When the Whispers Die [Daryl Dixon/OC]

Jemma Guthrie has too much noise in her head. Between the ADHD she can't shake and thirty-three years of hearing the neighbors whisper about her mother and Will Dixon, she's done. People in this town love to dig into her bloodline, but Jemma is too busy sweating over a fryer at the local dive to care. She's a line cook with a mouth full of sarcasm, stuck in a life that smells like old grease and disappointment.

She belongs to Merle because he was the one who claimed her first. He's a possessive prick who treats her like property, while Daryl just watches from the background. It's a dead end existence, but it was the only one she had. Then the dead stopped staying down, and the whispers died with the neighbors.

Now Jemma is just trying to breathe. The kitchen is gone, replaced by the reality of the apocalypse. With her mother dead and Merle lost in Atlanta, the air is getting heavy. She's surviving while Daryl starts to cut through the grief.

Jemma isn't looking for a hero's ending. She's just trying to stay upright long enough to forget the person she used to be.

(Starts pre outbreak)