Kill me now guys, it's ok. I'm stupid late with this and I realize that. In part because I am slogging through my two hardest classes of my entire college career thus far, and part because I really struggled with where to take this chapter, and the story in general, but I have a pretty clear idea now, so I hope this doesn't happen again. I love you all very much, and for everyone reading and reviewing, you guys are the brightest spots in my life. Thanks for sticking with me.
"We can't stay here."
Rick tried not to think of the implication at wanting to murder the voice that was shattering his already shaky calm, and instead picked his head up and searched out the source of the noise. It was Ivy, restlessly pacing around the basement, her silver hair cast in a watery gold light from the lanterns scattered around their shelter.
"Why not?" Rick responded. Nobody else seemed to have the energy, or the will, to answer back.
"Those men that I killed were part of a larger group. We have tangled before, and they've been trying to kill me since I got here. There are only so many places in this city where I could hide, it won't take them long to find us. We must go."
"There is nowhere for us to go," Maggie said weakly. Her morale had significantly improved since Glenn's eyes opened a few hours ago, but she was still probably the most rattled of them all. With every breath she took her shoulders still quivered.
"Yes there is. I have a cache far outside of the city that the hostile ones don't know about. If we can make it there, we will be safe."
Daryl raised his head from where it was hanging between his shoulders. "How do you know they don't know about it? Or won't follow us?"
Ivy's jade green eyes whipped towards him and narrowed. Her teeth clicked together angrily, but there was a measure of respect that passed between them.
"You don't survive in this world for this long by engaging everyone you meet. All they want is for you to leave. This is their territory, they just want you out. They're not interested in wasting resources on vendettas. Petty human emotions like that died years ago." At this her face turned to stone and Daryl's gut twisted uncomfortably. She didn't even sound human herself, and he was beginning to doubt that they really could trust her.
"My cache is an hour's drive outside of the city, there's nothing but empty fields around it for miles and miles. There's no resources out there to pursue us for. None that they know about at least." Her teeth showed in an evil looking smirk.
"I don't know if Glenn can even make that trip," Benjamin said wearily. "He can barely breathe on his own, and the equipment we have is ancient. If it stops working, there's no way I'll be able to revive him."
"If we stay here, we are literally fish in a barrel, Benjamin." Ivy rounded on her old friend and he seemed a little shocked by the use of his full name. "If we stay here, we will die. I will leave, with or without you in tow."
Rick and Daryl's eyes met across the room and Daryl shifted to get up to his feet. Fox, who had been leaning against him all this time, stirred weakly. She hadn't moved since she'd come back down into the basement with him. Now that Daryl was moving she tightened her grip on him, her fingers digging into his arms and clenching down, not wanting him to leave.
"I'm just going to talk to Rick," he soothed.
She opened her eyes and pushed herself upright. "Then I'm coming too."
Normally he would have argued with her, but he saw that bone breaking resolution in her eyes and knew better. Not only would she make them all miserable, she'd just come anyway. The only way she was going to be able to cope with any of this was by having as much control as she could. He wasn't going to deny her that, not after everything she'd been through. Her world was slowly but surely crumbling around her, he wasn't about to refuse her the only thing that was going to get her through.
Rick, Daryl, and Fox climbed the stairs of the basement and made their way out into the yard. They left the basement doors open as they inhaled some of the cool, metallic tasting morning air, grateful for the relief in temperature but still exhausted. The sleep they had managed to get had been thin and fraught with nightmares.
"I'm starting to rethink this whole thing. I don't know if we can trust Ivy," Daryl started.
"She saved our lives." Rick's voice was unyielding. "Hadn't been for her we would have died back there. Her and Michonne."
"You're both right. But I agree with Daryl, something's off about her. She doesn't talk like the rest of us." Fox glanced at Daryl and though her green eyes were dull from stress and exhaustion, they were bright enough to have an edge.
"She's been alone for almost twenty years. Can you imagine what any of us would be like if we'd been away from people for that long? I'm amazed she remembers how to speak at all." Rick waved his hand carelessly and then ran his long fingers through his hair. "I've been thinking about the group that attacked us too. It only makes sense that they would regroup and come looking for who was responsible for killing some of their members. It's what we would do."
