Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Prompted by whowhatiswhich: "You've done more for my little girl today than her own daddy did in his whole life." Carol knows she's dying. Nothing can stop it. She has one thing left to do for her little girl. And who better to entrust Sophia to than the man who found her and brought her home? * Set season three after Daryl finds Carol in the Tombs. AU on Sophia's death where instead of getting bitten and found in the barn, Daryl finds her wandering when he goes out again after getting injured on the horse.
Warnings: *Contains: angst, tragedy, character death, loss of a parent, canon appropriate blood/gore, adult language, adult content, family drama, adoption ZA-style, cancer/illness, allusions Daryl's shitty childhood, issues of self-worth.
Agonize (but still try)
"You've done more for my little girl today than her own daddy did in his whole life."
"Do you remember what I said?" she whispered, paper-delicate and hoarse as her voice wafted weakly between the open bars of the cell - the same one she and Sophia and Lori had claimed as their own only a handful of days ago. "Back at the farm?"
His fingers bit deep into his thighs, blunt nails like pressure points as he snarled into his throat and forced himself to sit there. Half an ass cheek on the very end of the bed - as far away as he could get while still being there - as her girl quivered. Nothing more than a curled up ball of sun-tanned skin and long blond hair as she cried quietly. Arms wrapped tightly around her mother's waist.
"Daryl..."
He looked up, meeting dull blue for the first time in hours. Hating himself more and more every second as he struggled to keep whatever was left in his breakfast down. Christ. If he'd only gotten there half an hour sooner. Self-disgust and grief ridged his back, putting acrid-strength where there was none. A pantomime of broken ghosts he showed to the world the same time he screamed silently. He could hear the others, drifting just outside - guilty. Wanting to be close. Close when it happened, but finding they were a bit too close all the same. Eavesdropping on a moment he wasn't completely sure was even happening as the bird looked up at him, nearly shattering him with that small, brittle little smile.
No.
He couldn't do this.
It wasn't right.
She wasn't thinkin' straight.
Him?
Takin' on a chick?
He had no business even thinking about it to be honest.
"You'll look after her, won't you?"
The words he couldn't say were like ashes in his mouth. Poisonous and cloying just like the black-lined veins laced around her collarbone like a fell-shaded necklace. The only reason he'd found her in time at all was because the echoes of her screams had carried. He must have passed that god damned door half a dozen times clearing the blocks. Hell, he'd seen it! He'd seen it and he'd let it stay closed. Letting himself think it was just another walker. Just another-
She hadn't been strong enough to fight it off when it'd gotten through the door.
She'd tried but-
"Will you?" she rasped, blood trickling between cracked lips like water through a broken basin. Painting them red as she ran a hand through the girl's hair, shushing her.
"There has to be someone else, I ain't-" he tried, stung. Face flushing as a wrench of emotions – anger, rage, grief, discomfort, even one or two he'd told himself he didn't have it in him to express - threatened to fucking choke him.
"There isn't," she insisted, wincing as the pain from the fever wracked through her. Attention distant like she was looking at something he couldn't see as her eyes lost their focus. Hands stilling in her daughter's hair as Hershel pushed through the door on his crutches. Pale and unsteady as he clasped her wrist and checked her pulse. "There's no one I trust more."
The old man found his eyes as the words rippled out. Getting stuck in the air as she struggled to breathe, wheezing. Telling him what he already knew as the old man's eyes shone tired in the low afternoon light. And when he finally let himself look, watching a sickly sort of pallor punch bruises under her eyes, he swore he could feel the seconds ticking down.
"Daryl, please?"
He let her die before he could give his answer.
It was selfish.
But it was easier than way.
Better.
He sat beside her in the hall when it was all over. Ass to the floor – soaking up the concrete chill – letting her cry until she wore herself out and curled into his lap. Dreaming violently in the lax shelter of his arms, peeping and fitful, until he lost track of time and realized that somewhere along the line, he must have slept too.
That still stuck, years later.
The betrayal of the body over the mind.
The feeling of startling awake still sittin' upright.
The light-weight of her sprawled across him.
Trusting him.
Needing him.
It'd scored through him like heartburn in the back of his throat.
Like having one card too many when the dealer came to count.
The feeling had been visceral enough that he'd nearly dumped her on sheer principle and carried on with his own life. Business as fucking usual. Only, he didn't. He couldn't. Instead, that night he left her with Hershel – curled up between Carl and Beth and walked out into the dark. He didn't come back until the blood dried and he'd broken both of his knuckles wide open against a gnarled old spruce.
She avoided him for a couple weeks after that.
Smart girl.
He hated her for a long time. Hated the sound of her timid little steps and her painted nails. Hated how she could barely look at him. Hated how she picked at her food and stopped laughing with the others whenever he entered the room. Hated when he came back one day after scouting with Glenn to find she'd cut all her hair off. Wearing it close-cropped like her mother's. Hated when he'd found her doll ripped up and abandoned on the other side of the fence - trampled and spattered with walker blood. Hated that sometimes she crept into his cell when everyone was sleeping and huddled into the far corner with a blanket. Dropping off to sleep clean as anything but always gone before he woke up in the morning.
