Day 2: three questions - BtVS/Walking Dead - Gen
title: three questions
rating: FR13
disclaimer: BtVS and all related characters are copyright of Joss Whedon and ME. The Walking Dead and all related characters are copyright of Robert Kirkman, Image Comics and AMC. No infringement intended.
prompt: jedibuttercup/BtVS, Walking Dead/“Buffy, at least, as many of the other Scoobies and the WD cast as you want. Either part of your ongoing series, or standalone.”
note: This sort of got away from me. Sorry? Also Hozier might own my soul as much as Marvel.
summary: I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife.
Gunfire drew her, like it drew the dead, and that comparison made Buffy Summers wince. A sigh escaped her before she finished making her way through the window of the abandon home she’d used for shelter the last few days. All of her worldly possessions were tucked away in the attic-except for her weapons-those were spread across her person. Their placement precise and their edges clean and sharp, to be honest, they looked better than she did most days.
Clean hair wouldn’t save her life, but the careful maintenance of her parang might.
The parang was left in the holster on her thigh as she took a moment to study her surroundings. Noting the lack of dead, but still hearing the sounds of scuffle had her easing the strap of the crossbow down her arm. She settled the weapon against her shoulder as she made her way along the side of the house towards the front, towards the sound of someone putting up a fight. The sun sat at her back, high and overly warm, as she kept a safe distance between herself and the sharp-edged stucco coating the exterior of the home. Her palms still stung from their previous encounter.
Thorn filled bushes crept up along the front of the house, the main reason for her use of the window, and she eased around them to see the front yard. The minivan blocked the driveway, but Buffy could see a motorcycle a few houses down along with a truck that looked better than most of the other vehicles in her eyesight. The open front door of the house across the street-which had been closed the previous night-told at least part of the tale.
She used the minivan as cover, after taking a quick look beneath. There was no need to ruin newly acquired boots as she made her way around it. Buffy caught sight of the dead, but not their intended prey. There were six shambling their way along the street and three more coming from the opposite direction. Guns, while useful, weren’t always the best solution when dealing with this particular brand of undead. They tended to travel in packs-which she just didn’t get-and loud noises attracted them like bees to honey-or whatever the hell attracted bees.
The familiar thwack of a blade cleaving a skull drew her further down the driveway. She continued to use the minivan as cover while she watched one of the hungry things collapse backwards, skull split and more dead than before. A man stepped forward to take on another and her cheek came to rest against the crossbow’s edge as she settled it higher against her shoulder. He was taller than she was, but that wasn’t saying much, and Buffy didn’t recognize him as one of the men from the group she’d had run-in with a few days prior.
Annoyance-at both her relief and disappointment-chased its way across her features. Her left shoulder still ached, but she would’ve liked to have inflicted a little more pain on the one that assaulted her. A broken nose and possibly fractured wrist didn’t seem like enough recompense, but his friends had taken issue with Buffy defending herself. Guns had been drawn and, thankfully, most of them had been terrible shots, but one had hit her shoulder and another had grazed her thigh.
Green eyes narrowed and she exhaled before putting a bolt in the dead at the guy’s back. He spun, first to look at the lack of danger now behind him and then to her. He was kept in her peripheral as she reloaded and he brought up his gun. The sight of it made her shoulder twitch, but he pointed it at the dead beyond them so she returned the favor. Buffy allowed another bolt to fly, another fell and she reloaded before settling the strap back on her shoulder and retrieved the parang in one fluid motion.
She crossed the yard and dead nearest to her found its face split in two. The rate of decomposition made the sharp edge of the blade sink easily into brain matter even with the upward swing. She ignored the splatter and moved onto the next, but a bolt, not one of hers, sank into the skull of her closest target. Buffy retrieved it, noted absently it was long enough to be classified as an arrow before she used it to kill the next. Her nose wrinkled at the noxious smell that permeated her personal space with the impaling of that particular skull.
