Well, here it is, the sequel to Graveyard Dirt & Salt (if you haven't read that yet, then it's probably a good idea to read it first, but whatever I'm not going to tell you how to do your thing). It'll be nice to get a fresh start and sort some things out. Heh, got quite a bit of flack for leaving you kids hanging like I did...well it amused me.
Anyways, I suppose I don't really need to remind anyone that I don't own anything affiliated with any of TWD stuff, I mean, come on, really?
Oh, that beautiful cover art? Yeah, it was done by the ever lovely and always talented and super sexy Merle's Right Hand! Link to her art blog on my profile page, it's worth the peek!
Chapter One: Legba
**Daryl**
The incredibly blinding light was the first thing to pierce the darkness, burning his retinas and instantly creating a throbbing ache behind his eyeballs.
As the burn of the light faded, he found himself staring up at a yellowed ceiling.
Everywhere ached, not just the ache of a good workout, but with the searing, sinew and bone deep ache of one who had slept too long, who had fallen down a rocky cliff and hit every jagged outcropping on his way down.
For a moment he couldn't move, forgot how to it seemed.
Then overhead, with the light casting a halo of white fire around her head, the most beautiful face appeared, big blue eyes shining, mouth splitting in a wide, child-like grin.
"Good to see your blue eyes again," she whispered.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out of his throat but a dusty croak and air.
"Here, you should have some water," the woman said.
Carol, he reminded himself as she helped him take a deep drink of cool water, her name is Carol.
Watching the wooden rose around her neck as it bobbed and tapped against her collarbone, he became mesmerized by the woman's movements, slow, but steady and graceful as a dancer.
"I'd think I was dead," he muttered, "but I hurt everywhere."
She beamed wider at him and he was almost sure the light was coming from her not the window at her back. "Well, you had a rough couple of days, plus you're fighting an infection, but we got to it in time, Mrs. Douglas and Herschel have high hopes."
He coughed dryly and she offered him more water, which he refused.
"How many days?"
"Six."
"Jesus," he mumbled, "what'd I miss?"
Carol blinked. "Get some rest, we'll talk later."
"I've slept enough," he said. "What'd I miss?"
"You know when you close your eyes just before a fall and only open them when you feel the impact?" Someone inquired from beyond Carol.
Daryl rolled his head to the side and found someone occupying the bed beside him, book open in their lap.
"That's what you missed," the Lieutenant finished.
Blinking for a moment in confusion, Daryl struggled to gather a starting point, but only managed to gape at the man for a moment longer, before the Lieutenant offered him a nod of his head.
"You should rest," Carol said. "I know you slept enough, but just relax at least, I'm going to get you some food. I think some solids in your diet will be okay, just a little bit at least."
Daryl caught her hand before she could disappear on him and held it for a moment, too nervous to do anything more in front of the Lieutenant.
The Cajun, sensing his hesitation, reached beside his bed and pulled a curtain across calmly, eyes going back to his book.
Taking the opportunity, Daryl pulled Carol back onto his bedside.
She smiled softly at him.
He didn't know what to say, wasn't sure he was ever good at whatever it was he was trying to do, but he made the effort at least.
"Sorry if I made you worry," he said simply.
Carol laughed softly, leaning down and pressing a kiss to his cheek, her lips lingered there for a moment and he caught the scent of her.
She smelled so beautiful, like baking and home, he almost wanted to just pull her down and curl up around her, but he refrained because everything still ached and he felt like if he pulled her down his bones would shatter.
"Don't worry about me," she replied, pulling back. "You just worry about recovering, we need you back."
Regretfully he watched her get up and leave, feeling like he missed his chance to do something, whatever it was his brain was struggling to form.
"Hey, Fay," he grunted.
The curtain was drawn back and the Lieutenant leveled his grey eyes on Daryl in the cot beside him.
"Yeah?"
"What'd I miss?"
The Lieutenant sighed. "Not much, been quiet here for a few days."
"Yeah, but…?"
Shifting in his bed carefully, the Cajun set the book on his bedside table.
It was then that Daryl noticed the chain and padlock that had been placed around the man's ankle, chaining him to the bed.
"What the hell?"
Looking down the Lieutenant wriggled his leg, causing the chain to jangle noisily. "I've been confined to bed rest for a few days," he replied easily. "Veterinarian's orders."
Daryl wasn't sure if it was the fact that he was giddy from still being alive or if the Cajun finally told a joke that was hilarious, but he coughed and then laughed.
The two of them laughed for a few seconds, before Daryl's bones protested and the Lieutenant broke off with a grimace, gripping his ribs and they finished abruptly, both moaning.
As they both recovered, the Lieutenant sighed. "Is this what it's going to be like when we're old?"
