AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.
This one is partially from the show and partially of my own creation/embellishment.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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The doll was the greatest sign he'd found to date that he was on the right track. Sophia had carried the doll everywhere she'd gone since they'd left the quarry. Daryl was naturally concerned that, having dropped it, something had prevented her from picking it up again, but he was consciously choosing to believe it had been something that spooked her—nothing worse—that had prevented her from taking even such a small delay.
The doll was the closest he'd come to seeing Sophia so far, and he fully intended to take it back to Carol—even if it almost killed him.
And it almost did. The whole thing was a senseless, stupid accident, but it almost killed him. But, of course, he wouldn't have been the first person that died from such a thing.
"You're gonna die out here, little brother. And for what?"
The appearance of Merle wasn't real. Daryl knew that. His brother hadn't come, magically and in the flesh, to taunt him. Daryl wasn't a total stranger to hallucination. Merle made sense, too, as far as hallucinations stirred up out of Daryl's subconscious mind went. He disappeared a lot in Daryl's life, but if the shit got a little too deep? He'd show back up, and always in the nick of time.
"Girl. They lost her little girl," Daryl had responded to the hallucination that he would accept, for the time being, as his brother.
Real or not, Daryl heard Merle's voice as clearly as he ever had. And, real or not, he was going to answer him. He'd asked himself the same question already. It wasn't new to him—and he knew it was a question that Merle would ask him if he were really there and found Daryl lying in a creek bed, banged up and bleeding.
They'd lost Sophia. The group had lost her. Rick had lost her. And the way they were handling things, they'd never find her unless she just came strolling up one day, asking them what the hell was taking them so damn long.
Carol didn't know how to look for the girl and, emotions as they were, she'd get herself killed just trying. She wasn't able to take care of herself yet. And, even though Daryl could argue that she needed to learn, now wasn't the time for that. There'd be plenty of time for that when the girl was back, safe and sound.
"You got a thing for little girls now?" Merle taunted him. "'Cause I notice you ain't out lookin' for Merle no more."
Merle would try to get his goat. He always had enjoyed harassing Daryl. He liked the back and forth of the insults. An insult on Merle's tongue was as good as a declaration of love in the mouth of somebody else. Daryl had been raised with it and he ignored it.
And Merle would ask him to explain himself when it came to giving up on searching for him.
Daryl had asked himself about it more than once. He was still making peace with it, but he was getting close to forgiving himself. He told Merle that, though not in so many words.
It was Merle's fault he ended up handcuffed to the roof in the first place. Maybe it was wrong of them to leave him there—and maybe it was wrong for them to handcuff him to the roof in such a precarious situation in the first place—but Merle's ignorance and his mouth was what led them to do it in the first place. His dependence on the drugs that would eventually kill him—if they hadn't done that already—was what led him to getting handcuffed up there.
And it was Merle's fault—choosing to saw his hand off and leave on his own, rather than trust that Daryl would come after him—that he wasn't there waiting on them when they came back for him. Daryl couldn't go running off looking for him when he didn't even know where the hell to start. Merle had left no signs and tracking Merle through the Walker infested concrete jungle of Atlanta was far more impossible than tracking Sophia through the surrounding woods that he knew she'd started in.
Merle would have to find his own way—if he was still alive to look for it.
But Merle—or at least the Merle that Daryl's mind conjured up for him—did what Merle had always been best at doing. He got Daryl up and out of the dirt, even if he only accomplished it by harassing him into anger that would drive him to action.
"You're nothing but a freak to them. Redneck trash."
It was probably true. He knew that they looked at him as something of an outsider. He was an outsider. He wasn't like them—not like most of them. They didn't understand him. They didn't know where he'd come from. They didn't know the life that he'd lived. They wouldn't understand it if he told them about it because they were judging him from the moment they'd seen him. They thought he was just like Merle. It was just a matter of time before he got himself handcuffed to a roof.
They didn't realize that he wasn't his brother's keeper—and he wasn't his brother.
It was probably true—he was probably nothing more than a freak to them. But he was determined to be a freak that found the little girl and brought her back.
"Ain't nobody ever gonna care about you except me, little brother. Ain't nobody ever will."
Merle had always been the constant in Daryl's life. The only one who, at the very least, always came back.
Daryl had loved his mother, and she had loved him. But she was gone and he could barely remember the details of her face. She'd never be back. His old man was gone and he'd prayed that he'd never see him again.
Merle was the only one that cared and came back. He was the only one that really seemed to give a shit that Daryl was even alive. The population of the world had taken a hell of a hit and Daryl didn't figure that the odds of finding anyone that cared about him were any greater now than they ever had been, so maybe Merle was right. Maybe he was the only one that was ever going to care.
But it didn't mean that Daryl didn't want that story to be different.
It didn't mean that he didn't hold, somewhere down deep, a little hope that it wasn't true.
And it was on his mind—if it hadn't been on his mind then his subconscious would've never offered it over as something for its Merle-creation to say.