He hated that he started to know her.
Not as what she was, but who.
Sometimes he just hated her mother most of all.
Or at least he tried to.
God knows it never lasted.
After all, why hate the dead when he could hate himself for caring?
It took a couple of years and more than a few false starts before they started taking care of each other. Him looking out for her beyond checking in and making sure she knew how to use the pea shooter he shoved at her after Woodsbury - growling at her not to shoot herself in the foot with it when Carl took her out to get used to the feel. And her bullying him into letting her give him a haircut whenever his rat's nest got too long in the front. Telling him, with all her serious-faced freckles and somber expression – with a tone that screamed she figured it was freakin' obvious - that he needed to actually see what he was shooting at.
She was her mother's daughter alright.
The little ass ball to his fucked up chain or whatever.
But it wasn't until Aaron cut cleanly into their lives and convinced them to hope on a miracle, that someone really put a head on it. Setting it more or less in stone in a way he figured he didn't have any right to. Only for them, the words came ridiculously easy.
He'd been pretending to sleep, stuffed in a corner of the RV with Sophia sitting across from him at the table. Nimble little hands filling up everyone's clips with the last of the ammo, dirty cheeks hungry-hollow and trembling with more than a bit of hopeful determination. Half-aware of Noah squeezing past with some painkillers, the rattle a strange accompaniment to Eric's soft snores in the back. Drugged up and exhausted as Aaron kept watch beside him.
He didn't catch the start of the conversation. But he did clue in about half way, especially when the natural flow hitched and Aaron asked a question that made Noah hesitate, if only for a second.
"We have a pretty gifted surgeon in Alexandria. His name's Pete. I've seen him do some amazing things. He might be able to help," Aaron offered, tiredly genuine in that way he'd learned just came off some people – good people – in waves.
"Yeah?" Noah asked, hands curling around the frame of the door. Clearly trying not to get too attached to the idea as the moment lengthened without awkwardness.
"Yeah," Aaron echoed, fabric rustling like Eric had just tried to flop over on his stomach again before being stopped mid-spurt. "And hey, look, you don't have to answer this if you don't want. I don't strictly need to know, but I like to have everything neat before I debrief Deanna, but- Daryl and the girl? Sophia, right? She's his?"
He cracked a lid. Gauging the moment as Noah damned them both with the punctured silence. Watching her through the slated-light as she carried on, oblivious. Short hair curling in feathers down the tanned slope of her neck. Still the same mess of long limbs and freckles she'd always been even though it was clear by now she was starting to grow into her skin. Growin' up, despite all odds.
"Yeah, he's hers."
Thing was, the kid wasn't wrong.
It was a death wish, he knew it was. For the both of them.
God knows he'd been born with tragedy in his blood.
But hope – Alexandria – had a funny way of putting shit into perspective.
Or maybe he'd just gotten tired of fighting.
Goin' soft around the edges when all along she needed him to be strong.
Still, there wasn't anything quite like it when she ran at him. Arms outstretched whenever he breezed back through the gates with Aaron and Eric after a run. Breathin' in the clean scent of her as he scooped her up one handed. Holdin' her gently until she wrinkled her nose at him and slid down his side in inches, already gripping him by the elbow and marching him back towards the house. Chattering about dinner and showers and hey- guess who'd shot a bullseye three times in a row since he'd been gone?
He figured Carol would have approved, if anything.
He still waited for the other shoe to drop.
It wasn't until he had more than a bit of grey in his hair and was stuck in bed, useless and struggling to breathe that the past came back to haunt him. Cycling through to traumatize a whole new generation as everything he was used to doing on any given day suddenly became a whole lot harder.
It had been pervasive, a long slow ride to the finish that he'd held off for as long as he could. He got slower, more careful. Only it didn't last for long. His house of crappy cards tumbled down one day when he passed clean out trying to re-string his bow. Cancer, probably. Least that was what the Doctor said. Too many damn cigarettes. Nothing anyone could do anyway. He'd known that months ago. Didn't see the need to have everyone prancing around him like he was on deaths door before his body was ready to throw in the towel. They'd all been on borrowed time. He just had an expiry date on top of it.
She'd refused to speak to him for days after that.
He'd just laughed into his oxygen mask and told Aaron and Eric to stop hovering.
Feisty little bird.
"Did you love her? Mama, I mean?" she asked one day – the last day – couple weeks after he'd stopped eating and every breath had turned into a wheezing struggle. Choosing to look at her rather than the muted quiet in the hall as the others lingered. Taking in every inch of her, sitting picture-perfect in the chair she'd pulled beside his bed when this had all started. Glock gleaming in its thigh holster as she nursed her second under a blanket. A little boy with wispy strawberry blonde hair that she and Carl had decided to call Isaac Dale.
And just like he'd done to her own mother decades before, he slipped into the dark before he could give her his answer. Feeling the splatter of tears pitter-pat across his skin as the world faded and everything narrowed down to the gentle pressure of her hand holding his.
Because the terrible truth of it was, saying nothing - even to her - was still easier.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.
Reference:
*Isaac: Hebrew name meaning: "he will laugh."
*Dale: English word for: "valley."