On the Razor's Edge

Summary: Outbreak AU – 10 years after a virus outbreak ravished the world, humanity is left holding onto a thread. In the ashes of what is left – two broken people find each other, and find solace together of the likes they never thought they'd have again. GREENS.

Playlist: The Last of Us – OST – Relaxed Compilation

Authors note: This is heavily inspired from The Last of Us. It doesn't take place in the same universe, although the overall context has been inspired from it.

The Powerpuff Girls do not belong to me and as always, they have human appendages.

The Green's don't have their powers in this AU, and are roughly 27-26 years old respectively.

Thank you Pinky-Keene, for helping me with locations.

((Also, a very late birthday gift to StraniqueGirl0684 – happy birthday darling! Thank you for filling my old, bitter heart up with so much Greens joy! I'm so happy to have found someone who understands my deep love for them! XD))

Your name is Buttercup and are a survivor.

Your last name isn't important anymore. No one here cares, and you don't use it anymore. Nobody uses their last names anymore.

You're standing on your shabby apartment building's rooftop – staring out at the misty horizon as you watch the sun slowly start to rise above the tree tops of the forest just on the edge of the twenty-foot-tall fence that surrounds the perimeter of Jacksonville county.

You glare down at the fence as you run a hand through your wild, inky black locks. You hate living in Jacksonville – it's nothing more than a glorified prison, but you have nowhere else to go.

As much as you hate living here, and that damn fence – It keeps you and the rest of Jacksonville county safe from harm. After all, that barbed wire fence was the only thing keeping the rabid infected that live in the wilderness just beyond the county, out.

The infected. Such a lovely bunch they were.

Your bright lime eyes scan the forest below you, scanning for signs of movement in the trees.

Nothing. They weren't there at the moment, but there were around. They were never far off. They were everywhere now. You couldn't go more than twenty feet outside the wall without running into one or more.

The infected were the byproduct of the brutal new world that you existed in. They were once human – average people just like you once were, leading average, normal lives – before one day – almost ten years ago exactly – people began to get sick. It wasn't a normal sickness however, and it had spread like wildfire. Within three and a half months, the entire world was affected by it, and shortly after that – everyone lost their minds.

The collapse of all government law as you knew it happened a lot sooner then you originally thought it would, and anarchy followed shortly after that. Humanity turned on each other and began to slaughter one another out of pure fear, before finally the military had stepped in and declared the entirety of America under Marshal Law.

It was too late at that point however – the infection had ripped across America and every state was affected. The death toll had been staggering, and nowhere was safe from the newly turned infected, who were killing the unaffected people at an alarming rate – before finally, the rapid spread of the infection had forced you, and what was left of humanity into military protected spaces called Quarantine Zones – or the QZ's as you've taken to calling them – much like the one you're currently living in.

Of course, not all of the QZ's survived the initial outbreak.

They were spaced out all across America, but the ones that had been created near large cities or densely populated areas had fallen first due to being overrun with infected. Others fell because of overpopulation or corrupt military governing systems – causing in riots, leading the QZ to be destroyed in the process.

Honestly you hate that the QZ's are run by what's left of the military, as they make living inside one absolute hell, but they do manage to keep some semblance of order intact which keeps people sane, so you'll give them some credit for that.

It's a shame that they're all corrupt though. They make living inside the QZ's just as difficult as living outside of one, if not more so. You've heard that the Jacksonville QZ is a lot better than some of the other Zone's, such as Boston – but it's by no means easy living in it.

And as the years dragged on, and as more and more people got infected, and as supplies began to get harder and harder to find – the worse the conditions in the Zone seemed to get, until you'd almost rather take your chances out there with the infected.

Now it was ten years later and the infected still rule the earth. They were hollow shells of their formers selves. Savage, blood thirsty creatures, with chunks of flesh missing and blood dripping out of every orifice. Suffuse to say they were a terrifying sight to say the least – but that's what the infection did to a person, and the longer you were infected, the worse it got over time.

Ah yes, the infection itself.

Nobody had an actual name for it – it had wiped out too many of the world's leading scientists before they could come up with something as trivial as a name for it.

The few that were left had come to the conclusion that it was a viral infection of sorts that caused the brain to swell and promoted violent behavior in those effected with the disease. They also determined that it was being transmitted through direct contact with an infected person.

And by direct contact, they had meant bites – but nobody had wanted to say that.

That was the last bit of information that you had gotten regarding the infection, before all of the airwaves went down – plunging the whole world into some modern-day dark age.

That was seven years ago, give or take.

They said that it killed about sixty percent of the world's population by the end third year. Well, killed isn't exactly the right word for that. Maybe a quarter of that number had actually died… the rest were mindless, screaming, infected creatures who wanted nothing more than to rip the flesh off your body, and leave what's left to turn.

Still, you don't find that number hard to believe. Seeing how your father and sisters had been part of that body count.

You scoff and shake your head, determined not to let yourself slip into that dark train of thought again. Bad things always happened when you did.

You cast a look around you at the desolate roof-top as you lapse back into your thoughts. Sixty percent of the world's population gone in three years… well it was ten years later now, and you could only guess how much of the un-infected population remained. Significantly less, if the recent spike of infected around the Quarantine Zone's perimeters had anything to say about it.

You snort. More and more people were starting to slip outside the QZ's walls now trying to find supplies that the Zone didn't have, but it wasn't doing them a damn bit of good, as more than half ended up getting bitten and didn't bother coming back.

If they were going to scavenge for supplies outside the wall that was fine, but they needed to understand that they needed to follow the outside worlds rules while they were out there, otherwise they were as good as dead.

A lesson that many of them were learning too late.

