HVNDREDZONES. An indie, selective multi sideblog for the Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys fandom, heavily steeped in headcanon shared and co-crafted with Hannah of ru5t (et al). Not comic compliant. Written by Squid (they/them, 21+, UTC -7).
Follows from this blog will come from either hvndredbattles or hvndredstories; mutual status is based on following this blog.
This blog will include mature themes and triggering content, which will be tagged appropriately to the best of my ability.
Some important notes (rules highlights) below the cut:
This is not a multifandom blog. This is a verselocked blog. This means that characters do not exist in a vacuum of each other, and I will not be generating other verses for the characters on this blog. Some characters can be found on either of the parent blogs; if a character here is not listed on another blog, I will only write them publicly within this verse.
Danger Days features heavy distopian and triggering themes, including (but not limited to): violence, oppression, violation of personal rights, mass killings, compromised moralities on both sides of the conflict, and other dystopian & wartime themes.
There are some elements of the setting's supernatural phenomena which might trigger people who experience paranoia and delusions.
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He hums flatly and gives on single nod, both agreeing and confirming. Expensive's his concern for bringing it to table. They'll manage, if it comes to it. They always do. But it's worth considering, first.
“Jasper's going shutters down; hoping for good, expecting the worst. They'll let us bunk if we beat it there, but nobody's making promises if the dust gets there first.” They'd be gambling on easy roads. “No real word from Ashtap, just one or two voices echoing Jasper, a couple more expecting it to fall apart before it hits.”
Just like that the round table is just a dialogue. It's not hard to imagine what the others would say anyhow. Assuming he could even get them all to sit for it. He crosses his arms loosely. “Miles okay for a sit still, you think?”
Expecting it to fall apart before it hits? The idea has Jitter's nose wrinkling with doubt. She can't think of the last time a storm really called it quits like that before it hit anyone. She doesn't say as much, but she doesn't think she has to.
"He doesn't like it," is her anwser, almost off-hand in tone, something absent and a little airy as she thinks. "Um- if we have to, he'll be alright, yeah. I can keep him in the truck with me if we gotta."
She's not sure when it happened, exactly, that she grew up too much to fit easily under his chin, but it feels like some kind of mega fucking injustice. A cosmic dickhead's punchline or something. That she has to duck and fold when she's supposed to be the little one. Sunny sniffles and shuffles in under his arm, the ancient carpet dusting the gravel from her feet.
“Wall.” It's dumb. She's way too old for it and knows for fact monsters don't come from under beds, but. Wall anyway. Wall, so she can fit under his arm and be safe between two unshakeable things.
She crawls in ahead of him, already safer by miles here than her own bed. Sunny curls up almost dead center of the actual bed, wrestling with the impulse to ask something stupid like do you remember or does it still scare you. Like she hadn't seen him when he came back. Like all that shit they pretend not to do (and per the unspoken contract of being crew and safe and home, she pretends not to notice) never happens.
Sunny, special as she is, doesn't get the usual grousing and griping that comes with taking up too much of the bed. Instead, Ghoul bumps his knees to hers as he gets in, trying to gently urge her over without making her move. He'd like his ass to stay on the bed, but if he hangs off, he hangs off. Bitty gets special privileges and that's facts.
When he's in with her, he yanks the tattered quilt back up so it's a semblance of over them. Through unspoken invitation, she's offered the opportunity to crowd in close. She's still small enough to hold, even if she's bigger'n he is now.
"I gotta kick somebody's ass?" Instead of something like what happened or do you wanna talk about it.
“Oh,” Merit's exclamation is soft and downturned, blatantly missing a choice of four or five letter word in its aftermath. (Fuck. Shit. Balls.) Three little sentences for the worst news possible: this is Pedal's definition of talking funny. Why shouldn't it be? She'll never have heard anything like it, almost as rare a thing as anything could be in this part of the world, even rarer on the desert side of things. He immediately begins scratching at his chin. They city would never send a transfer out so unprepared. Sure as sin, they've got a problem on their hands, and now he knows only about twenty percent of it is going to be related to finding more antirad to keep on hand. Merit sighs. “You're a long way from home.”
Just had to pick him up, didn't he? He turns.