"What? Chained to beds? I call that a good way to spend a Saturday night," Daryl replied weakly.
Grinning broadly, the Cajun held his ribs. "Don't make me laugh, cabri."
Despite the pain, Daryl pulled himself up higher in the bed.
"Easy now," the Lieutenant urged.
Daryl ignored him, propping himself up a little, enough to see a spectre haunting the doorway of the infirmary, her little pooch at her side, her doll in hand.
"Hey, you have a visitor," he pointed out to Fay.
The man eyed Annie at the door quietly. "Ah, she's been there almost non-stop since they moved me in here. Won't come in though."
"She scared?"
"I don't know, can't get her close enough to talk." Saying this, the Lieutenant motioned the girl inside, but she quietly backed out and left the doorway again. "She'll be back, doesn't go far."
Eyeing the soldier, Daryl winced as his spine rippled a wave of pain upwards, heading for his shoulders and stilled. "Is she going to be okay?"
"I hope so, Grace and I tried to brush things off casually, but I think she caught on to the severity of the situation."
"And what's the severity?"
"I almost died." The Lieutenant sorted through the stack of books on his bedside table idly, pulling one out. "Want a book?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, we're laid up, thought you'd want a book or something to re—"
"You know what I meant, dumb ass," Daryl growled.
The Lieutenant put the book down on top of the others. "There was a point at Woodbury where I could have died."
"What?"
"There was a point where you could have died too."
Daryl narrowed his eyes at the dark, distant tone the Lieutenant took when he said this, but didn't say anything.
"I'm not entirely sure I was even meant to come out kicking from Woodbury, from that room where they had me strapped to a table. Sometimes late at night I think, maybe I did die, maybe we both exist in only a state of energy, hovering here in our cots, waited on by misty memories of our old life."
Sneering at the man, Daryl was about to scoff, when the Lieutenant beamed widely and rattled his ankle chain.
"I'm just yanking your crank, cabri!" He exclaimed. "Did almost die though, that close," he held up his good arm, forefinger and thumb an inch apart.
Distracted by Grace who swept into the infirmary with an arm full of books, the Lieutenant beamed and held out his good arm, the other tucked into a sling and chirped, "ah, the most beautiful sight known to man."
"Behave your—"
"An armful of classics, simply magnificent," the Lieutenant went on smoothly, taking the books from the former nun.
Grace pursed her lips. "Keep it up and we'll leave you in that bed a while longer."
Winking at Daryl, the Cajun chuckled. "My times up in two days."
"With good behaviour," Grace shot back, moving to Daryl's bedside, stepping over Clyde who lay in the space between his cot and the Lieutenant's. "Good to see you awake," she said touching a hand to his forehead. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I've been shot then run over by a bulldozer," he shot back.
Smiling as she ran her hand around his face feeling his temperature, Grace eased onto his bedside. "You feel like your temperature is back to normal, how's your heart rate? Is it steady?"
"I suppose, wasn't really paying attention." He replied, flinching from her touch, but putting up with it grudgingly.
Placing a book on the bedside table near him, Grace glanced over at the doorway where Annie was peeking in again. The little girl ducked back out when she was spied like a little mouse.
"I don't know what you like to read, Daryl, honey, I know Lafayette only reads the classics, so I brought you some murder mysteries and a handful of non-fiction historicals," she said.
"I read things other than classics," the Lieutenant argued, cracking open a Zane Grey novel and flipping through it idly.
"Got any more of those westerns?" Daryl asked.
The Lieutenant held up two books in one hand, "Riders of the Purple Sage or Fighting Caravans?"
"Don't matter."
"Grace, cher, I've got a bit of a problem over here," the Lieutenant said as he pushed one of the westerns across the bedside table in Daryl's direction.
Painfully he reached for the book, feeling a pull in the area just under his left pectoral where he assumed he was patched up.
"What is it, honey?" Grace asked, moving to stand at Fay's side.
"I dropped something just under the bed here, could you get it for me?" The man said, smirking as the woman dipped down to inspect the floor for a dropped item. "No, no, beb, the other side."
Eyeing the devilish look in the Cajun's eye, Daryl tried hard to look like he was inspecting the book, but he was genuinely interested in what was about to go down as Grace stooped by the bed, bending down to inspect the floor.
Hooking his arm under her, Lafayette held the woman firmly in her spot, bent over, ass in the air and chuckled. "Undo the chains, cher, and no one gets hurt."
Daryl smirked slightly as the woman struggled, before huffing. "The only person who will get hurt, honey, is you. Let me go."
"Hell no, you're my hostage now. Daryl, you'll back me on this, yeah?"
Finding himself pulled into the situation, the youngest Dixon shrugged best he could in his spot. "The man needs leverage."
