Sasha tried her best to keep Grace occupied. She recalled stories from her own childhood, and told them to the girl, trying her best to remember them. Although she knew Grace wouldn't know if she got the stories wrong, it seemed important to remember them. Mostly she just held her, hoping that that contact would be comforting. It was to Sasha herself, she found.
Matt was bandaging up the cuts and wounds of the other survivors. It was keeping his mind busy so he didn't dwell on his pain. He came out of the kitchen with a glass of water and watched Sasha and Grace. He still hadn't gotten used to how easily they had become accustomed to losing people. He walked into the room and sat next to Sasha. Grace stood in her arms and yelled
"DADADADADADA!" Matt smiled and reached over and let Gracie crawl onto him and cuddled his little daughter. He kissed her on the head as she played with his hair.
"Is she giving you trouble?" Matt asked Sasha.
Sasha shook her head,
"Not at all, she's a delight" she said, with a smile, watching them.
"She seemed a little lost, though. And then she saw you" she added, before looking away, where Matt had come from,
"How is everyone? Nothing too serious, I hope?" she asked, but she figured if there had been, Matt would have asked for her help.
"Mostly bumps and scrapes. Jon was the worst off." Matt got still and asked.
"Do you hear something?"OUTSIDE--
Ingrid nodded to Ethan and said,
"I'll be fine. Matt knows what he is doing." She smiled and went back inside.
Violet pulled her horse's reigns back as she came up on the side of her home. She never thought to lock the place up since walkers couldn't seem to open doors. She pulled out her semi automatic handgun and put her horse in the barn. She saw the guards scattered about.
Ethan watched Ingrid go back inside the house, but Ethan didn't bother following her. He wanted to stay outside and have a look about. Most of the walkers had been wiped out now but there were ones in the distance, but Ethan didn't think there was any need to go out of his way to kill them. The sound of a horse galloping caught his attention though, A woman on the back of a horse rode into the barn so Ethan decided to see who she was.
A minute later he walked into the barn and all of a sudden a gun was pointing directly at him.
"Wow!" Ethan shouted, chucking his hands into the air.
"We're friendly, we're friendly!"Violet gave him a funny look.
"Someone points a gun at you and you yell out "Wow"? Who are you people and why are you in my house? And how are you english and in Texas in the middle of a zombie apacalypse?" Her hat got caught on her hair and she pulled it off.
"Damn thing."Ethan watched as she took off her hat to see a long purple hair, he didn't expect that.
"Well I was actually English before the Apocalypse, just happened to be here when it happened and no one was exactly willing to fly me back across the pond." He took a second to catch his breath.
"We didn't realize people were still living here, seeing that there was a load of walkers wandering about the place, so we kind of decided to stop here. We've drove all the way from Cali without stopping." He slowly put his hands back to his sides.
"Everyone's in the house, if you wanna speak to them?" He gestured to leave the house.
Violet smirked at his remark about no one willing to fly him back.
"Not people, just me. Why did you leave California? Had enough of the land of fruits and nuts?" "Yeah... was feeling a bit too healthy, thought I'd come here and get a steak to sort me out." Ethan replied to her question with a slight joke, but then realized it wasn't really the time with what had happened. Talking a bit seriously he continued,
"There was an earthquake, that destroyed where we was staying so we had to leave, we kind of just started driving." He gave an awkward smile, then replied,
"I just came along for the sights."She put her gun down to her side. Her instincts said that she could trust him. She still had to be careful. She looked up at the english man and smiled to herself. She knew he couldn't see her very well since outside the barn lights were off and it was mostly moonlight and what little was coming from the house. Violet offered him her hand and said,
"I'm Violet Braddock." He reached for her hand and shook it slowly,
"And I'm Ethan Blackledge, it's nice to meet you. Are we going inside?" Violet grinned and said,
"I think that would be a good idea." Violet didn't let go of his hand right away. She hadn't even seen a living person in over 2 months. She slowly let him go and walked with him to the house and she opened the door. The gun in her hand was met with six or seven pointed at her when she went into the living room.
