All plans Rick had for a peaceful exit flew out the window when the two strangers turned up on their doorstep. His first thoughts were, "Guard". Whether it be to keep up his own guard or protect those he was surrounded by. Two vulnerable friends who could easily say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

The two strangers eventually sat down where Marley had the glass dig into her arm. A small brush of blood was still there.

Glenn had ushered Marley behind the bar, his arms leaning on it whilst she sat stiffly on the stool. Her eyes became icy at the sight of the strangers, and she had not said a word. Hershel sat where he had been for the past couple hours, supported by hs elbow.

Rick had confiscated Marley's gun.

The two men casually sat down in front of them.

The man bearing the Strafford shirt leaned back as the sheriff poured his friends, and new-found "friends" a drink into a couple of shot glasses - all except for Marley and Hershel of course.

"I'm Dave," he said offhandedly, he looked between the other man and Rick. Dave immediately knew who the leader was, and the right-hand man, the stressed damsel in disguise, and the plan B. Dave was smart, unlike his counterpart. Dave pointed to him. "That scrawny looking douche-bag there is Tony."

"Eat me, Dave," Tony chuckled.

"Hey, maybe someday I will." Dave eyed the drink Rick had poured him, reaching out to take it.

The problem they had was that not only was Dave smart, but Rick was too. Marley even, maybe, was smarter - but her brain was still buzzed and scrambled from her tendencies. So as Dave eyed their group, Rick watched their double-act.

"We met on I-95 coming out of Philly. Damn shit-show that was."

Glenn, unlike everyone else, had a grin plastered on his face. He was practically ecstatic. The girl beside him hadn't blinked her eyes away from Dave. "I'm Glenn. It's nice to meet some new people."

"Rick Grimes," he offered his name, only breaking eye contact briefly as he handed Glenn his drink. Marley reached for it but he gently pushed her hand away. She huffed tiredly in annoyance.

Dave noticed.

Rick handed Tony a glass as well, and not one to Hershel.

"How about you, pal? Have one?" Dave asked, looking between the plan B and the stressed damsel in disguise - the two people not having drinks.

"I just quit," the old man answered, his voice still scratchy from what he had consumed, slurred and imprecise. Hershel's eyes seemed lazier as he squinted to see the men. His drunkenness could not be suppressed.

Marley, somehow, was able to suppress it. If she hadn't, she would be rambling on about absolutely nothing. But she stayed calm, her jolting leg squeezed by her own hand, just enough pressure to hold it down. Her pounding headache was pushed back. She had suppressed ill symptoms many times before. It wasn't that hard to do it again.

"You've got a unique sense of timing my friend," Dave smiled, being genuinely humorous.

Rick spoke up for his friend. "His name's Hershel. He lost people today, a lot of them." The experience of the situation in Rick's voice was almost painful.

Dave caught up on that, taking a moment of silence as he finally took his eyes off everyone. "I'm truly sorry to hear that." Dave knew what it was like, all too well. Dave had lost people. And like Hershel, it was a lot of them. Dave couldn't remember what it was like to refer to people in the present tense, and not the past.

He gulped, lifting up his glass. "To better days and new friends. And to our dead-- may they be in a better place." They all lifted their glass in unison, Rick and Dave looking through the liquid and glass to Dave, who did the same. Marley and Hershel stayed still.

And as they lifted their glasses in unison, they downed it that way. Dave did it quickly, not wanting to be distracted for too long. Glenn sipped it gingerly. Rick drank it steadily. Tony gulped it longingly.

Marley was almost jealous.

As Dave kept the glass in his hand, he coughed under his breath then looked to the last person he knew nothing about. The girl with strawberry blonde hair, and tired but thunderous green eyes. The thin flesh around them were slightly discoloured, and her plump lips were dry and in need of sobriety.

Dave noticed how she deciphered him, he calculated that she already knew what type of person he was. And Dave was correct.

"What about you?" he gestured towards her. "You got a name?"

