YAY! It's raining in LA! So, this isn't exactly as good as I'd hoped it would be, but I've run through it several times, and at this point I think I'm just going to let it be. I hope what I was going for comes across at least in part (it's reading a little fragmented and choppy to me). If you see room for edits, let me know, I think I could use them! ~ Jody xx
"Uhhh," Beth's light brow creases as she concentrates, her river eyes quickly darting back and forth, scanning the scene before her. "Button… Clippers … penny, bullet, and … nail." Her bright eyes flash from the collection of odds and ends on the floor to Walter, who, after a moment more produces his right hand from behind his back. When his fist opens he reveals, held in his palm, a plastic two-hole button, a small set of nail clippers, a 1976 penny, a 175-grain 7mm bullet, and a 10-gauge nail. The dimples appear before the smile, but Beth does smile, a small smile, simple in the pride of having accomplished something small, and complete. It's charming the way she's looking at that handful of junk.
"Nice job," Walter nods, and returns the items to the circle. "You're turn."
Beth shifts onto her knees and leans forward, tucking strands of blonde hair behind her ears that isn't yet quite long enough to stay when it's been tucked. "Okay—" Beth looks, "close your eyes." Walter, Bonnie, Simon, even Hadeel, either look away, or close their eyes. Beth reaches into the collection of items – not one larger than a pocketknife – and rearranges them, and then one by one plucks items away. She takes a spool of thread, then a safety pin, the working mechanism of a music box, and an orange plastic whistle. "Four?" she checks."
"Four, yeah," Walter confirms. Beth tucks the items behind her then invites their gaze to return. "Okay."
The others look, and scan for what has been removed. Bonnie idly drums her fingers on her raised knees as she looks. Walter rubs his upper lip. Hadeel looks straight on, having no use for distractions. Simon rises, forfeiting to check the rice.
"Safety pin," drums Bonnie, bobbing her head to music she hasn't heard in ages.
"Safety pin, thread, whistle, music box."
Beth reproduces the items, smiling at the silent woman who'd spoken so resolutely. "Yeah," she nods, "that's right."
Walter smiles, "She's really good at it."
Across the room, Daryl still leans silent against the wall. No longer used to getting used to people, he isn't sure that he can be again. Even as he moves forward in this life, pushes forward – for Beth, for the child – his thoughts direct him backwards, to the others he's loved. There cannot be another Rick, another Carol. Never another Glenn or Michonne. Or Hershel Greene. Michaels, James, Peters and the rest, they do not abound in the world. Never will he have another brother by blood, someone with his own history, with his own same scars. Knowing this, what's to recommend these people? Even if they prove worth the effort, what could they possibly have the others in his life did not, to keep them from one day too being nothing more than memories? Just three more lost comrades – by death or by disappearance, gone?
Still, they need people. He's known this all along, and nothing's that's happened has disabused him of this. So he stands by, and he watches this forging of their groups happen, unable himself to make nice or make even passes at conversation, knowing all the while that Beth would urge him to make an effort, to judge them on their own merits, and not by the shadows cast by their absent family. One by one Daryl cracks his knuckles with his thumb. A child is to be born – without a larger family; brought into the world by them. If he no longer can connect with the people living in this world, it is a darker place his child will inherit than what is still possible to give. At some point, he knows, he'll have to make an effort. But not tonight. Tonight, while Beth and Simon are distracted by the novelty and the relief these three have brought, Daryl can slip unseen into numbness, brooding for days gone by, and the faces and the names that lived them. A laugh from someone playing the game breaks him from his thoughts. He shifts his weight. From where he stands removed from the others, Daryl speaks up, "What's th' point o'this?"
All eyes turn to him. "It's just a game," Bonnie answers.
"It focuses your concentration," Walter tells him. "Memory."
"If so," Daryl speaks again, "why not take 'em all out?"
"You work up to it," Beth explains.
The bathroom door reopens letting in heat, smoke, and Simon, carrying a saucepan of boiled rice. Simon kicks the door closed behind him and moves with his spoon and the pot around the room. "Put th' bricks on," he mentions to Daryl, "an' water's boiling."
Bonnie nods at Simon, looking him over as he serves Hadeel. "How old're you?"
The kid drops a scoop of rice in her own bowl next, then moves on to Walter's. "Fifteen."
She makes no response, though she's confirmed he indeed is much younger than his aptitude for this life would suggest. He's supremely competent, and considerably more talkative than the other two, and she wonders about the working dynamics of this trio.
