[ She knows what heβs asking without directly asking, the wound heβs circling. Itβs 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 himβor 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 thereβs real anger in her tone, and it comes out in sideways means. She canβt control what Daryl says to Bossie, or people in general, and so doesnβt intend to try. But he lied to her once, over and over again, and now to say that heβs 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.
[ She almost snaps at him. Almost. Anger's an old friend of hers at this point, one of the few she's kept and carried her whole life. God, Lee, you're an angry girl, her mother used to say. What've you got to be angry about? Like her daughter was so unreasonable to want something else, to be seen as she was and not as the blank slate everyone around her wanted - a doll to be molded and told to stand up tall and be charming. They never spoke again after Leah finished bootcamp and she doesn't know what story her family told about her absence. What did it matter, when she never really existed for them in the first place?
Anger is easy. Anger is her oldest friend. And she knows Daryl's silence. She could get him to break it if she tried, if she pushed hard enough.
She doesn't. She just exhales through her teeth, and lets it go. What's done is done. She has work to do now. ]
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[ She knows what heβs asking without directly asking, the wound heβs circling. Itβs 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 himβor did, once. How difficult it can be to voice the things you dredge from down deep. Once, she might have helped him.
This time, sheβs 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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Iβd fucking hope so, Daryl.
[ She rarely curses. But thereβs real anger in her tone, and it comes out in sideways means. She canβt control what Daryl says to Bossie, or people in general, and so doesnβt intend to try. But he lied to her once, over and over again, and now to say that heβs done with it?
Too little too late. ]
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No one can hold their silence like Daryl can. ]
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Anger is easy. Anger is her oldest friend. And she knows Daryl's silence. She could get him to break it if she tried, if she pushed hard enough.
She doesn't. She just exhales through her teeth, and lets it go. What's done is done. She has work to do now. ]