And that's why they should just leave going outside the wall up to you and your partner. You and him are some of the top smugglers that your Zone has to offer and you know it too. You actually know what you're doing out there. You know how to avoid the hordes of infected and most importantly: you know how to stay alive.

A lesson that you taught yourself after your sisters died.

You shake your head frantically as thoughts of your family cut across your mind like a knife, and you try to backpedal away from those memories, but it's too late. Your mind keeps traveling back to your sisters, and before you know it, you're being pulled down memory lane to the very beginning of the outbreak.

You had been living on the Golden Coast – or rather California, when it happened. You, your older sister, younger sister and your father had been together when all hell had broken lose.

You had barely managed to escape California with your lives, and had then spent a year living out in the Nevada desert while the rest of the world went to shit. After another year passed, and you had left the desert behind and had wound up in Utah.

Utah… otherwise known as Hell to you.

Your father had this clever idea that if you went farther up north, you would hit farming states, such as Wyoming, Idaho or Montana, and that it was a possibility that there would be less infected up there then as opposed to the south.

You and your sisters had agreed that it was worth a shot, and had decided to head for Wyoming, since it was the closest to state to Utah, and you had heard rumors that they still had a functioning Quarantine Zone that hadn't been overrun.

You had been passing though Salt Lake City when it had happened.

Your sisters and father… had been mercilessly killed. You had survived by a fluke – you hadn't been there when they had been murdered.

The ironic part? It hadn't been infected that had killed your sisters and father. You might have been less biter and more accepting if it had been the infected, but no. It had been people. Regular, shitty people who weren't even bitten.

The people who had killed your sisters and father would now be known today as hunters, or scavengers by the people who still alive now. It doesn't really matter to you what they call themselves, you don't care.

You fucking hate hunters.

You hate them for taking away the only family you had left, and now-a-days when you come across one on your trips outside the QZ, you don't hesitate.

Many have met their end at your hands.

Because even though you know it's not the same hunters that killed your family, a part of you still blames them and their culture for turning you into what you are now:

A cold, calculated, vengeful being, intent on bringing the same pain and misery that you experienced to anyone who dares to stand in your way. It hurts you to know that you think that now – because you never used to be like that – but something in you snapped upon seeing the mangled bodies of your family.

You had become numb to everything after your sister's deaths, and you barely remember the year that followed – you're pretty sure that you had gone on a mindless killing spree – hunting down and murdering people that tried to hinder your trip up north.

You privately think that you had become more animal then human at one point, before you finally made it here to Wyoming – the place that you and your family were trying to get to in the first place.

You could have cared less though.

The world had taken something irreplaceable from you. Now you were out to take something from the world.

At night, you are less angry, and in the quiet hours before dawn, you have time to reflect on what your life has come to.

Sometimes you wonder why it was you who survived and not your sisters.

But you had always been the strongest of your sisters. The toughest. The fighter. That's how you had gotten your nickname after all.

The toughest fighter.

Not that it mattered anymore.

Your sisters weren't there to call you that anymore. They hadn't been around of a while now.

Speaking of which, what the hell was taking him so long-

The door leading up to the roof behind you swings open with a rusty scrape, and a towering man steps out onto the roof top.

There he was, your smuggling partner, the other half of your dynamic duo, and the one person who you trusted more than anyone else in this shitty Wyoming Quarantine Zone:

Butch.

Butch was a beast of a man. He couldn't have been any older than his mid-twenties, but stood at a glorious height of 6'4 almost 6'5, with an impressive bone structure, and an even more impressive muscular build, due to all of the fighting you both do day in and day out.

His black hair was disheveled and stuck up in wild spikes on his head, and his deep green eyes that were a stark contrast to your own – were rimmed with red, indicating that he hadn't slept much at all the previous night.

You would know – you felt him toss and turn all last night next to you in bed – doing a damn fine job of keeping you up as well, and you hadn't even fucked last night.

You bite back a grin at that thought. You and Butch were a little more than just regular smuggling partners. Seven years of being stuck with the same person had a way of doing that

When you had first met the brute, you had just joined up the biggest Wyoming smuggling party there was, as you couldn't stand being cooped up in the QZ for an extended period of time – and still can't to this day. It was there, that your employer at the time had introduced you to one another.

To say that you hadn't gotten along when you first met would be a vast understatement.

You had fought with him on almost everything and anything. Whether it was getting illicit goods back into the Zone without getting caught, dealing with the military patrols, or even handling rival hunters or infected that you came across during your trips outside of the wall – you couldn't stand him – no matter how attractive you found him.

But once you got past it all: you realized very quickly that you and him were one of the same.

For starters, you were both alone in this new and dangerous world, with no immediate family to speak of. Yours obviously being long gone before you even got to Wyoming, and Butch simply being by himself since the moment you met him all those years ago.

And when you weren't arguing with each other, you thought with the same mind.

You were both solitary people by nature, and were people of action – you always held a firm belief that actions spoke louder than words did anyways, and that applied to the infected riddled world now more than it ever had before. Not to mention that you later found out that he had a secret love for B-rated horror movies that matched your own. After finding out those little things about him, you found it much easier to work with him, and he you.

Over the years, as things on the outside got progressively worse – the smuggling party began to get smaller and smaller, until it was only you, Butch, and a handful of other the other smugglers left. All of you managed to stay alive for as long you had, because you followed the rules that the new world outside had laid out for you:

1. Always wear your masks in or around decaying infected corpses is a must, unless you want to run the risk of having the virus jump to you.

2. Always make sure you have extra bullets, or a secondary weapon of some kind, on you.

3. Always be aware of your surroundings – Infected and hunters alike could give less of a shit if you're stopping to take a breather.