She raised her gun and pointed it at the man with the baby.
"Put them down, now!"Sasha had just risen at the sound of voices, having not talked to all the group, she didn't know if they were friendly or not. When the woman aimed the gun at Matt and Grace, she shifted so she was in front of them. The only gun she had was empty, the bullets in her pocket from earlier. She raised her empty hands,
"no need to threaten a child""Jesus!" Ethan shouted, as he stood in the middle close to Sasha.
"Why do you Yanks just love having Mexican stand offs everytime you see someone? Put the bloody guns down now!" Ethan shouted, his northern accent thick.
"We're all friendly here."Violet lowered her gun slowly and the others did too. Right about that time Ingrid turned the corner to see what all the shouting was about.
"Who the fuck are you?" she said, her irish brogue a little thicker than normal.
"I'm the owner of this ranch that y'all barged into, that's who the FUCK I am!" Matt got to his feet before there was a purple haired cowgirl and an irish woman brawling in the living room. He handed Grace to Ingrid knowing it would make her behave. Ingrid took the baby and let Matt handle it.
Violet lowered her gun again and Matt towered over her and made her feel really tiny suddenly.
"I realize you weren't expecting company but if you ever point a gun at my child again I'll break your ever lovin' neck and I won't ask you a thing first." The seriousness in his eyes told Violet that she should be careful of this man. He was dangerous to anyone in his way.
She nodded and said,
"I only did it so I didn't get shot full of holes. I wouldn't have ever hurt her." She nodded towards Sasha and said,
"Your wife there is brave to step between a target and my gun."Matt's eyes changed and he punched the wall next to Violet's head putting his hand all the way through it to the other side. He yanked it back out and walked outside in a huff. Truly surprised, she asked.
"What did I say?"Sasha gave a soft sigh, and said
"I'm not his wife. He just lost her today. I did what I did because i won't see a child dead for someone's own protection." part of it was also because she suspected Matt may have tried to hand Grace back to her, and tear this woman apart, but she wasn't going to say that.
"I'd do it again. But next time, I think, nothing will stop him hurting you. " she glanced to the door, and gave another sigh, unsure if she should follow and see what damage Matt had done to his hand.
Violet walked past Ingrid and smiled at the baby. She then went up to her room to at least shower and change. She got upstairs and saw a sock on her door. She pulled her gun out and opened the door. Violet saw a naked man on her bed asleep and before she could say anything to Nikki.....
"Hey! Get out!" Nikki yelled at her.
"Didn't you see the sock?" Nikki was wearing her bra and panties freshly out of the shower, still getting dressed. She picked up a shirt and covered her naked husband's ass with it. Kyle had passed out and Nikki had opted for a shower. She had barely started to show in her pregnancy. When she realized this girl was not one of theirs she kicked the gun out of her hand and she kicked her into the wall. Violet was out cold.
OUTSIDE--
After sitting outside for awhile Alex finally decided going in to find a better place for Erin to rest was the best option. The two walked up to the house just as Matt burst out the front door with an intense expression on his face. Alex slid off to the side and watched what Matt was about to do next watching to see if the man lost his temper again. Alex didn't want to be close to the guy if he went on a rampage.
Matt got outside and realized he didn't have a destination in mind. He went around to the side of the house and sat down leaning against the house. He finally let go and cried.
When Matt walked around the corner Alex almost didn't check to see what the older man was doing, but his curiosity and suspicion took over so he couldn't help peeking around the side.
He saw something that wasn't what he expected. Alex hadn't seen much from Matt, but he had certainly not seen the man cry. The young man wasn't sure if he should do anything though. Despite the way he was now Alex still was a person who didn't like seeing others in pain. He would hurt people that threatened those close to him without qualms, but Matt actually had helped Erin on numerous occasions.