"We wouldn't have come out guns blazing and shooting other people to shit for no reason," Daryl growled. "We don't have time to speculate on motive. We have to make a decision whether to trust Ivy and whether to risk moving Glenn." Rick's voice cut like a knife in its urgency and Fox shifted uncomfortably.
"Then I think Benjy is the one to talk to." Daryl locked eyes with Rick. The hunter could tell that his friend was rattled still, but he was doing the best that he could given the circumstances, and Daryl really couldn't ask anything more than that.
"Let's go." Rick turned on his heel and went back downstairs and after a beat where Fox and Daryl met eyes briefly in silence they followed. Michonne was watching all three of them very closely but not saying anything, even as she ran a sharpening stone against the edge of her sword. Ivy was in one of the other corners, pouring over some of the supplies on the shelves. Rick picked his way through the basement to where Benjamin was crouched over Glenn.
"Can we move him?" Rick asked, his voice growing thin and weak.
Benjamin sat up and pushed his hair out of his face and let his still bloody palms rest on his thighs. "I don't want to if we don't have to, but I don't think we have a choice."
"So you trust her? You think she's right about the group that came after us before?" Daryl questioned.
Normally with Daryl's tone so stern Benjamin would have shrank back or flinched in nervousness, even after having known Daryl for so long, but something about the night's events had pushed away the cowardice that normally clung to Benjamin. He stared Daryl right in the eye, not yielding in the slightest, his thin jaw hard as he answered.
"I don't have to trust her to know that if it had been our group shot to shit like she did to them that we'd come looking guns blazing. Look at what we're going through just to find Luna and Judith." He paused and a grim look crossed his once well bred, high pedigree features. "As far as going with her to wherever she plans to run off too…I don't really think we have much choice. If she was going to hurt us, she would have just left us to die in the shootout, not taken us here in the first place. And if she was just trying to save me…she could have pulled me out of the firefight on her own easily enough. Or kidnapped me. I wouldn't put that past Ivy, even in the world that was." He peeked out from around Daryl's shoulder to catch a glimpse of her for a second before looking back at Rick. "She's obviously been through hell. She lost half of her hand for fuck's sake, God knows what else has happened to her. I doubt she's the same person that she once was. But if she's going to help us, I don't think we're in a position to turn that down."
Rick rolled it over in his mind. He always took the group's opinion into account when he made decisions, but he generally relied more on people like Daryl or Fox if he was uncertain about which path to take. Asking Benjamin's advice was new to him. But he was the one with first hand knowledge of the two most pressing situations at hand.
Rick stood up to his feet again and turned. "Ivy. We're going with you. Now where is it that you're taking us?"
Ivy's eyes gleamed like jade in sunlight, despite the darkness of the basement. "I'll be on my bike. You follow me. But first, there's no reason not to bring some firepower of our own with us."
She grabbed several large duffle bags from underneath one of the tables and began loading them with all of the guns she had. "All of these are fully loaded. There are clips and boxes of bullets at the cache we're going to."
Maggie rose up to her feet and rounded on Ivy. "Where did you get all of this?"
Ivy's eyes narrowed, her silver hair falling limply around her thin face. "A large group causes noises. On my own, I can slip in and out of camps without much trouble. I've been stealing bullets and guns and anything else I need for years."
"So you've been in the area a long time?" Daryl asked.
Ivy shook her head as she zipped up one bag. "I only stay in a place long enough to build a cache, then I move on."
"How long have you been here?" Michonne questioned. She rose off the stool she'd been resting on and slid her sword back into its sheathe across her back.
Ivy tilted her head and muttered something that wasn't English, her brow furrowing deeply as she concentrated. "Hard to say. The air was hot when I first came here, there had been no rain for a long time. Even the river was almost dry, but there was enough left to survive on. The river…always stay near the river." She recited it like a mantra and turned away from them, muttering to herself in that foreign language again.
"What is it she's speaking?" Daryl asked, glancing at Benjamin who'd begun to gather his tools.
"Russian," replied the medic. "Ivy's full blooded Russian. I met her in Moscow when I was a foreign exchange student there. She came back to the States with me"
"Mail order bride?" Michonne asked with a teasing smirk.
Benjamin dared to roll his eyes at the katana wielding woman. "Hardly. Although we had to do some bribing and some convincing of authorities. I was there for a semester abroad and she flew back with me." He glanced at Ivy out of the side of his eye again and sighed very softly. Fox's interest pricked as he watched the medic; he had lived with them for almost twenty years but even on the long drinking nights he'd been reluctant to talk about his past, his life in the Before, and she had always been curious about why. And now even more so his connection with Ivy.