"I was afraid of this," Grace said with a sigh, "we're going to have to separate you two."
"No grab ass in the infirmary," someone boomed from the doorway.
Daryl peered over Grace and Lafayette on his cot to find Merle moving towards them.
"Heard you weren't dead," his brother stated with a grin. "Had to see it with my own eyes, poke you with a stick just to be sure."
"Funny," Daryl griped, watching as the Lieutenant pulled Grace in closer to press his mouth to hers. She put up a bit of a struggle, before her hand dropped to Fay's chest and she bunched his shirtfront in her clutches, before pulling away with a pretty pink flush painting her white chocolate complexion and hurrying off in mild embarrassment.
It reminded Daryl of what he forgot to do with Carol.
He wasn't good at that relationship shit, but he probably should have done that.
"I'll just gnaw my leg off then, how about?" The Lieutenant shouted after Grace as she scurried out the door to the infirmary.
Turning his eyes back on Merle who had plopped down in a chair by his bedside and was resting his boots up beside Daryl's knee, Daryl scowled. "So, you look pleased with something."
"A little," Merle replied. "Can't I be glad to see my baby brother finally awake?"
Daryl scoffed. "Yeah right."
"I am, Daryl."
As Daryl eyed his brother with a look of mild curiosity (and shock) he heard the sound of the dividing curtain being drawn and peered back to find Fay had given them some privacy. Daryl returned to gazing at his brother with a mildly uncomfortable look.
"You almost died on us, baby bro." Merle said. "And believe it or not you're my only brother."
"Whatever," Daryl replied, bouncing Merle's comment off his shoulders with a shrug.
"Besides, we need you around here, I hate hunting, don't have the goddamned patience."
That was more like it.
Daryl smirked. "Get me out of this bed I'll catch you some damned dinner today."
"No, you're fine where you are for now."
Feeling something had changed about his brother, Daryl angled his head and really studied him.
Merle looked like Merle, but there was something off about him.
"Are you drunk?" He asked.
Chuckling, Merle pushed to his feet. "Naw, just preoccupied." Dropping his hand on Daryl's shoulder, Merle squeezed it. "Well, I should head out, we're going on a run today, pick up some supplies from this little mom and pop shop Glenn scouted in the boonies a ways out that hasn't been touched yet. You're gonna take it easy, right?"
"Yeah, too sore to cause trouble."
Nodding, Merle walked out.
Daryl contemplated taking another nap, all the yapping he was doing was sapping his energy fast.
"You know this curtain is ineffective, I can still hear everything," the Lieutenant muttered from the other side of the pastel yellow curtain.
"What's up with Merle?" Daryl demanded.
"Oh, just Merle being Merle, I suppose."
Grasping the curtain despite the pain it caused him, Daryl tore it back to glower at the Cajun.
"What's going on around here? Every time I ask someone what I missed they change the subject, I ain't stupid," Daryl growled. "Your little girl is terrified, Merle's acting like he gives a rats ass about people and you're chained to a goddamned bed!"
Looking up from the book he was reading, Fay eyed Daryl quietly for a moment.
"They didn't want you getting out of bed before you're fully recovered, I don't want you leaving that bed until you're right again." He said.
"Tell me."
"Rick, Tyreese, Andrea and Alan didn't come back from the mall and Mrs. Douglas, Karen and Milton are having a hell of a time trying to talk peace with Woodbury."
"What?" Daryl demanded struggling to sit upright in the bed. "What do you mean Rick didn't come back from the mall? And who the hell is Mrs. Douglas and Karen?"
"See, this is why we weren't supposed to say anything," the Lieutenant urged. "Now calm down before you pull your stitches loose, couyon. I'll fill you in."
"Is that why you're chained up?"
Lafayette grinned crookedly. "Yeah and they'll do you the same if you aren't smart."
Daryl rolled his lips over his teeth in agitation. "Alright, fill me in, then I'm going to knock your teeth down your throat for not telling me sooner."
"Well, that's not a goal I'm heading towards."
"Just spill it, dumb ass," Daryl snarled.
"Alright, calm down, cabri."
The Voodoo Dialect
Black Cat Bone – Black cat bone refers to the same kind of powerful protective charm that graveyard dirt or salt offer when creating a mojo. Other common items used in a mojo charm bag consist of coins, herbs, rattlesnake rattles, swallows hearts and bat wings.
Legba (or Papa Legba) – The old man who guards the crossroads, Legba is considered the origin of life and therefore he must be saluted each day upon awakening. He protects the home and travelers. He is often referred to as Papa Legba due to the respect people have for him as a good deity and he is often depicted as an old man, but his appearance masks his very powerful internal self. His symbol is the sun and the crutch (due to the gnarled, withered appearance his human vessels take while the deity is occupying their body) and all that is good.