Alex was slightly conflicted as to what to do. He looked around and then looked at Erin. She seemed to be worried for the older man without expressing it. Alex finally decided to just at least show support. He could hear a few guards at the front of the house making a small ruckus because they had found a small bit of alcohol. Alex walked up behind them and snatched it away saying,
"There's someone who needs this more than you guys." They turned to him disgruntled and followed him up to the point where they had rounded the corner to see Matt.
Alex and Erin walked over and quietly sat by the man and Alex held out the alcohol saying,
"Here. Seems like you may need this."Matt took the bottle and dropped his head back down. He guzzled down a good bit and wiped his tears.
"Thanks Alex." Matt glanced over and asked,
"You ok Erin?"Erin looked up at Matt and gently nodded her head. Quietly she spoke,
"I'm alright." Alex looked at the girl and was deeply saddened. No matter how well he knew her he still wouldn't be able to tell how hard that experience at the school would have affected her. No words could probably explain the fear she had. He would do his best to make her feel safe. Alex turned to Matt and said,
"If there is anything you need to get off your chest, I won't say anything to anyone. I'm use to being an emotional dump for others.""Alex, where are your kids, brother and sister?" Matt asked.
Alex turned to look out at the horizon. This was scary not knowing where they were. He hoped they had found his message. If they had he would need to sneak away in the next hour or so to meet up with that group. He decided to merely answer Matt with a half-truth for now,
"Last thing I remember is they were with Haru. I was inside the school looking for Erin so I don't know what happened. I left a message at the school that only they should understand in case they ran from the school." When he finished saying this Erin looked at him with a mixture of anger and fear in her eyes. Alex didn't dare look at her right now or else he might break.
Matt realized that meant he had no idea if they got out. Matt rubbed his eyes a minute and took another swig of whiskey.
"Fuck....did anyone stay behind?" He mumbled to himself and closed his eyes trying to remember.
"No, so it's just the three of them if they all got out at all." Matt opened his eyes and handed Alex the whiskey.
"Your turn."Sasha watched the woman go off, up the stairs, and thought that might be just as dangerous to her as it would be pointing a gun at Grace, but decided not to intervene. What could she do, anyway?
She retrieved her pack, and proceeded to look through it, retrieving a bandage, and non-stick dressing, grabbing the bottle of water Kyle had given her earlier, still half full. She didn't doubt that Matt had, at the very least, scrapped his knuckles punching the wall.
She started out the room, and was once more outside, making sure she had her knife, just in case there were walkers sneaking about.
Alex took the bottle wide-eyed,
"Oh, uh. I've-I've actually never drank before. You can have the rest if you want." Erin looked at Alex with a questioning look then realized he was telling the truth.
"Suit yourself. I had to put my wife down after seeing her turn." Matt took another swig.
As she came out, finding Matt with two strangers, she hadn't yet met but assumed were okay, drinking, she heard what Matt said, and wondered if this was her day for philsophical words.
"So, in other words, you protected Grace from not only seeing her mother like that, but from being bitten. It's..." She shook her head, wondering if perhaps she didn't want a swig of whatever alcohol that was.
"It's not...It's not bloody fair, I know" She could still see the dead gaze of her partners landing on her, nothing but malicious intent in a gaze that had once held everything for her. Putting the knife in his head had been the hardest thing she had ever had to do. Aside from living.
She very nearly reached for the bottle, but decided that might merely make the whole thing worse.
"I...I had to do the same thing...But even if there was a chance of saving them...they were already gone. And I know that Blaise would never have wanted to live like the walkers." She sighed, shook her head again, remembering what she had come out here to do.
"Let me see your hand."Matt pulled Sasha down to sit in front of him.
"I get to hold you if you get to fix up my hand. Want some?" He showed her the bottle.
Sasha was a little shocked when he pulled her down. She shook her head at the offered drink,
"better not" she took his hand gently, and poured the water over it to make sure there were no splinters of drywall.
"punching walls is generally not a good thing, but it doesn't seem bad""It's fine. I think I scared whatever her name is." He tilted his head back against the house.
