Fic: Same Old Brand New You (1/4)
Title: Same Old Brand New You
Author: 3am_moonlight aka Mirrored Illusions
Rating: FR-13.
Crossover: The Walking Dead & Gilmore Girls
Characters/Pairing: Rory Gilmore, Gigi Hayden, Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane, Daryl Dixon.
Disclaimer: Property of Joss and whoever owns TWD & GG.
Summary: Rory survived the apocalypse with her sister, but then her car gets stuck in the mud and she gets surrounded by walkers.
Word Count: 2,257.
It had been three months, one week, and four days since Lorelai 'Rory' Leigh Gilmore had become an orphan and the official? guardian of her younger half-sister, Georgia 'Gigi' Hayden. Could she be an orphan when she was 28 years old? Gigi was definitely an orphan, maybe. She didn't know where Sherry was or if she was alive, but it didn't really matter. She'd been in and out of Gigi's life when it had suited her, so Lorelai had been more of a mother than Sherry ever had. After all, Gigi spent vacations with Lorelai, Lorelai looked after her when Christopher was out of town, and generally called her at random times just to ramble on about something or other. And of course to check up on her former step-daughters well-being. It had been sweet, really. After all, she had no obligations to the little girl, but Rory supposed her mother had only seen her (ex-boy)friend's motherless child and thought of Rory and what it had been like for her own daughter to grow up with a mostly absent father.
Rory had had a good childhood; her mother loved her and always made sure she felt loved and had everything she needed, even if it wasn't the best quality. Christopher had loved her, too, but he nearly always prioritized something else over her. She'd had grandparents who also loved her but showed it in a very different way. When Christopher had shown up with a two-year-old Gigi they had tried to give the little girl something similar to what they had, but now everyone was gone except for Rory and Gigi. No mother, no father, no grandparents, and she was far away from the eccentric people of Stars Hollow who were probably gone as well. Rory shook her head, stop that! Those thoughts are getting you nowhere fast!
When the infection first broke out she'd been visiting her father and sister in Atlantia, Georgia. She'd been freelancing as a journalist for a few years at that point and didn't really need to be anywhere specific so she'd traveled a lot. It had given her a good chance to get first-hand accounts of many events she wouldn't have gotten if she'd been living somewhere permanently. Early on she had been covering the initial outbreaks; she'd written several articles about how the dead seemed to suddenly get back up again and try to take a bite out of whoever happened to be closest to them. She'd even included several of her own photographs, taken with her smartphone, with the articles. She'd done a lot of research trying to find something, anything, that would help, but in the end, the only thing that had been helpful were the survival guides she had printed out as a joke for her father. They had quickly become her lifeline as the world around her descended into chaos. Without them, they would probably have starved to death in the beginning, or at the very least they would've gotten bitten.
Now they were in her Jeep outside Atlanta, at the edge of a forest, and her car was stuck in the mud. It didn't matter what she tried, it wouldn't budge. The next thing she heard was a thunk! on the passenger door window, quickly followed by a cut-off scream from Gigi. They had soon learned that screaming was bad around the walking dead, as were movement - especially abrupt ones. When she turned she saw a walker right outside the window and behind that one was a herd slowly encircling the car. Rory doubled her effort to get the car loose, but it didn't help at all. As a last effort she turned off the engine; hopefully, it would make them lose interest when there was no sound or movement. She thought quickly, they needed something to cover the windows so they couldn't be seen. Scratch that, they just needed to hide.
"Gigi, climb into the back and hide under a blanket on the floor. And for God's sake, don't move when you've settled. Okay?" Rory's voice was soft and commanding. The nine-nearly-ten-year-old girl climbed carefully in between the seats and over to the backseat before grabbing one of the blankets they used when they had to sleep in the car. Using few and cautious movements to accomplish the task the girl was soon semi-comfortably hidden out of sight.
"I love you, Rory. Don't become one of them."
"I love you, too. We've survived this once before, we'll survive it again." Rory's voice was still soft, but the commanding tone was gone. Instead, she tried to sound both comforting and encouraging. They really had been in a similar situation a month prior, but back then it had only been four walkers and they had moved on within half an hour. This time she had counted fourteen but probably missed a few as she curled down into the small space underneath the steering wheel and beside the driver's seat she had previously occupied.
