"Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dropping the last of her salvage inside the building, Brandy presses the button that closes the doors waiting to make sure it engages fully. Her clothes stink of diesel, just like they always do, but today's haul was a goldmine. They aren't the only people in the city, and the Vatos are friendly enough, but thankfully they don't compete with her for diesel.
"Glad to see you made it back."
Brandy smiles wanly as Edwin Jenner's voice crackles over the intercom. "I'm too boring for the infected to take notice of."
It's not entirely true, but one thing years upon years of practice being a librarian teaches a person is how to be truly quiet. If Shane was around, she'd make some joke about the infected wanting tastier meals than some bland as hell gal like her, but Edwin does not share the quirky Walsh sense of humor. Besides, it would feel disrespectful of Candace, and Brandy knows damn well she owes her life to the late scientist's willingness to break protocol and import them into the CDC under the guise of being part of the Jenner family.
If she hadn't followed Candace here, she'd have been in the refugee center when the military dropped napalm on it. Every time she's somewhere that she catches a whiff of the remains of that hellfire, it's like a living nightmare flickers behind her eyes. Shaking off the thought, she maneuvers the containers of fuel onto a pallet along with the other supplies, stacking them easily with weeks of practice. Tugging the pallet jack along behind her, she heads for the service elevator.
Once she's emptied her finds into fuel barrels previously tapped dry, she makes sure the one generator they keep running is completely full. The routine is as much clockwork as shelving books once was, and it doesn't take long before she's climbing the stairs back to the floor they use as living quarters now, bag of scavenged goods slung over her shoulder. They don't need most things, not with so few people in a building meant for hundreds, but nothing would alert other survivors to something odd more than Brandy not pilfering necessities other than fuel.
"Mama!" The cheerful cry echoes a bit in the big central room, with Jamie running to her and hugging her tightly before grimacing. "You stink."
"Just like I do every time I go out to forage, little missy."
Today had been a good day with no close encounters with the infected, but siphoning diesel from various places is about as dirty in its own way. Crawling under equipment and vehicles to puncture siphon proof tanks invariably ends up with some of her goal splattered across her. The best thing about it is that the rank scent of the diesel contributes to her invisibility if she's very, very still.
"You should go shower."
"That's where I'm headed." Just to be ornery, Brandy ruffles Jamie's hair as she lets the supply duffel drop to the floor. It's just beyond her shoulders now, but that does little to tame the wild black curls that make her daughter unmistakably a Walsh.
"Don't make my hair stinky, too, Mama!" Jamie darts out of range. "Nana and I are doing crafts in the kitchen."
"Did you get your schoolwork done?" It feels a little weird sometimes, to insist on Jamie still working on grammar, math, and history like the world didn't screech to a halt outside, but she's only ten. Learning can't stop just because civilization did.
"Every bit of it. Uncle Edwin says I'm almost ready for high school science and math."
"Did he? Guess we'll have to rustle you up some good textbooks then."
Jamie grins before trotting off, calling for her grandmother and announcing Brandy's safe return. Brandy considers going to visit Edwin in his office, but Jamie is right. She stinks to high heaven, and with today's addition to the fuel stockpile, she can afford a good hot shower.
Once she's clean, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and sighs. At first, losing the twenty extra pounds she never quite shed after Jamie was born was a small personal victory despite the challenges they faced now. But weeks of making sure they don't run out of fuel and that she always comes back safely to her family have honed her to a constant fight to keep herself above weight. At least getting enough calories isn't enough to make anyone else do without, not here.
Clad in tank top and shorts, she heads back to the central area, enjoying the feel of bare feet after most of the day in combat boots borrowed from the military supplies here. She snags the duffel bag and takes it to the kitchen, pressing a kiss to the top of Jamie's head before rummaging for a can of the protein shake mix Shane preferred and heading for the blender.
When she settles into a chair to drink what masquerades as chocolate flavor, Bonnie eyes her carefully over her bifocals. The older woman looks the picture of a stereotypical librarian, even settled into the bowels of the CDC, as much as Jamie now looks like an escapee from some survivalist show. Today is a good day, though, if Bonnie is out and about and having craft time with Jamie.
"You should mix that with milk next time. Extra calories to put some meat back on your bones." The soft slur to some of the words breaks Brandy's heart, but there's only so much the medications can do to hold the disease at bay.
"That would be the smarter way to do it, I know." But unlike most of the stuff stored down here, milk doesn't last for decades. The mother part of her brain keeps bleating that she needs to save the precious milk powder for Jamie.
Bonnie snorts softly, but thankfully doesn't press the issue. She rarely does these days, preferring to save her limited energy for happier things than convincing a stubborn thirty-something to follow the food pyramid correctly. Instead she explains the project, which turns out to be teaching Jamie how to crochet granny squares. Even if she can't handle a crochet hook herself, she can still guide her granddaughter.
Watching them work together makes every one of Brandy's aching muscles and the lowkey terror of being topside more than worth it.
"Brandy? Can you meet me at the security computer?" Edwin sounds so alarmed that Brandy is on her feet without thinking, leaving behind her half drunk protein shake.
"Stay with Nana, baby girl," she cautions when Jamie seems about to follow.
If Edwin's watching the security cameras, her first worry is that she led something bad back to their safe haven. The group she trades with seem to be good people, but Brandy has never lost the healthy sense of wariness Shane instilled in her about strangers that got stronger after he became a cop. Even four weeks after establishing contact, she doesn't know where they're holed up, and they don't know where she lives.
"I think you need to take a look at this," Edwin says, pushing his chair back to let Brandy approach the screen.