4. Don't be a hero and go out of your way to save someone who you know is clearly fucked.

5. Trust no one.

You lived and breathed those five rules and you never strayed from them. Because of that, you're still alive and so is Butch.

But it was during that time, where there was only a few members of your smuggling party left, that you found yourself beginning to rely more heavily on Butch for support, and sometimes protection from the outside. What surprised you the most was that Butch didn't back away from you like you thought he would have, and instead became even more focused on yours and his survival.

After seeing that change in him, you knew that you could trust him completely, and you began to open up to him… as much as you could in this god-forsaken world, that had taken so much from you already, that is.

Eventually you moved in with him to his apartment, convincing yourself that his was simply nicer than your own anyway – which really wasn't saying much – and that you wouldn't have to share with four other people. (you still don't know how he managed to get a place to himself, but you think that his already violent reputation within the Zone might have had something to do with it.) But if you were really honest with yourself, you were pleased that you had found someone who understood you to a T.

Not long after you moved in, you started to connect with him on a more… intimate level.

After three long years of trauma and being by yourself, you had a certain itch that you needed help scratching, and Butch was more than willing to please. It didn't hurt that you found him very attractive, and if the way your name rolled off his tongue during your wild intimate moments meant anything – he was just as infatuated with you as you were him.

Of course, your business dealings and professional partnership came first and foremost, but it was still nice to have someone who could please you when you needed it.

And he was a damn good lover if you've ever had one.

He mumbles a quiet mornin' at you, as he strides past you on those damn long legs of his, to the edge of the rooftop, where he proceeds to pull out a small cigarette box from his back pocket. Flicking it open he pulls out one of the long, white sticks and holds it in between his lips as he pulls a lighter out from his other pocket, lighting it.

You watch as he takes a drag of his cigarette and releases the haze of blue tinted smoke from his lungs a moment later. He calmly watches the dreg drift away in the crisp autumn air and you shake your head in amazement.

He's so calm, he's always calm – too fucking calm. You think to yourself as you furrow your brows. You're a little envious of his cool demeanor and level headedness, because you don't know how he does it.

You and him have seen your fair share of crazy shit since you became partners, and you've done even worse things to those who have dared to stand in your way – and while you never show it, some of the things you have been forced to do have taken a toll on you mentally. But with him it's a different story.

Butch on the other hand, has never once showed any hesitation in taking a life, or facing off against a hoard of ravenous infected – things that would make normal people, and even yourself on occasion – flinch.

Of course, he's not always calm. When shit really hits the fan – whether its dealing with a bad client or infected – he has a tendency to turn into a raging berserker with a twisted smile – ready to hack and slash his way to victory with one of his beloved knives, or his bare fists – and he never loses. It never seems to bother him much either.

Its times like that, when he completely loses control, are when you're grateful that he's your ally instead of your enemy.

You have no idea how he handles the mess that is now the world so well. You wish you knew his secret, because you wish you could stop caring about everything, and become hollow like he does when he's put on the spot.

But you still feel things – If only barely – and you hate it. Feelings are for the weak-hearted after all, and that is something that you are not. If you were, you wouldn't have made it this long. You want to know how he manages to shut it all off.

A thought occurs to you there and then as you watch him finish off the last of his cigarette. Maybe he did something similar to this in his former life before the outbreak. Maybe that's how he deals with it. The thought makes you pause.

When you stop and think about it, you realize that you hardly know anything about Butch's life from before you met him. He's like you in the way that he doesn't talk about his former life before the outbreak happened – which is totally fine by you – but sometimes you wish that you knew a little more about the man who has been your partner (not to mention the only person you completely trust to have your back) for the last seven or so years.

You know that he came from somewhere in or near Colorado before the outbreak, but that's it. He's never mentioned anything else to you. He's never told you whether or not he had a family or a even a girlfriend. Maybe he didn't, you're not sure, and you don't think that you'll ever know unless he tells you.

But that will never happen.

When you and Butch first teamed up, you made a promise to each other never to speak about personal events or people from before the outbreak. It was too painful, too distracting, and the both of you know that dwelling on the past is dangerous, and being distracted for even a second can get you killed. Part of the reason why you made that promise in the first place was because back then, you were still grieving for your sisters and father almost every day, and opening up to someone about that loss was the last thing that you wanted to do.

But it was years later now – and while you still weren't necessarily okay with their deaths, you could at least think about it without choking back tears.

You sneak a glance over at Butch, who is still absentmindedly blowing smoke into the crisp morning air. He's been there for you consistently since you met him and he's never let you down once in that time. Of the few people that you have left in your life, he is the one who you trust the most, and realistically would be the one you'd feel most comfortable sharing that piece of your life with.

You only hope that he'd feel the same way.

He's the one person you don't want to keep secrets from after all – even though you know that together, you have a closet and a half full of dirty little secrets. Some of which will probably never be said.

But maybe that's for the better.

Butch throws down the butt of his cigarette and crushes it with the heel of his combat boot, snapping you out of your reprieve. "Ready to go?"

You nod. "You know it. We have a client waiting for us down at the West-end district. I have the pills he requested, but he's one of the shadier bunch, so get ready to fight if we have to."

He nods with a hint of a smirk. "Is death out of the question?"

"I don't think that anyone will miss him if he goes 'missing'." You respond nonchalantly, as you examine your cuticles. "But unless things go south, I'd like to avoid that if possible."

He shrugs, "Let hope it doesn't come to that then. He's got payment for us?"

"He better, he said he did, but you know people nowadays, that's why I'm saying get ready for anything."

"What exactly are we giving him again? It's a pretty decent sized order if I remember correctly."