“Pedal,” he orders, “go get Jitter and the boys.”
She pouts at him for a second, and opens her mouth to argue -he asked her if she wanted to stay!- but Merit gives her a shut-down of a look. Pedal groans, but she goes. Still holding the wrench. Merit turns back to their problem.
“Don't go thankin' me yet. I pulled'ya up but you might get to wishin' you'd stayed down if the city gets wind'a you.” He looks their refugee over newly. This certainly explained the bulk of him. Hard to find in this wasteland. (He wonders - hard to find there, too? Special privileges? Or... the alternative's an upsetting notion. He stems it off.) “I take it whoever sent you didn't tell you much. On account of the uh...” Maple Plaza incident. That won't mean anything to this man. It barely meant anything to Merit. He gestures, instead, to all of the stranger. On account of this. The gesture turns into an offer of shake, greeting. “Call me Merit. Don't ask why, we'll get there.”
Richie's brows lift with his surprise. Recognition. Isn't that something? It's the first he's found since he dropped in this godforsaken desert, and out of one of the first people he's come across closer to his own age, best he can tell. Maybe a little older, or with rough living putting more age to his face. Hard to say.
Merit. Richie's gaze slides in the direction the girl had gone. When it returns to Merit, his mouth quirks up on the un-scarred side. "Yes, I caught that." Names that aren't names. "If that's the case-" he has to clear his throat around more dryness that devolves into scraping coughs. He might have lived, but bouncing back, it seems, will take time.
"Duke," he manages once he's had a few more sips from the canteen he's been left with.
Only once he's sure the coughing has subsided for the time being does he sit back. The canteen returns to sitting upright in his lap. "It's not easy to get information about this side of the world." His nose scrunches as though smelling something mildly offensive. "Is it really just the one city here?"
Do you think ghoul has ever set any of the others on fire on accident? (Follow up, do you think he's ever done it on purpose?)
I think yes, in their earlier years together in the desert, when he was still figuring out the ins and outs of his chemistry-without-the-full-science-knowledge shit. Generally the sort of thing of like. Someone comes in, he's got a reaction going, it's exothermic, they're accidentally on fire because it's gradual enough for neither of them to notice before one of the others is On Fire. At least he keeps stuff handy to try to put those sorts of things out quick?
As for setting any of them on fire on purpose... Maybe Before. But only a little. More of a singing than an On Fire. Like rolling all the tobacco out of a cigarette and putting it back so the whole thing burns up real fast.
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The now-iconic imagery from the videos shows the boys within -and presumably living out of- an old, abandoned Diner. This created some of the more iconic staples of the danger days aesthetics and became such an infamous thought that a lot fanwork includes or prominently features the Diner, to different degrees. It’s hard to divorce the idea of it from the Danger Days lore, even though the Four Aces Movie Ranch –the filming set where the video was made– has been featured in countless other movies, music videos, tv commercials, and celebrity photo shoots. (Believe me, I can spot this thing a thousand miles off, now.) As a common sight, it becomes a common thought of the zones, and I say all of this because: while it's become an infamous piece of imagery in an OOC sense, I don't think it's well known within the universe's setting that the boys and Sunny live in a diner, much less this specific one..
I’m sure the very dedicated among the desert’s obsessed type have attempted to find out where their most lauded go whenever they’re not out and around terrorizing Better Living or crashing into their preferred hangouts, and some have probably even succeeded. The Diner isn’t a complete mystery or secret. I just don’t think it’s total common knowledge, either. Call it an open secret, maybe, or maybe more of a rumor that most people don’t actually believe. (Their Fabulous heroes live in a dusty old diner surrounded by nothing but dirt? Yeah right.) Regardless, if everyone knew they’d never have a moment’s peace, and I think that’s what the Diner is to them. Somewhere they can have peace. Constrict down just to themselves, each other, and not have to worry about the rest of the desert and its expectations of them.
Tucked up and away to the north of the city, in some lucky stretch between ridges that leaves the surrounding area nice and flat an open - they can see anyone coming up on them well ahead of time. From any direction. While also keeping the hills close enough that, should they need to flee, there’s an option with that advanced warning of the open space. A few other places nearby, settlements and the like, for them to turn to, but also just places in the hills. Hiding holes and secret stores, careful caches. Spare guns and some canned food, if nothing else managed to get into it.
