[ God, he hates it. He hates it more than he's ever hated anything, not the least of which because the magic just lets her into his head like it's nothing, like no one needs a key, least of all her. ]
Are we?
[ The statement, the method of delivery, the dread it kicks up in him. All of his irritation is audible in his answer. ]
[ Even though it's happening in his mind, he somehow manages to hold back 'and you just watched.' Maybe because he still isn't looking for a fight with her. ]
[ She knows better. There will be a reckoning and they are both of them liars. But the equation has shifted now. Not so long ago, she was the last man standing. And now, her little brother has come back from the dead—brittle, and shaken, but alive.
There are no second chances. Nothing that clean. But it changes things now. She has obligations beyond sheer survival, and the mission she assigned herself after putting down her dead, one by one. She has one of them back now and she means to hold onto them. It can’t be done through lies but she knows Bossie, too: he can’t take the truth of it head on, not just yet. And she knows, too, that she cannot say any of this to Daryl because he will, inevitably, use it against her. The bitter lessons are the ones that stick. And this she has learned oh so well. ]
[ There's a long silence where Daryl wonders if that's it. If all she'd wanted from him enough to reach out was the promise of some shakey truce, but why should she believe him even if he agrees? She's proven that she has no interest in taking his word on anything. Not unless she has no other choice.
But she's talking. And he has questions since seeing Bossie. ]
[ He can't figure any of it out. It had made some kind of feasible sense, at least the timing had, until he'd seen Bossie. Maybe Leah had survived what had happened. What he did.
But not Bossie. He's been in the ground long enough to turn to worms. ]
[ She doesn’t understand them yet but she will because that’s where the power lies: understanding how a thing works, the full shape of it. Why it works and how it breaks and how it can be made into a newer, stronger form. She had to understand the Army before she could survive as a soldier, had to understand the shape demanded of her before she tried to become something new; she never knew what shape mother was supposed to be but she tried. She held onto it with both hands and thought, maybe. And now here she is again, grappling with a system she doesn’t yet grasp but she will.
I didn't wanna take any of 'em from you. I tried to give 'em back.
[ "I didn't want this." And god, he hadn't. But he's surprised at the anger in his bark now. He'd thought he'd left it all behind, buried it like everything else.
She'd forced his hand again and again and that was supposed to be that. He hadn't realized he was mad about it. ]
[ Her voice is iron, utterly unyielding. The unspoken part: you made me a liar, too. They could have walked it back if he hadn’t been there, muddying the waters. She could have dragged Pope back to the center and things would have gone back to normal. They could have had a community, walls.
But that’s nothing but wistful thinking. It’s not what happened and she’s always had a tendency to get emotional, her mother sighing at the dinner table, you know I can’t hear you when you get like this, sweetie; her first sergeant, sneering and almost sad after the first time she scraped a corpse off the sand; you gonna fucking cry now, Shaw? You gonna be a girl about it? I knew you’d fucking cry.
Pope, glasses shining, when she knew she was his favorite: You can do better than that.
Pope, gurgling as he died under her boot. She wasn’t yet a liar then but it was coming. Inevitable as the fire, as Pope’s wrath of God shining in the blood. ]
Then your back was to a wall, and you killed my brother. You thought I’d take your hand after you did that? You thought I’d give them up so easily?
[ There’d been a moment where she’d thought about it, is the thing. Not leaving them, no, never, but finding an angle to make it work. A moment where she might have taken his hand after all and bodied the cost. And then she’d seen Ancheta lying there, and that made it so very simple. ]
It doesn’t matter what you wanted, Daryl. That’s not what happened.
[ Did you give me a choice? And you wouldn't have? And I'd do it again, if it meant their lives.
He could say a lot and so of course, he says nothing. Silence buzzes from his end because she isn't wrong. He'd hoped she would, been almost sure she would. That he could gamble on the piece of her he'd known once in the woods. The piece that had shone for a moment when that wounded mother had closed her eyes and Shaw had lowered her gun. He'd thought for a second that part of her was bigger than it really was, that she had seen her people for what they were. That killing Pope had meant that.