"If I fall asleep out here somebody drag me inside or wake my ass up. I have a baby to protect. Gracie needs me." He pulled Sasha's hand to his lips and kissed her hand.
"I saw what you did in there, thank you."Sasha gave him a small smile, and shrugged,
"I figured if your arms weren't full of Grace you would have torn her head off, and it seemed better to make sure that didn't happen" She said, looking back down at his hand, she pressed the non-stick dressing over his knuckles, and wrapped it up, feeling the prickle of tears at the somewhat tender gesture.
"Purple didn't know, I couldnt hurt her about that. Now Gracie is another story. I'd kill anyone to protect my baby." He looked at her and asked,
"So does the big bad Matt look like he was bawling his eyes out?"Sasha glanced up, rocking back on her heels, then shook her head,
"Not at all" She said,
"But you do look like you need rest. Of course, everyone does"Matt got to his feet, stretched and yawned.
"Come on let's go inside and find a place to sleep."******
A couple of moments later Nikki ran down the stairs with wet hair and barefoot.
"Who is the purple haired chick I just knocked out?" Ingrid couldn't help herself she started laughing.
"I love ya Nikki. That would be the owner of the house." Nikki looked around.
"Great, just great, where's Matt?"Still chuckling Ingrid said,
"Well purple girl pissed him off when she pointed a gun at our little Gracie here and when she mentioned his wife he did that to the wall and went outside." Nikki looked at the wall and said,
"Great!" She went back upstairs to deal with the owner.
Kyle woke up, and immediatley was confused. He was not confused by the naked part, although why there was a shirt draped across his bottom he didn't remember, he was confused as to why there was an unconscious woman on the ground across from the bed he was on. Kyle got out of bed and dressed rather quickly, in his pants and T shirt, then walked over and knelt in front of the women. He reached out and placed two fingers on her neck and checked her pulse.
Nikki came back into the room. Nikki picked up one of her arms and lifted Violet onto the bed.
"It figures, babe this girl owns this place. She could have said something." Nikki shook the girl and got a wet cloth and put it on her face and woke her up.
Violet woke up and the first thing she noticed was that it hurt to breathe.
"What the hell? I think you broke a rib or two." Violet had tears come to her eyes.
"Kyle? Can you get Matt?"Kyle nodded then walked down stairs and asked the crowd of people there where Matt was, and they pointed him outside. He walked outside and quickly found Matt.
"Hey Matt. So........girl nearly broken up in mine and Nikki's room. Just woke up. What the shit man? Is she.....like living here before us?""What happened to purple girl? Did you say Nikki broke her?" Matt halfway grinned.
"Yea looked like something broke inside her. No not emotionally but like-,"Kyle said as he rubbed his stomach and sides
,"inside broke her. Do you think you could, I dont know, like help her at all?" Matt laughed at Kyle.
"I thought that was the signal for hungry. Are you trying to say Nikki kicked her?"Kyle laughed.
"Well for blood maybe I dont know. Just woke up remember?"Kyle put a hand on Matts shoulder.
"I mean I dont know about you, but maybe she has moved on from wanting to kill walkers, and now wants to kill people too? Pregnancy I think does that."Matt smirked.
"Maybe, as I remember it, Kat was not overly sweet when she was pregnant either. Then again if someone was kicking me in the bladder from the inside I might not be too happy either. Alright let's go see what Nikki did. I'm guessing she broke ribs. Purple is maybe 100 lbs and your sister has kicked me across a room before." Matt stopped an looked for Sasha.
"You comin?" Matt grabbed her hand and pulled her inside.
Sasha had risen just as Kyle came out, gathering her water bottle, she listened to the conversation. As the two bantered, She thought it was a broken rib or two, and she thought back to the medicines she had had to leave behind. Pain killers would be wonderful right now, and the antibiotics. But what was, was. As Matt grabbed her hand and pulled her inside, asking if she was coming, she couldn't help but laugh.
