Glenn goes missing at some point, never making it to the farm.
The group is horrified, of course.
He was meant to have gone on foot, easier in the dark with the traffic all snarled up. He didn't have much with him but his baseball bat and a bag with a few protein bars scavenged from one of the cars closest to the RV. TDog was waiting for him, waiting to know if it was safe for a man high on painkillers to make his way to the farm himself. Glenn was supposed to have returned but he never did.
All Daryl could find was signs of a scuffle. A broken car window, baseball bat dropped on the ground.
The tally of the missing had gone up by one and he did not like it one bit.
Already Glenn was taken from him once, practically under his nose and he was not content with letting the one useful member of the group be taken away by some mysterious force. From what he could tell it hadn't been walkers, wasn't enough sign of blood and decay prominent around the car and he knew the boy was light on his feet. Still, he shouldn't have been forced to leave on his own in the dark as a scout. Daryl doesn't appreciate how the group decides who does what and how it gets done, because this shit happens.
Kid barely in his twenties is armed with a bat and sent into the night, hours after one kid gets shot and the other kid is an alarming question mark.
So he goes to the farm to set up camp with the others, setting up the Korean's tent up with ease. Already it looks better than it had at the quarry, half collapsing on itself then. Now it stands secure next to his, ready for when the boy made it back. Carol is numb to everything and everyone while Lori is a perfect example of a wreck. Daryl forgives them for their ignorance but the others make him clench his teeth.
"How stupid could he be, fooling around tonight. Should have come back hours ago. Wasting time," Dale mutters as he's readjusting a part in the engine of the RV. The bulky contraption was rattling around a bit too much on the route up. "Give him a few hours and we'll send someone out for him," he says that bit to Andrea who's leaning against the nearby tree.
"How can we look for Sophia if he's pulling this joke?"
Daryl was leaning over a map looking at the area around. Lots of wooded places, small subdivisions and more curiously, a town. If he took a hostage somewhere he would probably go to a town place to do it. Lots of places to hide, stronger locks than in the burbs and more valuable, plenty of cover. He's hoping Glenn is just a hostage right now, nothing less.
"You best stop talkin' shit, old man." Daryl says sharply as he takes the red pen and circles a particular area of the town violently. Rick is looking pretty bad, face ashen and movements disoriented. He forgives the cop as well, looking at the way his hair is starting to turn grey almost.
Dale looks surprised when he speaks but Daryl ignores whatever reply he says back. He's got a plan now and a place to begin.
.
Glenn is terrified when they find him on the road. He had seen them first, with their flashlights skimming the ground in the distance. Instinctively he dropped the ground, scuttling behind the parked car for shelter. A rotting body lies still above him.
He knows how to make himself real quiet when he needs to, remembering his father on the nights where drinking wasn't enough. He's good at hiding in closets with his hand pressed down over his mouth so he doesn't make a sound. Glenn is very good at being afraid.
They find him anyways because they're heading in a straight line and there is nowhere for Glenn to run. The belly of the car hung to close to the ground to roll beneath and even making a break for it off road would have been pointless since the trees were far too dense and ditch steep enough he probably would have taken a header.
They talk at first, nice and soft. They remind Glenn of his father in a panicky sort of way.
When they move he is ready. The one hits him hard across the face, the other kicking him in the gut. He goes up with the bat and gets on effectively in the shoulder hard, feeling a satisfying lurch in the bat from his actions. It's worth it, he thinks when they slam him against the car window, taking the bat and slamming it into his arm.
Something definitely breaks.
.
The first two days he doesn't find anything.
The town is a pretty decent grid layout, full of small mom 'n pop type places and artisan apartment types. He looks carefully. It's mostly clear of any walkers, a few snarling from in the depths of buildings but they are not his priority now.
Glenn is, because no one else seems to care.
The feed warehouse was a good place to start because it was a place of some activity. Cars parked there inside the big building were clean of any dust. Trunks got lots of supplies he finds, and the one car trunk had some knotted up rope left. This was all recent, a hiding spot of hiding spots. It makes him aware that there are two cars with potentially ten people, all very clever.