She lifted an eyebrow, tapping the fingers on top of the surface in front of her - it was momentarily the only sound heard. Until she spoke up, her vocal cords scratchy, more than usual. It had gone from her usual brittle and taut voice had gotten worse. All those years strangling her screams had permanently made her words come out slightly strangled.

"Marley. Marley Van Allan," she answered, halting her tapping fingers. Her head was tilted downwards to where her eyes had to be rolled back to look at him. This only highlighted how unhealthy she looked. She looked tired and like a cracked shell.

"Pretty name," Tony interjected. Dave rolled his eyes.

Marley continued. "I have an alcohol problem," she said. Dave lifted his eyebrows at her, telling her to go further. "Just a problem. Many problems."

She wouldn't give him any more.

Dave nodded, pushing his glass across to the other side of the table, reminding himself not to drink too much. When he did that, the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans showed itself. He saw at the corner of his eye, Rick and Marley look suspiciously between him and the gun in question.

He was brave, so he pulled it out to show. "Not bad, huh?" Dave laid it out on his hand to show them, crossing one leg over the other. "I got it off a cop."

"I'm a cop," Rick said immediately, but Dave was even faster to counteract.

"This one was already dead," he smiled, trying to keep the mood from getting darker if he could. Dave would be lying if he sad that nervousness didn't get shot through him every time Marley and Rick blinked at him. Out of the four people in front of him, Marley and Rick were the most dangerous.

Like he was calculating, so was Rick. "You fellas are a long way from Philadelphia."

"It feels like we're a long way from anywhere."

"What drove you south?"

"Well, I can tell you it wasn't the weather," Dave pinched the bridge of his nose, recalling his colder hometown and shifting uncomfortably. "I must've dropped thirty pounds in sweat alone down here."

Tony interjected, his Philly accent stronger than Dave's. "I wish."

"No, first it was DC. I heard there might be some kind of refugee camp, but the roads were so jammed, we never even got close." Dave remembered the mass amount of cars. He remembered the horror of hopeful corpses littering the roads. Women, children, men. Everyone had tried. "We decided to get off the highways, into the sticks, keep hauling ass." Dave remembered that he couldn't convince a certain person to leave the highway, and the last he saw of them was their figure walking slowly between the cars. But he wasn't alive. "Every group we came across had a new rumour about a way out of this thing."

"One guy told us there was a coast guard-center in the gulf, sending ferries to the islands."

Dave hadn't been there, but he remembered witnessing a fight between a boat. The boat never made it to the coast and had bared more blood than water. "The latest was a railyard in Montgomery running trains to the middle of the country-- Kansas, Nebraska."

This time, it was Glenn who spoke up. "Nebraska?"

"Low population, lots of guns," Tony answered, his eyes going wide at the thought of surviving being a little easier.

"Kinda makes sense," Glenn looked to Marley. He had been watching her for the past few moments. The way her hand was shaking from the pressure of using it to squeeze her leg. Glenn, admittedly, was too scared to pull her hand away with his own.

Glenn had never been scared of Marley.

"You ever been to Nebraska, kid?" Dave tilted his head. "The reason they call 'em fly over states."

Tony let out a wheezy, and strained laugh as Rick finished off the rest of his drink. Dave gave his friend a smile, looking back down to his lap. He had been worn out from recalling memories.

"How about you guys?" Dave asked.

Marley didn't really know that answer, she didn't really care where she went as long as she wasn't alone. Rick knew, his leg hitched up on the stool as he kept his body entirely still. He still had the motif "guard" running through his head. "Fort Benning, eventually."

"I hate to piss in your cornflakes, officer, but..." Dave really did hate it, honestly. He gulped. "We ran across a grunt who was stationed at Benning. He said the place was overrun by lamebrains."

Glenn's face dropped, the light fading from his eyes as he looked between Dave and Rick. "Wait, Fort Bennington is gone? Are you for real?"

Dave bit his lip before answering, his face downcast. "Sadly, I am."