It hadn't, but she's right about one thing. It doesn't matter what he wanted. It never had.
So he asks what he's afraid to ask. Time to test the scab. ]
[ She knows what he’s asking without directly asking, the wound he’s circling. It’s a habit of his. The sort of thing that bleeds down into the marrow, all bruised and weary because you cannot look at the sun head on without bodying the burn, and some things it hurts to ask directly. It would hardly be the first time. And she knows him—or did, once. How difficult it can be to voice the things you dredge from down deep. Once, she might have helped him.
[ So she's been thinking the same thing, too. There's a coldness in that realization, that he had been the last one willing to believe the possibility. He hadn't wanted it to be that way that day but he'd had to carry it in the end.
Just one more thing. Just one more mistake, just one more death.
What's just one more, right? ]
Guess there ain't one. It went the way it was gonna go.
[ Choices. She'd made her choices, a lifetime full of them before Daryl had even met her. Why is that so easy to forget about as soon as she's in front of him? As soon as they start talking? ]
Just keep him away from me.
[ But even as he says 'me' Daryl worries about all the others. All the people here, new arrivals and townies alike, that don't know about them. About who's walking among them. ]
[ She rarely curses. But there’s real anger in her tone, and it comes out in sideways means. She can’t control what Daryl says to Bossie, or people in general, and so doesn’t intend to try. But he lied to her once, over and over again, and now to say that he’s done with it?
[ That's all Daryl can take. He doesn't know how to shut out whatever web is holding them all together in their heads but he can end the conversation there if he tries.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Are we?
[ The statement, the method of delivery, the dread it kicks up in him. All of his irritation is audible in his answer. ]
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One of my boys is here.
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The one Pope killed to make a point.
[ Even though it's happening in his mind, he somehow manages to hold back 'and you just watched.' Maybe because he still isn't looking for a fight with her. ]
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[ There's more that could be said about it - that one day will need to be said - but not to Daryl. Her voice remains cool. ]
He's not going to bother you. You're not going to bother him.
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So you're lyin' to him?
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You know it.
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[ This is a gordian knot, not easily unwound. But one thing remains certain: she doesn't need Daryl and Bossie trying to kill each other. ]
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Y'know, sometimes you sound like a broken record.
He even ask you for an explanation? Or have you trained him not to?
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Don’t pretend you care about my family.
[ That was clear from the start, only she’d believed that one day he could—a sin that she will never come back from.
She should have known better. She cannot say she wasn’t warned. ]
All I need is for you two not to kill each other.
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But the truth ain't gonna come from me, if that's what you're really askin'.
[ He has no interest in killing Bossie, but he doesn't trust him being around real people any more than he'd trust a walker.
Or Leah. But what the hell can he do here? ]
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[ She knows better. There will be a reckoning and they are both of them liars. But the equation has shifted now. Not so long ago, she was the last man standing. And now, her little brother has come back from the dead—brittle, and shaken, but alive.
There are no second chances. Nothing that clean. But it changes things now. She has obligations beyond sheer survival, and the mission she assigned herself after putting down her dead, one by one. She has one of them back now and she means to hold onto them. It can’t be done through lies but she knows Bossie, too: he can’t take the truth of it head on, not just yet. And she knows, too, that she cannot say any of this to Daryl because he will, inevitably, use it against her. The bitter lessons are the ones that stick. And this she has learned oh so well. ]
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But she's talking. And he has questions since seeing Bossie. ]
What's the last thing he remembers?
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Why?
[ It comes out softer than she means. Bossie was always the brittle one. She fears it shows. ]
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That has to matter.
[ He can't figure any of it out. It had made some kind of feasible sense, at least the timing had, until he'd seen Bossie. Maybe Leah had survived what had happened. What he did.
