AN: Here we go, another little chapter.
I'll throw in a sort of general trigger warning. Carol is with Ed for a while here so that means that all Ed warnings apply. Domestic abuse/mentions of domestic abuse, etc. are possible and likely throughout the time that Ed is with us.
I'd also like to say that I'm going to be taking this story pretty much off path from the show. That means that there may be some things that are familiar from the show, but there will be a lot more that just aren't.
I hope you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!
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As soon as Daryl woke up he took his crossbow and crawled out of the tent. Alice was still asleep, but he figured he'd leave her there for the moment. It was likely the best sleep she'd had in some time.
When he came out it didn't take him long to find Merle. He was sitting down by the water, his feet in the water, watching the women across the way that were washing clothes and chatting among themselves.
"Merle!" Daryl barked as he neared the water. "Merle! Get'cha ass up. Let's go get some meat."
He didn't know if the place had roles or if people had jobs that they were supposed to be doing, but nothing had been assigned to them if that was the case and they had little more to offer to this group than the fact that they might be able to bring back some food.
Merle got up from where he was sitting and made a wide circle around the quarry sides until he finally reached Daryl, scratching at mosquito bite on his neck that he'd already scratched the blood out of.
"What the hell we gonna hunt 'round here?" Merle asked. "Fuckin' camp like this? Ain't nothin' worth eatin' within' five miles."
"Guess we goin' five miles out," Daryl declared. "We can't stay here an' expect not ta pull our weight."
Merle nodded and swiped at the bite that he realized was bleeding now.
"Where the fuck's Alice?" Merle asked.
"Sleepin'," Daryl responded. "Let her lie, I say. We ain't leavin', just huntin'. We'll come on back for her."
Merle nodded and made his way back up toward the tent. Daryl stood outside it while Merle stepped in, as quietly as he probably could, and came out with his boots and a knife.
"You gonna run up an' stab some damn deer in the head?" Daryl asked.
Merle chuckled and plopped down on the ground to put his boots on.
"Fuck, Derlina…ain't got no ammo for that gun no more," Merle said. "You gonna shoot it an' I'm gonna keep ya sorry fuckin' ass from gettin' chewed the fuck up."
Merle started scratching again and Daryl realized now that Merle might be scratching at mosquito bites, there were certainly enough opportunities for them to be leaving bites since Daryl was half eat up himself, but he was more than likely scratching at a lot of phantom itches.
He was detoxing…and that was a sure fire way for Merle to start clawing his skin off to try to reach the itches that really weren't even there. Getting him away from the camp would be a good idea at any rate, whether or not they brought any meat back.
As Merle was getting up from putting his boots on, Alice crawled over and stuck her head out the tent.
"What's going on?" She asked.
"We goin' huntin'," Daryl responded. "You stay here…we comin' back for ya."
"How long will you be gone?" Alice asked.
"'Til we get the fuck back," Merle spat.
Daryl shot her something of an apologetic look and Merle scratched more at the phantom itches, picking for himself another spot on his arm that he seemed determined to scrub until the point that it bled. Alice looked at Merle and then back at Daryl, nodding her head slightly. She knew what was happening to Merle too.
"We'll be back," Daryl repeated. "Keep armed…don't get killed."
Alice crawled all the way out of the tent and stood to her full height, scratching her fingers quickly through her hair.
"Yeah…you don't get killed either," she said. "Looks like I'm probably going to be doing some laundry…I do love domesticity."
Daryl nodded at her, not fully understanding the comment she closed out with a chuckle, and started toward the wooded area with Merle behind him.
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"Maybe we got off to a bad start," Alice commented as she approached the bunch of women who seemed to be staring at her but not really trying to communicate with her in any way or hold any kind of prolonged eye contact. "My name's Dr. Alice Walker. I answer to Alice, Al, asshole…anything really will do."
"Did you sleep well?" The laundry lady asked.
"You are?" Alice asked.
"Carol," Carol said. "Sorry…"
"It's alright," Alice said. "And yeah. I can't complain. I slept better than I've slept in a while. I'm sorry, I'm bad with names. Who are the rest of you?"
She got the round robin of names from them: Andrea, Lori, Amy, Jacqui…throw in Carol and those were her new companions.
"Nice to meet you all," Alice said, plopping down on the dirt by Jacqui's side. "Anything I can do to help?"
The woman named Lori got up.
"You can fall into my place if you'd like," she offered. "I've…I've got a few things that I need to do. I'll check on the children."
Alice slid into Lori's place and watched as the overly thin woman walked back up toward the main part of the camp. She fell in, not feeling entirely welcome yet, to scrubbing clothes with others, trying to copy what they were doing to assure herself that she was going to get things done well enough to perhaps win herself some sort of end of the world girl scout badge.
"Did you all know each other before this?" Alice asked.
"Amy's my little sister," Andrea offered.
Alice glanced up and searched for whatever resemblance she could find between the two. One was dramatically older than the other, clearly showing someone in the family was a surprise, but there was something of a resemblance there. It was as much as Alice had ever shared with her sister.