The group made short work of packing up their things, loading them into the vehicles with practiced ease. Then they turned to the matter of moving Glenn. Between Daryl, Rick, and Carl, they were able to get him up the stairs and into the cab of the truck rather than the tail-bed this time. The whole time he drifted in and out of consciousness, occasionally trying to speak to Maggie, but mostly just remaining glassy eyed. Once he was in the cab and Maggie had his head in her lap the group Rick turned to Fox while the others split up. He made sure Daryl was out of ear shot when he spoke.
"If something happens…if something goes wrong…" Rick's voice was very quiet and he wouldn't look directly at her, shifting his gaze between the ground and the front of the convoy where Ivy was adjusting her baggage on her bike.
Fox tilted her head to the side. "You're asking me if I'll kill Ivy?"
Rick gritted his teeth. "Not kill. Just…make sure she can't hurt us. For whatever reason."
Fox shrugged her shoulders. "You think she'll turn on us?"
The man's eyes darkened markedly. "I don't know what she will or won't do. She's not coming off all that stable to me. We have to look out for ourselves. Benjy will just have to understand, if it comes to that."
Fox nodded. There was a response on her tongue but it died before it could escape her teeth. Rick was trusting her with this, and she would not fail him if it came to that. She dearly hoped it wouldn't, because Ivy was a valuable asset in more ways than one, but she also trusted Rick's instincts that perhaps Ivy needed more than one pair of eyes watching her closely. Rick nodded once more to her and then Fox retreated to climb back into the tail bed of the truck with Daryl.
"What was that about?" he asked.
She considered not telling him but in the end decided to, in part for her guilt at snapping at him earlier that night. He listened to her explanation with quiet understanding in his eyes and Fox sighed softly at the end. "And I'm sorry," she added.
He tipped his head to the side. "About what?"
"Ripping your head off earlier." She shifted on the bed of the truck but forced herself to look into his eyes. To her surprise they were not edged with anger or aggravation, but calm and acceptance.
He offered her a very small smile. "When are you gonna learn, Dahlia? It doesn't matter how much of a bitch you act like. You're not going to drive me or anybody else away."
She crawled across the bed and almost fell into his lap when the truck hit a bump and propelled her into his chest. She scrabbled back to try and keep from jabbing her knife belt into him but he caught her by the shoulders to steady her, helping her to lean against the sides of the truck as they trundled along. She turned towards him and smiled. "Thank you," she murmured with a ragged kiss against his lips. He responded lazily, exhaustion curbing every motion.
"You taste like whiskey," she noted softly.
Daryl shrugged. "When we planted the winter wheat I saved some of it and brewed a barrel's worth. It's down in the cellar at home."
"Who taught you to make moonshine?" she asked with a yawn.
"Merle," he answered. "Merle and I used to make it when we were low on cash. A hundred and fifty proof for a lot cheaper than the local bar or liquor store."
"Christ, that's basically poison," she said with a quirked eyebrow.
Daryl snorted and ruffled her hair. "Remember when we caught Luna stealing from our stash?"
Fox tipped her head back with a quiet sigh and a nod. "Yeah I remember. Your whiskey and cigarettes."
Daryl remembered that night all too well. He'd come home from working in the fields, Fox was still gone a supply run, and he'd found a fifteen year old Luna and a sixteen Judith both swaying back and forth, laughing with drunken abandoned, a two thirds empty bottle of whiskey on the floor and half smoked cigarettes. He kept a careful watch over both girls until Fox and Rick returned from the run and then sent Judith home. He nursed Luna's basic alcohol poisoning more gently than Fox did, who snapped and scolded and out right yelled at Luna while she was doubled over heaving her guts up throughout the night. The lecturing had continued into the next morning while she was laid up with a severe hang over, but after a few days when she was back on her feet is when Daryl took her on an all day hunt to talk to her one on one.
"I handled it pretty well I think," Daryl said quietly. "Better than my old man handled me anyway."
Fox stroked his arm with calloused fingertips. "She never did it again after that I noticed."
