
Sure it was a good idea and once settled it was ideal, but the place had been nothing but bad luck for them since they got there. Maybe the farm had spoiled him. Maybe he got to fat and contented sitting around the safety of the farm that after all that the prison seemed like hell with it's hard floors and cold drafts.
Of course he wouldn't have made any other different choices than the ones Rick had made, but the whole situation was shitty therefore shitty outcomes were all they would find.
They had fallen on hard times during the winter, no one had any hope as they struggled and scratched to make it through the cold months, but the spring came and they found hope again in the form of high walls and bars on the doors and windows.
Daryl Dixon of all people knew that hope liked to kick you in the balls when you got too confident in its certainty.
When they had lost Lori, T-Dog and Carol all in one day, he had thought that maybe the world they were struggling to survive in finally had gotten the best of them, when it took someone as sweet and gentle as Carol, he knew it was a miserable, bastard of a world. Even worse than it was before.
But then he found her and that little fucker hope was back, tapping on his temple, reminding him that it was there.
He knew then that things would get worse. Hope was like that.
Sure enough, Glenn and Maggie were gone, this new woman arrived with trouble written all over her, the Governor, Woodbury, Merle, things came crashing back down on him and hope once more fucked him over a barrel without any lube and laughed about it.
He had thought he was good as dead when he realized that his legs had stopped working for him in the woods as he carried Merle's sorry ass from Woodbury, but that little asshole hope showed up in the form of a soldier boy stepping out of the forest, heading for them and once again Daryl knew no good would come of his arrival.
Sure enough, the prison was empty by the time Daryl made it back.
Well, empty was an awkward word to use. It was full of walkers, but they were nothing, so it was empty.
His first thought – after a long, mental 'fuck' – had been of Carol. Nobody else in the group cared for her. He knew that. They'd notice her gone if the laundry wasn't done or their food tasted like shit, but they didn't worry about her eating or sleeping enough. They weren't the ones who perched themselves on a counter top in a homey RV just to be there for her while her baby girl's grave was being dug, they didn't look half as hard as they should have for Sophia, they didn't offer Carol a kind distraction from her sorrow and they sure as hell didn't make any attempt to hold her back when she raced to certain death at the arms of her walker daughter.
He often wondered why he had done all that.
That was something he didn't want to dwell on too much. He had no time for any of those soft emotions that would get him killed, not in the new world that was left to them.
Still, Daryl could recall the indescribable feeling of emptiness at the loss of her, when they had all given her up as dead. It had been as bad, if not worse than the feeling he had when Merle was gone.
As much as Daryl loved his brother - and he did - he couldn't deny that Merle did stupid shit, that there had been nights before the dead started walking around when he'd have to drag his ass out of bed to go down to the local police department to bail his brother out of jail. No, Daryl certainly didn't miss that about his brother. What he missed with Merle had been that extra pair of eyes to watch his back, that older brother wisdom that Merle did seem to have when it came to matters such as survival.
But with Carol, as the hours went on, as the days passed like all the rest, he found he missed her. He missed the moment when he'd come back from hunting and slip into the kitchens to hand off the field dressed critters he had caught then cleaned for her. That he had to give them to Beth, who somehow didn't give him the right kind of greeting that Carol had.
Carol had a way with her eyes of saying 'I missed you, glad you're back in one piece' that Beth just didn't. She was the only woman he knew who had ever actively sought him out. Most of the easy girls back home who came around were sniffing for Merle. But when Carol would repeatedly seek him out back on the farm, Daryl was at first suspicious - his default mode of anyone that wasn't Merle - then angry at her intrusion into his space. There was a reason he set his tent up so far from the others, but she didn't seem to get the hint. And it bothered him that somewhere deep, deep down he kind of liked that she came around, that she was unfazed by his hot temper. Over the winter she had began to develop a bit of a cheeky attitude towards him that he found unsettled his gut, but not because he disliked it. It unsettled him because he was actually a little proud of it. She went from this mousy creature who lost her daughter to this woman who he felt could most definitely handle herself. After Sophia he had worried that she'd go the other way, she'd become too overconfident in her strength like Andrea, or collapse in on herself and give up.