As for the diner itself: this layout is loosely based on, but modified from, the layout of the four aces filming set. (In this case, I have removed the ‘gas station’ part of the set, and lightly altered the layout and number of rooms within the motel section of the build.) This is the 'canon' version of it, as applies to @hvndredzones & I's version of things. Feel free to adopt/ignore as usual !
Isolated even in its own time, the Diner was one of those clever ‘last stop for __ miles’ kind of places. Somewhere you ended up, rather than somewhere you aimed to be. Positioned strategically between bigger destinations, so anyone on an overnight drive might find themselves pulling over just to get out and stretch their legs, grab some coffee… but wouldn’t you know it? Why not just spend the night. And of course the diner served breakfast in the mornings, before you set out again. That means now, after the end of all things, it’s truly isolated. Most of what connected it to the world, including the road, is all long gone, worn away by the bombs or the fires or who knows.
The boys found it by chance, in a time when they had nothing else. Almost like destiny, they went stumbling on something built just the way they needed it. The way people had needed it in the past, even if their circumstances were a bit less dire than being ejected from the only protection to be found in the desert— They quickly tore through the diner’s old stores. Mostly dusty old utensils, many of them broken and/or tarnished. Some ancient canned goods they were just desperate enough to risk. The food in them was unrecognizable, but it didn’t kill any of them, so. It worked out.
Those first few nights they kept themselves to the diner's floor, piling together in the booths, cradling Bitty close to their sides, trying their best to look after her. Eventually, they spread out a little. Cleaned out the old motel rooms - some of the mattresses were even salvageable, though terribly sandy. They rid the dark corner of rats and bugs, found ways to let in the light during the day, air out the rooms. (Lucky for them, there’s not a lot of moisture where the diner is situated, so mold and mildew growth was pretty much null. The benefits of a dry environment.)
The carpet is ancient and ugly, the walls cracked, plaster falling away in places, and for anyone thinking on it no, the bathrooms don’t have functional plumbing, but it’s shelter. Shelter, and space for them to spread out. Create little hiding holes of their own, rooms to collect treasures in, if they so choose.
As connected properties, the diner and motel share a sort of parking lot courtyard. The only way in is through the front of the motel’s drive, with a sturdy, sharp ended fence discouraging anyone from trying to climb in through the back. The boys have taken to partially blocking the entrance with a concrete barrier. In a pinch, the AM (as well as Kobra’s bike) can scrape around it to get in and out fast, but it keeps the entrance too small for larger, bulkier BLI (or other) vehicles. Jet meanwhile keeps his jeep parked near the side entrance of the diner, for a different quick escape route that can’t be boxed in.
A back door through the kitchen of the diner means that one can go from the diner to the motel rooms without ever setting foot around the outside of the building; the crew all know this, obviously, but it’s less readily shown to others.
The diner itself has become a sort of communal space. There’s a small stage set into its back wall, outfitted with an array of gathered equipment that largely belongs to Sunny. She’s got an interest in music, and has spent several years of her young life writing and practicing, improving her musical skill, and is set in some ways to become one of the desert’s next iconic performers (like Mad Gear, or Solstice.) If she could get up the confidence to take up a stage of her own.
The booths are more often just seats these days, the tables places to collect and spread out any projects, though now and again they all still pile up together in the largest booth, the one near the front that wraps around, to all sleep together.
On the rare occasion that they bring someone to the Diner, whether for consulting, or some other reason, visitors are generally confined to the diner itself, and the main floor at that. This is not a hard rule it’s just a general approach to the situation — this is their home, and of the spaces available the diner is the least personal to any of them. The most trafficked. It’s still like bringing someone into your living room, a bit awkward and exposing sometimes, but far less of a compromising position than letting someone see, for instance,
The Motel. Since settling in and spreaing out, the old motel has transformed into what are more or less their bedrooms. The office (top right of the following image) remains fairly neutral ground, given that it serves them no real purpose now, but the claimed rooms are decidedly private spaces.
There are eight rooms in total, with five of them, of course, being claimed as these bedrooms, while another two have been allocated to other purposes.
