He could feel his racing heartbeat throbbing and pulsing in his temples and wrists. A nasty headache was building in his left temple, making it hard to focus on his surroundings. Dread was pooling in his stomach, freezing him up until he was unable to move, staring into the darkness from under the bed, his right cheek pressed against the cheap carpeting, listening for every tiny sound. And sounds would come, of that he was certain. He wasn't stupid enough to believe that he'd get one night at home without a beating.
His left side was throbbing with pain already, liquid heat drilling into his flank, front and back, making it next to impossible to move. He'd have a hard time escaping the grasping hands of his personal tormentor tonight once he came bursting through the door into his room, even though he'd be drunk senseless, as always since his mom had burned herself to a cinder two years ago.
The memory of the smoldering embers of the house flashed through his mind, the white smoke from the water gushing out of the firefighters' hoses evaporating instantly on hitting the red-hot wood, billowing up in huge, ever-expanding clouds. The hushed voices of the neighbors and his friends - friends? - wondering if Missus Dixon might have burned along with the house. The pity in their faces and voices once it had become clear that she had indeed done just that.
He still remembered the tears burning in his eyes once he'd realized that the only semblance of stability, however unreliable she had ultimately proved to be, was gone from his life - for he sure as hell couldn't count on Merle, who was almost always gone by now, and the only thing he could count on from his dad were the daily - nightly - beatings with his belt or getting burned with his cigarette butts. The fire had taken away the only person who'd sometimes - when she wasn't as drunk as he was - been able to curb his dad's drunken rages, the only one who'd been able to stop him.
His chest constricted with panic as he waited for the light to come on behind the door, for heavy footfalls approaching his bedroom. If his dad was drunk, he wouldn't drive home as he'd lose his license if he got caught one more time, and he'd have no engine giving him advance warning of his return. Waited for the fumbling hand pushing the door open and hitting the light switch before reaching out to first search under his own bed after finding it empty. Waited for the hand to then, after this brief reprieve, yank him out from under Merle's bed in his threadbare pyjamas that left his ankles and bruised wrists uncovered because they were two years old at least - for his momma had occasionally remembered that he needed something to wear - and no longer fit him.
As the weather had been exceptionally warm for late fall, he'd been able to spend the last two nights outdoors despite overcast skies, but tonight it was raining and the wind was moaning through the trees, so sleeping outside was out of the question if he didn't want to get soaked and catch cold. At least the bruises from the last beating he'd taken had had time to fade and the cuts left by the belt had scabbed over, so it wouldn't hurt quite so badly tonight. Getting hit on top of fresh, purple bruises or open, weeping cuts was hardest, the pain so sharp that he usually had to bite back his anguished cries every time the belt buckle or fist made contact with his raw flesh.
His side twinged again, and for just a moment he wondered what he'd done to hurt it, but the terror of waiting for movement on the other side of the door soon took over again, erasing every other thought. So far, he didn't even see light under the door, but that didn't mean he was off the hook yet. If he was lucky, his dad would have fallen asleep at a friend's house and sleep off his hangover there, not returning home for a day or two.
He'd be able to heal, but in payment he'd have to go hungry for as long as his dad stayed away as there was no food left in the house and the concept of pocket money, which Daryl could have used to buy himself something to eat, was a foreign one in the Dixon household, if it could even be called that.
By now, his temple had started throbbing in time with his fucking heartbeat, and he felt that meanwhile his thumping heart was loud enough to be heard over in the next house. With his luck, his dad would be reminded of his presence solely by that damn thundering sound. But so far there still wasn't any light under the door.
He tried to ease the discomfort of lying on the floor under Merle's bed by shifting his weight to his other side, but as soon as he moved the pain in his flank flared up once more, tearing through him like a fucking white-hot bolt, and he stopped moving again instantly. Nevertheless, he felt sick to his stomach now, swallowing hot, burning bile in an effort to get the pain under control again. After all, that was something he was really good at.
He'd once gone to school for a full three weeks before anyone had noticed that two fingers of his left hand had been broken and sent him to the school nurse for a cast. Wearing that on his hand for four weeks after that had, of course, earned him the dubious honor of being called a fuckin' pussy even more often than usual, but prying it off before it was to come off again would have called more attention from the authorities than he was willing to suffer; so he'd suffered the name-calling instead.
The sound of a car approaching the house had him breaking out in sweat from head to toe, and he realized just how fervently he had been hoping that his dad wouldn't be returning home tonight. He held his breath and waited as the car stopped, one of its doors opened and the driver - or a passenger? Would one of his dad's friends take him home? - got out. The phrase "he was all ears" began to make dreadful sense to him.
