Who: Ciri, Daryl Dixon Where: Her place When: Snow Warnings: None Status: Completed GDoc
The smell of bacon, eggs and sausage wafted through the apartment. She'd thrown the curtains open and the snow was piled up enough to get them pretty snowed in.
her hair was down today, as white as the snow with undertones of ashen grey, and she wore a loose white shirt, low cut but comfy over practically painted on leather pants. She didn't want to wake him up and they'd been hanging after cleaning. She hummed a little as she cooked.
****
He'd slept deeply, for the first time in a very long time. He woke to the smell of bacon frying, and thought he was dreaming. Awareness came slowly, almost reluctantly, as he became conscious of his surroundings. He was in a bed, warm, cozy. In a room, an actual bedroom. Not a prison cell or some random place he happened to crash.
He remembered Ciri, and the kindness she had showed him. Hot running water, food, and the bed. He hadn't wanted to take her bed, she'd insisted, and he'd been too tired to fight. he barely remembered falling in under the covers, his bow at his side. HIs eyes flickered to where his Stryker should be, and seeing it was still there, he let out a little sigh of relief.
He kicked the blankets back and stretched as he rolled out of bed. A few minutes in the bathroom, and he was heading to the kitchen. "Looks like you're expecting company." Because there was way more food than any two people should need frying on the stove.
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Ciri looked up as she heard him get up. She hadn't wanted to wake him. He looked like he hadn't slept in a real bed in eons. She knew the feeling well. So she'd tried to stay quiet. Not hard for a Witches.
She smirked a touch, "Well I can eat a deceptive amount of food and I wasn't sure how much you'd want so extra was made. Plus if the power goes, precooked is a good idea." She smiled at him, she was genuinely kind.
Her weapons hung by the door still, unmoved from where she'd left them. She flipped one of the sausages, "I didn't know what you preferred for a morning drink: coffee, juice, water "
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"Coffee." No question. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had coffee made in a pot. He followed his nose to where it was on the counter and poured himself a mug full. He'd have to be careful he didn't try to drink it when it was too hot.
"I want you to know I appreciate the hospitality. Ain't too many good people left where I'm from." He still wasn't convinced he wasn't dead or dreaming.
****
Ciri nodded a bit, then flipped the last of the food onto plates, she stretched then laid everything out on the table. Giving him plenty of room to move without getting into his space. Ciri knew what it was like being in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people. She jumped time enough to know that.
"Not a problem, would have been nice had someone done it for me when I got here so I promised myself if I was in a position to help, I would." she shrugged a bit.
"Oh, that so?"
****
"Ain't pretty," he told her. Picking up the fork he started shoveling the eggs, taaking a bite of bacon with his mouth full of egg. He didn't really have table manners to begin with.
"The living are more dangerous and deadly than them walkers," he said with a shrug and another fork full shoved in.
****
Ciri didn't mind she'd seen worse manners. "The living are always more dangerous than anything." She said with a scowl. People plotted. Monsters and the dead didn't.
"People are unpredictable. Monsters and the like aren't like that." She shook her head, taking a bite of eggs
****
"People are the real monsters." He'd encountered enough of them to know. The dead were driven by a primal need. They didn't know how to reason, strategise, or exploit. They were easy enough to kill in small numbers. They didn't use weapons to fight back.
As nice as it was to be in a world without walkers, Daryl was more on guard for it. He finished off the eggs on his plate, inhaling the rest of the meat and washing it all down with the coffee.
****
"Always are. People call others animals but half the things people do, animals wouldn't." She leaned back, sipping on her coffee, looking out the window with a small frown tucked on her lips.
"I prefer animals to humans most of the time." No scheming, no plotting, no backstabbing. You generally knew where you stood with an animal.
****
Daryl nodded his agreement. He hadn't ever really spent much time around animals, but he knew what she said was true enough. People were schemers, and until they found a group to lay loyalties with, they were only out for themselves. And then the group, if they were lucky enough to find that kind of self made family. Daryl had been the loner, for a long time, even when he'd first started out with Rick and the others, and so many of them were dead now, but his loyalties lay with the ones who survived. With Rick.
"I ain't never been around animals enough, but I ain't a big fan of people no more," he told her. There were some, certainly, who had earned his trust. But not many.
****
"End of the world will do that" she laughed softly, she pushed her hair out of her eyes and finished her coffee. "This place isn't bad, people generally get along. I'm an outlier, people don't know what to make of me so I'm a loner here."
She looked at the snow falling. "It could be worse, though"
****
Daryl rolled his shoulders. "I been a loner all my life." He wasn't a bruiser like his brother had been. He was never what good enough to please his father, never lived up to what Meerle expected from him. He'd made his own path in the world, despite the setbacks both his father and his brother imposed on him. He'd found his place with Rick and the others, but he'd learned he could still survive on his own. He'd always been and would always be an outside, even when he was part of a group.
****
"Not a bad thing, really." She was sent away, traveled then on the run for so long that it was ridiculous. She only kept close to a couple others. Geralt being the only one she truly trusted.
"Being a loner is not all bad"
****
Daryl shook his head. "No. Some days it's for the best." He'd had a rough life, and trusting others had rarely worked out for him. It was better, safer, to be a loner, relying on no one but himself more often than not. But times had changed. Things were different now, here, in Madison Valley.
"Other days, other times, being part of a group ain't so bad either."
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She shrugged a little. "Sometimes. I havent really been part of a group in a very, very long time." she said softly, looking back at him. "I've been on the run too long"
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"We been on the run since the dead started to rise. My brother got us in with a group in Atlanta. He got exiled, but they let me stay. Merle found us, after a while, but then he got bit. And I had to destroy the thing he became. We hunkered down in a prison, but got attacked and split up. I ran with a couple'a guys for a while, but they tried to kill Rick, but at least I found Rick again." Daryl shrugged. it was a short and far from complete history of what had happened. He left out Carl and the farm and Sophia and so many other things.
****
Ciri offered no pity, just a nod. "Sounds like a rough run." She stretched, "I was passed from family to monk to monk after my parents died, both to protect me as the heir and train me to be a Witcher. Then there were wars and people trying to assassinate me. Tiring things, really, being on the run no matter the cause is exhausting. Though I only could trust three others, I rarely spent enough time with them for mine and their safety."
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"What's a witcher?" He could make assumptions, based on his understanding of what a witch was. But he thought it might also be different. Because witches aren't real, they only existed in books and movies and whatever else.
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"Mmm think of it as a bounty hunter for monsters and people. It comes with bonus things like powers. " she shrugged a bit, she looked back at him, smiling softly.
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"What kind of powers?" She was getting into crazy talk again.
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She waved her hand lightly, "unimportant here. Resistance to poison, immunity to disease, a sixth sense" she shrugged a bit.
****
It would take time for him to accept what she said at face value. It was all too new, too unusual, and not reality where he came from for him to just shrug it off. he filed away everything she said, he'd analyse it all later.
"Sure, okay." He stood, and took his dishes to the sink. He rinsed the plate off and refilled his mug of coffee. "You're a bit weird. Anybody ever tell you that?"
****
"All the time" she laughed softly, "that's just part of my life. I'm used to it." She grinned softly as she got top to clear her own dishes. She didn't mind that he thought she was crazy, it was just another day in the life of a Witcher. Nothing was off limits. She was weird, stranger and that was perfectly okay with her.
"That's fine. I'm ok with that."