"OxyContin if you can believe it, and something tells me it's not for pain." You respond dryly. "He was asking for a decent chunk of our reserves, and I was pretty hesitant to hand it over to him, since the QU nurses tend to come to us for it, but he was offering a price that I couldn't refuse."

Butch hisses. "Shit we're already pretty low on that as it is. We're going to have to go outside the wall and find more soon."

"I don't think that there is any more around these parts." You sigh. "We got lucky with that find last time, but I think we're going to have to start trading with other scavengers outside the wall from now on. We've already cleaned out all of the nearby towns of anything useful, and all that's left there are the infected."

"Who the fuck even uses that shit now?" Butch grumbles irritably as his fingers twitch towards his back pocket where he keeps his smokes. "I'd be more worried about the infected then getting a fix."

"It's a sickness Butch, I don't pretend to understand it, nor do I care to." You mutter back as you turn away from him and head towards the door leading down into the apartment building.

"Now come on. West end is going to take us a couple of hours to get there and back again. I updated our clearance papers last week so the guards shouldn't give us any trouble at the gates, but I'd like to be home by evening, before the night patrols start harassing people out past curfew."

Butch sighs but follows you regardless. "Yes ma'am."

Shit. Fucking shit. That didn't go as you'd hoped it would.

You're staring down at the lifeless body of your client with a twisted sneer on your face – fighting the urge to spit on the corpse, but you manage to refrain yourself at the last second.

You might be a twisted person, but you've got some dignity left.

Much as you suspected: the deal had gone south, and things had gotten out of hand fast.

You had met your client in one of the old warehouses that line the boarder of the west end of the QZ, and had demanded your payment before passing over the drugs. You've done too many shady business deals like this one in the past, and you know every trick in the book. Most importantly you know how to handle guys like this one.

Having Butch there during your shadier deals was also an added bonus – he's a great intimidator, which was perfect because you know that you don't look all that threatening, much to your displeasure. Your reputation precedes you in the looks department.

Just as you thought might happen, the pasty looking fucker had demanded that you give him his drugs before he paid you.

No. no. that wasn't how things worked with you and Butch. You got paid first then you forked over whatever it was that the client wanted.

You had tried to be a decent business woman and explain that to him, but he wasn't having any of it.

This guy was clearly an idiot – he must have not realized that he was talking to the most ruthless and dangerous pair of smugglers in the Wyoming QZ.

The guy had started to turn violent as you again refused to hand over the drugs, before having the audacity to pull a gun on you.

You and Butch had reacted at the same time.

And now here you are – both covered in the junkie's blood splatter, breathing heavily, and the idiot's dead body on the floor – face down in a pool of his own blood which was rapidly spreading across the concrete floor of the warehouse.

What you actually find humorous about the whole situation, is that the idiot honestly thought he could take the two of you on together. What a laugh.

To his credit though, the pissed-off junky had managed to land a couple of decent hits on Butch – who was almost twice the size of him – succeeding in knocking him over and stunning him momentarily, before directing his rage onto you.

You know that the guy must have been going through withdrawals of something else he was previously on, otherwise the guy would have never been able to barrel Butch over as he did. Hell, the guy looked as if he had never seen the sun and hadn't eaten anything in weeks, which you don't think was that far off from the truth.

He had gotten a few good hits on you before Butch had recovered, and whipped one of his precious butcher knifes out of concealment, and it was all over.

You clutch at your bruised ribs where your client- or should you say ex-client – had practically Sparta kicked you in an attempt to crush your ribcage – and hiss.

Fuck, one spot is a bit too sore to just be bruised – fucker might have cracked a rib. The thought makes you furious as you glare distastefully down that the body that is now surrounded by a pool of blood, due to the multitude of deep stab wounds that Butch had inflicted on him.

Ribs were always a bitch to heal because you couldn't tape them, and did nothing but slow you down if you needed to run – something you did quite often. Having an injury like that when going outside of the wall made you venerable and an easy target, and that was something that you couldn't afford to be.

"What do you wanna do with the body?" Butch finally asks, nodding to the corpse that's still oozing red life. You snort cruelly. "Leave him for the infected. I know that at least one or two manage to find their way into here each month. They can have a nice little snack, and get rid of the evidence for us."

It happens so fast that you almost miss it, but you see Butch's face twist up into a grimace for the briefest of moments at your solution. It's gone in the next second, but you know that it was definitely there.

Your eyes narrow in confusion. He doesn't have a problem with bludgeoning the infected that you come across outside of the wall, but for some unknown reason, whenever he sees a corpse that's been mauled by the infected, or a recently turned body – he freezes up for the briefest of seconds.

You decide to let it go, it's his business, and as long as it doesn't hinder him from doing his job, you don't care.

You glance over his way and you feel your piercing lime gaze soften as you take in his blood-soaked form, with a fondness that you feel only for him and him alone.

Once again, just like the many times before this one – Butch saved your life.

"Hey," he rasps, voice dry as he brushes some of your black hair away from your face. "You good?"

You look up at him and see that he's staring at you with those deep green eyes and you feel your mouth go dry, not from exhaustion, but from desire.

Your gaze sweeps over his blood splattered form and suddenly you don't think that you've ever seen anything more appealing in your life.

And suddenly you want him. More than you ever have before. You want to fucking drown in him.

"Yeah." You rasp back, not breaking eye contact with him. "I'm good. I'm more than good."

He must see the wild-eyed hunger in your eyes, because he's own irises darken until they're almost black. "Not here." He mumbles as his hand travels down the length of your side, before coming to rest on your hip. "Save it for when we get back home."

Despite the fact that you've just killed someone and that the both of you are covered in blood, you manage to crack a dark grin at him.

"Well then, we'd better hurry and get back then."