Buffy kept hold of the arrow and kicked the thing away from her. It released from the eye socket with a sickening squelch that made her thankful she’d been rationing her food as of late. Turning she took note that their quarry had dwindled to none, but she scanned the surrounding area twice anyways while the two men made their way cautiously towards her. She tossed the arrow towards the guy with the crossbow, he caught it easily, and she switched the parang to her left before bringing her own crossbow forward. She didn’t point it at the two men, but reminded them of its presence as they settled themselves several feet away.
“Hey,” was tossed in her general direction by crossbow guy.
She arched a brow at the casualness of that greeting. The movement made her face feel tight in some areas and she could only hazard a guess that it was the tackiness of the congealed blood that had splattered her. Not bothering to wipe at it, the sleeve of her shirt was little to no good and taking her eyes off the men wasn’t the smartest of moves. The living were just as dangerous as the dead-she kept having to relearn that lesson the hard way.
Instead she lifted her chin and watched both of them a moment before returning his greeting with, “Hi,” she frowned and tacked on an, “also.”
She could see now that the one that had done the head cleaving was Asian and he was watching her hands more than her face at the moment. He held his own gun low along his body, but had settled it up front and center. She got the nagging suspicion he-like her-was reminding the group that he was armed.
He cast a quick glance up and down the street before questioning, “You alone?”
The parang sank into the ground at her feet with a deft flick of her wrist and the crossbow was settled against her should before he’d even raised his gun. She kept her aim center-mass and felt, more than saw, his friend raise his weapon in response to her. Buffy bit out the question, “What’s it to you?”
“Whoa! Whoa!” He took a step back and separated his hands. He kept the gun in his right hand and pointed it away from her. “I didn’t,” his voice wavered and he cleared his throat before stating, “I didn’t mean anything by that. Especially not what you’re thinking.”
“Smooth,” was snorted by his friend and he stepped forward, attempting to draw her focus away from-she was betting-the younger of the pair. “How long you been alone?”
“How is that any of your business?” She flicked her gaze to him and then back to the offended one. “This is where we part ways.” She flicked her gaze back to the one with the crossbow. “Unless you want this to get bloody?”
“We’ve got a camp,” The younger one supplied.
There was a casualness to the statement, but she heard the offer and it wasn’t entirely welcome. “So do I,” her response was less casual and more bitchy-it’d been a bad week.
“Our’s got people in it.” She quirked a brow as crossbow’s accent became more pronounced and she was nearly certain he had a toothpick in his mouth. “’Course we can always use more. ‘Specially folks who know how to handle themselves.”
“And if they don’t know how to handle themselves?”
“There’s room for them too.” Buffy studied the younger one a moment and he held up just fine under the scrutiny. He kept her gaze as he offered, “I’m Glenn. What’s your name?”
She hesitated, the last group hadn’t asked her name, hadn’t offered their own. One of them had simply hollered, “claimed,” when he saw her and then all hell had broken loose. These two kept a respectable distance and it really didn’t matter if they were doing it to make her or themselves comfortable. It was almost like courtesy-or as close to it as people got nowadays-and Buffy found herself enjoying this conversation of veiled and not so veiled threats.
She lowered the crossbow and bent, gaze still on the two men, to retrieve the parang from the ground at her feet. Dirt and thicker things stuck to the blade and she chose to keep it in her hand rather than dirty up the holster. She finally relented when the silence between them had stretched on long enough. “Buffy.”
“Daryl.” Crossbow dipped his chin at her name as if it was most common thing in the world, but Glenn’s brows nearly reached his hairline. “How many walkers you’ve killed?”
“Walkers?” Buffy questioned and Daryl looked to the dead around them as if it was the most obvious thing. “Ah.”
“What do you call them?”
Buffy looked at Glenn and raised a brow. “I don’t call them anything. I mostly just kill them.” She looked back to Daryl. “And to answer your question. Not nearly enough.”
His brows rose and she thought she caught a ghost of a smile before he added, “How many people?”