It takes her a minute to understand she's not hallucinating. Right there in living color, unmistakable in his King's County deputy uniform, is none other than Rick Grimes.
"Oh Jesus," she mutters. Last she heard, Rick was being airlifted to Atlanta to Emory Midtown. Considering the bombed and crumbling state of that hospital, she assumed he was gone in the bombing, if he ever arrived. "Is he alone?"
"Seems to be. Even arrived in a patrol car." Edwin pans the camera from Rick's frustrated expression, showing Brandy a view of the car parked just outside the military checkpoint. "I'd prefer not to open the doors without one of us waiting. You want that to be me or you?"
"I'll go. There's things we need to talk about before I bring him down."
"Take a weapon," Edwin cautions, and Brandy wants to tell him she won't need anything since it's Rick, but there's no way Rick would know to stay hidden. He's driven right into the city with a marked car and parked it outside their front door, more or less. Even Brandy doesn't use that entrance, although part of that is the necessity of using the service elevator.
Taking a quick trip by her room, she switches shorts for pants and puts her boots back on. Belting on the utility belt, she checks her magazines and holsters her Glock before shouldering the M4 Edwin issued her once population dwindled enough that Brandy had to start going outside. It's not the best weapon for dealing with the infected, but sometimes the short three-round burst it can give lets her be a little less precise with her aim than a hunting rifle would require. With years worth of ammo for the damn thing, it's far more useful than her trusty old Winchester.
The elevator ride seems to take forever, but the stairs to the lobby would be worse on her nerves. When she reaches the lobby, she can hear Edwin talking and is grateful that he activated the intercom up here so she can hear his conversation with Rick. It's fairly bland, just Edwin pretending complete ignorance of who Rick is to question him like they would any random visitor.
Waving at the lobby camera, Brandy rolls her eyes at the nodding motion Edwin makes with the camera and reaches for the security panel. The door slides upward, revealing the haggard and hopeful expression of a man Brandy has known since preschool. He staggers inside, and she can't blame him that he looks around wildly, turning wickedly pale when he only spots her.
"Where is everyone, Brandy? Where is Carl?"
Carl. Lori. Shane.
Her stomach churns with pain and mourning and the unending ache of missing half her family. Grief has been a constant companion for weeks now, but Brandy tries for compassion. "I think they're gone, Rick, all of them. I haven't seen any of them since a few days after you got shot."
Hope drains from his face and he sways dangerously. As athletic as she's become out of necessity, catching him is a near miss. Only the fact that he's lost significant weight helps at all. Torn between the danger of the patrol car showing something's changed around their building and helping Rick, in the end, she opts for the closer problem and keys the door closed. Edwin might not be a medical doctor, but he's got far more knowledge than Brandy does, so she drags Rick toward the elevator, confident that Edwin will be waiting below.
They may have closed off the actual infirmary to conserve power in favor of the scientific floor, but that didn't stop them from turning an office into a fully-fledged mini-hospital. Meant for Bonnie's care, they've been lucky so far that she hasn't needed it. Now it houses Rick's undernourished form with an IV sluggishly trying to remedy the damages still remaining.
"I don't like that his wound isn't completely healed. Someone took care of him up until recently or he'd be in worse shape, but he's dehydrated and malnourished in ways that set off every alarm on my lab equipment." Edwin busies himself making notes, but his concerned look switches between Brandy, Rick, and the notebook.
"Don't people heal slower if they are comatose?" she asks. The last news she got was two weeks after the shooting, just before communication fell, and that was that Rick was still hanging in there after three surgeries. "And god only knows what his caretaker had to work with. I'm guessing he didn't get evacuated considering he showed up in uniform."
Rick has been stripped of that uniform and gear, which Brandy folded carefully and set aside, along with that anachronism of a Python he obviously still favors. They still haven't told Jamie that her godfather is in the building, because honestly, Jamie mourned Rick once, along with the rest of their family. It may be wrong, but she doesn't want to reopen the wound when Jamie seems to be recovering, and Edwin's readings are too unstable for her to trust.
"I'll go hide that car now," she decides, reaching for her rifle. "It'd be just our luck that weeks of hiding the van I'm using got blown to hell because there's a damn cop car parked at the front door."
Edwin nods. "He should sleep for at least four or five hours with the sedative I added. Man needs rest almost more than he needs nutrients and fluids."
Smoothing back Rick's sweaty curls, Brandy leans in and presses a kiss to his forehead. "Don't you dare die on me again, Richard Grimes. I will not mourn you twice."
Despite her natural realism telling her that Shane never coming to the CDC means he didn't make it to Atlanta with Lori and Carl, or worse, that he made it to Atlanta and went to the refugee center instead, the miracle of Rick's appearance when she thought he was dead for weeks sparks a tiny flare of hope deep inside her. But even if she only gets one miracle, dammit, she wants it wholeheartedly.
Maybe Jamie won't mourn if she doesn't know Rick's here, but Brandy?
One day, too many of these losses will break her right in two.
A/N: A reader on FFN requested a Daryl/OFC story... hope you enjoy where this wanders!
Primary POV: OFC (Brandy), Lori, Shane
Pairings: Daryl/OFC, Lori/Jenner, Shane/Jesus
Background: AU prior to the series (obviously). Gonna make y'all wait for some of the details, but the important ones to know now? Rick actually was a responsible cop and filled up his gas tank, so no horses met grisly ends and no deputy had to get his ass pulled out of a tank by Glenn. Thus with Rick driving around the city to the CDC (chapter 2 shall explain more), the rooftop disaster did not happen. Never fear, all our stray duckies will find the same pond soon.