Butch swallows thickly, and you watch his Adam's apple bob in his throat. "Yes ma'am."

You wind up in your shared apartment bedroom that night.

As soon as he shut the door to your apartment, you were on him. What had once started off as a heated makeout session, quickly turned into a contest of who could take off the other's clothes the fastest – and, your personal favorite: who could make the other moan louder.

So far it was a tie.

The walls of the old building are paper thin, and you're pretty sure that your whole floor and even the floor below you can hear every sound you make, but you can't bring yourself to care.

You want him. Badly. This bone session was long overdue. Besides – it's not like anyone would say anything anyways – the entire apartment building knows what you and Butch do under the military's noses, and more importantly – they know what you're capable of. They're not going to say anything, they respect you two, not to mention that they're scared shitless of you at the same time.

And it can stay that way for all you care.

Your clothes are ripped off of you faster than you can blink, and his own aren't far behind. Next thing you know, you're nude, and he's thrown you onto the sorry excuse of a mattress that you call a bed, and he's hovering over top of you, having ditched his own clothes a while ago.

He kisses his way up your body, causing you to gasp and moan, as he slides his hands up your arms and laces your hands with his. Now all you can think about is him, nothing else. Not the infected that are lurking just outside the QZ wall, not the death that you've seen and caused, not your sisters and farther. Nothing.

All you can see and think about his him.

Him. The man that you hardly know and yet at the same time trust with every fiber of your being.

He slams into you suddenly, snapping you back to the present with a choked moan. You glare up at him weakly, and see that his forest green eyes are almost laughing, as he locks eyes with your own light green ones.

"Eyes on me Spitfire. You want me, you got me."

"Shut the hell up and kiss me." You demand breathlessly as you throw your head forwards and slam your lips onto his. The feral growl that passes through his lips is everything you ever dreamed of and more.

Finally, after an hour, he lets out a snarl and bits down hard on your clavicle, as you follow him with a high-pitched cry that only he can draw out of you.

He stays above you for a few minutes more as he catches his breath, before lowering his head to press an uncharacteristically gentle kiss to your lips. You return it as he rolls off you to lay by your side, panting heavily.

You give him a dewy-eyed look, and he shoots you a wink as he twists onto his side looking for a glass of water that he normally keeps on the bedside table next to his side of the bed, allowing you to get a full view of his back. You glance over at him and you freeze, your green eyes widening in shock.

Oh.

Oh.

His back looks like a battlefield. The scars are long and white, and cross over each other like jet-streams in the sky. Some look quite strange, like they were caused by the jagged end of a broken bottle, or something sharp like that.

You knew the scars were there, as you've seen him without a shirt on countless times before. But something is different this time around as you look at his scars. It's like you're seeing them for the first time.

Some of them are fairly new, and you know exactly how he got them – as more often than not, you're the one who patches him up when he gets into a scrape – but some of them… some of them look like he's had them for a while, maybe even before the outbreak happened.

You find yourself staring at his back for longer than you planed, and you see him turn his head to look at you in confusion out of your peripherals. He sees you staring hard at his backside and he suddenly seems to freeze up under your assessment.

He makes a move to turn over, but you press a small hand on his backside and he freezes in place. Slowly, gently, you begin to trace over his scars with a feather light touch, and gradually you feel his muscles unlock from their tense position.

You don't know what makes you do it, but you lean in and press a gentle kiss onto one of the older looking scars. He completely freezes up at that, and shoots you a stunned look, but you ignore him, and soon you find yourself planting small kisses onto all of his scars – almost as of your touch could miraculously heal them.

You know that it won't, and that it won't make any of them go away, but the action seems to make Butch deflate before your very eyes and next thing you know, he's grasping around for your hand. You relinquish one, and he grips it like a lifeline and takes deep, shuddering breaths in as you continue your work on his backside.

After a few more minutes, you decide that you got all of them and slowly pull away, before going back to tracing over his scars. He releases your hand after a moment and you lightly stroke his back as he lies next to you, looking more tired than you've ever seen him before.

You know that you shouldn't ask – but this is a quiet moment, and they don't come often. Right now, it's just you and him and room, nobody else – if you're going to talk openly, now is the time. God knows you might not get any more opportunities like this.

"How long have you had these?" you ask as you trace over one particular ugly scar in particular.

He blinks once as he peers over his shoulder at you, his expression guarded. "Long time. Before the outbreak."

You take a deep breath in. You know that there's only one way that he'll tell you, and that's if you open up a little bit about your own life before the outbreak. A part of you can't believe that you're going to do this, but you know that the only way he'll open up is if you talk too, because fuck it, you want to know the history behind those scars.

If you're being honest – you feel like you need to open up the closet and let some of your dirty secrets out anyways. It's going to drive you insane if you keep them locked away for much longer.

You roll onto your back and stare up at the bedroom's ceiling, and a second later the bed creaks and shifts, signaling that Butch has also moved on to his back. The two of you lay in silence for what feels like an eternity as you struggle to figure out what to say.

Finally, without taking your eyes off the ceiling, you begin to talk – saying the first things that come to your empty mind.

"I wasn't always alone." You start off quietly. You're not looking at him, but you can tell that he's turned his head to look at you by the subtle weight shift of your shared pillow.

"I'm not even remotely from around here either." You continue. "Before the outbreak happened, I lived in California with my family." The word dries up on your tongue, and the inside of your mouth suddenly feels like a desert.

Family. How long has it been since you've said that forbidden F word? You can't even remember the last time you used it.

Butch is silent as you slowly press on – still fishing for words that are currently eluding you as you try and tell him about yourself in hopes that maybe he too will tell you about himself.