The windows were all closed but she could still hear the groans and the corpses trying to hit or move the car. A few even tried the door handles, but in a case of paranoia after the first attack, Gigi had insisted that they lock the doors even when they were driving. That came in really useful right at that moment, even if she had only humored her sister earlier. Anything to make Gigi feel a little safer in the new world.
&&&
(Further into the forest shortly before Rory's car first get stuck.)
"Nice crossbow."
The man holding the aforementioned weapon simply stared at the two women in front of him. It was the blonde one who had spoken, but he was more weary of the brunette standing slightly behind her and to the blonde's left side. The leather outfit she wore made her look like she belonged somewhere in between his old neighborhood and the more x-rated club scene, only with more visible weapons. The blonde one only had a couple of knives and some sort of fancy ax strapped on her back, in addition to the gun in a holster at her hip and the crossbow she was aiming straight at him.
"What are you doing here? Do you have a group?" He didn't feel like being polite, that was more Rick's thing than his. Besides, he needed answers. Needed to make sure the group was safe. Two women traveling alone was unlikely this far into the apocalypse, so there had to be someone else nearby.
"Easy tiger, we don't bite." The brunette gave him a smirk and a casual once-over. "We're just passing through your... 'hood. No need to get trigger happy."
"Yes, just passing through looking for something edible." The blonde wrinkled her nose cutely. "I'm Buffy, and that's Faith." The blonde, *Buffy*, pointed helpfully to the dominatrix beside her when she introduced the brunette. Both of them also dodged the group question. Which meant they either had someone they wanted to protect or they were alone.
"Daryl. The fuck kind of name is *Buffy*?"
"The kind of name my parents gave me, so no more comments on it." Okay, Blondie was clearly in charge. The world had ended and she could be anyone she wanted to be and she chose to keep using that name? Women were weird.
"How many walkers have you killed?" Buffy blinked in slight surprise, while Faith laughed and replied.
"As many as possible. Most of the ones we've come across. Didn't really count 'em. We were busy making sure they stopped walking." She turned towards her friend, "Estimate, B?"
Blondie shrugged her thin shoulders, "Somewhere between 300 and 500 each? Atlanta is swamped with the things." Daryl just stared for a couple of moments before he blurted out a denial.
"No fucking way. There's no fucking way scrawny little twigs like you two could kill that many by yourselves." He was getting angry; he hated to be lied to, especially by people he had just met.
Faith just laughed again and Buffy gave him an amused smile that was disconcerting in its casualty. Her whole attitude said she was used to being underestimated.
"Believe it, Scruffy. We know how to fight and kill. And the walkers ain't that difficult to kill unless they crowd ya. Make sure they don't get personal and you're good."
Daryl opened his mouth to reply when both of the women suddenly tensed and turned towards the right, clearing hearing something he didn't. They exchanged a silent look before Buffy switched the crossbow for the ax she had on her back. Faith instinctively checked the handle on the sword she had sheathed across her back and then they were off running.
Before he had a chance to really understand what was going on they were so far away he could only see their backs. He cursed and began running after them. What the hell was wrong with them?
By the time he caught up to them they were busy chopping the heads off of a group of walkers surrounding a car. Huh.
"The fuck?" He was cursing more than usual, but these women were going off script and he didn't like not being in control or at least he wanted to know what was going on.
"We're killing more walkers and saving the damsel in distress." Faith gave another smirk and then added, "Add 17 more walkers to the estimate."
"Great. Fantastic. You're Supergirl times two." They'd moved impossibly fast both when they ran towards the walkers and while they were fighting, and now that he was forced to reconsider their earlier interaction they had both moved with a predatory grace even before that. Daryl's head began to consider the ramifications of having these two women as part of the group. There were both pros and cons; they were clearly experienced fighters, much stronger and faster than their fragile appearance suggested, and could be major assets to the group. On the other hand, they could be the entire group's death if they just wanted their supplies. If they could kill 17 walkers within a few minutes they could probably do the same thing to a group of living humans.
While he was contemplating adding more people to the group, Buffy had gotten the attention of the woman inside the car and was helping her out. Faith opened the back door and a little girl around nine or ten came out looking weary and skeptical of the new arrivals.
&&&
(Rory's POV.)
"Everyone, this is Rory and her sister Gigi. Rory and Gigi this is Faith and Daryl. And I'm Buffy."