"Yeah, I'm coming"Matt walked into the living room and Ingrid handed Grace to him and he smiled and headed upstairs to see what Nikki did to purple. When he got in there Grace yelled
"KIKIKIKI" Nikki took her neice instantly and as soon as Violet saw who Matt was she tried to move away from him. "Don't you touch me!"
Matt sighed and massaged his temple a minute.
"Purple......What the hell is your name?" "Violet." He looked at her and grinned.
"Well I wasn't that far off." He chuckled.
She looked from Matt to Nikki.
"You guys are related." "Good guess, she is my little sister." "Were you guys part of some asskicking family of ninjas or something? You punching my walls down and she ..."OWWW!" Violet yelled as tears started to form in her eyes when he pressed slightly on one of the ribs.
"Yeah Nikki's kicks are worse than getting kicked by a mule. Ok One is definitely cracked and the others appear to be really badly bruised. Bed rest for a couple of days and no lifting anything for say at least a month. Want some whiskey?" Violet took the bottle and swallowed a good bit.
"If the pain gets any worse, or if you find you have difficulty breathing, you should probably tell one of us, or you could die. A punctured lung is not fun at the best of times, and these are the worst of them" Sasha added, leaning against the wall,
"And I wouldn't use a gun for a while either, the recoil could make it worse" She thought for a moment, but that seemed to be all she could think of.
"So why would you dye your hair purple if your name is Violet?"Violet said,
"My mother loved violets so she named me after the flower. She died 8 years ago so I've had my hair violet ever since." Violet sighed and looked at the baby.
"She is a beautiful baby. I'm sorry about earlier." Matt waived it off.
"It's all in the past. Since I am assuming this is your bedroom where can I sleep? The baby needs to sleep too.""Any other bedroom except this one. Extra blankets are in the closet at the end of the hall and could someone ask Ethan to come up?"Matt and Nikki smiled and nodded.
"Sure." Matt took Gracie from Nikki and took Sasha's hand and pulled her into the hall with him and into the next bedroom. Nikki smirked as he pulled her out with him.
Sasha nodded at the story, figuring that that was reasonable enough, yet she did wonder how Violet was going to keep her hair dyed in this world. Perhaps the girl had a stock of dye somewhere. Once more finding herself pulled along by Matt, Sasha quickly gathered her feet so she wouldn't fall, yet she figured this wasn't truly odd behaviour for him.
Still, as he pulled her into the next bedroom, she had to wonder what he was doing. Glancing about the room, she said
"How do you normally put Grace to sleep?" While she figured the girl wasn't likely to fall off a bed, she was still a baby.
He looked down at Grace and she was already asleep in his arms. He smiled.
"Like that." He put Grace in the middle of the bed and said,
"I figure we are going to have to double up in order for people to have a place to sleep. I'd rather sleep with you in here than the others. I'll be a perfect gentleman. No funny business and Grace would be between us. Is that okay?"Sasha knew she had to sleep somewhere, and Matt was the only person, besides Kyle-and after seeing what had happened to Violet, there was no way she was getting close to Nikki right then, that she had really interacted with. Besides, she liked Grace, and figured this would be a way of keeping her safe-no way she could fall off. She nodded,
"Sure, that's okay""Thank you. Believe it or not, as horrible as today has been, you have helped me get through it." Matt reached over and kissed her on the forhead and briefly hugged her. Then he locked the door, took off his shoes and pulled the blankets back and climbed in so that he was facing Gracie.
"I'm glad" Sasha said softly, returning his brief hug. She watched him for a moment, before taking off her own shoes. She was no stranger to sleeping with others-for a while in the community they had had to share the courthouse, the only place that had been secure-so she got into the bed as well, being careful not to wake up Grace, she found herself curling slightly around her, wanting to make sure the child was as secure as possible.
Nikki went downstairs and told Ethan what happened to Violet and told him that she was asking for him.
Collaboration with
@Josephb@caits@dabombjk@Alexfangtalon
Member
Timemaster