He brought in a breath, he was fidgeting with his hands in his lap. He was admittedly uncomfortable with the world. As much bad or good Dave had done, he was incredibly uncomfortable with everything about it. He could never get used to letting people down and forcing people to live because he couldn't watch them die. He couldn't take it day after day.

Marley saw that.

"Ugly truth is there is no way out of this mess." He shook his head, his expression similar to that of a beaten dog. "Just keep going from one pipe dream to the next, praying one of these mindless freaks doesn't grab a hold of you when you sleep."

Marley closed her eyes briefly. "If you sleep."

He nodded sadly. "That's very true, Miss Van Allan." An idea dawned inside him - survival instinct being brought out and reminded. "Yeah, it doesn't look like you guys are hanging your hats here. You holed in somewhere else?"

Something turned inside Rick. A compass. "Not really." He peered at the man in front of him, brushing off the interrogation that Dave had initiated.

Dave also brushed off the hint. "Those your cars out front?"

Glenn answered this time. "Yeah. Why?"

Rick had a positive expression on his face, mostly arrogant. But his insides were definitely negative. His compass was upwards, so for Dave, it was pointing downwards.

For Rick, he had already made the decision. He had decided that Dave was not going to win whatever game they were playing.

"We're living in ours," Dave said. "Those look kinda empty, clean. Where's all your gear?"

Rick lifted his arm to rest his elbow on the bar, he looked over his right shoulder to look at Marley.

She looked back at him, and they both knew that they were on each others side in this game. Whatever chess piece they were, they were the black side. They wouldn't go first, but it didn't mean their moves were any weaker.

After that confirmation, he looked back to Dave but Hershel spoke up. "We're with a larger group. Out scouting, thought we could use a drink"

"A drink? Hershel, I thought you quit." Dave was always good at spotting errors in stories. But Marley was burning inside and she didn't really know why.

She thought it was because Dave had used Hershel's name. There was something so intrusive about a stranger using a part of your identity in their own mouth. Like a sense that they could tear more away from yourself.

Rick looked slightly humorous. As Dave and Tony smiled and laughed it off, Rick's brain was burning its cogs trying to halt viscera. The same with Marley.

"Well, we're thinking about setting up around here. Is it safe?"

Glenn's helpful trait shone through. "It can be."

"Not a guarantee," Marley added, her voice like a whisper. "There's never a sure moment living anywhere, anymore. It's all a guessing game. You never now if a walker is around the next corner or the fifth."

"Walkers?" Dave asked in a gentle voice - he knew he had to be. "That what you call 'em?"

The corner of her lip curled upwards. "Yeah."

"That's good. I like that better than lamebrains."

Once again, Tony interrupted. "More succinct."

Dave lifted a hand to the back of his neck. "Okay, Tony went to college."

"Two years."

Marley didn't think that going to college proved you were smarter. She had never been to college. She never finished the sophomore year, and yet, she knew just as much as everyone else. If not, more. Despite being the second youngest in the group, if you counted the farm, then third - she had a mind similar to the oldest ones.

There fell and awkward silence as Dave realised that these people were not going to give in easily. "So what-- so what, you guys set up on the outskirts or something? That new development?" He pointed his thumb towards the door. A silent invitation for himself.

Tony leaned forward and got up from his seat, starting to walk over to the opposite wall. "Trailer park or something?"

"A farm?" Dave prodded. Dave knew that they were too smart to be tricked, so he had to be blunt. "Old McDonald had a farm..." he sang, eyes trailing after his friend, as did Rick's. Then his eyes snapped to Rick. "You on a farm?"

Marley watched in the corner of her eye, with disgust, as Tony leant his arm against the wall and urinated - continuing the song that Dave had started.

'You on a farm?' rang through Rick and Marley's head. 'That farm' where Carl was. 'That farm' where Rick's unborn child was, and where Marley's tiny sense of being cared for in the form of a person was. 'That farm' where their whole worth was.

"Is it safe? It's gotta be," Tony had a much less good way at speaking to people that could potentially be the key to a longer life or a shorter one.

Dave thought of the important things. "You got food, water?"

