A/N~ Hey guys! Just a little random thing that popped up in my head. Enjoy!
It was a random moment one night, when Carol mentioned it. A dark, quiet moment around the fire, and she looked through the dancing embers and saw him sitting there, picking at his dirty nails and she smiled. The group had lost everything, barley clinging onto their humanity and she wanted to laugh because such a useless thought had popped into her head. She had been thinking about it for hours, it seemed like, and she just wanted to say something to him, even though she knew how meaningless it was.
"I wish Sophia had known all you did for her." Carol says, louder than she had expected, and Daryl shot his head up as soon as her name was mentioned, but quickly brought his eyes back down to the ground. "I think she would have liked you." Carol purses her lips together as she finishes the sentence, bringing her eyes down to the clasped hands in her lap. She wasn't sure what she expected from him. A nod, maybe? An emotional break down? A fight? Anything would have been nice, but he just sat there, his overcast eyes lost in the flames and she wonders if he even heard her. A few days ago she would have urged him to talk, kept on mentioning it until he was fed up and screamed in her face. But now she was tired, and it was evident to her that talking wasn't really Daryl's thing.
"I didn't want her to know me." Daryl said, gruff and quiet and Carol is taken a bit back. She blinks at him, but he doesn't look up because he knows that she's staring with that same look that Daryl hates. "I woulda been a bad influence or some shit like that." Carol smiles slightly when he says that, and he glances up at her, shrugging. "She ain't need to be around people like me." He stands up then, and Carol isn't surprised. He starts to walk away from the fire, and over his shoulder he calls, "'Sides, I hate kids."
"I think she would have liked you."
Daryl can't sleep. But it's not like he does on any normal night, so he doesn't really mind. The thing that's eating at him is why. The few, unimportant sentences that Carol had said to him had been running through his mind deep into the night, and Daryl wasn't sure why. There was a few things about Carol that had stuck in his mind, but most of Carol's nonsense had slid straight off of Daryl's suppressed emotions. She was a whiny hopeless woman that had nothing better to do than go on about shit that didn't matter during the end of the world, but those few words stick to his brain like glue, and when he feels them at his lips he recalls a useless memory that he let slip out of his mind long ago.
"Sophia! Get in here. Now."
Daryl had just gotten back from one of him and Merle's hunting trips. Merle, after obnoxiously announcing his arrival, making sure to let everyone know that he was keeping them alive, settled down into his tent to sleep for the rest of the day. Daryl was sitting outside, wiping the squirrel guts off of the arrows for his crossbow when he heard the order for the 12 year old girl. Ed stands outside of his and Carol's tent, giving Sophia a demeaning look that Daryl had never bothered to notice before. Sophia and Carl both look up from the notebooks they were scribbling in, and the young girls innocent face is replaced with a scared one, and Daryl can see her glance around for her mother before he looks away from her, focusing back down on his weapon. It's silent for a moment, and Daryl can barley hear it when she lets out a meek defense, and she is quickly shot down.
"I said get in here." Ed raises his voice, stepping fully out of the tent. Daryl had never bothered to give him or his family a second look. He was a sad excuse for a man, a fat coward that found the most broken woman he could just so he could break her more. Daryl had done some bad things before the end of the world, but he would never hurt a woman or a kid like that. It probably had something to do with all the scars on his back. "Your gonna spend some time with daddy."
It's at that moment when Daryl looks up. Ed stands a few feet away from a now standing Sophia, and she's clutching her hands close to her chest, strands of dirt blond hair falling in front of her shaky eyes. "But I want to play with Carl." It sounds like a question when she speaks, and she closes her lips as soon as she says it, finding regret in her words.
"Hey now," Ed chuckles, grasping his hand around Sophia's wrist. "I don't really think I was asking a question." It's at the moment when Daryl can see part of the reason that he had always avoided Ed and his family; he can see himself. He can see himself in her scared eyes.
"Hey!" Daryl's there now, and he doesn't even know how he got there. "I'm pretty sure she ain't goin' with you." He feels like a hypocrite as he stands there, looking down at this man that he has been so many times before. His hands are in fists, his face hard as stone, but Ed just cocks his head back with a laugh and Daryl narrows his eyes. "ain't you a cocky little bastard?" Daryl mentions, his lips forming in a dark smirk. "Well, maybe not little."
Ed's definitely not laughing anymore. "Why don't you just mind your own business?" he takes a step away, Sophia tripping a few steps after him.
Daryl wasn't sure why he was even in the situation in the first place. It was him and his brother, that's it. These people meant nothing to him, he could care less. But something in that little girl hit him in the part that was buried away, the part that Daryl didn't want in him. Suddenly Daryl and Ed are inches apart, Daryl gripping on the collar of his shirt so tight his knuckles are getting white, anger boiling in his brain.
"If you don't leave the girl alone right now, I will cut you open and strangle you with your own intestines. Don't you think for a moment that I won't, because then you'll be dead." He pushes Ed away then, breaking the hold he had on his daughter. Sophia takes a few awkward steps away from him, watching as Ed grumbles off into his tent. He was a coward. He could only boss around the people that weren't strong enough to stand up for themselves.
Daryl looks down at her for not more than a split second, and is hardened by the fear in her eyes. She's trembling, taking a few worried looks at Daryl before she trickled away, back to her seat with Carl. Daryl picks up his cross bow fast, making his way into his tent, like he had never even been there. She looked at him with the same fear she did Ed. Daryl was a monster, not a hero. What was he thinking?
Dinner that night was as silent as ever, and Daryl took no time to take is plate and make his way back to his tent. Sophia sat cuddled into the warmness of Carol, Ed across their fire, sitting back with his arms across his chest. Ed makes the slightest glance at Daryl as she walks by, quickly shifting his eyes back on the fire, and Daryl can't help but glance his gaze against Carol and Sophia. Sophia looks at up at him for not more than a second, and once they make eye contact she brings hers eyes back to the beans on her dinner plate.
Maybe Sophia was scared of Daryl, but she was safe, and that's all that really mattered after all.