Close to the diner, the first room remains empty as a buffer of sorts, a sapcer from the rest of the desert. The second is Party's chosen landing pad, then Ghoul's.
Party's room is largely undecorated because idk what to put in there. Squid @/hvndredzones did Ghoul's!
Across the way, Kobra's room is the farthest back, Sunny is -of course- bundled up in the middle, with Jet on the other side, then the office serves as the buffer.
I decorated all of these because apparently no amount of "I'm not writing Jet" is. actually going to stop me from having opinons and. y'know. writing him. so.
One of the motel rooms, close to the back corner (on the right here, with the cot in it), serves as a sort of guest room. It’s not exceptionally well outfitted, more of a desperate measures sort of situation, but it’s better than being stuck out in the middle of nowhere with no shelter for the night. It doesn’t see a lot of use. They’re not a lighthouse, not a charitable bunch exactly, just a few boy doing their best and trying their hardest to keep the family they’ve put together for themselves safe and as comfortable as could be said to be possible in the apocalypse.
The sims build fairly accurate represents the layout of these spaces, and some of the decorating nature reflects the general aesthetics and choices the crew have made, but it’s worth noting the sims will only let you do so much. The wear and tear is hard to replicate - she’s a run down old place. The windows are heavily scratched and the carpets absolutely, horrifically tragic. The tiles in the diner are dull and, in some places, cracked. Worn down by use in the diner’s own time, then by the wars and the wind and the years spent empty after that. It seems structurally sound, which is rather impressive all things considered, but definitely shows both its age and all the abuse withstood over the years.
oh also elements of specific Departments, and - idk where/if it's going somewhere else, but boy do i have Thoughts on how The Company is run and structured
It's not exactly hesitance. That implies choice. It's more a battle of will. A struggle against whatever has seized her. Slowly, she draws her hands away from the empty space around her skill. She reaches blindly for him, trusting she'll find friend before her, not foe. Not slammed door or cold wall. not straps and steel.
Cautiously slow, she coaxes the good eye open. Then the bad. It stings and burns and stabs all at the same time, like her nerves can't decide which signal to send, scrambled by the conviction that something's in there. A single tear -the kind a handful of sand to the face would bring- rolls down her face. In want of words, she angles her head so the tear-eye, her left, lifts above the other and slightly forward. This one. This one. She can feel it screaming. Pushed aside for something else. Everything else. Someone's else's kicked in teeth.
But.
Is it there? Something says maybe not even though she can feel it. Feel it. She wobbles in place, dizzy and anxious. “What is it?” she whispers. Scared to send it into hiding before he can find it, and tell her.
He thinks, pretty acutely, that whatever she's feeling, it's not from anything he'll be able to find. Still, Midnight leans in to have an earnest look, gently holding her where she has offered but otherwise not touching. He resists an old, heavily rusted instinct that says he should wipe the tear away. Not the time.
"Nothing there, pumpkin," he murmurs, low but certain assurance. Nothing he can see, anyway. Just her eye and wetness and all that emotion.
He dares a careful pull, now, encouraging her closer. She's still on the table, but she doesn't have to be. "C'mere, kiddo."
...God it's hot in the cabin. That really was kinda the whole reason for being on the roof of the cab in the first place - even with the windows down, there's only so much breeze around to get in, and the truck cab traps heat like nobody's business. Great news for those extra cold desert nights when she and Jitter curled up in here to sleep for the night. Terrible news now, in the middle of the day in the middle of dry-ass Ashtap. Pedal's feeling half suffocated in no time. But it's a matter of principles, of points made, and she stays exactly where she is, ignoring(!) the melted man who insists on calling himself Duke.
...And she left her magazine on the roof. Ugh.
“Peach!” the call catches her attention straightaway. Pedal glances around, a quick double check that the guy's still back there, before bailing from the cab. She goes running for her dad, some mix of excited and... maybe a little weirded out, actually. Their tow-along isn't like anybody she's ever met in the zones before and the novelty had quickly turned into nervousness. Maybe he hadn't gone all wild-thing over the water, but that didn't make him sane.