Tony thought of other things. "You got cooze? Ain't had a piece of ass in weeks."

Marley nearly got whiplash at how fast she turned her head towards him. The tenacity and cockiness he must have had to say that in front of her must have made him blind stupid. 

She saw how Rick turned his head to look at her discreetly. He still had his arm placed next hers, and his palm now lay flat.

Everyone looked to the girl, even Tony himself, whilst he still was handling himself.

Her jaw clenched, and her head tilted downwards, eyes still on him. A sound was heard as her nails scraped against the wood, curling her hand into a tight fist.

Rick tapped the bar once, very lightly.

"Listen, pardon my friend," Dave hastily told Marley, bringing a hand to his face and rubbing his eyes tiredly. "City kids-- they got no tact. No disrespect." His eyes turned slightly angry, as his friend was not following his technique. Dave didn't want to disrespect Marley.

So, Dave knew out of all of them; it was either Glenn or Hershel who would bend to words. Rick and Marley were just as smart as him.

The three of them knew that.

"So listen, Glenn--"

"We've said enough," Rick had enough. He knew Marley had too. Tony's comment was the last straw, and there were plenty of straws.

"Well, hang on a second. This farm, it sounds pretty sweet," tactics were being slowly pushed aside, bit by bit, as desperation laced his thoughts and Dave just wanted something - something, a prize. "Don't it sound sweet, Tony?"

"Yeah, real sweet," he answered, finishing himself off and zipping up his pants. He laid his shotgun across his shoulder, absentmindedly.

"How about a little southern hospitality?" There was a pause. "We got some buddies back at camp, been having a real hard time. I don't see why you can't make room for a few more. We could pool our resources, our manpower." Dave wasn't greedy, he was desperate.

Rick stopped him before he could go any further. "Look, I'm sorry. That's not an option."

Dave knew that it wasn't, but it didn't stop him from trying harder. "Doesn't sound like it'd be a problem."

"Then I don't know what you've been listening to," Marley snapped. Her eyes still hadn't left Tony. He should have been scared. "We can't take in any more."

"So," Tony drawled. "Definitely no southern hospitality."

"I was raised by a dutchman," she clarified, steadily. Her voice did not falter.

There was another pause.

Dave couldn't help but chuckle. "You guys are something else. I thought-- I thought we were friends."

No one answered him - that was answer enough.

"We got people we gotta look out for, too," Dave's voice was slightly strained.

Rick shrugged. "We don't know anything about you."

"No, that's true," he shifted under their gazes - nervous. "You don't know anything about us. You don't know what we've had to go through to get here. The things we've had to do." He jutted his jaw out, thinking about the times he's had to walk away from unburied loved ones. "I bet you've had to do some of those things yourself. Am I right?"

There was a moment where the three people - Marley, Rick, and Dave - they knew, that each other understood.

"'Cause ain't nobody's hands clean in what's left of this world. We're all the same."

And Marley knew that people who were similar to her in that aspect, they needed to stay away from each other. If she met someone like her, her initial instinct would be to run for the hills.

"So come on, let's let's take a nice friendly hayride to this farm and we'll get to know each other."

Rick only shrugged again, turning more away from Marley and directly to Dave. "That's not gonna happen." There was a sick smile on his face.

"Rick--"

"This is bullshit," Tony exclaimed.

"Calm down," Rick hissed.

"Don't tell me to calm down. Don't ever tell me to calm down." Dave tried to calm down his friend but was put down before he could even get a word in. "I'll shoot you three assholes in the head, and take your damn farm along with missy here!"

Both Rick and Marley rose from their seats. Rick's lean body strode steadily towards the man, and Marley stood furiously glued to her spot. Dave intervened between the two men whom he knew who would win out of the two. He didn't even want to think about if he was involved.

"Relax," he hushed his friend, holding a hand towards him. He placed a hand on Rick's shoulder, who almost jerked away and casually. Dave's heart thumped in his ears. "Take it easy. Nobody's killing anybody." Dave knew that they would be prepared to, though.