Daryl kept his mouth shut, be he knew partly the reason for Luna's compliance; every so often he'd let her take a drink from his brew. He knew Dixons' naturally had a taste for whiskey, or any mind or mood altering substance, the best way to handle it was just to control it and keep an eye on her and not make it worthwhile to go behind her parents back to get a hold of it. He promised Luna that he would keep that little secret from Fox though. And even though it was more or less pointless, he still held onto that secret.
They drove for a good solid hour at least before Ivy's bike and the truck veered off the asphalt and began to off road through a field that ran along side the river that was also hemmed in by a thick swath of trees. Ivy's bike slipped through a very narrow gap in the tree line that the vehicles made it through, although branches snapped and scraped at their sides.
They emerged on to the edge of the river where the trees thinned and Ivy stopped her bike. The engines of the vehicles died and everyone piled out and assembled in front of their guide. Ivy tilted her head to the side while she looked at them all, as if not quite sure they'd had this many with them when they left. "I built my cache into the side of the river bank. It took a long time, but there is room enough for all of us. Come. I'll show you where and then we'll figure out how to get Glenn inside."
She led them down a shallow sloping portion of the bank and had there been rain the river water would probably come up to their calves, but as of now it was only at their ankles. They sloshed through the water for about ten feet until they came to a messy tangle of brambles and thorny branches which Ivy deftly pulled side to reveal double basement style door with a combo on it. She spun the combination and slid the lock off and threw the doors open. They'd have to duck to get inside, but the entrance was about the width of a car.
"Holy shit. How did you build this?" Benjamin whispered.
Ivy grinned a little. "It took a long time, but after almost twenty years of laying caches down in the most out of the way places you get good at it. I dragged pieces of metal and dug them into the side of the river bank and welded them together so they would hold. The door was the hardest part really. The rest just took a lot of manpower. Come on."
She led them down into the cache and upon reaching the bottom lit several lantern so they could see. The air was musty and damp but all the surfaces themselves were dry. It obviously wasn't built to be inhabited, there was not much by the way of living space, but the back wall was lined with hung carcasses and burlap bags of preserved canned food that would feed a group their size for six months, and a single person for well over a year. Dug into the earthen wall were alcoves that held plastic bags and as Michonne came over and inspected one she tipped her head to the side in curiosity.
"Guns?"
"And bullets. The plastic protects the metal. That shit will never degrade. Ever." Ivy snorted. "Come on, we can lay Glenn out at the back, it's the furthest from the water of the river."
Maneuvering Glenn into the cache took some doing but in the end they managed, the Asian giving a heavy groan by the time they set him down. Benjamin immediately began to check his vitals and while the rest of the group settled in, claiming small slices of space for themselves while Ivy set about using some of the cache's stores to feed them. They dug into the offerings with ravenous abandon, and Ivy consented to let them eat their fill rather than strict rations. "You all look like you're on your last legs," she noted.
"You have no idea," Benjamin panted. He was out of breath from having wolfed down food so fast that he hadn't really stopped much to breathe. All of them were in a similar state, even Rick, who had eaten very little ever since this whole shit storm had started. Only Michonne didn't eat like a rabid dog at a fresh kill, although like the rest, she ate as much as she could. Daryl was beginning to see many similarities between who he had been Before and her; she was quiet, rational, much more intelligent than she let on, independent, and brave. When the rest of the group was settling into the cellar to finally get some sleep, he helped her dispose of the bones from some of the preserved animals and fish they'd been eating.
"Thank you for what you did. For helping Fox and Rick," he said quietly.
She turned to him and the smallest smile was on her face. "I wasn't about to try and come back knowing I'd let the two people most important to you die." She became a little less offbeat when she spoke next. "That's not her real name, is it?"
Daryl shook his head. "No."
"Why won't she use her real name?"
Daryl shrugged his shoulders. "It's not who she used to be. That's what she tells me anyway."
Michonne's lips twitched. "Some part of that person is still there though. I know you know her real name. Rick does too now. If she really wasn't who she used to be Before she would never have told you her name at all."
Daryl nodded, slightly amazed at her insight, and chastised himself for treating her the same way a lot of people used to treat him. "The only one who's probably nothing like they used to be is Ivy."
Michonne shook her head. "I doubt that. And that worries me."
"How long until we can travel?" Rick's question was directed at Benjamin who was sitting on one side of Glenn's shoulder with Maggie at the other. It was about noon or maybe a little after and the group had finally managed to get a some decent sleep and were feeling much more solid and rational than they had previously. Glenn's condition was holding steady, with Benjamin monitoring his vitals frequently just to keep tabs on him.