The car door closing again. Footsteps. A key being pushed into a keyhole and turned. A front door opening - but no corresponding sounds in his own house. The key, the door, the car were not his dad's. These were the sounds of a neighbor coming home. His pent-up breath left his lungs in an explosive exhale that had his side erupting in pain again instantly. What the fuck had happened to his gooddamn side to make it hurt like that?
He couldn't stand this uncertainty any longer. He had to see what was wrong with his side, and he had to do it before his dad returned so he'd know what he would be able to do to escape despite the pain - and what he wouldn't. He pulled his legs up in order to push off the wall and scoot out from under his absent older brother's bed, but the pain lancing through him as soon as he moved had him hiss through clenched teeth and his head shot up from the floor, his throbbing left temple banging into the underside of the bed.
His eyes flew open to total darkness.
He still felt his heart racing, his pulse throbbing in his wrists and neck, and he was bathed in cold sweat. Pain was still drilling into his left temple and burning in his left side. But he was no longer lying on the floor under Merle's bed, and he was no longer eleven years old.
Very gradually he was able to make out shapes in the darkness surrounding him. A chair next to the bed in which he was lying on his right side, with pillows propping him up so he wouldn't roll over in his sleep. The dim outline of a window, with a small table standing next to it. A glass of water on the nightstand. A plate.
His anxiety began to seep out of him as he remembered.
The little girl running off into the forest in the distance while he was taking care of T-Dog. Their fruitless search for her while they'd still been on the highway. His own search for her since they'd come to the farm. Finding the house where she'd stayed. Finding her doll.
Getting thrown by the damn horse and impaling himself on his own fucking bolt while tumbling down to the stream in which he'd found the doll earlier. Almost making it to the top of that bloody ravine before falling down a second time. Regaining consciousness to a walker attempting to gnaw its way through his boot. Climbing up the bloody ravine once more, and making his way back to the farm of the old man, Hershel, by the skin of his teeth, only to get shot in the head by Andrea who had chosen the wrong moment to practise her sniping skills.
The hazy memory of getting dragged to the farmhouse and up the stairs by Rick and Shane so Hershel and his older daughter could take care of him without kneeling in the dirt outside his tent.
His dad only lived on in his nightmares now. Whatever he'd done to him in the past, he could no longer hurt him, except in his mind. He vividly remembered the night he had just dreamed about, adding the pain of his injuries of today as some fucked-up form of artistic freedom.
His dad had come home that night, had eventually found him hiding under Merle's bed and had beaten the crap out of him with his belt. He'd had to stay home from school the next day, but had gone again the day after that for his dad had been off work, and spending another whole day at home with him was a nightmare best left solely to the imagination.
There had been many such nights. They were what had made him into the person he was today. A grown-ass man who was afraid of a woman leaning over him as he lay in his bed. A grown-ass man who raised an arm in defense and flinched away when she bent down to fucking kiss him. Remembering the kiss and his flinch brought to mind something else.
His right hand rose to his chest and back, checking whether or not he was covered up. It found clammy skin, ropy scar tissue and the dressings on his side, already wet to the touch. Fuck. He was lying here more or less buck naked, and he was still bleeding. Inspecting the shadows in the dark room more closely, he made out the shape of a night lamp next to the glass of water and reached out to switch in on. The pain tearing trough him at the sudden movement had him gasp.
Looking down at his side Daryl saw that the dressing on his front, standing out brightly against the bruises from his two falls covering his chest and abdomen, already sported a big red spot in its center. He'd need to take care of this or he'd ruin the bed which would surely get them a ticket for the road again, and the boy, Carl, couldn't be out again yet. Also, he still needed to find Sophia. Squinting at the table, he was relieved to see that the old vet had left some of his supplies in here. Biting back a groan of pain, Daryl forced his aching body to the edge of the bed and slowly inched his legs over it to sit up.
When he pushed himself to his feet, his legs almost gave way under him as his blood rushed toward the floor, leaving his vision blacked out and his head reeling not just with pain but with dizziness. He barely managed to stay on his feet by grabbing the bedpost with his left hand and leaning on the table with his right. It seemed to take him a lifetime to make up his mind to take a first tentative step.
Thankfully, that one stumbling step was enough to bring him within reach of the stack of fresh dressings and the rolls of bandages, and he managed to grab one of each before losing his balance and falling backward into the bed again. This time, the agony tearing through his injured side was so fierce that a breathless yelp escaped him before he clamped his stupid fucking mouth shut again.
Too late.
He had been too loud.