“Mer! Mer!!!” she's shouting for him as she runs up. She grabs one of his hands with both of hers and begins pulling, dragging him back toward the truck as if that somehow wasn't his destination to begin with. “He woke up,” Pedal reports, a skew for dramatics and maybe even a shade of a horror story spook at the idea of it. Woke up! Like nothing! Though they had, of course, thrown one of their most valuable resources at him in the hopes that he might.
Merit sighs. Now to figure out what to do with this man. He trades Pedal the gift he's brought her for his hand, putting the heavy wrench into her hands. Replacement for one of hers they'd lost on a chase weeks ago. Her face lights up as she takes it, surprised to see that's what his task in the trading center was. He knocks her cheek lightly.
“He say anything?”
“Uh, a bit? Basically 'why ain't I dead' an' 'where's my stuff' and Mer this guy says his name is Duke like that makes any kinda sense and.” She pauses there, a scrunch in her nose. “He talks funny.”
Trust Pedal to cut to the middle of things. And whatever else she found weird or diverting. Merit nods, taking the string of information as new insight. “Noted. You stickin' around or d'you wanna go find June?”
“Stickin'.” Her grip on the wrench - she holds it like a treasure. But also something to bludgeon with. Merit smiles to himself.
“Alright. C'mon then. Let's see about your weird guy.”
That's how they approach, and round the side of the truck. Merit in the lead, eyes occasionally skipping over the surrounding edges of the settlement, Pedal close behind, new wrench shiny and sturdy in her hands. She's almost more taken with it than any upcoming conversation, tracing the branded lettering on the side of it that's still raised enough to be legible. Something old world that still has its identity - you don't find that every day. Merit steps up, sets his arms on the edge of the truck bed to lean. He scans over their rescue. Still looks like death warmed over, but that's to be expected. More importantly, his eyes are clear, his wits sound enough to be looking at a map with some amount of understanding, puzzling. Not gone for the static, at least. Though whether or not he's mad remains to be seen.
“How's that hangover?” Merit leads. Radsick's a hell of a bitch.
He'd have loved to have his own map, with this one in front of him. Compare, modify, annotate - what she's handed him offers far more context to the world he's been rather unceremoniously dropped into, even if that context doesn't all prove to be true.
He thumbs over outlines of spaces not so specifically labeled - something that has meaning to her, to her mapper too maybe, but that he has no context for. He's not even sure where he'd wound up, to try to identify any labeling trends. Does this outline mean this is a safe space, or the opposite?
And what in god's name is this circle decidedly not past the markings of "Zone 6", that she's got marked as 07?
Richie puzzles over the map all for all the time that he's left to his own devices with it. He drinks in topographical features, and the few notes he can decipher about locations and regions that suggest danger. He wishes for- He'll just have to commit all of this to memory, and copy as much as he can if he's given the chance, so they're both prepared when they're reunited. He stubbornly ignores that what if lurking in the wings.
There is, of course, still a throbbing pain behind his eyes that makes the whole process of study far more effort than it would otherwise take. Squinting at rough scribbles makes it worse. He's got the map help up at an odd angle that strains the muscles of his arms because it's better than angling his head.
A man's shout draws his attention up. The sound of the girl leaving the truck - he winces at the sound of the door slamming shut behind her - has him allowing his hands to fall back to his lap. He folds the map back up as best he can without looking at it.
Blue eyes roll up to take in the makeshift tent again, then out, Richie squinting into the brightness beyond as the girl reappears with someone new. Moment of truth, then. He pushes himself just a smidge more into sitting fully upright.
This man - a name(?) Richie hasn't yet caught - has the benefit of backlighting. Richie's heavy frown speaks to the way he refuses to avert his gaze, though it hurts his eyes to maintain eye contact with all that light.
Hangover's about right.
His gaze slides briefly to her and her wrench, then back to ??? "I've had more pleasant ones," he settles on. He clears his throat against the dry rasp of his voice, lingering despite the water he's nursed. "I understand I should be thanking someone for the privilege of experiencing this one. Is that you then?"
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For a guy often perceived by the zones to be spontaneous and off-the-cuff, Ghoul is not a fan of unexpected guests. Possibly the most likely to come out locked and loaded if he doesn't know the diner will be having company.
