Who: Pete Whelan and Daniela Diaz Where: Pete's quarters, the UMCB What: catching each other up on a lot of shit When: around 9PM, 12/1/18
It might hurt a little while Hurt a little while It might hurt a little longer Than a little while But one of these days I’m gonna smile again One of these days I’m gonna smile
True to her word, Dani dropped everything and went to see Pete at the first conceivable moment. If she'd been doing anything else but paperwork it might have taken longer to wrap up, but a few minutes to fill out the last section of a report and she was on her way. And well before the time that she usually finished up for the day. There were few enough people left in the world that Dani would leave work for, but Pete was one of them.
Although, to be honest -- and she always tried to be truthful with herself, even if she wasn't as forthright with others -- work wasn't quite as satisfying as it used to be. The change had been a slow process, creeping over her at such a snail’s pace that she couldn't really pinpoint the day or the hour when it had started to happen. Well, no. She was perfectly capable of hazarding a guess, given how obvious the answer was, but that didn't help her identify why the position that represented as close to the culmination of her ambitions as she was likely to ever get felt so … unfulfilling. The fact that work was all she ever did might have had something to do with it. Dani was will to concede that. But that wasn't true tonight. Tonight someone was waiting to see her, which was a surprisingly nice feeling.
After a quick stop by her room for the promised food and drink -- cheese she'd liberated from the ball just two days prior and half a bottle of vanilla vodka, which was frankly disgusting but still counted as liquor -- Dani made her way over to Pete’s apartment. Her steps felt lighter than usual as she walked down the halls, like gravity suddenly had less of a pull on her. Excitement, Dani realized, and wondered when the last time she'd even felt such a thing. Way too fucking long.
When Pete opened the door in response to her knock, greeting her with a big smile and obvious enthusiasm, she immediately regretted the fact that she was carrying something in both hands. How could she greet him properly? “Hold that thought,” Dani said before he could speak.
"Seriously? Why?" He stepped back to allow her space as she slipped through the door to deposit her burdens inside, shutting the door behind them both.
“Now,” she continued, turning to face Pete and opening her arms. Now that her intent was made clearer, he was already moving forward towards her, that grin back on his face. “I expect a genuine, honest-to-god, ‘I just returned from a journey into the wilderness and by some miracle didn't die’ style hug. Because holy shit, Pete. It's really good to see you.”
"You don't even know the half of it." He did as she asked, wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her easily up off of the ground. Laughing, Dani returned Pete’s embrace, arms circling his neck to hang on as he picked her up. She turned her head and gave him a swift peck on the cheek. Pete held her there for a moment, savoring the fact that he was home and, more importantly, that he was glad to be home. That feeling of wanting to leave Austin for good? It sucked a ton, especially once he saw how easily Luckenbach had been subdued by zombies. No, Austin was better, raiders and drugs and a lack of real food and all.
He had so much to tell her, and she him, if all those texts from Demi were anything to go by.
They couldn't catch up with her in his arms like that, though, so he reluctantly set her back down on the ground, his hands resting briefly on her shoulders as though to make sure she was real. "Good enough, or you want another one? By the way, Demi says hi." He wiggled his eyebrows at her, unable to help himself despite the tension he still felt about Demi's allegiances (another one?!) and the worry he had for her situation (house arrest?!). "Didn't know you two were acquainted, by the way."
“Full marks for the hug,” Dani replied, hands automatically going to straighten her clothing now that she was back on her feet. Making her way over to take a seat Pete’s small table bought her time to take in what he'd just revealed to her about knowing Demi. Austin was a small town, but it always took her surprise when confronted with exactly how small.
“Demi and I met while I was staying at the Capitol.” There, she had managed to refer to that period of her life without so much as a flicker of discomfort. Leaning forward slightly to reach the bottle of vodka, Dani began to unscrew the lid. “Didn't know you and she were acquainted either.” Oh, Lord, was Pete trying to imply that he and Demi had slept together at some point in the past? She paused, looking over at him with narrowed eyes, and debated whether she wanted to fall down that particular rabbit hole. “You know she’s seeing someone, right?”
"I've known her for years. Like at least five, I think, something crazy like that. And yeah, I know she's with someone." Pete sat down at the table, oblivious to the assumptions Dani was concocting in her head, and watched expectantly as she poured them both a drink. "I haven't met the guy but I think they're happy together. Or at least… I don't know. Sounds like she's got a lot of stuff going on right now."
Pete didn’t know the half of it when it came to Demi’s complicated personal life. Or maybe he did, from the sound of it. Dani shrugged slightly, less willing to talk about their mutual friend’s personal life when there was so much else to discuss. Topping off the second glass, she twisted the lid back onto the bottle.
He reached for a cup and sniffed at it, wrinkling his nose at the heavy vanilla odor. Beggars couldn't be choosers, though, not these days, so he raised it towards her and smiled, clinking his cup against hers. "Thanks for coming over, Dani. It's really fucking good to see you again."