Maybe, one day, Merle wouldn't be the only one who cared.
But right now? He was the one that Daryl had—in real or imaginary form—and he was the one that got Daryl out of the creek so that he could try to make his way back to camp. For now that would have to do as an act of brotherly love. Real or not, Merle saved Daryl's life. He came through for him just one more time.
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Daryl didn't fully understand, until he came into consciousness and Hershel was patching up his injuries, that it had been Andrea that shot him. Part of him was pissed at her for shooting him, but another part of him was at least a little bit pleased that she'd been able to hit a mark at such a distance.
Naturally, he'd have preferred not to have been her target, but marksmanship was something they needed on their side in this world. Now they apparently just needed to hone in on the rule that it was better not to go about shooting those that they were supposed to be calling, if not friends, at least fellow group members.
Hershel had seemed more than a little irritated that he had to care for Daryl. Daryl ignored it, as much as he could, but Merle's warning that he was nothing but a freak to them all kept playing in his mind. The man hadn't cared a damn bit when he'd been taking care of Carl. He hadn't said a single thing about treating T-Dog's wounds.
But it was Daryl that was costing them antibiotics. It was his accident that seemed to irritate the old man.
Daryl also hadn't missed the expressions that Hershel had made upon seeing him stripped of his shirt. Daryl knew what his body looked like—he knew all the scars, even if he tried not to ever have occasion to see them—and he saw the looks that they got from Hershel. Those looks were the reason he was often so careful to keep them covered.
The slight look of disgust was never as bad as the look of pity. Daryl couldn't stomach the pity.
And it seemed, too, that nobody really understood the importance of the doll. Nobody seemed to see it as the sign that Sophia had passed by—close to them—and that he was following the right trail. Nobody seemed to think it was as great a discovery as Daryl had felt it was when he'd first held it in his hands.
It was just a doll and he was just a freak that had fallen off a cliff, stabbed himself with his own arrow, lived through the almost-headshot of his fellow group member, and had cost them antibiotics.
A freak that, he was pretty sure, wasn't going to get anything to eat either.
He was stewing on it when she came in the bedroom carrying a tray. He'd expected his visitor to be Rick—wanting to talk about a searching strategy since talking was all he ever seemed interested in doing—or Hershel coming to check a bandage. When he saw it was Carol, he moved as quickly as he could to somewhat cover himself with the sheets from the bed. He didn't want her to see what Hershel and Rick had seen. He could take the looks from them, even if he didn't care for them, but he didn't want to see them from her.
He was sure that she saw, though. He hadn't had time to cover himself. Not entirely.
When she put the tray down, though, declaring that she'd brought it because he must be hungry, he searched her face and found no evidence of pity nor disgust. Instead, there was a different expression there—one that Daryl was so unaccustomed to seeing that he couldn't even begin to find a name for it.
She wasn't looking at him like he was a freak. Not at all. And she seemed to understand the importance of the doll that everyone else was at least mildly mocking.
She leaned over and surprised him by dipping her head and brushing her lips softly against his forehead. The gentle touch sent a shiver down his spine. It was so quick that he could've almost thought he'd imagined it, but it was nice.
And it was mildly terrifying.
"Watch out. I got stitches," Daryl said, not knowing what else he might respond to such a kiss. Carol didn't seem bothered.
"You need to know something," Carol said. "You did more for my little girl today than her own daddy did in his whole life."
Daryl swallowed.
The soft sound of her voice was the sound of gratitude. It was the sound of appreciation. Maybe there was even a little awe there.
If she sounded that way over the doll, how would she sound when he found Sophia and brought her safely back to the farm?
Daryl didn't dare to imagine it because he didn't like letting his imagination run away with him. He'd done it too many times when he was a kid and he hated the sinking sensation that followed when his life never even had a chance at living up to his daydreams. It was better not to dream. If you didn't expect anything, at least you were never disappointed.
And he didn't feel he was the kind of man that deserved, really, the tone of voice that she was giving him or the expression on her face. He didn't deserve the praise that she was offering—even if he desperately wanted it.
"I didn't do anything Rick or Shane wouldn'ta done," Daryl said.
And he hadn't. Not really. They were organizing search parties. They were making plans. And when they finally got around to searching for the girl, maybe they'd do better at it than he was doing. Maybe they wouldn't fall down cliffs and stab themselves. He couldn't say that he was any better than them. He couldn't even say that he was even anywhere in their league. After all, they were cops and he'd never been more than a freak. Redneck trash, just as Merle had said.
But she didn't seem to see it that way.
"I know," Carol said, her voice still soft and low. "You're every bit as good as them. Every bit."
Daryl liked the sound of the words in her mouth. Even if he wasn't sure he believed them, he wanted to believe them. Even if he wasn't sure they were true, he wanted them to be true.
And, maybe, the most important thing of all was that Carol's tone of voice and the expression on her face told Daryl that—even if he couldn't just yet—she believed they were true.