"I lived there with my father and my two sisters, Blossom and Bubbles. Blossom was my older sister and Bubbles was my little sister, and I was the troublesome middle child." You let out a small chuckle. "I was such a pain back then – always getting into trouble. Drove my dad and Bloss crazy."

Butch snorts. "Why am I not surprised." you nudge him arm with a half-laugh. "Shuddup, anyways-" the smile slips off your face and you feel yourself become somber again as you continue with your tale.

"When the outbreak was in its early stages, we didn't leave right away. My dad was a researcher for one of the tech labs in Cali, and he thought that it would blow over soon enough. So we waited and waited, hoping that the scientists that trying to figure out what exactly it was would find a cure for it. Evidently, they didn't, and turns out the cost is one of the worst places to be if a viral outbreak of that caliber happens." Butch nods somberly.

"I heard that the cost got hit pretty badly before all of the airwaves went down. I was kinda surprised by that. I thought that California had shelters and bunkers, equipped for this sort of thing."

"We do have shelters, but they're for natural disasters – not for outbreaks like this." You inform him. "When it finally did reach California, the whole place went to shit. The shelters were overrun in the first two weeks with infected, and there was nowhere for us to go. A lot of people ended up jumping into the ocean and drowning trying to escape."

Butch griminess at that, and you continue. "By sheer dumb luck, my family managed to get out, and we spent almost a year in the Nevada desert avoiding everyone."

You remember that year well. It was a horrible first year of the infection, where people were dying left and right and robberies and other sorts of arson were still in full swing. People didn't trust people, and tended to avoid each other at all costs. You heard that the cities were the worst for it, which is why you're thankful that your family had some shred common sense, and hid out in the middle of the desert where no one was around for miles – avoiding the worst of the chaos.

When you think about it, that decision was probably the only thing that kept you alive that first year.

"Damn, you came from a long way's a way. California's almost four states over, how the hell did you end up in Wyoming?" Butch ask incredulously.

"I didn't make it up here until about year three." You remind him softly. "It took me awhile to get here – you would know, you were here long before I was." Butch scrunches his face up slightly and pops his back. "Yeah, I came from a much closer place. So, how did you get here? I'm assuming you left Nevada after a bit."

You brush his questions away. "I'm getting to that, just be patient alright? This isn't easy for me to talk about." He opens his mouth to retort, but then shuts it again as he remembers that neither your sisters or father is here with you. You came to Wyoming alone.

Instead he nods. "Right, sorry, go on."

"Dad had this brilliant idea." you mutter as an angry grin starts to work its way up your lips. "He said: let's head for Wyoming – its farm contrary up there and it should be more remote than most of the other states – we'll be safe there." You feel your gaze become flinty as you stare daggers up at the ceiling.

"We had to make our way through Utah to get here though, and that took us another year and a half. It was in Utah – Salt Lake City actually… was where… its where…"

You don't want to say it. You really don't want to say it. Because if you do – you're going to relieve the moment that it happened and you don't know if you'll be able to handle it.

One of Butch's hands find your wrist and holds it. the slight pressure keeps you grounded and allows you a second to clear your head. You blink rapidly, trying to clear the tears that you feel gathering in the corners of your vision before daring to say anything.

"We were in Salt Lake when it happened. We were camped out in a hotel or something, and we were running low on supplies so I offered to go have a look around, I figured I would go alone because I was always faster when I went by myself." Your voice becomes very quiet. "…I told them I would be right back… I promised them I would be right back…"

You wipe pathetically at the tears that have started to fall down your cheeks. Christ it's been fucking ages since you last cried, and you certainly didn't want Butch of all people to see you in this state. You wanted him to open up, and you knew that you would have to do it too – but you didn't think that it would be this fucking hard.

"Hey, hey-" you can see that Butch looks distinctly uncomfortable out of your peripherals, and he makes a move to brush away your tears, but you swat his hand away, knowing that you'll truly start to cry if he touches you.

You clear your throat and exhale shakily.

"What we didn't realize was that we were being followed by a group of hunters. I was only gone for fifteen minutes at the most, but when I got back…" you close your eyes as the images from that day flash in front of your closed eyelids.

"They… they had already gotten to my sisters and father. They killed them. Bullet to the head – all three of them. They were gone before I could do anything."

You laugh, but it's far from friendly. "You know, if it were infected, maybe I would have learned to accept it, but no. it was people. Regular, shitty people who didn't deserve to live." You glance at him only to see that he hasn't taken his eyes off of you.

"See that's the thing with the infected Butch. I'm not scared of them. I hate them, but they're more of an annoyance to me than anything now. They're simple, easy to understand. It's normal humans that I fucking despise."

You flick your eyes away from him. "Infected didn't make me bury my family in an overgrown, forgotten garden out the back of a hotel – humans did that. Humans are unpredictable, and sometimes, I think that they're even worse than the infected themselves."

Butch hums. "So that's why you hate hunters so much. I always wondered why you would attack the ones that we came across outside with such unbridled savagery… Now I get it."

There's a stiff pause before he releases your wrist to rub his temples. "Jesus Butters, I'm sorry. About everything."

You shake your head, still not looking at him. "That's okay Butch."

There's nothing you could have done anyways.

He shifts his head so he's looking directly at you. "So what did you do?"

"I killed them." You nod to yourself as you keep your eyes trained at the ceiling. "I hunted them down and killed every last one of them, and then I left their bodies for the infected to rip apart."

Your silent as you figure out what to say after that. "I don't remember much after that. I really don't. I just shut everything off I guess, and I somehow managed to make it almost a year by myself before I finally made it up here, and I've been here ever since."

You blink, slowly, tiredly. Then: "Sometimes I ask myself why was it me who lived, you know? Why me? Why not my sisters and my dad? Why was I spared?"