After the introduction, Rory saw both Buffy, Faith, and Daryl give both her and Gigi a thorough once-over to check for wounds and other injuries. Or at least, that's what she assumed they were doing. The two women had done the same thing to themselves and then each other after the last walker had lost half of its head.
"Thanks for the help. My car got stuck in the mud and I couldn't get it loose and then the walkers turned up and surrounded us, and -." Why was she rambling like she was back in high school? She was more articulate than this.
"Whoa, easy on the babble-fest. We get it, kid. You're safe now, at least until you come across the next herd."
"Faith!"
Kid? This Faith couldn't be more than a couple of years older than her. Rory resisted the urge to cross her arms under her chest, it wouldn't help her situation at all. Something about these people made her feel both protected and threatened, which made no sense at all.
Then the man, Daryl?, decided to enter the conversation, "How many walkers have you killed? Do you have a group?"
Rory heard Faith give an unladylike snort, but both of the women remained silent otherwise.
"Uh... 20-30? We usually hide when they come, or we try to run or drive away." She blinked back the sting in her eyes, she wouldn't cry in front of these people. "We don't have a group anymore." She inhaled and exhaled slowly a couple of times to regain control before she added, "The walkers got them."
Her three rescuers nodded in acceptance of that, before Buffy replied, "You can join us. Daryl has another group we haven't met, but they're probably not far from here."
The man in question gave the blonde a sharp look at that but refrained from commenting. Mostly because Faith began talking before he got that far.
"Yeah, you can join us. It'll mean our little group consists of all of four people. We lost the others to some idiots and a herd of walkers."
"You can all follow me to my group, we have a camp about an hour from here on foot."
The next ten minutes were spent going over details; first how to get Rory's car loose from the mud, then how to get to Buffy's car some forty minutes in the opposite direction from Daryl's camp. It ended with Faith pushing her car out of the muddy trap, then everyone piled into the car to drive to get the other car.
It took a while but they were finally on their way to what Daryl called the Quarry Camp. Once they'd reached Buffy's car she and Faith had switched cars, and then made Daryl get into the backseat to give them directions. Rory followed in her own car with Gigi.
Author: 3am_moonlight aka Mirrored Illusions
Rating: FR-13.
Crossover: The Walking Dead & Gilmore Girls
Characters/Pairing: Rory Gilmore, Gigi Hayden, Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane, Daryl Dixon.
Disclaimer: Property of Joss and whoever owns TWD & GG.
Summary: Rory survived the apocalypse with her sister, but then her car gets stuck in the mud and she gets surrounded by walkers.
Word Count: 2,257.
It had been three months, one week, and four days since Lorelai 'Rory' Leigh Gilmore had become an orphan and the official? guardian of her younger half-sister, Georgia 'Gigi' Hayden. Could she be an orphan when she was 28 years old? Gigi was definitely an orphan, maybe. She didn't know where Sherry was or if she was alive, but it didn't really matter. She'd been in and out of Gigi's life when it had suited her, so Lorelai had been more of a mother than Sherry ever had. After all, Gigi spent vacations with Lorelai, Lorelai looked after her when Christopher was out of town, and generally called her at random times just to ramble on about something or other. And of course to check up on her former step-daughters well-being. It had been sweet, really. After all, she had no obligations to the little girl, but Rory supposed her mother had only seen her (ex-boy)friend's motherless child and thought of Rory and what it had been like for her own daughter to grow up with a mostly absent father.
Rory had had a good childhood; her mother loved her and always made sure she felt loved and had everything she needed, even if it wasn't the best quality. Christopher had loved her, too, but he nearly always prioritized something else over her. She'd had grandparents who also loved her but showed it in a very different way. When Christopher had shown up with a two-year-old Gigi they had tried to give the little girl something similar to what they had, but now everyone was gone except for Rory and Gigi. No mother, no father, no grandparents, and she was far away from the eccentric people of Stars Hollow who were probably gone as well. Rory shook her head, stop that! Those thoughts are getting you nowhere fast!