It's maybe half a kick, half a flat-tiring. Ghoul's minding his own goddamn business, thankyouverymuch, and one of the only things that keeps him from really seriously tripping up is how fast he whirls on Kobra. "Fuckin'-" Motherfucker's doing this on purpose. So Ghoul starts with a firm smack to the chest, but it devolves from there. There might be a knee aimed for a certain someone's nuts.
“No,” she deadpans in excess, “I had no fuckin' clue you're a lost moron who doesn't know his ass from his mouth or his feet from smiler bait.” She might not be the most impressive looking 'joy around but she's not prepared to tolerate some half melted's man assumption that she's stupid.
(Of course he's not from here. Just- where else is there? Empire's zones, but it supposed to be worse that Battery's. Nobody from there would do something this dumb. And FISKs zones have been dead forever! It doesn't make sense.)
In an agitated huff, she disappears from the window. After a moment of rustling around, a half-crumpled map comes through- “Yer mapper's shit, too.” The window snaps closed, a layer of dark, reflective tint now a wall between them. There. Now he can see the known pits and the whole lotta nothin' he was walking for - not asking 'why the pit' but 'why were you out there at all'? What could he possibly be hoping to find, wading out alone to the outer zones like that? Questions she'll just have to ask the others, now that she's settled in her seat and content to hide inside the cab until someone comes back.
Well. She's a colourful little thing. A different man might have taken offense. Though she stays fixed in his gaze, it's due to interest, rather than contempt. He may even be amused, though his expression simply remains mild.
Richie edges toward bemused the longer she rustles, but paper flung out at him answers that quickly enough that he doesn't ever feel compelled to move. If he has something to offer about his mapper - that it's something he thinks might be official, or that any additions came from him - it's not voiced. She closes herself off in the cab, and he's left to reach for the map.
Might as well have a look at what all she has marked, since it seems he has nothing better to do than wait.
He doesn't snatch the water from her, or try to take her arm off with it, so there's that at least. Then, to Pedal's open amazement, he doesn't go all in on the chug. She learned better from Merit, the times she'd gotten herself in trouble too long without a decent drink, but most who got themselves crisped or went full wavehead didn't have the sense left not to chug whatever they got as soon as they got it.
A bit of observational silence passes between them. Face framed by the back window, Pedal alternates between looking right at him and a bit through him. Thinking, as best as she remembers, of her early years in the desert. What little Merit had told her of the hard times she'd been born into. The way groups collapsed on themselves. Their friends. She sets her chin on the edge of the window.
“What were you doin' out there, anyway? ..You really just didn't know, or somethin'?”
She stares, and it's a pointed thing he can feel on the side of his face, but he doesn't bother meeting it. Let her stare. Absently, he wonders if he's as much an oddity to her as much of the desert's denizens have been to him.
Her question, when it comes, draws Richie's gaze toward her. His eyebrows lift with some facet of disbelief. She's decided his manner of speaking is odd, but he gets the sense suddenly that she hasn't come to the conclusion that it means he's not native to the region.
"I don't know if you've noticed," he begins with a wry drawling of words, "but I'm not exactly from around here." He lifts the bottle up for another swig before continuing, "Radiation pockets aren't marked on what maps do exist of the region." And his tone suggests he finds those lackluster to begin with.
"It's not somewhere I'm looking to go back to, if that's what you're worried about."
Pedal pauses. She glances around again, less subtle about it this time, desperately hoping to see Merit or Jitter. Even though that'll mean Rumble gets an earful again and she promised not to tell. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't see any of her crew. Not even Mile, though it's not like him to wander off when they're parked like this. She looks at their scraped up road kill wannabe again and sighs.
“Okay, fine. But like..” she eyes him. The size of him, built like a frickin' hauler of a human being. She's seen the tall types, the occasional bulky type, but most of the desert is scraps and wastes and people look it. He's the first she's seen who doesn't seem like his bulk is built out of leftovers and desperation. She's never been in the city, or met someone from it who hadn't been in the dust at least a year, so she's not sure if that's what it means, but even half baked he makes her nervous. “Don't... get all feral about it, okay? We're in town and there's more.”