And there it is – your darkest and most well-kept secret is out in the open

Its deathly silent. Neither of you say anything for a long time after that, and the only sound in the room is the sound of you breathing in and out. It's quiet for so long that the silences start to become suffocating, until finally, Butch breaks it.

Butch laughs, but it's a bitter one. "Guess you and I are more alike then I realized." You're about to ask him what he means, but the look on his face stops you. It's a familiar one, and it's one that you know that you wear on your own face every day.

He's lost someone.

You hesitate for the briefest of moments before you place your hand delicately on the broad expanse of his chest. "Who?" you ask quietly. Butch grimaces and looks away, but not before taking your hand in his own.

"Brothers."

You feel your whole world come to a grinding halt. Oh shit, you really were more alike than you gave him credit for.

"Older or younger?" you ask again. He looks back at you and his deep green eyes bore you're your soul, allowing you to catch a glimpse of the pain that now shines within them. You realize this this is the most vulnerable that you've ever seen him in the years that you've been together.

"Same boat as you – one older, one younger."

Your heart stops. Oh Jesus. He knows. That's why he understands you so well, because he knows exactly how you feel. He's been there, and probably still is there, much like you.

"What where their names?" You suddenly have the urge to know everything you can about his former life. He's never told you anything about it – never given any indication of having a family, or a career or much of anything. You just know him as the brute that he is today – not that you mind of course, but you find this information shocking for some reason.

That and you also know that this will probably be the only time that he talks about it. after this, there's a good chance that he'll never speak of it again, and you know why.

It's because this world prays on the weak, and anyone caught showing mercy, or any sign of weakness is automatically a target. You both know that rule. You live and breathe it. Its why you've stayed alive for so long while others have perished.

"Brick and Boomer." He responds quietly, still holding your hand.

"Brick was my older brother, and Boomer was the baby." He sighs. "They both had so much potential. They didn't deserve what happened to them."

"How old?"

"Brick was just starting his first year at University when the outbreak happened, I was in my Junior year of high school, and Boomer was just starting Sophomore year."

You suck in a breath. Eighteen, sixteen and fifteen. Christ, you and your sisters hadn't been much older when the outbreak had happened either.

You twist your hand in his grip so your fingers are laced with his. Since he's being open, you'll tell him a little more about your sisters, it's only fair.

"My sisters and I were basically the same age." You inform him. "Blossom was going into her second year at University, I was in my Senior year, and Bubbles was starting Sophomore year as well."

He grins at that. "Fucking knew you were older than me you damn cougar. What are you, twenty-seven?"

You elbow him. "Shut the fuck up, you can't be any younger than twenty-six. Keep talking, what school was your brother going to?"

Butch chuckles, but pulls you closer. "Brick was starting at UEC – University of Eastern Colorado. He was pretty excited."

"Ah, so you are a Colorado boy. Go Big Horns."

He snorts. "Yeah, he was one of the first people in our family to get accepted into University. To be honest, we were all surprised. The three of us were pretty bad kids growing up. We always got into a shit ton of trouble, and Brick was the ringleader."

He pauses. "Well, I guess I was the worst of the bunch. I was the one who would get into fights every single week in school. At least two a week. I never lost though."

You smile at that. He seems so normal, talking to you openly like he's doing now. You miss conversations like this.

"Anyways, when Brick got accepted into Uni, he smarted up, stopped getting into trouble, and started getting really good grades. Boom and I always used to tease him though, because we thought he was going soft… I think he had the right idea all along though. God knows he was the smartest person I knew."

The smile that was on his face starts to fade as he thinks more of his older brother, and you don't like where this is going, so you try and steer him onto a different topic. "What about your younger brother?"

"Boomer was an idiot." Butch states bluntly, and you raise an eyebrow at him. He sighs. "He was an idiot, but I loved him. It was impossible not to like him when you met him, you know?"

You nod. "My baby sister was one of those people too. I miss people like them."

"Yeah… too bad there's none of them left now." Butch mutters as he closes his eyes, still gripping your hand, and you allow yourself to lean into him.

You don't really want to ask this, but you feel like you need to know… you only hope that Butch won't snap.

"Butch… what happened to them?"

He flinches, and the muscles in his jaw twitch. He's silent for a while as he tries to collect his thoughts. It's another minute before he opens his eyes and shifts in the bed so he's looking at you.

"Infected."

You nod. What else can you do? You had a feeling it was something along the lines of that. Basically everyone you know now has lost at least one person to either the infected or the infection itself. It's impossible not to know someone who hasn't.

"The outbreak hit Colorado around homecoming week. Brick managed to get back home before the worst of it hit." Butch mumbles so quietly that you almost miss it. "He could tell something was wrong, and apparently, a lot of the students at his campus were starting to get sick, so he left just in time." He nods to himself as a dark look passes over his face.

"We all left together as soon as Brick got back. We drove to Boulder and we hung in their QZ for a while before it got overrun, then we got the fuck out of dodge."

His frown starts to get deeper the more he talks, and you can tell that the next part is difficult for him say. You idly wonder if he's ever told anyone else this, but something makes you think that he hasn't. You feel honored that he's bothering to tell you this at all.

"After Boulder fell, we were on the road for about a year." He informs you. "But during that time, Brick started to get feverish. He wasn't acting like himself at all – and then one day I woke up and he was turning-"

He stops for a moment to steady himself, and you feel your heart clench – already figuring out what happened next.