When the infection first broke out she'd been visiting her father and sister in Atlantia, Georgia. She'd been freelancing as a journalist for a few years at that point and didn't really need to be anywhere specific so she'd traveled a lot. It had given her a good chance to get first-hand accounts of many events she wouldn't have gotten if she'd been living somewhere permanently. Early on she had been covering the initial outbreaks; she'd written several articles about how the dead seemed to suddenly get back up again and try to take a bite out of whoever happened to be closest to them. She'd even included several of her own photographs, taken with her smartphone, with the articles. She'd done a lot of research trying to find something, anything, that would help, but in the end, the only thing that had been helpful were the survival guides she had printed out as a joke for her father. They had quickly become her lifeline as the world around her descended into chaos. Without them, they would probably have starved to death in the beginning, or at the very least they would've gotten bitten.
Now they were in her Jeep outside Atlanta, at the edge of a forest, and her car was stuck in the mud. It didn't matter what she tried, it wouldn't budge. The next thing she heard was a thunk! on the passenger door window, quickly followed by a cut-off scream from Gigi. They had soon learned that screaming was bad around the walking dead, as were movement - especially abrupt ones. When she turned she saw a walker right outside the window and behind that one was a herd slowly encircling the car. Rory doubled her effort to get the car loose, but it didn't help at all. As a last effort she turned off the engine; hopefully, it would make them lose interest when there was no sound or movement. She thought quickly, they needed something to cover the windows so they couldn't be seen. Scratch that, they just needed to hide.
"Gigi, climb into the back and hide under a blanket on the floor. And for God's sake, don't move when you've settled. Okay?" Rory's voice was soft and commanding. The nine-nearly-ten-year-old girl climbed carefully in between the seats and over to the backseat before grabbing one of the blankets they used when they had to sleep in the car. Using few and cautious movements to accomplish the task the girl was soon semi-comfortably hidden out of sight.
"I love you, Rory. Don't become one of them."
"I love you, too. We've survived this once before, we'll survive it again." Rory's voice was still soft, but the commanding tone was gone. Instead, she tried to sound both comforting and encouraging. They really had been in a similar situation a month prior, but back then it had only been four walkers and they had moved on within half an hour. This time she had counted fourteen but probably missed a few as she curled down into the small space underneath the steering wheel and beside the driver's seat she had previously occupied.
The windows were all closed but she could still hear the groans and the corpses trying to hit or move the car. A few even tried the door handles, but in a case of paranoia after the first attack, Gigi had insisted that they lock the doors even when they were driving. That came in really useful right at that moment, even if she had only humored her sister earlier. Anything to make Gigi feel a little safer in the new world.
&&&
(Further into the forest shortly before Rory's car first get stuck.)
"Nice crossbow."
The man holding the aforementioned weapon simply stared at the two women in front of him. It was the blonde one who had spoken, but he was more weary of the brunette standing slightly behind her and to the blonde's left side. The leather outfit she wore made her look like she belonged somewhere in between his old neighborhood and the more x-rated club scene, only with more visible weapons. The blonde one only had a couple of knives and some sort of fancy ax strapped on her back, in addition to the gun in a holster at her hip and the crossbow she was aiming straight at him.
"What are you doing here? Do you have a group?" He didn't feel like being polite, that was more Rick's thing than his. Besides, he needed answers. Needed to make sure the group was safe. Two women traveling alone was unlikely this far into the apocalypse, so there had to be someone else nearby.
"Easy tiger, we don't bite." The brunette gave him a smirk and a casual once-over. "We're just passing through your... 'hood. No need to get trigger happy."
"Yes, just passing through looking for something edible." The blonde wrinkled her nose cutely. "I'm Buffy, and that's Faith." The blonde, *Buffy*, pointed helpfully to the dominatrix beside her when she introduced the brunette. Both of them also dodged the group question. Which meant they either had someone they wanted to protect or they were alone.
"Daryl. The fuck kind of name is *Buffy*?"
"The kind of name my parents gave me, so no more comments on it." Okay, Blondie was clearly in charge. The world had ended and she could be anyone she wanted to be and she chose to keep using that name? Women were weird.
"How many walkers have you killed?" Buffy blinked in slight surprise, while Faith laughed and replied.
"As many as possible. Most of the ones we've come across. Didn't really count 'em. We were busy making sure they stopped walking." She turned towards her friend, "Estimate, B?"
Blondie shrugged her thin shoulders, "Somewhere between 300 and 500 each? Atlanta is swamped with the things." Daryl just stared for a couple of moments before he blurted out a denial.
