sweet lioness.

"And unless you like company—" he slowly smirks at her thin frame as it moved almost carelessly over the grass; seemingly reckless despite how much effort her juvenile mind must be putting into her co-ordination, "—you’ll probably rather staying in bed tonight." He had no intention of making things easier for her now, and he was of the belief that children shouldn’t be given opportunities like this to fuck up. Though he would be thrilled if she did put herself in a position to be possibly the only one awake with him tonight. He’d find that plenty amusing, where his life recently had become quite dull.

After the day he’s had he wouldn’t be giving up watch too easily. Things were too up in the air, people were feeling strung tight. And Dean didn’t trust anyone, certainly not when they could see through the thin curtains of his disguise. But they were always welcome to voluntarily suffer, alongside him, in the dark when he could definitely benefit from the entertainment.

"They’re smarter than you will ever know," he raised his hand, inclining it towards her some with a cocked brow, questioning her ability to not flinch or step away from him with his own expression.

"We are already in their trap." His voice is somber and his eyes dark with a haunting and nameless recollection. Sometimes people and the dead could even spring traps together.

"You think predators catch prey with questions?" he retorts smoothly, taking a few heavy steps closer to her station, grass bending to accommodate the weight of his figure.

"Never underestimate a predator that rises from its grave," he looked down at her kill, the prize for her recklessness. "You will often find that they have something up their sleeve."

With the mottled blue clouds slipping across the expansive grey sky above them he considers a rainy evening. More bumps and patters in the night which rendered it almost impossible to relax. And if Naomi brought any undead to their door with the scent of her bloodlust and the commotion around it, they could all be made to depart in the night in the middle of a downpour.

"I didn't say that. I asked if you thought they were smart enough to set traps." She rises gracefully, brushing dirt on her, the rabbit dangling from a rope in her hand. Standing straight, she's only about four inches shorter than him. Her mom is only an inch smaller. She wonders if it bothers him. She hopes it does. "You don't seem to like to answer questions directly." There is still blood under her fingernails and on the tips of her fingers. Some smears on her temple when she reaches back to tuck straying bangs behind her ears. "I'm taking my mom's watch turn tonight. She needs rest. I need you to tell her so." It's a bad time to ask for a favor, but she hopes he'll understand. Everyone has a softness for her sweet mother, and she assumes that even Dean has some small place in his heart (or whatever he has locked away in his chest) for Violet. 

"And you thought.." his voice is as slow and as cold as the chill rolling in over the hills, ".. that you would come out here on your own to do so?"

"Without anything but a knife?"

He had no interest in watching Naomi perish like so many others, fade into the bony corpses he’d had permanently decomposed into the back of his eyelids since things went as rotten as the smell of the undead swarming through this once flourishing state. He wasn’t going to stand idly by and let a child and her shell-shocked mother try to fend for themselves. He had weapons, and the training to use them. He didn’t have any other thing to offer them besides his hands and the sharp reflexes that hadn’t dulled through any of his self abuse. But it was what he planned on giving them.

"Nothing is so important that you need to come running out here on your own like the rabbit you’re gutting now," he leans towards her, still strides away but boring into her features with burning eyes, "are you trying to get caught in a trap?" he asked with no real interest in hearing her answer.

"If you want to be skinned by the hands of a predator than you should stop wasting your mother’s precious time and energy—and our supplies."

It was infuriating to have no control over her, to not be able to drag her back into the confines of safety until daylight. He wants to be able to dig his fingers into the skin of her arms deep enough when he grabs her that she can feel the danger of being anywhere alone seeping into her thoughts of a lost freedom.

He doesn't need to lecture her on survival. It has become her new religion. Praying to the nameless deities that bring rain and sure-shooting. Her bible, a book she'd read a month ago called The Art of Survival. It was where she learned how to field dress. It was where she learned how to make a trap for rabbits. When she started it, she'd had no idea just how important the contents would be. No idea that it would teach her things beyond the practical. No idea, that the passage on being lost at sea, drinking dew off of sails would sustain her soul from day to dismal day. It taught her that one must survive even in the face of utter hopelessnes, so that you are there, when something to live for finally arrives. 

But as his mind drifts back to the woman and her child, the two that had made him think the most, he realizes he can’t place where the little girl was. He hadn’t asked her to look after anything, Violet hadn’t said anything to him. The man slowly scanned the room before standing and making an informal search of the surrounding rooms, the ones usually occupied by the survivors that had come together for safety in numbers. But no head of brilliantly blonde hair anywhere.

At this point his eyes seek out what his feet move swiftly towards; the doors, the outside. The only place he would feel the need to go if he were a thirteen year old child staring the end of the world in the face like a bull tamer with their eyes on the beast. Naomi’s bravery had a childish grace to it, and it was always there in her face where he could tangibly see it, read it, every line. There was something instinctive about her.

His scuffed brown leather boots crunched on the twigs of a dawning fall once he’d tread over the cold stone steps leading out of their temporary sanctuary. At first he doesn’t see anyone, eyes scanning the horizon this time, circling the trees that speckled either side of the lawn. A lawn that ensured a certain amount of warning before any undead reached them. Though the woods, were directly behind them.

Movement catches his eye and within a minute he’s standing a few long strides away from the girl he had begun to think hadn’t done the stupid thing he’d considered when coming out here.

"What are you doing out here alone?"

She continues her work for a long beat, slicing the rabbit's stomach roughly, considering not answering at all. Just stubbornly continuing her work to answer his question. Eventually though, her eyes flick up from her work, and there's something razor-edged perched in that cherubic face. No danger or malice poised in it, but something faintly wild lighting blue eyes like halogen lights.