"At the pace we were before? Its hard to say. I really wouldn't want to push anything hard until the suturing I did in Glenn's chest has had a chance to really heal. It's all a gamble what I did, I don't even know if it's going to work. We're not out of the danger zone yet, not by a long shot. He's stable for now which is a good sign, but if we go tearing off into the blue we're risking undoing everything." He paused for a minute and did some mental calculations. "I'd say we're looking at least two or three weeks before we can move."
Rick sighed heavily. "Then that's what we'll do." He turned to Ivy and addressed her directly. "We'll help you with anything you need. Food, water, patrols, keeping watch, anything. We'll pull our weight."
She nodded. "Good. It'd be nice to have some extra help. This cache is just about done, and once it's all squared away it'll be time to move on."
"So is that what you do? Just move from place to place, hole up for a while, and then leave?" Maggie asked quietly from where she was leaning up against the wall.
Ivy shrugged. "In a sense, yes. I find a suitable spot, lay down a cache, and then move on. I have safe houses like this all over the country."
Now Benjamin turned to her. "What happened to you, Ivy? I tried to get you out…what happened?"
She glanced at him and twitched her lips into an unsettling expression. "I do not wish to relieve those years. Though there were moments that made life bearable, those memories are filled with pain." She paused for a moment and exhaled slowly before meeting Benjamin's eyes again. "I'll tell you what happened to me, just because it might somehow benefit you later on." She tipped her head back again. "What I wouldn't give for a shot of Stolichnaya." She looked back down at them and settled into her skin once more.
"After I left you the night before the world ended I went back to my place. Two of my flat-mates were ill, they'd been bit, but nobody knew what it meant. I was getting ready for work when they turned, killed our third roommate, and then came after me. I beat them bloody but they wouldn't die. The chair leg broke off when they crashed into it and I grabbed the end and stabbed them in the head. That did it. My third roommate turned just as I had finished off the first. I killed her, grabbed my stuff, and ran for it."
"The streets were fucking hell. Everyone was running around like mad. Someone hit me with their car as I was crossing the street, and when I fell I broke my phone. I could see that you had called but I couldn't respond. I tried to get through by payphone but the lines were completely jammed. It was hell. Millions of people all tearing each other to pieces. I heard something about the National Guard coming to close down the city, but I couldn't get out in time. I was hiding in Central Park, trying to avoid looters and muggers and anybody else taking advantage of the chaos. The biters were everywhere though. I spent the night hiding in a tree and they were clawing all over the base of it trying to get at me. I'm pretty sure I would have starved up there if my first group hadn't found me and killed them all so I could get down."
"They took me in. We moved from apartment to apartment, using the places people used to live to barricade ourselves in, moving whenever it got too close. We ran through the supplies so quickly it was amazing none of us starved to death, but eventually they were all picked off from bites or other survivors until it was just me and two other guys. We ran down into the subways and found shelter there, at first. Until we were mobbed by a horde. My new friends were ripped to pieces but I got away."
"I didn't come above ground for weeks after that, I used the supplies I found in the subway stations and metro shops to stay alive. I knew I had to get out of the city but I didn't have any sense of direction yet, I was just trying to stay alive. I had a gun but couldn't shoot for shit yet, and I didn't have many bullets to practice with. I found my second group while I was learning the subway tunnels. They taught me how to shoot, how to make quick raids above ground to bring back supplies, and they also had a map of the city's subway tunnels, and a plan to get out of New York. We were making preparations to leave when this unfortunate accident happened."
She rolled back the sleeve on her left arm and showed them a very nasty, gnarled scorch mark on her bicep. Running through the middle of the burn mark was a thin white rope of scar tissue that wrapped about halfway across her arm.
"We were coming back from a run and as we were running back into the tunnels one of those things grabbed me and scratched me. Now we all knew what that meant. You get scratched or bit you die. But the leader of the group suggested we try to cauterize the wound, that if we did it quickly enough it would stop the spread of the infection. So they held me down and gagged me and took a blow torch to my arm."
Benjamin winced, his skin turning a sickly shade of green. Fox shifted and Daryl blinked his eyes in affirmation slowly. He knew all about that kind of brutal yet effective medicine.