He was never more relieved after the farm was lost, then he was when she sidled up beside him as they were about to settle into a temporary place for the night and asked him if he'd show her a few things about guns.
Of course he acted like it was a pain in his ass, but he never refused her. He wanted to be the one to teach her all the tips and tricks she'd need, because he wanted to be confident in her ability to handle herself.
If Carol was dead for good this time, however, he swore hope and everything related to it would die as well. He'd make sure of that. Sure, there were things even a Dixon couldn't kill, but he'd find a way. There would be no more of that shit around him.
That weird Cajun fellow wandered out of the church where he had retired with the old nun, heading for the infirmary a little quicker than his usual easy pace and Daryl glowered at the back of him.
The youngest Dixon had a problem with authority figures (not to the extent his brother did, mind). It was bad enough Rick was an ex-cop, but that fucking marine with the slow Cajun drawl was quickly rising on Daryl's list of people who needed their noses broke.
It wasn't like the man gave him attitude, Daryl just didn't like the way the man looked at him. Like he knew him or knew what he was thinking. It was annoying as hell and Daryl wasn't going to put up with it much longer. That was the entire reason he avoid Dale as much as he could, the man knew too much about people without knowing them at all.
The image of Dale raising his forehead to the barrel of that fucking gun came to mind and the twig he was working on snapped in his grip. Daryl shook his head to clear his thoughts. Fucking world had gone to shit and he was daydreaming.
Turning the combat knife over in his hands to scrape sticky bark off the blade, he noticed there was a single word carved into the handle and lifted it into the light to read it better.
"Salt?" He snarled.
That fucking soldier was weird as fuck.
..-~-..
..-~-..
He was eating cold stew that a nun had brought him the next morning, when the soldier boy took a seat at his side, setting a handful of ruffed grouse pinfeathers down for him. All night he tempered the wood of his bolts over a fire, waiting for daylight and the feathers to finish his work.
"Couldn't catch the little fils de putain," the man drawled in this stupid accent of his. "Grouse feathers will work, yeah?"
Daryl nodded, barely chewing before swallowing his stew.
The Lieutenant gave him one of his all-knowing looks, before looking off to check on the nuns at the gates and on the wall.
Daryl eyed the man, putting down his empty plate. "Your dogtag says you're a Sergeant Major," he snarled. "You telling lies to make yourself feel better or what?"
The Lieutenant chuckled. "I was promoted on the field by the Lieutenant before me. Didn't have much time to get myself a new dogtag."
Daryl was silent, which was usually his way of letting someone go on without having to urge them. He wasn't going to give the Cajun a leg up in the conversation, but he wasn't going to stop him. The chatter kept his mind from wandering.
"He was bit." The man scowled at the grounds around them. "Think his name was Henderson. Second Lieutenant Henderson. Hell, I jumped over the Warrant Officer ranks, headed straight for Lieutenant. Ain't that something? 'Course," he added in his slow drawl, "the world was ending…so…"
As the man spoke, Daryl began to notch the bolts enough to attach the fletching.
"I suppose with the world ending, it makes us beggars into Kings, yeah?" The Lieutenant pointed out lightly.
Daryl snorted. "It makes fools into bigger fools with better ranks."
The Lieutenant chuckled then, it soon became a strangely innocent, half mad, half child-like cackle. "Possibly." He looked around them then, at the grounds. "What the fuck am I doing here surrounded by armed nuns?" He asked in mild bewilderment.
Daryl's mouth twisted briefly into one of his fleeting grins. Or maybe it was a grimace, he couldn't tell the difference between the two anymore.
"I mean, Jesus Christ, ain't never been in a church in my life and here I am, dead start walking around and I'm arming nuns and teaching them how to shoot. Maybe they'll make a saint out of me at the end of it all. I'll most definitely be defan then, yeah?" The man laughed a little longer at whatever Cajun joke he just made, before kicking a boot out and resting the other over it neatly. "So, what's going on? What's Woodbury? And why did your group kick dust out of the prison?"