"I had to do it. I had to. There was no way Boomer could have done it. Brick was turning fast and I wasn't going to let him turn into one of those things. Not my brother." Butch rubs at his temples with his free hand. "Brick hadn't gotten bitten or anything. I think he might have passed a bit too close to a decaying body of an infected person while we were out scavenging one day, and it jumped to him. That's how a lot of people ended up with the virus you know, back when this thing first hit."

You do. Many a person on your scavenging teams had the virus jump to them because they were careless and weren't wearing their masks around infected corpses like they should have been. You can't even begin to count how many allies you've lost over the years to something as simple as that.

"I lost Boomer about three months after that." Butch mumbles after a long pause, his voice thick with raw emotion. "Boomer had actually gotten bitten – runner came out of nowhere and it was on him before I could even do anything… I had to do it right after I killed the thing too. It had taken massive chunks out of my brother, and at that point he was either going to bleed out or turn, and I wasn't about to let either of those things happen."

You're silent as he presses on. "After that, I lost myself. I was alone for another year or so, before I ended up joining a group of scavengers. Then I left, and I somehow found myself up here in Wyoming, and I've been here ever since. And well, then I met you and the rest is history." He flashes you a weak smirk and you return it gently, but something about his story makes you pause.

"You were traveling with just your brothers? No parents?"

A shadowed look passes over his face, and he simply shakes his head. "Nope."

You know you shouldn't pry, but now you're curious. "Why?"

He snorts. "Mom left when I was five. Dad was a fucking alcoholic, and an abusive one at that. As soon as Brick got back from University, we took off and left that fucker behind with the door open. Wish I could say that we felt bad for doing it, but that would be a lie, and I try and be very honest with you."

His words hit you like a truck, and you don't stop him as he rolls back on top of you – clearly ready for another round.

You're starting to piece together the fact that Butch's life might have been pretty shitty even before the actual outbreak happened. Maybe that's why he deals with all of the madness so well.

And as he hovers over top of you, moaning your name, and moving your hips to the rhythm of his own, you peer over his shoulder to look at the scars on his back – the old ones, that you know aren't from recent history – and can't help but wonder if he sees the outbreak as a blessing in some way shape or form.

A week after that, you find yourself back up on the rooftop with Butch. This time, you're both sitting down on the edge of the rooftop, and you're nestled in between his thighs and his warm, powerful arms are wrapped around you securely, as you stare out over the wall and into the forest that surrounds the East end of the QZ – listening to the screams of the infected far off in the distance.

Its nighttime. You can't see anything as there are no moon or stars out tonight, and the forest is an inky black mess, but you know that there are infected moving through the trees. Sometimes they get more active at night for whatever reason and tonight is one of those nights.

They'll never get too close because of the massive trench dug around the perimeter of the QZ, but they like to stand at the edge of the forest and scream at the residents of the QZ – furious that they can't get to you.

After what Butch told you about what happened to his brothers, you don't know if you'll ever be able to look at infected the same way again.

Now you know why he freezes up from time to time.

Do you blame him? Absolutely not. You've got your own demons in the form of uninfected people to deal with anyways, so you're in no position to judge.

You find it interesting how you both have a common enemy in the remaining humans and infected alike.

You both can't trust anyone or anything anymore. All you have is each other.

But that doesn't sound half bad in your mind.

"You know." Butch mutters, catching your attention and snapping you out of your thoughts. "This outbreak is singlehandedly the worst thing that's ever happened to the world, and it's done a damn good job of ruining both of our lives, but I want you to know something."

You wrap both of your arms around one of his thick ones and lean back into his chest, letting him know you were listening.

He sighs and holds you closer. "You're the one good thing that's happen to me since the infection. Hell, you're the best thing that's ever happened in my life to be honest."

Your grip becomes like steel on his arm, and suddenly you're grateful that you're pressed against his chest, looking out into the forest around the QZ and not at him, because now you're truly in danger of crying.

You swallow heavily and whisper so quietly you know that only he can hear. "Right back at you Butch. I'm glad you're mine… so glad…"

He hums gently and presses a kiss to the crown of your head, as he presses you even closer to him with a sigh.

"I just wish… that we could have met under different circumstances."

You hold onto his arm even tighter at his words and tilt your head up to press a gentle kiss to his jaw, feeling a shiver run though him at the slight contact, as you look back out over the dark forest that surrounds the QZ.

"Me too, Butch. I think we would have gotten along just fine." Your face scrunches up as you think back to the first time you were introduced. "… Eventually."

He laughs, the sound rumbling deep in his throat, and squeezes your lean frame tightly, as he lowers his head so that his mouth is directly by your ear. "I think… I think that I might be in love with you Buttercup. I'm kinda fucked up, and I know that I'm not a good person, but I'll keep you safe… I promise."

It's not the kind of confession that most girls dream of, but then again – you aren't like most girls.

And honestly, living in the world that you're currently living in – it's the closest thing to perfect that you've ever heard.

You tilt your head up – light green eyes bore into forest green, and you can see that he's being truthful, and for the first time since your sisters died, a genuine smile spreads across your lips.

"I know Butch. I've always known."

He smiles presses his lips to yours with a tenderness you weren't aware he was capable of, and you return the kiss with the same amount of feeling. For a few fleeting moments, the world seems almost normal, and you feel like the teenage girl you once were before the world went to shit.

You and him are broken, damaged people who had seen and done horrible things to survive – that was a given. But you're was starting to see that maybe you weren't beyond repair.

There were going to be bad days, but it would be okay, because you would have each other. So long as you were together, you would get through it, and you would be okay.

You would live, and fight to your dying breath alongside him.

Because he was right about one thing: he was the best thing that the outbreak had given you, and you would be damned if you let infected or human alike take him away from you.

"As terrifying as those things (infected) are, at least they're predictable… It's normal people that scare me." – Bill, The Last of Us