Taking a sip of her drink, and squelching a grimace at the flavor, Dani smiled back at Pete. “No kidding. I thought we might have lost you for a while there.” Whether she’d believed he would move on to (literally) greener pastures, or whether her worry had been more about him falling prey to one of the many dangers outside of Austin, she didn't specify. One was worse than the other, but both were bad. Not that she begrudged anyone leaving the city, in theory, but her selfish side didn't want to lose any of her few friends. “I'm glad I was wrong.”
"Hey, me too." Maybe one's supposedly-impending peril wasn't the most uplifting of drinking topics, but he'd survived and returned, hadn't he? That was pretty fucking uplifting. Pete took a sip of his drink, forcing it down, then set his cup on the table. "It was pretty weird that the radio stopped working. They kind of… think the radio set-up here might've gotten busted up.” Dani frowned at these words. “I don't really know how that stuff works, but that's what the guy who works with Erik was saying. It sucked, though, not being able to get in contact with you anymore, even if it was just passing messages through Savannah's kid and not talking to you directly."
“Odds were that it was only put together with duct tape and luck to begin with, so it probably broke down completely on its own.” Maybe that was a little too easy of an explanation, but Dani didn’t like thinking about the alternative, wondering about who would want the expedition to lose contact with Austin and why. Pete nodded non-committally; from the way that Erik and his helper had talked about the radio, it hadn't seemed as shoddily built as Dani made it out to be. But it seemed like she needed to hold onto that, so he said nothing as she added, “I appreciate that you sent back what you did, while you could. So thank you for that.”
After a beat, she cleared her throat quietly and glanced down at her cup. “So what have you heard so far, about what you missed?”
"Um…" Was he supposed to share about Demi's house arrest? Pete wasn't sure if he wanted to be the one to pass that on, so he switched topics somewhat. It wasn't lying; just omission of truth. Sort of. "The Hellhounds are in jail, I guess? Some of them, at least. Or is it all of them?"
“Just the ranked members.” Dani gave a slight grimace, and gestured with one of her hands in lieu of a shrug, flipping it palm up. “Most of them are still out there doing … whatever it is they do at their camp when they’re not raiding hospital supply trucks. But the Dog King and his top brass are all in La Quinta.”
"Serves them right." He couldn't help but think of the way Rodeo had insulted him, apologized, then thanked him for his efforts to help almost two months ago, that day at the Dog Park. His thoughts then drifted to the women and children who must still be at their camp, Noa in particular and all of Demi's friends; how were they doing? If something else had happened to the Dog Park, Demi would've mentioned it to him in her texts. Right? "After all they've done to us." Holding onto the wrongs the Hellhounds had wrought felt easier than addressing the confusion he felt.
“Indeed,” Dani replied, her eyes glanced to the side, away from Pete, and her brow furrowed slightly. He was right, of course, but -- well. It was Max, naturally, that gave her pause. She hated to be the first to bring him up, and wasn’t sure, in fact, whether Pete would even give a damn that their friend cared about one of the men who’d been arrested. So she held it back, for now. “The Capitol threw a ball to celebrate it,” she said instead. Setting down her cup, Dani unwrapped the cheese she’d saved from that night, nuding the plate over toward Pete when she was done. “Oh, they pretended it was to commemorate the full frost moon or some bullshit, but everyone there knew the real reason for the event.”
"Huh. I mean, that makes sense." He looked at the cheese with poorly-veiled excitement; fresh cheese? Where had it come from? "You know, after all they've done." Repeating the words made him feel better, too, as he reached for some. He was silent for a moment, savoring its taste and marveling at its presence, before he spoke up again. "You went, then? What was it like? Man, I wish I could've gone. It sounds kind of awesome."
“Decadent. This is just the least of it.” Dani gestured to the plate on the table between them as she spoke. “It was black tie, Pete. We’re talking ball gowns and tuxes, a four course meal, live music and a dancefloor. As if the Capitol was still part of the old world, and the infection just a nightmare.”
She stopped, pressing her lips together, and shook her head. The whole evening had been surreal and slightly unsettling at the same time. And even now, days later, Dani was still asking herself where it had all come from. “It sounds impossible, I know. Shame you missed it, though. I think you would have liked the experience.” He’d certainly have taken better advantage of it that she had.
"I probably would've, honestly. I guess sometimes you need an escape for a little while, you know?" There wasn't anything wrong with that. Not in Pete's book at least, and certainly not if it was only a once in a while type of thing. Still, if he thought about the concept a little more deeply, allowed himself to poke at it more and unravel the loose threads, there would've been something disconcerting about the whole thing. And the way Dani was describing it didn't entirely sit well with him, either; she was a pretty good judge of character, after all.
"I don't really plan on going on any trips like that again, anyway." Once was enough for a while. "So hopefully I won't miss the next thing that happens." He ate more cheese and washed it down with vanilla vodka; the flavors didn't go all that well together, but it was still nice to have something that was more luxurious than most snacks. "Anything else I should know about? Anything new with you?"
