forbidden (illicitus) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-10-09 23:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 21, alice munroe, derek miller, thomas galloway, | alice and derek, | alice and tom, | derek and tom |
Week 21: Tuesday
Characters: Tom, Alice, and Derek
Location: The farm
Summary: Immediately after the group meeting, Tom and Alice take Derek aside to discuss Leo.
Rating: PG
As much as Tom had wanted to have a conversation with Alice privately before anything else, the situation with Derek and Leo had to be handled before it exploded. Just from the other man’s reaction he knew Derek was going to be fiercely opposed to letting Leo back into the group, and as much as he was inclined to agree with the attitude he wasn’t prepared to see Walker starve when he could do something to prevent it.
He ushered the angry man and too quiet Alice into his bedroom/workspace. “Have a seat if you want,” he offered, shutting the door behind them and leaning against the wall. Alice moved over to sit at one of the two chairs the room allowed for additional furniture, her eyes moving silently between Derek’s and Tom’s faces.
She absolutely did not want this to happen. Truthfully, she was still trying to process being told Leo was nearby while the meeting had gone on, and to hear Derek react so suddenly and loudly had left her stomach churning. She could still remember meeting Derek for the first time and hearing him spew out the nonsense about these so-called Sevens. What she really wanted to do just then was find Leo, not talk Derek down from being outrageously irrational.
Derek had too much nervous energy to sit and he paced as much as the small room would allow. The Sevens had been on his mind a lot the last few days and the idea of having one nearby filled him dread. The rope burned and chafed. Derek rubbed his palm up and down his left arm, felt the long raised scar under his sleeve.
“If you have any sense, you’ll run anyone with that mark off right fucking quick.”
“Mind explaining why?” Tom asked, frowning at Derek’s body language. Something wasn’t right here, but he didn’t understand what it was. “What’s so horrible at these Sevens? Were they some kind of biker gang?” He’d never heard of them before, and frankly didn’t see what the problem was. Whoever they were, there was no way they would have followed them all the way up from Las Vegas and stayed clear of them for weeks while they got settled in here in Grants Pass.
“Not a biker gang, not exactly but the ideas not far off. Maybe that’s where they came from, I don’t know.” Derek’s voice was clipped and short. His arm was warm and wet with blood and when he looked at it,. he was surprised he couldn’t see red. “But they are a gang. Imagine the worst people survive the end of the world and then think about what happens if they go crazy. These are people who don’t just steal. They’ll take what you have, rape who they don’t kill and if you don’t have anything they want they’ll burn down what you’ve got. You want to keep people safe, keep anyone with that number tattooed on them as far away as fucking possible.”
Alice had slowly grown more and more tense as Derek went on, images of their being raided in Vegas flashing briefly behind her eyelids with each blink, but by the time he finished she was silently shaking her head. Leo wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. He might’ve had a past -- who didn’t anymore? -- but he wouldn’t rape or kill people. Her hands white-knuckled her knees.
“Leo was with the group for weeks before I joined,” Tom pointed out, still frowning. “He obviously had issues or he wouldn’t have left, but I’m having a hard time picturing the man as part of a gang of thieves and murderers. If he was, he wouldn’t be dragging a kindergartner around all the time.”
There was something he was missing here, he just couldn’t quite figure out what. Judging from Alice’s shake of her head she was disagreeing with Derek’s appraisal as well. “I haven’t suggested we welcome the man back with open arms, but I’m not seeing why we shouldn’t allow him in on a probationary basis.”
Derek stilled; the idea of having someone marked with a seven living in the same house as he was gave him chills. “And how long was Jared on probation?”
“Don’t,” Alice said sharply, her voice cracking even around the monosyllable. She was on her feet in an instant, her face pale and drawn. The idea of Derek drawing a parallel between the youth and the man, both of whom had been such huge parts of her life only to leave her and betray her, left her insides so knotted up she felt like she might be sick. She needed to find Leo. This was too much to take in without seeing his face and hearing his explanation.
“If Leo was going to have sicced someone on us he’d have done it already, but I’m not prepared to take this Greg’s statement about Leo’s condition at face value without checking it out myself.” Tom stated, hoping to keep this from becoming a flat out slugfest between Derek and Alice.
