Chapter 1- The Intangible Calm

Daryl could feel the exhaustion ache in his body as they walked. Most days he could hardly recognize it, as he placed one foot in front of the other, dredging deeper into some desolate woods, but today ever bone in his body was crying for attention. It had started with his feet, the arches of each beginning to tingle, defeated and insoluble. His boots had been worn for years, but he never stopped to consider that an explanation for the pain. Next it was the biceps of his legs that began to pound so intensely. He could have sworn that he could feel the blood being pumped so furiously throughout his body that the friction tortured the inside of his skin. And then alas his back grappled in his pain. A deep shallowing tightening yanked vigorously at his shoulder plates. Daryl could have called this a million things, finding an easy explanation for each, but as he walked on and on, he knew that perhaps for the first time in years, Daryl Dixon was just tired.

There are different kinds of exhaustion, felt by different kinds of people. There was children frantic because they stayed up past their bedtimes, and sick babies screeching with symptoms rendering them awake. There were workers whose bodies just craved the littlest amounts of sleep. And then there was Daryl himself, not admittingly defeated.

Jesus was dead. Jesus, who was in all ways just good, was dead. Everytime that Daryl just wanted to forgot that, he needed only to look beside him at the slumped over body disgraced and soiled, lifelessly being dragged home. He tried to stop looking, but what kind of man did that make him. Daryl had seen death before. He had seen it so many times that he couldn't remember an immature part of his life that he didn't feel the guilt of others gone and him there. Everytime that he dared think the pain would end, something would happen and it would pierce through him so pungently that he would think he died himself. Sometimes the numbness would just take over, permitting him to just keep walking, pushing those disgraced boots forward one step at a time, but other times there was no solace to the pain.

That was one of those times, as Daryl could not help but to subdue to all the memories of Jesus. But he was dead, and Daryl wasn't. Perhaps that was the most fucked up thing of all. And it was this fact that pained Daryl, not now in the wake of the terrific death, but later when he would try to rid the exhaustion from his body. When Daryl would try to sleep, or try and feel the world for what it was by watching Judith giggle at some make believe story or watch the communities live and laugh almost seamlessly, that was when it would hurt most of all. Perhaps exhaustion was never real to him, all it had ever been was a sword of some withered ghost slashing him while trying to hide it from everything else.

For it was no longer the living that caused the pain, it was the memories, disguising themselves as something to reach out and touch only to destruct on impact. Exhaustion truly was the most intangible pain.

The wind soothed his thoughts for a moment, as it ruffled the uneven edges of his jacket. The denim material was course against the scruff of his upper neck, but the season was beginning to change from fall to winter, and the beat up material did him some good protection. He wore it even in the warmer months though, as it was one of the few things he cared for in life. It felt his, and that was more than his possessions did. Boots and jeans, a knife and crossbow, they were just the things he needed in life, but the jacket was what he wanted in life.

Dog nipped at the ending frays of his jeans as he stood on that rickety bridge, his crossbow raised as they lured the walkers, or perhaps masked humans, towards them.

"'Ay" Daryl snapped. "Back Dog." Daryl growled angrily, and the dog immediately obeyed. Daryl could see Michonne glance at him out of the corner of his eye, the worry apparent on her face. She knew better than that, looking away from the threat. He knew she could sense the frustration in him, but now was not the time to lament.

Seconds later the deathly beings were upon them. With an inhale Daryl felt his crossbow aimed and loaded, and with an exhale he released. A scream echoed in his ears, as walkers crowded to feast on what seemed to be an alive man. Others persisted, slipping forward now with visible blades. An inhale and an exhale and an arrow pierced one through their masked eye. This time there was no scream, no agony, just death in its finest form. The exhaustion was gone, and Daryl was numb.

He stashed the neck of someone who wandered to close. That someone had once been a father or a mother, wife or husband, son or daughter, and now they were a bloodied mess on a bridge surrounded by breathing bloody messes. The sounds of death weakened, as Daryl's eyes gazed down. Blood seeped from the body between the cracks of the bridge, drifting down into the river below.

"Daryl." Michonne beckoned with an eerie calmness in her voice. Daryl understood that calmness, as he had reveled in it many times before. There's a calmness that comes with killing people, something unexpectedly comforting. Protecting is primal, it's what the human race does, it feels unresistable for the moments until they remember later that day that it was resistable, but they killed and slaughtered anyway.

Daryl looked over towards Michonne, seeing her knife against the neck of a masked walker. He stepped forward, examining it with such closeness that he could hear the drawn out breaths of the thing. Its clothes were ratty, the sneakers were hardly recognizable, and its bright blue eyes were hidden behind tears. The sound of its gasps were booming, as Michonne held the body up. It seemed to be about to collapse if it were not for her. Droplets of blood fell upon Daryl's boots, and he looked down to see the handle of a knife sticking out of above its hip. The weld of the knife was unrecognizable to him, so he deemed the wound to have been inflicted by one of the others with him.

"What do we do with them?" Aaron asked from behind him, holding a knife out towards the disguised being in preparation to kill it as soon as it tried to escape.

"There ain't a point in bringin' it back." Daryl reasoned. This killing would not be calm, for he knew it was not needed. The thing, which he reckoned was a girl based on its frame, was outnumbered, injured and alone; he did not have to kill her, he wanted to.

Daryl backed up a few steps and raised his crossbow to be in line with the bright blue eyes of the monster. She was looking down, blood slowing dripping from an unfatel wound only to disguise itself with the rest of the unpossessed body fluids from her group members. They bodies and blood and body parts flooded together on the panels of the bridge, each undistinguishable to tell where one stopped and the next started.

An inhale and Daryl held his bow steady, ready to end a life. An exhale and a plea.

A childlike voice seeped out in a whisper, with the girl still gazing down. Her voice was filled with defeat and desperation, although she hardly yelled or tried too hard to fight for her life. "Please." The girl said softly. "Daryl, please."

Daryl watched Michonne's expression change as she scrunched her eyebrows together and contracted the tight bones of her nose and cheekbones. Daryl's face was as calm and steady as ever when he stepped forward, but he was trying to perfect his next move. His arm was still crooked, waiting to release the bolt.

He watched Michonne's grip tighten on her, as Daryl flung his bow back over his shoulder. His hands grappled for the hold of the mask, as he stood so close that Michonne's breath collided against his skin.

The material was dry and old, as it crunched against his hand. His eyes moved down the stitch marks, as he finally found the opening and with all the might he possessed, ripped it off.

Thick blonde curls reeking repulsively of sweat and rot erupted out as if the hair was bouncing inside just waiting for an escape. It feel back behind her, going past the girl's waist. The deep blue eyes visible even beneath the mask looked up, a tangible contradiction of both courage and cowardice, innocent youth and tortured maturity, hope and fear all at once. It was only for one tear escaping that Daryl followed it down her face, noticing the blood and dirt and bruises of her cheeks. The tear stopped at what could hardly be called skin, as the unsmoothed and uneven surface of flayed skin beginning at the end of her lip and spreading down her neck only to disappear behind the black T-shirt and green jacket that covered her middle. Her lip was bloodied from the fight, but her mouth was pressed slightly ajar, as she watched the man in front of her gaze from the burns of her right hand cheek to the same sided bullet shaped scar of her forehead.

Daryl's face was no longer a stern expression. For once eight years of emotion was displaced all at once, as his mouth was as well ajar, and his eyes an illusion of complete confusion.

"Beth."

And alas Daryl Dixon was no longer exhausted of life.

Warnings for future chapters; Rape, Self harm, illness and symtoms, and major character death/s

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