That gave her pause and while she knew the exact number she offered, “Too many,” in its stead.
They shared a glance before Glenn prompted, “Why?”
“They attacked me. They attacked mine.” A shrug lifted her uninjured shoulder. “I don’t take joy in it.”
“Take joy in killing walkers?”
Daryl’s question made her smile, a baring of teeth from one predator to another. “Some.”
“Do you want to join us?”
Glenn kept the request casual, but she caught on to the fact that they didn’t make the offer to everyone. Daryl spared a glance at their surroundings rather than stare her down like Glenn. She sighed before giving another shrug. “Why not?”
The dry grass crunched under her boots as she spun and made her way up the lawn of the house, retrieving her bolts as she went. She was nearly to the minivan when Glenn called an uneasy, “Hey!”
She paused, glanced back and explained, “I’ve got gear.”
Daryl made his way past Glenn and questioned, “You coming?”
She waited for Daryl to reach her and fell in step beside him rather than have both of them at her back. He seemed to get that and took a few steps ahead and she watched as he made his way around the house. She cleared her throat when he nearly passed the broken window and tilted her head towards it. Buffy brought the parang up, wincing as it forced her to use her injured shoulder without the added benefit of an adrenaline rush.
The handle struck the top half of the window a few times and she waited to see if any surprises had made their way inside while she was out. Silence reigned and she climbed through without looking to see if the other two would follow.
They did and she led them through the house, ignoring the sight of their raised guns, since an ambush by the living wasn’t an unheard of thing. She forgave their suspicion and hoped Daryl forgave her as she kept her crossbow on his back as he led them up the stairs she pointed him towards. “How long have you been alone?”
Glenn’s question broke the moment of tension and Buffy spared him a quick glance. “I’m not sure.” Buffy turned back around and spoke to Daryl’s back, “It was a lot colder than it is now.”
“Were you with a group?”
“Yeah.” Buffy swallowed and forced out the next part, “My sister and I drifted a bit. We never really found a group that fit us right. The last one we tried was swarmed and I lost sight of her.” She blinked away the watering of her gaze, but her voice remained steady when she finished, “Never found her again.”
“Are you still looking?” Glenn’s gun lowered a bit and she guessed him as the more tenderhearted of the pair.
“Looking requires hope.” She slipped past Daryl and into the master bedroom before finishing, “And that is in sparse commodity.”
She made her way past the bed and into the walk-in closet. The crossbow was settled back onto her shoulder and she reached for the pulldown with her good arm. The ladder led up to her makeshift camp. It’d been unbearably hot in the attic, but she’d felt the tactical advantages outweighed her discomfort while healing. She snagged the flashlight she kept near the entrance. The Maglite, with its four D batteries, was hefty enough to be used as a weapon, but for the moment she used it to flood the attic with light.
Plywood spanned the floor and did little to absorb her footfalls as she crossed the few feet to the camp she’d created. Buffy knelt and tugged the sheet from the pile of comforters she’d used as a bed the last few nights. She’d been unwilling to disturb the contents of the bedrooms by snagging pillows and such, not wanting to leave a trace of her presence if she could help it, so she’d raided the linin closet instead. It hadn’t been comfortable, but she’d had worst.
The sheet and spit were used to clean the parang as best she could before she returned it to the holster while the crossbow was propped against her leg as she retrieved the pack. A pack that she rarely unpacked since leaving at a moment’s notice was par for the course. She slipped the straps up her arms and winced when it sat heavy on her left shoulder, but she ignored the pain and instead focused on snagging the crossbow. She caught sight of Glenn looking around the attic from his place on the ladder.
He looked up at her before questioning. “Ready?”
She retrieved the flashlight and cast the attic back into shadow before taking a deep breath and answering, “As I’ll ever be.”