Lifting her cup for another sip of her barely-palatable drink, Dani shrugged one shoulder. About her own life, aside from the trip to the Capitol for their celebration, there was nothing to say. “Unless you consider countless hours in the lab to be something you should know about, I’d have to say there’s nothing new of interest to report.” The words were spoken without shame. Pete knew her well enough by now to know that she’d spent her time exactly the way she’d wanted to, and likely the same way she would have spent it even if he’d never left the city.
"You can't keep me from ever wondering if you'll say something else besides that." Pete had never bothered to hide his concern for how Dani spent the majority of her time. The fact that this tendency only seemed to get worse after the ordeal she'd had earlier in the year was something he was able to conceal a bit better, though.
Dani made a dismissive gesture, a wordless That’s your choice. Up until this point, she’d not had any of the cheese herself, allowing Pete to enjoy as much as he wanted. She’d had her fill at the ball, after all. Taking a small cube now, she held it in her hand for the moment. “You’ve barely told me any details about this trip, though, and I expected you to be bursting with news. So, then. What did you find?” Question asked, she popped the cheese in her mouth, chewing while Pete replied.
He shrugged a little, shaking his head. The horrors of Thanksgiving at Luckenbach were still pretty fresh, but maybe a second opinion on everything wouldn't hurt? "I guess it wasn't all we thought it would be. The trip, I mean, and the place. We found a couple of things we needed for the greenhouse while we were gone, so that wasn't a total waste, but… I should probably start with where we ended up. There was a big ass zombie horde in one of the towns we stopped at to forage, so we drove away from there and ended up finding another town. Luckenbach, they called it. It was kind of… To tell you the truth, it was a nice place. No raiders, no Prax, just a community of people living together."
“That sounds …” Impossibly idyllic. Maybe it was a sign of just how worn down the city of Austin had become after living under the shadow of raiders, Prax (and Prax addicts), s’mores gas, and all the rest of it, but Dani had a hard time reconciling the idea that there might be a community within a few days driving that didn’t have to contend with such problems. “Too good to be true,” she finished, after a moment. “But that’s my cynicism talking. How did they react to all of you rolling up on their town? Were you welcomed, or were the residents suspicious?”
"I mean, it kind of was. Or at least, it would've really been too good to be true if they'd been happy to see us." Pete refilled his cup; the vanilla flavor seemed to bother him less the more he drank. Funny how it always worked like that. "Definitely a lot of suspicion, I think. Like, were we going to stay there forever, come back with a bunch of people and take over…" Not that he hadn't considered moving there (with Dani, even) and doing just that. "They had actual vegetables. Meat at the meals. No smores gas. Too good to be true for sure, but it was really, really good. At least, until the zombies came." Because that was always how it ended these days, wasn't it?
The idea of zombies swarming the town made Dani shiver, and she sat down her forgotten cup in order to fold her arms across her chest. With Capitol patrols and such, it was more unlikely for a horde to take the UMCB.s shelter by surprise, but anyone who claimed they didn’t have nightmares about exactly that happening was lying. Especially anyone who’d been in Austin when it all went to hell. “Odd are good that I wouldn’t welcome outsiders either, if I lived in an isolated community like Luckenbach.” No matter how they were set for supplies, there had to be the worry that someone -- raiders -- would come along and take everything by force. It was that sort of world now. Dani rubbed her arms, as though increasing her circulation would clear these doom and gloom thoughts from her head.
"Yeah. I didn't really blame them. Especially since it's not like supplies are all that easy to come by, even if they were growing their own food and stuff." What a waste; all those resources were likely ruined now.
“I’m glad you made it out safely,” Dani said, shaking her head slightly in dismay at the situation he'd ended up in. “Do you think the walkers from the overrun town you stopped at followed you there, or was it just a coincidence?”
"Do you think they're capable of that? Like watching our bus go and heading in that direction?" It was a pretty fucked up thought to have, and Pete hoped valiantly that it wasn't true. "They must have some kind of brain left, right?" But as much as he found the concept of zombie dissection fascinating, what had happened to Luckenbach was still too close to home. Pete gave a shrug and reached for another piece of cheese, his expression a little more somber. "I guess it'd been awhile since I'd even seen a zombie that close. Kind of weird."
“Who knows what they're capable of? Though I suspect the deterioration in the brain would rule out any kind of higher-level thinking.” There wasn't anything left in this world, however, that would make Dani investigate the intellectual capabilities of the undead. Admittedly she did catch herself wondering about the infection itself, about the possibility of a cure, but handling the blood of someone who'd been bitten carried an amount of risk that she just wasn't willing to take upon herself.
Dani pushed the small amount of remaining cheese toward Pete. “That's all you. Now, let me catch you up on the rest of the hospital gossip. No reason why Helen should have all the fun.” With the more somber topics out of the way, the two settled in for a much lighter-hearted discussion about which residents were fighting, hooking up, or doing both.