But not Bossie. He's been in the ground long enough to turn to worms. ]
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[ She doesn’t understand them yet but she will because that’s where the power lies: understanding how a thing works, the full shape of it. Why it works and how it breaks and how it can be made into a newer, stronger form. She had to understand the Army before she could survive as a soldier, had to understand the shape demanded of her before she tried to become something new; she never knew what shape mother was supposed to be but she tried. She held onto it with both hands and thought, maybe. And now here she is again, grappling with a system she doesn’t yet grasp but she will.
She will, because that’s the only way through.
Her voice goes thick, even across the distance. ]
You don’t get to take this from me.
no subject
I didn't wanna take any of 'em from you. I tried to give 'em back.
[ "I didn't want this." And god, he hadn't. But he's surprised at the anger in his bark now. He'd thought he'd left it all behind, buried it like everything else.
She'd forced his hand again and again and that was supposed to be that. He hadn't realized he was mad about it. ]
cw: misogyny
[ Her voice is iron, utterly unyielding. The unspoken part: you made me a liar, too. They could have walked it back if he hadn’t been there, muddying the waters. She could have dragged Pope back to the center and things would have gone back to normal. They could have had a community, walls.
But that’s nothing but wistful thinking. It’s not what happened and she’s always had a tendency to get emotional, her mother sighing at the dinner table, you know I can’t hear you when you get like this, sweetie; her first sergeant, sneering and almost sad after the first time she scraped a corpse off the sand; you gonna fucking cry now, Shaw? You gonna be a girl about it? I knew you’d fucking cry.
Pope, glasses shining, when she knew she was his favorite: You can do better than that.
Pope, gurgling as he died under her boot. She wasn’t yet a liar then but it was coming. Inevitable as the fire, as Pope’s wrath of God shining in the blood. ]
Then your back was to a wall, and you killed my brother. You thought I’d take your hand after you did that? You thought I’d give them up so easily?
[ There’d been a moment where she’d thought about it, is the thing. Not leaving them, no, never, but finding an angle to make it work. A moment where she might have taken his hand after all and bodied the cost. And then she’d seen Ancheta lying there, and that made it so very simple. ]
It doesn’t matter what you wanted, Daryl. That’s not what happened.
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He could say a lot and so of course, he says nothing. Silence buzzes from his end because she isn't wrong. He'd hoped she would, been almost sure she would. That he could gamble on the piece of her he'd known once in the woods. The piece that had shone for a moment when that wounded mother had closed her eyes and Shaw had lowered her gun. He'd thought for a second that part of her was bigger than it really was, that she had seen her people for what they were. That killing Pope had meant that.
It hadn't, but she's right about one thing. It doesn't matter what he wanted. It never had.
So he asks what he's afraid to ask. Time to test the scab. ]
What's the last thing you remember?
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[ She knows what he’s asking without directly asking, the wound he’s circling. It’s a habit of his. The sort of thing that bleeds down into the marrow, all bruised and weary because you cannot look at the sun head on without bodying the burn, and some things it hurts to ask directly. It would hardly be the first time. And she knows him—or did, once. How difficult it can be to voice the things you dredge from down deep. Once, she might have helped him.
This time, she’s in no mood to make it easy. ]
no subject
Just one more thing. Just one more mistake, just one more death.
What's just one more, right? ]
Guess there ain't one. It went the way it was gonna go.
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[ That's the simple truth of the world. You make do with what you know, with what's in front of you. ]
And I'm choosing my brother here. You should be familiar with the concept.
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Just keep him away from me.
[ But even as he says 'me' Daryl worries about all the others. All the people here, new arrivals and townies alike, that don't know about them. About who's walking among them. ]
I won't do any more lyin' 'cause of you.
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I’d fucking hope so, Daryl.
[ She rarely curses. But there’s real anger in her tone, and it comes out in sideways means. She can’t control what Daryl says to Bossie, or people in general, and so doesn’t intend to try. But he lied to her once, over and over again, and now to say that he’s done with it?
Too little too late. ]
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No one can hold their silence like Daryl can. ]
(no subject)