+
Sunlight streamed through the trees canopying the road and the sound of the motorcycle leading them was unsettling in its no longer commonplace normalcy. Buffy let her head fall back, bouncing against the warm glass of the truck’s back window as she gazed up at the dappled sunshine. She’d caught sight of a few signs warning drivers away from hitchhikers and it’d made her smile. She wished-not for the first time-Dawn was still with her. They tumbled through Glory’s portal together into a world without the monsters of make-believe. They’d found their way in it until it’d taken a turn for the worst, but they’d always had each other. Until they didn’t.
She shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, and brought her crossbow up to rest in her lap. The truck slowed as they left the shade of the trees and gravel crunched under the truck’s tires as Glenn pulled off the road. Buffy twisted, leaning out of the bed of the truck to get a better look at what the signs had hinted at and arched a brow at her first sight of the prison. Metal doors pushed their way through a throng of dead and nudged them into some wooden posts placed as strategically as the weapons on her person.
Their guttural cries a more common sound than Daryl’s motorcycle, but just as disconcerting.
The truck followed the bike through a fenced in yard and through another gate before they settled to a stop on a paved drive. Buffy could see those in the yard looked up as they entered. The people were scattered about doing various tasks with a few in something that looked suspiciously like a garden. Daryl was waved to by several of those people as she pulled herself up. There was an ache in her backside-hours spent in the bed of a pickup will do that to a person-and she retrieved her crossbow before her gear.
Her shoulder throbbed with pain from the rough ride and she chose to settle the crossbow strap on that shoulder while allowing her right to take the weight of her pack. Glenn exited the cab of the truck and came around to the back to offer her a hand. She stared at it a moment, considering, before she accepted his help by handing him her gear. His eyes widened with the weight of the pack and that made her smile before she hopped the side of the truck and landed beside him.
He shifted her pack up and onto his shoulder and now that they were standing side by side Buffy realized he really was quite a bit taller than herself. It didn’t help that her boots only had an inch heel on them, but anything higher was just asking for a sprained ankle on this terrain-the days she slayed in chunky high heels were long past. She sighed and watched as some of the inhabitants made their way forward to greet Glenn and Daryl and, apparently, welcome her.
A brunette, with a pretty face and easy smile, kissed Glenn soundly on the mouth and Buffy caught sight of the ring before she turned to offer that smile to her. “I’m Maggie.”
“Buffy,” she nodded, much like Daryl had, and frowned when Maggie’s smile turned beaming.
“Buffy?” She let go of Glenn and offered her hand, the one without the ring, and requested, “Can I borrow you a moment?”
“Maggie?” Glenn made her name a question.
“Please,” was said with a little more urgency and she wiggled her fingers. “It’s important.”
Buffy arched a brow at the thought of what could be so important to share with a stranger, but since she was in for the penny and the pound she accepted that offered hand. Maggie dragged her around the back of the pickup and towards the garden. The grass was soft beneath her boots and cut low, probably for visibility, and the scent of mud and manure wrinkled her nose as they passed what she assumed was a pigpen.
“Dad!” Maggie hollered loud enough to draw the moans of the dead.
Buffy arched a brow and since she could hear Glenn and Daryl bring up the rear she spared them a confused look before she turned back around. An older guy, hair white enough to put him well past sixty, exited one of rows of corn. The sight of corn distracted her a moment and she felt her mouth water at the prospect of fresh vegetables before she looked back to man-apparently Maggie’s dad-he leaned heavily on a cane and she noticed one of his legs was a prosthetic. He spared her a kind smile before looking to Maggie and the corn rustled, drawing her focus back to it.
She watched it part and she dropped Maggie’s hand as the blood left her face and she whispered, “Dawn?”
Her whisper lifted her sister’s head and blue eyes widened before the basket she held was dropped and Dawn was suddenly in her arms. Buffy’s name was chanted against her side of her neck and arms were wrapped much too tightly around her middle and she didn’t care. The pain was secondary to the joy.
Dawn was sobbing, she might’ve been as well, but all was currently right with the world and she couldn’t bring herself to give a damn.