Simon moves on, serving Beth, then Daryl. Before the rice hits Daryl's bowl, the archer nods in Beth's direction, indicating she get a portion of his already modest ration. He'd already dropped two chunks of his meat into her dish, ignoring her silent protest. Dutifully, without ceremony, Simon dumps a little more in her bowl, then takes the remainder as his, eating it right from the pan. Beth, not privy to Daryl's nod, watches Simon seat himself again at the foot of the bed while the others eat their soft-boiled grain. In the recent days passed, and no doubt too with the arrival of the newcomers, Beth and Daryl too have noted his development. Simon'd been the baby in camp, but he'd never been less capable. There he might have been quiet, more sensitive by nature, but he was every bit one of the brothers in the woods, and now in their absence he plays all their roles. Survival in their style was bequeathed to him, and Beth thinks he wears his inheritance well.
"Eyes," Hadeel speaks, having swallowed her first spoonful of rice. The players turn away and lithely she kneels forward, shuffles the items, and pulls away her pieces. Waiting to be signaled back, Beth pulls in tighter the blanket slung over her shoulders, then silently Hadeel returns to her spot. "Six."
The players turn back, Simon's eyes opening quicker than the rest's. Each spooning their rice slowly to make it last, they scan and concentrate. Simon sucks absently on his spoon, letting it knock some against his back molars as he studies the playing field. "Pocketknife…" he says. "Penny, compass… Uh…"
"Do you have much luck with the snares?" Walter asks.
"Some," Daryl monosyllabically rasps, pushing his spoon around in his bowl. "Nuthin's ever steady." Daryl takes his final bite. "'cept shit rolls' downhill."
Bonnie guffaws. "Daryl," she speaks, harmlessly amused, "you're a philosopher." His brow arches wryly, but she only smiles at him like they're in league. "Uh… broken watch!" she takes over for Simon who's currently just scowling at the collection and coming up short for answers.
As she waits for her challenge to be met, Hadeel burrows deeper into her sweater. The room is cold. Regardless of the wind and damp they're escaping, and the help from the grill and all the bodies, the room is cold, there's no denying.
"Can't get it," Simon shakes his head.
Beth, who's gotten a little sleepy, her eyelids growing momentarily heavy, also shakes her head. "Mm,mm."
"Walt?" Bonnie confers.
The man shakes his head. "'Uncle.'" Having not been bested, a whisper of a smile flashes briefly through Hadeel's steady gaze as she returns the unnamed item and its mates to the circle. "Well done," he nods. To the new players he explains, "She goes again, now, upping the count by two."
Once more they study the made-whole field, internalizing each and every item. Then she leans forward again, and the players look away once more as she shuffles and chooses. "Eight." They look back and scan…
"Lighter…" Bonnie starts them off. Popping the collar to her fatigue green coat, she and her buzzed-down mohawk nod good naturedly at her hosts. "So, lemme ask," Bonnie scoops her spoon through her bowl, "why this place?" Mouth full of rice, Bonnie continues. "I mean—" she swallows "—nuthin' wrong with a fireplace." Beth, Simon, and Daryl all raise their heads and look at her. "Am I right?"
"Bon—" Walter quickly curbs.
"Offense not intended," she amends. "We're happy to be here."
"Grateful," Walter specifies.
The expressions their hosts wear are shaded with resentment. Making the decision not to take it further, Daryl mutters the one-off, "Wasn't on the list."
"'The list'?"
Simon scrapes his fork along the inside of his bowl, though any trace of the meat and vegetables is long gone. "Walls are brick," he points out evenly; "hard t' burst in. Place's close to the road; we can see the highway – we can get out of town quick. Also see if vehicles pull in. We've got multiple doors between the street and us. The stairway leads to a switchback hallway – if we get stormed it grants us time. Flat roof; kept up well."
"He could go on," Daryl grunts, his eyes fixed.
Beth smiles for propriety. "We know what we're doing."
Truthfully, they may regret not having looked for a place with a working fireplace, and not holding out for a place with its own well, but they can work around both, and there may be no wells in Pierce, the town doesn't date back all that far. Most of everything they do is strategic and calculated, but they also survive on chance, on luck, and a great deal on instinct. The building felt right to them, possibly for the wrong reasons, but it did, and they acted on it. Invested a lot of sweat and effort into the cause. And they'll be hanged if they'll apologize for it. Though, rightly, they hadn't exactly been asked to.
Dryly Daryl glances at the floor. "Match, lighter, button, needle, AAA battery, blue pen cap, red rubber band, toothpick."
"Right on," Bonnie nods impressed, watching the silent Hadeel one by one produce and return to the collection of small sundry indeed everything the archer'd just listed.
"And the shell case," he grunts. "She didn't take eight," Daryl's glance shifts to Hadeel, "you took nine." With that he slings aside his empty bowl, lifts his crossbow and strides out of the room.