He lay a hand on Rick's shoulder briefly, before walking towards the other side of the counter adjacent to him. He climbed over it easily. "Nobody's shooting anybody. Right, Rick?"

As he landed on the ground, he spotted her. Marley's head was tilted downwards again, eyes upwards, but not at him. At Tony.

See, Marley knew that Rick had it handled. She knew that he was going to handle it. That was why she wasn't ducking behind the counter waiting for a shot to ring out and a body to hit the ground. 

She wanted to watch.

Tony handled the gun behind him, as Rick did it just as fast - a brief, beady glance over his shoulder.

As Glenn and Hershel watched with wide eyes, Marley dragged her nails across the top, walking from beside Glenn. Her upper body stayed steady as her legs carried her through the little opening between the two counters. Her eyelids were heavy. Her heartbeat unintentionally speeding up when Dave laid his gun down in front of him.

"Now, where's the good stuff, huh?" Dave clapped his dry hands together, rubbing them together. "Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. Let's see." He leaned down.

The sheriff latched his hand to the grip of his gun.

Dave's heartbeat was even louder, he thought that the people around him could hear it too.

He concealed it by talking more. "Hey," he grinned, holding up a full bottle of scotch. "That'll work." He sighed whilst unscrewing the lid, starting to pour himself a drink - into, admittedly, an extremely dusty glass.

Marley eyed the drink. She knew that he was using her tactic in that moment. Drink to hopefully conceal.

"You gotta understand-- we can't stay out there. You know what it's like."

This time, Marley spoke up, running a hand across her face to brush away fallen hair - licking her lips. "Yeah, we do," she leaned against the countertop. "But you are not coming to the farm. No ifs, buts, maybes, possibilities, parallel universes. Just an answer. And the answer's "no"."

Rick continued her argument for her. "You'll have to keep looking."

"Keep looking,"  Dave echoed, teetering on his feet. His hands gripped the edge of he counter. He really needed to be somewhere safe
He didn't know how long he could take being out there anymore. "Where do you suggest we do that?"

Rick thought for a moment, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know. I hear Nebraska's nice."

Dave bared his teeth and laughed. It was like he forgot how to stand as he became more and more nervous. Angry. Desperate.

Dave was incredibly desperate.

"Nebraska," he echoed Rick's voice again, in a mocking and humorous tone. He lifted his eyebrows for a moment and looked to Marley's pale face. "This guy."

He kept the smile on his face, taking a last look at the girl. The way her eyes were veiny and aching. Her lips slightly parted and bitten into. Her red hair falling over one eye like a devil has marked the way she sees things.

Marley looked to Dave.

They both knew.

And in a sudden moment, Dave latched his hand around his gun.

He remembered what his sister told him - "you've got to get it up to your eye."

So he tried. He really did.

But Rick also knew. He also knew where Dave stood and what needed to happen.

And just as fast, he lifted the muzzle of his own gun. Just in time for no bullet to hit him, but for his own to meets it's mark.

Dave's head flung back, facing the ceiling as his wound sprayed blood on the clouded mirror.

He spun on his heel to Tony, pulling the trigger at his shoulder. Then his stomach.

Tony reacted slowly as he shot at the ceiling, causing parts of it and dust to fall onto him. His body slid down the wall.

Rick cooked his gun one more time, taking three steps forward and firing again. To the head.

Another thud, and then they were both gone.

Both dealt with.

+

#someonestopsylarfromstretchingthingsout lol

 i legit had to split this from the rest of the thing with randall

oh randall

you really should have just died then and there.

because there's fun times ahead for you and marley

as  i said to my legit saltmate and wife TacoDixon (btw you should check out her daryl ff which slays my life) there are fun times ahead

comment any theories and such

loves ya all

Also v sorry I've been mia coz stydia has been slayin my life and I'm v busy with drama work

added 8/Jan/16: [also this chapter is dedicated to the lovely cohans bc she made me this new fab cover

 and i love her v much - if you like captain america, go read her fanfic called "little toy guns"]

- sylar