+
The end.
rating: FR13
disclaimer: BtVS and all related characters are copyright of Joss Whedon and ME. The Walking Dead and all related characters are copyright of Robert Kirkman, Image Comics and AMC. No infringement intended.
prompt: jedibuttercup/BtVS, Walking Dead/“Buffy, at least, as many of the other Scoobies and the WD cast as you want. Either part of your ongoing series, or standalone.”
note: This sort of got away from me. Sorry? Also Hozier might own my soul as much as Marvel.
summary: I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife.
Gunfire drew her, like it drew the dead, and that comparison made Buffy Summers wince. A sigh escaped her before she finished making her way through the window of the abandon home she’d used for shelter the last few days. All of her worldly possessions were tucked away in the attic-except for her weapons-those were spread across her person. Their placement precise and their edges clean and sharp, to be honest, they looked better than she did most days.
Clean hair wouldn’t save her life, but the careful maintenance of her parang might.
The parang was left in the holster on her thigh as she took a moment to study her surroundings. Noting the lack of dead, but still hearing the sounds of scuffle had her easing the strap of the crossbow down her arm. She settled the weapon against her shoulder as she made her way along the side of the house towards the front, towards the sound of someone putting up a fight. The sun sat at her back, high and overly warm, as she kept a safe distance between herself and the sharp-edged stucco coating the exterior of the home. Her palms still stung from their previous encounter.
Thorn filled bushes crept up along the front of the house, the main reason for her use of the window, and she eased around them to see the front yard. The minivan blocked the driveway, but Buffy could see a motorcycle a few houses down along with a truck that looked better than most of the other vehicles in her eyesight. The open front door of the house across the street-which had been closed the previous night-told at least part of the tale.
She used the minivan as cover, after taking a quick look beneath. There was no need to ruin newly acquired boots as she made her way around it. Buffy caught sight of the dead, but not their intended prey. There were six shambling their way along the street and three more coming from the opposite direction. Guns, while useful, weren’t always the best solution when dealing with this particular brand of undead. They tended to travel in packs-which she just didn’t get-and loud noises attracted them like bees to honey-or whatever the hell attracted bees.
The familiar thwack of a blade cleaving a skull drew her further down the driveway. She continued to use the minivan as cover while she watched one of the hungry things collapse backwards, skull split and more dead than before. A man stepped forward to take on another and her cheek came to rest against the crossbow’s edge as she settled it higher against her shoulder. He was taller than she was, but that wasn’t saying much, and Buffy didn’t recognize him as one of the men from the group she’d had run-in with a few days prior.
Annoyance-at both her relief and disappointment-chased its way across her features. Her left shoulder still ached, but she would’ve liked to have inflicted a little more pain on the one that assaulted her. A broken nose and possibly fractured wrist didn’t seem like enough recompense, but his friends had taken issue with Buffy defending herself. Guns had been drawn and, thankfully, most of them had been terrible shots, but one had hit her shoulder and another had grazed her thigh.
Green eyes narrowed and she exhaled before putting a bolt in the dead at the guy’s back. He spun, first to look at the lack of danger now behind him and then to her. He was kept in her peripheral as she reloaded and he brought up his gun. The sight of it made her shoulder twitch, but he pointed it at the dead beyond them so she returned the favor. Buffy allowed another bolt to fly, another fell and she reloaded before settling the strap back on her shoulder and retrieved the parang in one fluid motion.
She crossed the yard and dead nearest to her found its face split in two. The rate of decomposition made the sharp edge of the blade sink easily into brain matter even with the upward swing. She ignored the splatter and moved onto the next, but a bolt, not one of hers, sank into the skull of her closest target. Buffy retrieved it, noted absently it was long enough to be classified as an arrow before she used it to kill the next. Her nose wrinkled at the noxious smell that permeated her personal space with the impaling of that particular skull.