"At first we weren't sure if it worked, because I started to come down with a fever, but it broke after a couple of hours and I was fine. I think a combination of the two tourniquets that were tied above and below the wound, along with the blow torch, killed the infection."
"I'm amazed it didn't spread though, even with those measures," Benjamin said softly.
"The parasite is incredibly aggressive. As soon as it enters a host it searches for the brain."
Ivy nodded. "I was lucky. Most of my group was killed getting out of New York. There was almost twenty of us when we started. By the time we made it out of the state, there was less than ten. That first winter was brutal. We lost almost half of our group to starvation or infection of just regular diseases, not the plague. Our leader decided that to survive we had to make a break for it and go South. We did, and at first we thought we had a safe place to stay in Virginia, but we were ambushed. The hostiles killed all of our men, execution style. No mercy, no bargaining, no nothing, just clean shots to the back of their heads while they were on their knees. There were three of us women left, including me." She looked up and her eyes took on a vacant expression. "They raped us all. And wouldn't stop until the biters invaded camp because nobody was on watch. The biters ripped everyone apart but I personally killed a couple of those motherfuckers before I stole a car and ran. The rest of the group was dead."
"After that I kept to myself. I stuck close to the coast for a year before I found a group that I could actually trust. They were more evenly balanced than any of the ones I had encountered before. Men, women, children, elderly, even pets. They had reclaimed a little neighborhood in Florida and were doing alright for themselves. I was close to dying by the time I stumbled on their doorstep. I'd gotten some kind of sickness but they had a doctor with them and they patched me up. I lived with them for close to three years and at first I thought that maybe we could make the world as it was. We had food, water, medicine, even some solar powered luxuries. We had a wall to keep the biters out, we worked together as a group and protected each other."
"What happened?" Benjy asked very softly.
"A storm," Ivy said softly. "It must have been a hurricane. An awful one. It ripped down the wall and the biters got in. They destroyed everything. Half our group was wiped out within the first twelve hours after the storm. At that point there were so many bodies rising that we had no choice but to flee. We couldn't keep them back…" Ivy shuddered and rocked back and forth before she sighed weakly and looked back up. "We fled back into the wilderness. We lived on the lam for a while. It was then that I lost half my hand."
"You were bit," Michonne guessed.
Ivy nodded. "Ripped a good chunk off my hand. Our doctor told me if I cut the bitten half off at the nerve I might have a chance. So I did."
Benjy's skin tinged green and though he didn't show it, Daryl felt his stomach turn. Merle had cut his own hand off with a rusty saw…he couldn't even begin to imagine how badly that must have hurt. Ivy flexed the three remaining fingers on her right hand and shrugged. "When our doctor was bit in the ankle we tried to amputate his foot, but it was for naught. He died and I shot him in the head."
"Eventually we were all picked off until it was just me and one other survivor. Winter came and we were so hungry I was certain that we were going to starve to death. We found an animal that had died from cold before us and the carcass was rotted and already being picked at by buzzards. The meat made us ill but we were still alive, but some part of her had died inside. I left in the morning to try and find fresh water and when I came back I found her hanging in a tree." She trembled a little, her voice thin and weak. "So as to not use a bullet and draw any biters in the area towards our camp before I was ready to get away."
It took a long minute before she got herself together enough to keep going. "We'd known by then that no matter how you died you came back. I put her out of her final misery and then left. And since then I've mostly been on my own. If I find other people still alive and they are good I try to help, but most often, they are vicious and cruel and would use me for everything I had and leave me to die by the side of the road. I made it my mission to try and always have some safe place to go to, no matter where I happen to be. So when I find a good place, I build a cache." She reached inside her vest and retrieved something with shaking fingers, a piece of paper that when she unfolded was a map with at least a dozen little circles drawn on it in blue ink.
"You've got stores in all these places?" Rick asked with a gasp.
She nodded. Daryl stared at the map for a while and then looked up at her. "How'd you manage to collect supplies like this?"
She shrugged a little and took the map away, as if not wanting to expose it for very long. It was obviously precious to her. "I've been at this for almost twenty years. At first it was slow going, learning where a safe place to build was, how to acquire the stores I needed, but since then I have learned well. I don't store water, it takes up too much space, I try to always build within a short distance of a source of fresh water." She trailed off and began to mutter in Russian, but this time she recovered herself. "Now, you haven't told me what you all are doing out here."