"No fucking way. There's no fucking way scrawny little twigs like you two could kill that many by yourselves." He was getting angry; he hated to be lied to, especially by people he had just met.
Faith just laughed again and Buffy gave him an amused smile that was disconcerting in its casualty. Her whole attitude said she was used to being underestimated.
"Believe it, Scruffy. We know how to fight and kill. And the walkers ain't that difficult to kill unless they crowd ya. Make sure they don't get personal and you're good."
Daryl opened his mouth to reply when both of the women suddenly tensed and turned towards the right, clearing hearing something he didn't. They exchanged a silent look before Buffy switched the crossbow for the ax she had on her back. Faith instinctively checked the handle on the sword she had sheathed across her back and then they were off running.
Before he had a chance to really understand what was going on they were so far away he could only see their backs. He cursed and began running after them. What the hell was wrong with them?
By the time he caught up to them they were busy chopping the heads off of a group of walkers surrounding a car. Huh.
"The fuck?" He was cursing more than usual, but these women were going off script and he didn't like not being in control or at least he wanted to know what was going on.
"We're killing more walkers and saving the damsel in distress." Faith gave another smirk and then added, "Add 17 more walkers to the estimate."
"Great. Fantastic. You're Supergirl times two." They'd moved impossibly fast both when they ran towards the walkers and while they were fighting, and now that he was forced to reconsider their earlier interaction they had both moved with a predatory grace even before that. Daryl's head began to consider the ramifications of having these two women as part of the group. There were both pros and cons; they were clearly experienced fighters, much stronger and faster than their fragile appearance suggested, and could be major assets to the group. On the other hand, they could be the entire group's death if they just wanted their supplies. If they could kill 17 walkers within a few minutes they could probably do the same thing to a group of living humans.
While he was contemplating adding more people to the group, Buffy had gotten the attention of the woman inside the car and was helping her out. Faith opened the back door and a little girl around nine or ten came out looking weary and skeptical of the new arrivals.
&&&
(Rory's POV.)
"Everyone, this is Rory and her sister Gigi. Rory and Gigi this is Faith and Daryl. And I'm Buffy."
After the introduction, Rory saw both Buffy, Faith, and Daryl give both her and Gigi a thorough once-over to check for wounds and other injuries. Or at least, that's what she assumed they were doing. The two women had done the same thing to themselves and then each other after the last walker had lost half of its head.
"Thanks for the help. My car got stuck in the mud and I couldn't get it loose and then the walkers turned up and surrounded us, and -." Why was she rambling like she was back in high school? She was more articulate than this.
"Whoa, easy on the babble-fest. We get it, kid. You're safe now, at least until you come across the next herd."
"Faith!"
Kid? This Faith couldn't be more than a couple of years older than her. Rory resisted the urge to cross her arms under her chest, it wouldn't help her situation at all. Something about these people made her feel both protected and threatened, which made no sense at all.
Then the man, Daryl?, decided to enter the conversation, "How many walkers have you killed? Do you have a group?"
Rory heard Faith give an unladylike snort, but both of the women remained silent otherwise.
"Uh... 20-30? We usually hide when they come, or we try to run or drive away." She blinked back the sting in her eyes, she wouldn't cry in front of these people. "We don't have a group anymore." She inhaled and exhaled slowly a couple of times to regain control before she added, "The walkers got them."
Her three rescuers nodded in acceptance of that, before Buffy replied, "You can join us. Daryl has another group we haven't met, but they're probably not far from here."
The man in question gave the blonde a sharp look at that but refrained from commenting. Mostly because Faith began talking before he got that far.
"Yeah, you can join us. It'll mean our little group consists of all of four people. We lost the others to some idiots and a herd of walkers."
"You can all follow me to my group, we have a camp about an hour from here on foot."
The next ten minutes were spent going over details; first how to get Rory's car loose from the mud, then how to get to Buffy's car some forty minutes in the opposite direction from Daryl's camp. It ended with Faith pushing her car out of the muddy trap, then everyone piled into the car to drive to get the other car.
It took a while but they were finally on their way to what Daryl called the Quarry Camp. Once they'd reached Buffy's car she and Faith had switched cars, and then made Daryl get into the backseat to give them directions. Rory followed in her own car with Gigi.