"I wasn't lying about people breaking into tribes," Daryl muttered. "The assholes over in Woodbury, they got a nice little set up, walled, clean, safe. It's fucking suburbia over there. But their leader, fellow named the Governor, he likes to take things. His people get everything, other groups get rubbed out."
"Where's this Woodbury?" The Lieutenant asked.
"Down the highway a ways, I think if you keep quiet your group will be okay from them, though. You just have to be careful who you let in your gates and if you go into the towns to scrounge you gotta watch your back, the Governor's men like to nab people. Interrogate them."
"And you? Do we have to beware of your group?" The Cajun drawled, half teasing.
"Naw, Rick's protective of us, but he wouldn't ever take on another group unless provoked." Daryl studied the convent around them. "You did right by me and Merle, I'll let him know that."
"Rick your leader?"
"Yeah." Daryl glanced down at his work, then up at the Lieutenant. "He used to be a cop."
"So you ain't all prisoners? That's a big relief."
"Prisoners?" Daryl asked. "Only one of us is a prisoner, the rest of us just moved in this spring."
Running a hand over his face, the Lieutenant sighed heavily. "Okay, then I'm going assume since humanity has broken down and been reset back to tribal customs, I'm going to have to take a lesson from history and side with your band of Cherokees against the bigger force of evil."
"Don't need your help, be best if you just stay out of this mess," Daryl replied.
"Ah, but if I help you, then when we annihilate the common threat, we might be able to co-exist peacefully."
"Chickasaws and Cherokees, huh?"
"Exactly."
"Well then, best get your war paint on," Daryl remarked, pushing to his feet. "I'm going to find me some damned dental floss…"
"For what?" The Lieutenant stopped him.
"Have to attach the fletching somehow, don't think you'd have glue," Daryl replied.
The soldier boy patted himself down and pulled a box of dental floss from one of his many flak-jacket pockets. At Daryl's odd look, the Cajun shrugged.
"I like to have clean teeth on the go." He explained.
Taking the floss, Daryl scowled. "Sure you're from Louisiana?"
The Cajun tsked at him.
..-~-..
..-~-..
They approached the prison from the front gate, loaded down with enough supplies to last them a few days should they get cut off from their exit, but not enough to weigh them down terribly.
Daryl had piled most of the stuff on the soldier boy, seemed like he was used to dragging shit around on his back. He didn't care. If the idiot was dumb enough to want to involve himself in someone else's war, he could, just meant Daryl had someone to watch his ass, which was never a bad thing.
Not that he trusted the man too much, but he figured if the Cajun wanted to kill him he would have just left him in the woods.
"I figure if we take it slow," he explained to the soldier as they crouched just at the treeline, out of sight of the walkers. "Clear the yard first, go cellblock by cellblock, we might get most of them cleared out by nightfall."
"Naw," the Lieutenant said, pointing with his hand at the nearest watchtower. "You get me up there and I can do what I do best. I ain't so good up close, but give me some distance and you got good coverage guaranteed."
"No, the gun makes too much noise, can't risk it." Daryl argued.
"Don't matter much, we're going have one hell of a fight on our hands anyways, may as well do what I do best. First things first, Texian, someone's gotta get out there and close that second gate, gives us a bit more security, yeah? Before we're ready for the second wave."
Daryl eyed the distance between the two gates, Rick had run it before to lock up the second gate, but they had more people, more coverage last time. He bared his teeth, squinting at the yard and the twenty some walkers inside it.
"Okay," the Lieutenant made an adjustment to the plan. "Maybe I run it, you just lost half your blood supply, I'm faster on my feet, got longer legs to cover more ground. Can you cover me in the tower if I give you my gun?"
"No, I'll make the run. You just get your ass up in that tower and don't miss." Daryl grunted, handing off the pack he was carrying on his back to the man.
"I'd rather you didn't, capon, you look pale."
"I'll be fine."
The Cajun Dialect
Fils de putain - Son of a bitch.
Defan - Cajun way of saying deceased (literally means Sainted), often used before someone's name or title as in 'Defan Jean' or 'Defan Mamere'.