“He doesn’t have to sic anyone on us!” Derek’s voice was sharp. “He’s a fucking Seven, he’ll do it himself.”
“No he won’t!” Alice immediately countered, chasing the tail-ends of Derek’s reply so that there was barely a beat between them. “He was with us from the beginning, before we even became a group! He was with me and he never hurt me! You don’t know him!”
Derek’s fists clenched at his side. “I know Sevens. And I know I put two others with that mark in the ground and the world’s a better place for it.”
“Look Derek, you need to take a minute and cool your jets.” Tom shoved off from the wall and moved to stand between Alice and Derek, just in case. The other man was definitely acting irrationally about the whole thing, almost to the point of paranoia. “Leo is one man, and, as crude as this may sound, if he comes to live with us we have Walker as a hostage to his good behavior.”
Alice turned on Tom with a look of utter shock, her stomach roiling. Walker as a hostage? He was a child! Without another word Alice moved past the both of them, throwing the door shut behind her with a slam! before she raced off down the hall to get her coat. She’d waited long enough; she was going to go find him.
“Shit!” Tom took a step after her. “Alice! Hold on!” He called after her, having a good idea where her mind was. “I’ll go with you.”
He turned toward Derek, annoyed at the whole thing and not bothering to hide it. The veteran moved until he was two steps away from the other man and stared at him levelly. “You wanted me in charge, you got your wish. Let me do my job and do it my way. You don’t like it you can either try and get the others to vote me out or you can leave. Your choice.”
Derek was desperate, feeling more than a little shaky. There was only one card left to play and it probably wasn’t even a good one. But if there was one thing he had going for him it was that he worked hard at the farm and that had to be valuable. “You really think you can keep this place going without me?” If Walker was a hostage for good behavior, maybe Derek could ransom himself.
“Derek, you’ve got some assets, sure enough. I’d hate to lose you.” Tom assured him. “Look. I haven’t made up my mind and I need to go see the situation myself. Right now I’ll be honest: I’m not seeing Leo as this monstrous threat to our survival. Again, let me do my job. Give me some room to maneuver here.”
There wasn’t much left to do. Derek needed to drink or maybe go throw up. Tom wanted space and he gave it, leaving the room to head towards his own.
Tom wasted no time going after Alice. Pistol and tomahawk were taken up and shoved through his belt, and he snatched his field jacket from its peg beside the door to his room on his way out. The veteran put his arms through the holes as he walked and was out the door to the farmhouse in time to see Alice get onto her motorcycle. “Alice, wait. Just give me a minute okay?”
“No,” Alice said firmly. She’d only just barely gotten control of her emotions in the rush of needing to leave as fast as she could. “We can’t both go. I need to see him with my own eyes, Tom.”
She was right about them both not going. Not now, not after the whole leadership brouhaha. “Look, I wasn’t serious about Walker. I don’t think it would come to that even if I had been.” He would never purposely hurt a child, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t exile Leo and keep the boy at the farm if something were to happen.
“At least get Jed or John to go with you, all right? It isn’t smart going out by yourself.”
Alice lifted the helmet from its place on the back of her bike and put it over her head, flipping the visor up. “Which direction did they head off in?” she asked him sternly, ignoring everything else he’d said and hoping that for once there wouldn’t be a fight about this.
“Get one of the others to go with you and I’ll tell you.” Tom bargained.
Alice shook her head. “Then I’m just gonna have to pick a direction.” She gunned the motorcycle to life without further preamble, temporarily rendering communication between them before it cycled into idle.
“Dammit Alice!” Tom was tempted to slash a tire, but he had a sense that all that would do was cause Alice to drive off with a flat tire. “Think about this for a minute! We don’t know anything about these people. Please take some backup with you.”
“If I’m not back before dark, head northeast,” she continued on, once again ignoring his pleas. She backed up just enough so that she wouldn’t run him over, veering left as she sped past him and up the gravel road.
Tom watched her go and shook his head, badly wanting to shoot something right then. So far, his first hour on the job was shaping up to be a real bitch.