Buffy kept hold of the arrow and kicked the thing away from her. It released from the eye socket with a sickening squelch that made her thankful she’d been rationing her food as of late. Turning she took note that their quarry had dwindled to none, but she scanned the surrounding area twice anyways while the two men made their way cautiously towards her. She tossed the arrow towards the guy with the crossbow, he caught it easily, and she switched the parang to her left before bringing her own crossbow forward. She didn’t point it at the two men, but reminded them of its presence as they settled themselves several feet away.
“Hey,” was tossed in her general direction by crossbow guy.
She arched a brow at the casualness of that greeting. The movement made her face feel tight in some areas and she could only hazard a guess that it was the tackiness of the congealed blood that had splattered her. Not bothering to wipe at it, the sleeve of her shirt was little to no good and taking her eyes off the men wasn’t the smartest of moves. The living were just as dangerous as the dead-she kept having to relearn that lesson the hard way.
Instead she lifted her chin and watched both of them a moment before returning his greeting with, “Hi,” she frowned and tacked on an, “also.”
She could see now that the one that had done the head cleaving was Asian and he was watching her hands more than her face at the moment. He held his own gun low along his body, but had settled it up front and center. She got the nagging suspicion he-like her-was reminding the group that he was armed.
He cast a quick glance up and down the street before questioning, “You alone?”
The parang sank into the ground at her feet with a deft flick of her wrist and the crossbow was settled against her should before he’d even raised his gun. She kept her aim center-mass and felt, more than saw, his friend raise his weapon in response to her. Buffy bit out the question, “What’s it to you?”
“Whoa! Whoa!” He took a step back and separated his hands. He kept the gun in his right hand and pointed it away from her. “I didn’t,” his voice wavered and he cleared his throat before stating, “I didn’t mean anything by that. Especially not what you’re thinking.”
“Smooth,” was snorted by his friend and he stepped forward, attempting to draw her focus away from-she was betting-the younger of the pair. “How long you been alone?”
“How is that any of your business?” She flicked her gaze to him and then back to the offended one. “This is where we part ways.” She flicked her gaze back to the one with the crossbow. “Unless you want this to get bloody?”
“We’ve got a camp,” The younger one supplied.
There was a casualness to the statement, but she heard the offer and it wasn’t entirely welcome. “So do I,” her response was less casual and more bitchy-it’d been a bad week.
“Our’s got people in it.” She quirked a brow as crossbow’s accent became more pronounced and she was nearly certain he had a toothpick in his mouth. “’Course we can always use more. ‘Specially folks who know how to handle themselves.”
“And if they don’t know how to handle themselves?”
“There’s room for them too.” Buffy studied the younger one a moment and he held up just fine under the scrutiny. He kept her gaze as he offered, “I’m Glenn. What’s your name?”
She hesitated, the last group hadn’t asked her name, hadn’t offered their own. One of them had simply hollered, “claimed,” when he saw her and then all hell had broken loose. These two kept a respectable distance and it really didn’t matter if they were doing it to make her or themselves comfortable. It was almost like courtesy-or as close to it as people got nowadays-and Buffy found herself enjoying this conversation of veiled and not so veiled threats.
She lowered the crossbow and bent, gaze still on the two men, to retrieve the parang from the ground at her feet. Dirt and thicker things stuck to the blade and she chose to keep it in her hand rather than dirty up the holster. She finally relented when the silence between them had stretched on long enough. “Buffy.”
“Daryl.” Crossbow dipped his chin at her name as if it was most common thing in the world, but Glenn’s brows nearly reached his hairline. “How many walkers you’ve killed?”
“Walkers?” Buffy questioned and Daryl looked to the dead around them as if it was the most obvious thing. “Ah.”
“What do you call them?”
Buffy looked at Glenn and raised a brow. “I don’t call them anything. I mostly just kill them.” She looked back to Daryl. “And to answer your question. Not nearly enough.”
His brows rose and she thought she caught a ghost of a smile before he added, “How many people?”