With a quick, practiced maneuver, Pedal turns and goes directly into the cab -feet first- through the passenger side window. She starts to grab the big canteen, but reconsiders. Instead she tops of her metal-walled bottle. She leaves the lid off of it, not sure he'll be able to do it himself. When she reappears, it's in the back window of the cab, her heart-shaped sunglasses now perched on the top of her head like a headband. She passes the water bottle through.
Her hesitance around him truly rearing its head - or at least, her not bothering to hide it so much - now strikes him as ironic. Richie's eyebrows lift, and higher still at voiced concern over the prospect of him going feral. He's being civil, thank you very much, and is far more inclined to it now than he might have when he'd first awoken.
She is quick moving around this vehicle, and those raised brows tick toward impressed. It's gone before she reappears, and chased further away by the grimace that twists his features when he has to slide toward the cab rear window.
"Cheers."
He nurses it in sips, at least, but still downs a considerable amount before letting the bottle rest in his lap, one hand keeping it upright. If it's any reassurance to her, he makes no effort to move from his spot, save for to stretch out a stiff leg.
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The speed and certainty of her answer settles the matter. For a moment, at least. As he sinks into the still patience of having an injury tended. Fascinated by the way her touch is so careful despite the fact that she could not hurt him.
“Fawn,” says Handsome.
Zilch looks toward her to see no real change to the situation. He looks down at the back of the beast, tense and ready. He braces a boot against Handsome's flank, steady pressure. “Mm?” he nudges, trying to coax loose another word or two that might lend more to an elaboration.
“Fawn,” again.
“Fawn?”
“Bite. Quitit.”
Ah. Zilch looks at the two figures again, extrapolating a guess. Still with his boot, he rubs the smiler's side a bit, sympathetic. Fawn won't let me Bite. No treat. “Later,” he promises. Handsome hums. Zilch hums back, using the edge of his shoe to scratch his hide. The matter unsettles itself as he meditates on getting rid of a clump of dirt stuck to his companion's side. “..If it was good,” he ventures quite softly, “why stop it?”
"Um." Dahlia doesn't have an immediate answer to that. Only the sense that she, too, hadn't wanted for someone to die like that. Maybe that they had wanted to know, why it was happening. Maybe a worry over Zilch? She sits, quietly pensive as she tries to find actual words to convey the feeling she still feels if she thinks about Handsome killing a woman they had in the dirt.
"I guess," she starts, hesitantly picking out words, "we're not used to it like that." Because sometimes Handsome eats well, and they don't ask about it, and they don't think about it. And that's okay. But this... hadn't been.
Her gaze drifts over to her sister and their intruder, mostly silhouettes in the dark. She can read the annoyance in Fawn's body language even like this. She doesn't see signs of regret at having called their boys off.
"I think..." Her mouth pulls to one side thoughtfully. "Our dad never shot anybody without first figuring out why they were here." She's never consciously considered it until now. "Sometimes," she tries, "taking a life is the extreme response."
No, that's not quite right, says her subsequent frown. "Sometimes you're supposed to give someone a chance." That feels better.
Dahlia looks from Fawn to Handsome, and then from Handsome to Zilch. "Like you and Handsome."
His smile pulls. Tech's Midnight. Not quite the intended takeaway, but the framing of it still hits a certain truth. However complicated that truth.
“What's it like down there?” To seize on the subject, now that it's passing him by. He'd always wondered about the remains of the old said to be buried beneath them. Something about being enclosed in the earth, though... He couldn't rightly say he'd ever do the digging himself. However fascinating a glimpse of how things used to be might seem.
"Huh?" Already lost in her own little world of scavenging, it takes Wild a second to register the question's contents. "Oh- It's cool! There's this place called Claire's, and it's got a bunch of like. Earrings 'n' stuff that's fun 'n' sells great." Some of her new pairs are things she salvaged from the old storefront. "And this place called Crate and Barrel has furniture."
There's a lot she's found that she's yet to figure out how to get out, without asking Midnight for help. And plenty that hasn't survived as well. But- "It's like a... A..." Time capsule eludes her, but it's what she's thinking of. "Nobody's been there in forever. 's dusty and the air's kinda stale, but it doesn't look like it's been picked clean like everything else, y'know?"