His heart started its high-speed race in his constricting chest again as he heard the creak of bedsprings next door, followed by footfalls in the hallway. For a dreadful moment the sounds conspired with his fucked-up mind, taking him back many years, to another place and time, as he waited for the door to open, his side and head pounding with agony, his heart racing, his stomach clenching. He didn't even realize that he was holding his breath until it exploded out of him at the sight of Hershel in a white nightgown, an expression of worry etched onto his face.
"Son, you were not supposed to get up yet!" The old man's voice was so full of concern that Daryl at first thought this was a ruse designed to keep him sitting down until he'd reached the bed. But to his surprise, Hershel did not reach out for him immediately as he stood there next to him but sat down with very slow, deliberate movements carried out specifically in such a way that Daryl saw ahead of time what Hershel was going to do.
Saw that he was not going to grab him.
Beat him.
Burn him.
Saw that he was instead reaching out for the fresh dressing, the fresh bandage.
Saw that the spotted, wrinkled old hands would then come to rest in the old man's lap as his kindly eyes, so hard and unrelenting when he was negotiating with Rick during the day, found Daryl's own and held his gaze until the hunter looked down at his own calloused, dirty hands, with black soil still stuck under his fingernails from clawing his way up the ravine in the afternoon.
Saw, with a sinking feeling that was somehow worse than the pain still raging through him, that the old man wanted to talk first.
Daryl Dixon didn't talk.
Not about himself.
Not about his past.
Not about his nightmares.
But it seemed that Hershel Greene would get him to talk nevertheless.
"I saw what happened", he began without preamble. "I saw, and your man, Rick, might have seen. But even if he did, he didn't understand what he saw." His voice was kind and gentle as he continued after a pause that allowed Daryl to brace for the blow that he could feel was coming.
"I saw, and I understood", Hershel Greene all but whispered. Daryl tensed. There was no need to mention any details, neither what he was hiding on his back nor what he was hiding in his past. He prepared himself for the ridicule and abuse that he was used to getting for being who and what he was, for getting looked down upon simply for being a Dixon, but Hershel had a surprise in store for him.
"I expect you won't want to be alone with anyone who is taking care of you, and I expect you won't want the persons tending to your injuries to stand behind your back, outside of your field of vision", Hershel began again, as gently as before. "My daughter, Maggie, who also helped me when you were brought in, will help me during the day, and I would be grateful if you would accept only me helping you at night."
Still numb with surprise, Daryl nodded wordlessly.
Hershel continued. "Of course, neither Maggie nor myself will talk about what we see. And we will not ask any questions." Slowly raising his hands from his lap, he went on. "I will make sure that you always know what I'm about to do - I'll move slowly, and tell you what I'm doing as I go. Right now", here he nodded toward the bloodstained dressings on Daryl's side, "I'd like to change your bandages, if that's okay with you."
Again, Daryl only managed a mute nod.
With a gentleness Daryl had experienced only a single time in his life - that same night, when Carol had leaned over him to kiss his temple right next to the spot where Andrea's bullet had grazed his head, almost killing him because he'd been so covered in blood and dirt that he'd looked like a walker - Hershel began to remove the dressings and clean his stitched-up wounds in his side.
As he'd promised, he moved slowly and with purpose, explaining everything he was going to do in a low, calm voice that ultimately, along with his slow, sure movements, managed to calm Daryl's racing heartbeat and slow down his breathing to a reasonable pace despite someone touching his bare skin. By the time he finished by winding a bandage around Daryl's waist to hold the fresh dressings in place, Daryl was almost ready to nod off again.
"You need something for the pain?" Hershel asked solicitously as he handed a fresh shirt to Daryl and helped him put it on so it wouldn't matter any longer if he pulled down his covers. Daryl mutely shook his head no, too tired to talk.
"I met someone in the hallway", Hershel mentioned off-handedly as if meeting people in his hallway in the dead of night was nothing special to him. Daryl pried his eyes open again and squinted up at him with a questioning look on his face.
"The mother of that little girl you were searching for asked me how you were. May I tell her you're better? She seemed very concerned for you. Are you the father?"
This was too much input at once. In a voice that sounded reedy even to himself, Daryl mumbled that, yes, he was better, and no, he wasn't the father, the father was dead. He added that he wanted to thank the mother for bringing him food. Hershel's eyes found the plate, which Daryl had managed to polish clean in a total of three attempts, and smiled at him, picking it up to take it downstairs. "I'll let her know. I'm sure she'll be relieved to hear that, and see that you've eaten, too." He rose from the bed even as Daryl's eyes were closing again. The throbbing pain of his bruises, gunshot and bolt wounds was retreating into the background as he started to drift off.
By the time Hershel switched off the night light and found his way to the door in the darkness with practised ease he was already fast asleep again.
He didn't dream again for the rest of the night.