A/N: This takes place after Daryl has escaped from the Saviors and is back with the group. It's an AU, but every event that has occurred in the show up until this point has still happened. Criticisms and critiques are genuinely appreciated. Enjoy!

...

Daryl awoke in a cold sweat. He opened his eyes to a gentle stream of morning light peeking through curtains that had not been present two nights ago. A soft breeze circulated the stale air around him, filling it with the scent of vegetables, alfalfa, and manure. He was on a farm. The farm, actually: The Hilltop.

Swinging his legs over the edge of the twin-sized slab he borrowed last night, he swiped his forehead across the backs of his hands. Dirt and grime were disturbed by rivulets of sweat. His skin felt slick with oil and muck. Flecks of dried blood coated his face and his hair. His entire body felt clammy, as though he was coming down with the flu. It felt especially vile on his hands, along the crevices of his palms and the dips of his knuckles, where he couldn't tell if sweat was dirt or if dirt was blood.

Perhaps he had had a nightmare; he couldn't recall.

He did not mind that his boots were still on from last night or that he hadn't changed his clothes since yesterday. It wasn't often that he took his boots off anymore. It was more practical to leave them on. Fights could happen anytime, anywhere, with anyone. There was no sense in being unprepared for the sake of comfort.

Coming to a stand, he began to survey the rest of the room. It wasn't a bedroom, not originally, at least. The shape of it resembled that of an office. Stacks upon stacks of boxes and crates scattered all along three of the four corners suggested that it was now used as a storage space. The bunk he slept on had just been a last-minute courtesy on the Hilltop residents' part, he assumed. He peered through one of the tears of an especially-derelict box. It contained ten rolls of toilet paper – barely a quarter of the total size of the box. Rummaging through the other boxes revealed the same ratio. Nearly every box was at least half-depleted of its supplies. The Hilltop community was even worse off than he had first realized.

And it was all that bastard Negan's fault.

A blinding rage concentrated itself within his palms, and he felt his body tremble with the ache of it. He thought of driving his fist through the wood-paneling of the nearest wall, but opted to slam it into a small writing desk instead. He ignored the sting traveling up his arm, instead grabbing at a note that appeared to have been left for him on the desk.

Bathroom's down the hall on the right
two rooms down. Kitchen is
back the other way near the front.
Help yourself.

Sasha

His lips curled into a hint of a smile and he crumpled the note up while tossing it to the floor. Her directions weren't hard to follow. Once he was to the door, he opened it slowly. No one seemed to be around. There was neither the pitter-patter of naked feet nor the dull thud of covered ones. Certain that the coast was clear he made his way two doors down to the right. As Sasha said, the bathroom was right there. It was single occupancy, but it was empty, so he stepped inside and locked the door.

After doing his business, he occupied himself with cleaning the grime off of his face. Much of the blood from the overweight Savior he had killed yesterday was scattered along his jaw. The smell of it was acrid and unpleasant, but he had grown accustomed to blood and all that came with it; the smell of it was not as unpleasant as the sight.

The water from the sink ran cold. It was uncomfortable but not irritating. It numbed his senses with pinpricks of pain all along his face, from his temples, to the tip of his nose, to his lips and to his chin. He plugged the faucet and allowed the sink to become a basin. Inhaling as much air as his lungs would allow, he plunged his face into the freezing water. The water sloshed over the edges of the sink, forming large puddles near its base and around the toilet. There were not enough towels around the bathroom to clean up the mess even if he wanted to.

While submerged, he scrubbed at his face with his hands. He was not gentle. The calluses on his palms and fingers were abrasive against his skin. Every small bite of pain he could feel seemed to intensify the longer he remained under water. It began to spread from his nose to his cheeks, then from his cheeks to his scalp and neck. From there, he felt the pain begin to spread into his lungs. They constricted with each breath he refused to allow them, and were only slightly assuaged by his tremendous exhale. It bubbled up to the surface of the water and caused even more to cascade over the rim.

Now he had no breath to give or to take. He had spent nearly a minute in the water and he could feel the need to breathe overwhelming him, but he did not heed it. Not yet.

The depth of the cold numbed his senses enough that he was forced to abandon them for a time. Long enough so that he could confront himself, was compelled to confront himself – the self that anguished over the last few days, the last few weeks…even the last few years. For now, he allowed himself to anguish over one day in particular.

Glenn wasn't supposed to die. Glenn shouldn't have died. Glenn was a father, was going to be a father. He had a wife: a woman who loved him, who depended upon him, and who needed him. Of all the people that had come and gone during the past several years, Daryl could admit that Glenn had been one of the ones he thought was most important to their family. In the beginning, he'd hated the kid. He would have chuckled at the memory of first meeting Glenn if he wasn't near the point of unconsciousness. Glenn was annoying – a smart-ass with a heart. On top of that, he'd had little to no practical survival skills. For several months, he wondered how he'd managed to survive as long as he did, but as time dragged on with no chance of things going back to the way they were, he'd noticed that Glenn had the one skill everyone needed to survive: adaptability. Glenn learned how to survive and how to keep surviving. He could hold a gun and swing a knife with the best of them, and Daryl respected that. Even more, the kid kept his heart. Daryl had never managed to figure that part out. How was it possible? Amongst all the muck and guts, the horrors of war with the living and the undead, how was he still so human?

Maggie was a good match for Glenn. He guessed that the Greene family had that quality about them. All of the Greenes had been people you wanted to be around, people you wanted to get to know. People you wanted to stay around and grow old with.

And Beth had had such soft hair.

The force with which he yanked his head from the water caused him to temporarily go unconscious. He was reawakened just as suddenly by hitting his head on the wall beside him. He had slipped on one of the puddles by his feet and ended up on the ground. It wasn't exactly comfortable there, but he couldn't find the strength within him to mind. He didn't make much of an effort to stand up until he heard someone pounding the door.

"Daryl, are you in there? Are you OK?"

It was Sasha's voice. She sounded anxious, so he assumed that she had heard him hit his head against the wall. He made a considerable effort to get to his feet, his response gruff and irritated to cover the pain was feeling.

"I'm fine. What do you want?" He couldn't tell whether his tone had offended her because she made no comment. After a disconcerting length of silence, he began to wonder if he had actually upset her. He doubted it. She was tough enough to take it. But after another thirty seconds of no reply, he began to wonder.

"Just thought maybe you were hungry. Kitchen's down the hall near the—"

"Yeah, I know, I saw your letter. Now what do you really want?" Daryl wasn't one to beat around the bush and neither was Sasha. The way she skirted around what she wanted to say now was concerning. He wished she would just spit it out so that they could both get it over with.

Sasha sighed. "It's Maggie. She wants to see you after you've had some breakfast."