That gave her pause and while she knew the exact number she offered, “Too many,” in its stead.
They shared a glance before Glenn prompted, “Why?”
“They attacked me. They attacked mine.” A shrug lifted her uninjured shoulder. “I don’t take joy in it.”
“Take joy in killing walkers?”
Daryl’s question made her smile, a baring of teeth from one predator to another. “Some.”
“Do you want to join us?”
Glenn kept the request casual, but she caught on to the fact that they didn’t make the offer to everyone. Daryl spared a glance at their surroundings rather than stare her down like Glenn. She sighed before giving another shrug. “Why not?”
The dry grass crunched under her boots as she spun and made her way up the lawn of the house, retrieving her bolts as she went. She was nearly to the minivan when Glenn called an uneasy, “Hey!”
She paused, glanced back and explained, “I’ve got gear.”
Daryl made his way past Glenn and questioned, “You coming?”
She waited for Daryl to reach her and fell in step beside him rather than have both of them at her back. He seemed to get that and took a few steps ahead and she watched as he made his way around the house. She cleared her throat when he nearly passed the broken window and tilted her head towards it. Buffy brought the parang up, wincing as it forced her to use her injured shoulder without the added benefit of an adrenaline rush.
The handle struck the top half of the window a few times and she waited to see if any surprises had made their way inside while she was out. Silence reigned and she climbed through without looking to see if the other two would follow.
They did and she led them through the house, ignoring the sight of their raised guns, since an ambush by the living wasn’t an unheard of thing. She forgave their suspicion and hoped Daryl forgave her as she kept her crossbow on his back as he led them up the stairs she pointed him towards. “How long have you been alone?”
Glenn’s question broke the moment of tension and Buffy spared him a quick glance. “I’m not sure.” Buffy turned back around and spoke to Daryl’s back, “It was a lot colder than it is now.”
“Were you with a group?”
“Yeah.” Buffy swallowed and forced out the next part, “My sister and I drifted a bit. We never really found a group that fit us right. The last one we tried was swarmed and I lost sight of her.” She blinked away the watering of her gaze, but her voice remained steady when she finished, “Never found her again.”
“Are you still looking?” Glenn’s gun lowered a bit and she guessed him as the more tenderhearted of the pair.
“Looking requires hope.” She slipped past Daryl and into the master bedroom before finishing, “And that is in sparse commodity.”
She made her way past the bed and into the walk-in closet. The crossbow was settled back onto her shoulder and she reached for the pulldown with her good arm. The ladder led up to her makeshift camp. It’d been unbearably hot in the attic, but she’d felt the tactical advantages outweighed her discomfort while healing. She snagged the flashlight she kept near the entrance. The Maglite, with its four D batteries, was hefty enough to be used as a weapon, but for the moment she used it to flood the attic with light.
Plywood spanned the floor and did little to absorb her footfalls as she crossed the few feet to the camp she’d created. Buffy knelt and tugged the sheet from the pile of comforters she’d used as a bed the last few nights. She’d been unwilling to disturb the contents of the bedrooms by snagging pillows and such, not wanting to leave a trace of her presence if she could help it, so she’d raided the linin closet instead. It hadn’t been comfortable, but she’d had worst.
The sheet and spit were used to clean the parang as best she could before she returned it to the holster while the crossbow was propped against her leg as she retrieved the pack. A pack that she rarely unpacked since leaving at a moment’s notice was par for the course. She slipped the straps up her arms and winced when it sat heavy on her left shoulder, but she ignored the pain and instead focused on snagging the crossbow. She caught sight of Glenn looking around the attic from his place on the ladder.
He looked up at her before questioning. “Ready?”
She retrieved the flashlight and cast the attic back into shadow before taking a deep breath and answering, “As I’ll ever be.”
