Savage World •••Daryl Dixon•••

Kitten Fangs

"Sophia!" Carol sprinted for her dead daughter, stopped when Daryl threw down his gun and caught her around the waist, both dropping to the ground as the woman whimpered for her child. Asher felt her legs shake as her and the walker she knew made eye contact. Dead grey eyes met with liquid sky blue eyes for just a second, but it was enough to haunt her forever. They were so lifeless yet to accusing. Why didn't she help her?

The little girl shuffled over the bodies of the other walkers from the barn, teeth gnashing for flesh to rip off and eat. Nobody moved to shoot her, nowhere near as eagerly as they were to off those others. Tears spilled over her lashes and dripped down into the dust. It couldn't end like this. Not for her. Not for Sophia. She spotted Rick sadly moving between them to be the one to put the girl down. The man who looked to fervently for the girl, who rivaled Daryl in dedication to finding her alive was now going to be the one to put her down in front of her own mother.

"Sophia?" Her voice came out as a mere weak whimper and she held her hands over her mouth, hot tears flowing over her skin like rivers. Skin brushed across her shoulder but she flinched away.

"Don't touch me." Rick pulled his gun and took aim at the girl, Carol whimpering out Sophia's name with every breath she took. Daryl turned to check on Asher again, heart breaking when he saw the state she was in: every piece of her body was shivering, her hands clamped firmly over her mouth, shiny tears sliding over the pale skin to drip off her chin into the puddle of mud at her feet.

"Asher?" Her response was halted by Rick pulling the trigger, ripping through the somber silence that had taken hold of the group.

Bang.

Asher jerked awake at the ringing slam of metal on metal a few feet away. Zero was back, a metal pipe in one hand with a small plate of food in the other. That perpetual catty smirk plastered on his smug face.

"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey, little pet." Asher ground her teeth at his voice but forced her head to lift from its stiffly ducked position. Caked blood broke off in flakes and fluttered to the floor as she moved. Zero set down the pipe and produced a key to unlock her cell door and stepped inside. She stayed curled up in her little ball while he walked to her side with all the confidence in the world. Her fingers itched to scratch out his eyes and make her run for it, but she forced it down and waited for a better opportunity against an easier opponent.

"Sleep well? I know I sure did." He watched her shuffle out her aching joints but never answered him. The dark man smirks wider and stepped back to crouch down more to her height. "You can speak, sweetheart."

"Fine." Zero nodded and set down the tray of food and slid the metal across the concrete floor. "What is that?"

"That's food, sweetheart. Gotta keep your strength up if we're gonna keep having fun." Asher softly nodded and poked at the powdered scrambled eggs and canned cocktail fruit. As she busied herself with the food, Zero reached out and tugged back on her collar to pull the sharp spikes gently out of her wounds with crackles of old blood and the small squelch of new flesh. Asher froze at his touch, body screaming for her to run as far as possible as fast as possible. The man clicked his tongue in mock disappointment before reaching out to jab his finger into the fresh wounds, earning a hiss from Asher and a jerk away from his touch despite the spikes waiting to cut into her skin on every side.

"You should've played nice with me, Esmeralda Whitman. Look at what you did to yourself." He dropped the collar, the weight of the metal brace sinking the spikes back into her sensitive flesh. He chuckled and stood to leave, closing the door behind him with a loud clang and a click of the lock.

"Be a good little pet and eat some while I'm gone, alright? I'll be back in a few hours, maybe I'll have a new friend for you to play with." Asher simply nodded again and waited for him to vanish into the darkness. Once the door shuddered closed, she pushed to a stand and yanked on the chain tethering her to the pole outside the cage. She tried pulling the chain upwards to slide the leather strap up over the top, but the gap in the bars wasn't large enough and her arm couldn't fit through it either.

"Come on!" She yanked on the chain more, hoping that somewhere there would be a weak link, but only succeeded in digging the spikes deeper into her skin. Those would more than likely leave a nasty scar but she didn't care. Giving up on sheer brute force, she decided she would wait for someone she could easily take down and escape while Zero was gone. Someone had to be put on pet duty, right? Moving back to her spot in the center of the cage, she crouched down beside the tray of food and fished up a piece of pineapple from the fruit cocktail.

"Might as well." She sniffed at the foods and slowly nibbled on the fruit. After what felt like an eternity, the door in the darkness creaked open and she wondered if Zero had already returned. Did she miss her only chance? Instead she was met with a scraggly man around Daryl's age, wrinkled in the face and beady in the eyes. Strapped to his back was a Louisville slugger topped with a ring of nailed down railroad spikes almost as long as her arm. This was it, this was her chance to get out.

"Oi, little bitch! You alive in there?" She didn't bother to answer him, hoping it would antagonize him into opening the door and getting within reach. "Oi! I'm talkin to ya!"

He lowly grumbled to himself about all of Zero's pets being useless mute whores as he fished for his keys to the cage. Flinging the door open, he shambles into the space and kicked her tray about a foot from her before turning his back and bending down to pick up the metal disk. Asher launched forward with a scream and grabbed hold of his bat before kicking him in the backside so he would stumble a few feet away.

"You sneaky little slut!" He whirled around to attack her, hand reaching for the gun he had hidden under his oversized shirt. Asher didn't even hesitate to swing the bat at her captor with all her might. Metal pierced flesh, cracked open bone and blood sprayed across her face and chest. Stepping forward, she grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt and pulled him close as he took his last few breaths.

"I ain't nobody's fucking pet."