Rick glanced at Carl for a minute, as if reassuring himself that his son was still there before he answered. "My daughter, Judith, and Daryl and Fox's daughter, Luna, were kidnapped. We believe that they're still alive and being held at the CDC in Atlanta. We're on our way to retrieve them."
Ivy's eyes narrowed. "Taken by who?"
"A man named Jenner," Fox supplied. "The same man who is responsible for this." She tapped the scars on the side of her face and her expression twisted into something evil. "His continued harassment of us was not on purpose I'm sure, I was scarred before Luna was even born. She's seventeen, almost eighteen, now."
Ivy tipped her head to the side. "Why did they take them?"
"We're not completely sure, but when we first encountered Jenner he was hell bent to find a cure for the plague. We think he's using them to experiment on for the same goal," Rick answered.
She turned her attention back to Benjamin. "And you will go with them to Atlanta?"
He nodded. "They are my family now. I've been with them since the first winter of the outbreak."
"Then I will go with you as well, if you would have me," Ivy murmured softly.
"Why?" It was not Rick, or even Daryl to question her, but Michonne.
Ivy met eyes with the black woman and in them was a measure of suspicion but also respect. "I have lost everything," she said simply. "The world Before is dead. But I'll not so lightly let go of the ghost of what has returned to me."
She turned back to the rest of them. "Sleep a little longer, you have earned it. I will watch over you. And when you wake you can plan your next move." She went to another little alcove of her cache and retrieved a second map, this one without the notations of her caches and handed it to Rick. She retreated and left them to their own devices but was not surprised when the light, almost nervous footsteps of the medic followed her up.
"Ivy," Benjamin murmured. She turned back to him, and now that the sun had risen he could see the full breadth of what had befallen her.
Ivy had always had a stiffness to her that was probably a product of living hand to mouth for most of her life, but the end of the world had destroyed any small amount of softness that she had ever had. She was lean to the point of gaunt, her once blonde hair turned fine and completely silver. The hollows of her eyes were deeper, the string of her muscles more pronounced. The way she held herself physically, always ready to spring out of the way of danger at a moment's notice was such a sharp contrast to the way he remembered her, cool and confident, unafraid of anything having already escaped the dregs of a Russian neighborhood far tougher than even the streets of New York. She was nothing like the woman he remembered and in some ways that hurt his heart far more than having believed her to be dead.
"Do not weep for me, Benjamin," she said quietly. "You cannot change the past."
He hadn't realized his eyes were brimming with tears until she'd spoken. "Ivy I'm so sorry," he breathed. He dared to try and approach her and she flinched back from him at first, afraid to let him get too near. When she did allow him to come closer he wanted desperately to touch her, but afraid to do so, afraid she would be as cold to the touch as the sheen of ice that coated every word she spoke.
He was surprised when she closed the gap between them. She pulled him in by the wrist and since they stood at roughly the same height she was able to lean her forehead gently against his, a mimic of the same embrace she had held him in that night so long ago, the last time she had seen him.
"We have all lost what was," she said softly, speaking in Russian now. It took him a long second before his brain was able to recall the translations and the words to respond in kind. "But I have the ghost of what remains in my hands." She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. "I forgot everything else. Names, faces, dates, places I once knew, they are gone, I do not remember. But I remembered you. I saw you in my dreams, though gave up hope long ago that you were still alive."
"I'm so sorry for everything that happened to you, Ivy," he said again, his arms encircling her as well. "But if you stay with us, we will protect you. These people that I am with now, they are good."
Her lips twitched into the barest grimace of a smile as their eyes met. "I know. That is why I intervened. Though had you not been with them, I would not have brought you back here."
He nodded slowly. "I never thought I'd see you again."
She smiled sadly. "You have not," she breathed. "The girl that you knew is dead. I am who remains. But I will be for you what I can while I still can."
He held onto her so long the sun began to make them overheat but he didn't care. He didn't think the others would begrudge him for it. "No, Ivy," he whispered into her hair. "I can bring you back."
She smiled sadly and combed her fingers through his hair and then ran her palms down his shoulders and arms. The soft, slightly trembling flesh from his youth was gone, replaced with steely wry muscle born of survival and stress. "No, Benjamin, you cannot. But you have mourned once already. Do not do so again. I have you for only as long as Fate dares, do not waste the time crying for what you cannot change."
