Post by agni on Jan 4, 2011 23:21:36 GMT -5
It took a few seconds for his heart to calm down, the adrenaline left over from the battle still pumping in his veins, mixed with the pulse-pounding fear of his brother's fate had left him momentarily breathless. Once he'd stopped screaming and steadied his breathing, he nodded to Rory, accepting his apology with a slight narrowing of his eyes: a warning that if Rory ever pulled a stunt like that again, becoming a Walker would be a handsome alternative.
"Damn right you won't,"
[/color] he answered aloud, just in case Rory failed to see his point. The ruddy bastard had scared him shitless, taking off into the unknown like that. He was a right pain in the arse, but right now he was all Finny had and hell if he was going to lose him to some Walkers because of some misguided sense of commitment. Hard as it was, they needed to look out for themselves. Hell, he was taken in by the lovely little lass they'd rescued just that morning, but this was a different world now. You couldn't just go risking yourselves for strangers just because they tugged on your heartstrings. If you wanted to stay alive, you needed to fight for yourself and only yourself. It needed to be him and Rory against the world, as it had when they were just lads talking shit about the state of the world before it all went straight to hell. That was the only way they could get through this alive. "Damn right you won't,"
He tried to tell his brother this with a look, hoping that Rory got the gist of it if nothing else. They'd all but perfected silent communication over the years and hell if this was something Finny would ever admit out loud. It was a truth he didn't need to acknowledge with words. Family came first, that's what he'd been taught and it was one of the things, the only things, he still believed in.
He caught the unspoken look in Rory's eyes and rolled his own. "This time," he muttered darkly, though his annoyance was starting to wear off with the adrenaline. Now he was starting to feel the strain of the fight. There was definitely going to be a bruise on his side where he'd collided with that Walker. Finny scowled at the thought. Bloody walkers. He surely wasn't looking forward to that.
A slight tug on his shirt turned Finny's attention away from the Walkers and he looked down to find his arms suddenly full of sixty five pounds of blonde-haired, blue-eyed eight year-old girl genius. He hardly had time to react when Lily wrapped her thin arms around his neck in an impromptu hug.
"Oh," he said softly, taken by surprise. The little lass buried her face in his chest and stayed like that, reaching out to grab Rory's hand. Finny felt the tension melt from him, compelled to relax in this sweet kid's grip. He brought up a hand and gently stroked her hair.
"There, there," he murmured, still stroking her hair. He looked over at Rory helplessly, unsure why this little girl was so attached to them after only one day and for a moment he tried putting himself in her shoes. How would he have taken all of this in at her age? Thinking on it, he found himself surprised she held it together this well.
"Lillian..."
The sudden soft voice startled Finny and he dropped his hand, wrapping it protectively around Lillian's shoulders as his muscles tensed. He turned towards the source of the noise and found Beatrix standing in the doorway, staring at them warily.
"Gave me a fright!" he told the girl. "Should you be up and walking just yet?" Beatrix talked over him, still calling softly to her sister. Slowly, Finny dropped his arm from around Lily and touched her hair gently to get her attention.
"There's someone callin' for you, Lily," he told her, though he was reasonably sure she could hear for herself. "Why don't you two go catch up?"
He could understand Beatrix's unease; he'd felt the same thing only minutes earlier when Rory tried to play the bloody hero and he also knew it would do the girl no good to be walking around on that ankle of hers just yet. Might as well give Lily a push in the right direction and keep them both happy and appeased. He hadn't heard Lily earlier crying out for her ma and pa, but it didn't take a genius to figure she probably wanted to be with family and neither he nor Rory were it.
"Go on," he urged her gently. "You two best be off to bed, anyway. It's so late now that it's getting early."
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