+
Sunlight streamed through the trees canopying the road and the sound of the motorcycle leading them was unsettling in its no longer commonplace normalcy. Buffy let her head fall back, bouncing against the warm glass of the truck’s back window as she gazed up at the dappled sunshine. She’d caught sight of a few signs warning drivers away from hitchhikers and it’d made her smile. She wished-not for the first time-Dawn was still with her. They tumbled through Glory’s portal together into a world without the monsters of make-believe. They’d found their way in it until it’d taken a turn for the worst, but they’d always had each other. Until they didn’t.
She shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, and brought her crossbow up to rest in her lap. The truck slowed as they left the shade of the trees and gravel crunched under the truck’s tires as Glenn pulled off the road. Buffy twisted, leaning out of the bed of the truck to get a better look at what the signs had hinted at and arched a brow at her first sight of the prison. Metal doors pushed their way through a throng of dead and nudged them into some wooden posts placed as strategically as the weapons on her person.
Their guttural cries a more common sound than Daryl’s motorcycle, but just as disconcerting.
The truck followed the bike through a fenced in yard and through another gate before they settled to a stop on a paved drive. Buffy could see those in the yard looked up as they entered. The people were scattered about doing various tasks with a few in something that looked suspiciously like a garden. Daryl was waved to by several of those people as she pulled herself up. There was an ache in her backside-hours spent in the bed of a pickup will do that to a person-and she retrieved her crossbow before her gear.
Her shoulder throbbed with pain from the rough ride and she chose to settle the crossbow strap on that shoulder while allowing her right to take the weight of her pack. Glenn exited the cab of the truck and came around to the back to offer her a hand. She stared at it a moment, considering, before she accepted his help by handing him her gear. His eyes widened with the weight of the pack and that made her smile before she hopped the side of the truck and landed beside him.
He shifted her pack up and onto his shoulder and now that they were standing side by side Buffy realized he really was quite a bit taller than herself. It didn’t help that her boots only had an inch heel on them, but anything higher was just asking for a sprained ankle on this terrain-the days she slayed in chunky high heels were long past. She sighed and watched as some of the inhabitants made their way forward to greet Glenn and Daryl and, apparently, welcome her.
A brunette, with a pretty face and easy smile, kissed Glenn soundly on the mouth and Buffy caught sight of the ring before she turned to offer that smile to her. “I’m Maggie.”
“Buffy,” she nodded, much like Daryl had, and frowned when Maggie’s smile turned beaming.
“Buffy?” She let go of Glenn and offered her hand, the one without the ring, and requested, “Can I borrow you a moment?”
“Maggie?” Glenn made her name a question.
“Please,” was said with a little more urgency and she wiggled her fingers. “It’s important.”
Buffy arched a brow at the thought of what could be so important to share with a stranger, but since she was in for the penny and the pound she accepted that offered hand. Maggie dragged her around the back of the pickup and towards the garden. The grass was soft beneath her boots and cut low, probably for visibility, and the scent of mud and manure wrinkled her nose as they passed what she assumed was a pigpen.
“Dad!” Maggie hollered loud enough to draw the moans of the dead.
Buffy arched a brow and since she could hear Glenn and Daryl bring up the rear she spared them a confused look before she turned back around. An older guy, hair white enough to put him well past sixty, exited one of rows of corn. The sight of corn distracted her a moment and she felt her mouth water at the prospect of fresh vegetables before she looked back to man-apparently Maggie’s dad-he leaned heavily on a cane and she noticed one of his legs was a prosthetic. He spared her a kind smile before looking to Maggie and the corn rustled, drawing her focus back to it.
She watched it part and she dropped Maggie’s hand as the blood left her face and she whispered, “Dawn?”
Her whisper lifted her sister’s head and blue eyes widened before the basket she held was dropped and Dawn was suddenly in her arms. Buffy’s name was chanted against her side of her neck and arms were wrapped much too tightly around her middle and she didn’t care. The pain was secondary to the joy.
Dawn was sobbing, she might’ve been as well, but all was currently right with the world and she couldn’t bring herself to give a damn.
+
The end.