"Don't be so sure I can't change you," he challenged, but his tone was gentle. "I've changed too you know."
She pulled back and looked at him with a thin, wry grin. "Show me," she dared.
He'd of never had the guts to do it in the world that was, but he didn't figure he had that much left to lose now, and even though he was shaking he leaned into her and kissed her. It was awkward, slow, forgetful, too rough as all the memories began to flood back in, the taste of sand dry lips and exhaustion, wide fearful eyes and twitching muscles. Both their brains skidded to a halt as they slammed together. Benjamin was pretty sure she would slap him and thus was very surprised when she gripped him tighter and pulled him down to the ground and they rolled together in the dry grass on the edge of the river.
Much later that night when Ivy took Rick and Carl on a sweep of the nearby territory for a patrol and more fresh water from the river, Benjamin was leaning up against the wall of the cellar, letting his eyes close every so often. He'd already tended to Glenn and Maggie was at his side keeping a close watch on him. He had just about drifted off when he felt eyes on him. When he looked he saw Daryl staring at him with a knowing look.
"So you and the Rusky huh? Maybe you're not queer after all, Blondie."
Benjamin rolled his eyes. "Says the man who took almost six months to sleep with the woman who shared his tent every single night."
Daryl's eyes went wide for a split second. "Wait, you knew about…"
Benjamin snickered. "Everybody knew." He nodded to Fox who was asleep against Daryl's side. "She comes strolling back in with a shit eating grin on her face like she won some big bet and you can't stop making eyes at her. I knew you for all of a day and I figured it out."
Daryl rolled his eyes. "Tricky little woman," he muttered.
Benjamin tilted his head. "How you mean?"
Daryl glanced down at Fox. "She kept saying that everybody else in camp thought we were screwing around already, so if that's what was stopping me it was a moot point."
Now Maggie snickered a little. "You're not that mysterious, Daryl. Everybody knew you were as chaste as a flower girl. Fox might have been a raging ball of normal human hormones but you?" she quirked an eyebrow and tried valiantly to stop from laughing and wasn't able to.
"At least we didn't get caught half a dozen times a month. You'd think someone was paying you and Glenn to put on a show," Daryl shot back, but it was playfully.
"Oh don't even get me started on how many times the rest of us were trying to stuff anything that would fit in our ears to drown out the sound of you and Fox going at it like ally cats." She pretended to grimace and covered her ears with her hands for a second.
The conversation led to a spell of reminiscing that even Michonne joined in on every so often, and when Rick, Carl, and Ivy returned Fox woke and also added her own humorous input. After a while they pulled out the map and began to strategize how they would make their way to Atlanta once Glenn was fit enough to travel. Ivy consented to let them make use of the strategic points on her personal map where her caches were located and probably for the first time since they'd started this borderline insane mission, there was genuine hope that they had something far more waiting for them than a lost cause.
Brittney: Awesome chapter! Luna and Mal? I am liking this already (hopefully it happens) Keep up the wonderful work!
Ahh, will it or won't it? It's an interesting dynamic to play with, that's for sure.
lunacy: He's falling for her and she's starting to fall for him, both without even knowing it. I wish he'd of let her keep the knife, it's special to her.
If not falling for, at least becoming more curious about the other, and it's no surprise really. They've shook up each other's reality a lot more than anything else that's ever happened to them before. As far as the knife, Mal doesn't quite understand as much what it means to her, because he doesn't place sentiment on things like that, but perhaps Luna can teach him…
Emberka-2012: The Luna is very observant and likes to play with the mind of other people. Mal is clearly interested in her, and even admires her character. It seems there a smell of love in the air.
Ain't that the truth? Luna loves to dig under Mal's skin, just because she can, because it's the only form of power she's got over him. And the funny thing is, Mal likes it. He's been so used to basically answering to no one and no one really getting past his defenses that he's intrigued by anyone who can, especially the firecracker that is Luna.
RedneckBunny: Oh noes! Are we gonna see a little somethin'-somethin' happen with Mal and Luna?! That'd be great. What would their ship name be?... Muna? Lal? :-) Can't wait for more of everything you write!
Oh boy, ship names already. I have no idea what their ship name would be….I'll have to think about it, but there's no guarantee that it'll set sail, because Luna's got the gold medal talent level of ruining a good thing, and Mal is a cagey, tricky guy that probably shouldn't be trusted…