"Did the rest of you know each other? Or was it all just happy coincidence that you met?" Alice asked.
"No," Jacqui offered finally. "We didn't know each other. We met on the highway outside Atlanta. We've been here since they started bombing Atlanta."
Alice nodded her head.
When she heard someone bark Carol's name, Alice looked around. The man that was apparently Carol's husband, though she still didn't know his name, was trying to get the woman's attention. Carol scrambled to her feet, tossing something of an apology out to the other women who weren't quite as talented as she was at scrubbing clothes on rocks and scrub boards and scurried off in the direction of where the dirty asshole that Alice was pretty sure was a wife beater was waiting.
Carol gone, Alice shifted again and slipped closer to her spot, easing closer to the other women.
"Do we just pretend that we don't know what kind of man he is?" Alice asked.
She glanced around at the other women. No one was making eye contact with her. It was difficult to tell at this point if they were avoiding her eyes because they just didn't want her in their inner sanctum or if it was because she was threatening to call out the fact that Carol was wearing fresh bruises on all the visible parts of her body…and that meant that there was no telling how bad the parts they couldn't see looked.
"Yep? That's what we're doing?" Alice asked, deciding to talk to herself if no one else was going to chat with her. "That's fine…but it's pretty evident."
"You know," Andrea shot back at her, surprising Alice enough that she dropped the shirt she was untwisting from the tangled mess it had become, "I would think that you would respect the fact that she doesn't want it mentioned."
Alice cocked an eyebrow at the blonde.
"I respect her right to talk about it or not talk about it," Alice responded, "whatever she wants. But I think that kind of shit needs to be called out. He won't stop just because no one's talking about it."
Andrea looked at her like she had horns and scoffed.
"I don't think it's right, but what are we going to do? Put him in jail?" Andrea asked.
Alice curled her lip at the woman.
"Why are you crawling my ass?" Alice asked. "I don't even know you. No…I don't think we can put him jail, but we could do something."
She stopped, checked her temper, and shook her head. Finally she sighed and felt she could continue speaking with a clearer mind.
"I just can't tolerate that kind of thing," Alice said. "I wasn't trying to get off on the wrong foot. I don't know what the hell we'd do to the asshole these days. Unless shooting him's not out of the question."
That earned her a laugh, at least, from the woman who had identified herself as Jacqui.
"You know," Andrea said, "I don't support it either, but I'm really surprised that someone like you would be saying something like that…it's not like we can't see what kind of man your husband is. Which one is it?"
Alice wrinkled her nose in confusion at the woman. Clearly she was off to a bad start with the blonde, that much was evident to anyone even paying the slightest bit of attention, but she was also beginning to think that the woman might be suffering from heat stroke or something.
"What?" Alice asked.
"Which one's your husband?" Andrea asked. "Which one…"
Andrea dropped her voice.
"Hit you or whatever," she muttered.
It took Alice a moment, but finally all the pieces started to fall into place for her. She wondered now if the busted lip that she'd suffered, and kept busting back open one way or another, hadn't healed yet.
"I'm not married to either of them," Alice declared. "I'd be more interested in you and charming personality than either of them. And if you're referring to my lip, it was Merle. But he didn't mean to hit me."
Andrea smirked and rolled her eyes slightly and Alice laughed in response to it.
"OK, he meant to hit me, but if you want to know the nitty gritty of my business, he was strung out on something," Alice said. "So he meant to hit me, but he didn't mean to hit me. And I hit him back…knocked him out. That good enough for you?"
"You don't owe me anything," Andrea said.
"I don't, you're right," Alice said. "I'm just trying to give you what you want. It's clear I'm the odd girl out at this little sorority party. I'm just trying to rush…you let me know when I've done enough."
"You don't have to do anything to fit in here," Jacqui said quickly. "We're not trying to exclude you. It's just hard to get used to new people…"
"Thank you," Alice said. "And I appreciate that. I'm getting used to a lot of new people myself, so I can understand the sentiment."
"Did you lose all your family?" Amy asked.
Alice laughed ironically to herself and nodded her head.
"Yeah…I guess I did," she said. "I was working in a hospital in Atlanta. Everything broke out and we held our posts. We didn't know what was happening. I still don't. They came in while I was there. They started shooting everyone…everyone. I got out with a group of people and we just ran. Not one of us even knew where the fuck we were running…we were just trying to get the hell out of Dodge. A while later they were all dead and I ran into Merle and Daryl. I was overcome by their charming personalities and, well, here we are. So yeah. All the family I've got? You're looking at it."
Alice felt Jacqui's hand weigh on her shoulder, the first sign of affection from any of these people that there had been. She reached her hand up and covered Jacqui's with her own as a sign of thanks.
"We're all family now," Jacqui offered quietly. "That's the best we can do."
Alice saw Andrea make some kind of gesture with her head and she leaned forward and stretched out a hand, touching Andrea on the shoulder so that the blonde looked at her.
"I'm especially excited about being related to you," Alice said with a wink.
And she was pleased when Andrea gave into it and smiled at her in response, the smile breaking into something of a soft chuckle a moment later.