Daryl is cleverer so he takes his hunting knife and slices up the tires before he scrambles up the engines a bit, pulling a few wires here and there.
He doesn't find to many signs of life after those cars, spending hours combing through the big old farm supply shops and the few office buildings. It's on his way back in the dark, slinking through the streets in the shadows does he see the bar. It's big enough, he supposes and he kicks himself for not thinking about it sooner. The curtains of the place are drawn but he can see a flicker of light from within.
Life.
.
He can't see anything since they blindfolded him and left him cuffed to a heavy table. His broken arm is hanging uselessly in his lap while the other wrist is damn near raw from the too tight hand cuffs. It's been three days since he was taken and he's terrified.
They have him beaten and starved, shoulder an angry thing of constellations from the cigarette burns the one man likes giving him. Last Asian alive, they tell him.
.
Daryl watches them drink.
They look cozy, all set up around the bar while one mixes drinks and they all laugh and talk. They're have a goodtime and Daryl is glad. They're preoccupied with trying to feel good which means he can finally see the kid sitting slouched on the ground. Even with the dim lighting and distance he can tell the one arm is hanging kind of funny and he's worried how he's going to break the kid out with eight men.
So he waits.
One goes out for a piss so he creeps up behind him while he has his pants around his ankles and cuts his throat smoothly and quietly. Just for good measure he puts of a knife through the skull as well. Quietly he drags the body a few feet around the bar and leaves him to rot.
Two more come out after a little while and eventually find the body, everyone flooding to the street by then. Daryl slips through a window near the back and into the bar, not daring to say a word to Glenn. Instead he sits directly across from the door with his crossbow ready and shoots off seven men one by one. All head shots, all dead.
.
A hand touches his shoulder and he shrinks away, mute and blind. Someone shushes him and suddenly the blindfold is being removed and he can see an angry face with bright eyes and it's the most wonderful face Glenn has ever seen. Daryl somehow found a key to the cuffs and frees him, hissing at the sight of angry red cuts from his struggles. "You alright, kid?" The man asked gruffly, eyeing him over. Glenn feels like a mass of bruises and cuts.
"I'll be fine, let's get out before more of their group come looking," he says hoarsely. His throat is raw from screaming.
It's hard to stand straight, stomach empty and angry and he's a little more than dizzy. Thankfully Daryl takes him carefully, one arm firmly wrapped around and guiding him around the bodies and blood. Glenn doesn't feel too bad that they're dead. Daryl had hiked into town on his own, wanting the silence that came without an engine. That option won't work now since Glenn feels ready to kneel over so he positions him against a fancy red looking car while he easily hot wires it to life.
It makes Glenn want to laugh, thinking about another red car that he drove through Atlanta. He doesn't laugh though.
Suddenly he's being guided into the car and Daryl is doing the seatbelt up for him as gently as possible. It makes him feel a bit more secure despite how it presses against his chest, covered in angry bruises.
They drive in silence, Daryl moving fast faster and fastest down the old country roads until suddenly they're at the farm. A massive white house with what appears to be a refugee camp on its front lawn by the drive way. Glenn is half aware as he is pulled from the car with surprising gentleness and suddenly people are in their way and he shrinks back because they're all talking so loud and so angry and he wants to sleep.
.
"Get out of the way," Daryl demands, shoving back Andrea when she decides to get closer. Glenn makes a low noise, good hand clamped down on the end of Daryl's shirt. He likes the way Glenn moves to him. Doesn't know why, but it just feels good.
"Good lord, where have you been?" Dale asked and suddenly the hunter wants to bang his head against the wall at the stupidity of these people.
Before he gets to respond to the old man the Korean speaks up in a torn up voice, "a picnic."
Everyone falters and Daryl wants to grin when the door to the house bangs open, Hershel standing in the light. "This the missing one?" He asks to the crowd and Daryl is manoeuvering Glenn up towards the house.
"Think his arm his broke," he informs sharply as Glenn stumbles his way up the stairs, half being dragged and half being carried. "Son of bitches used him like a punching bag."
"Well, we can set bones. We'll see what we can do now."
Hershel seems alright, calm and rational. Daryl wishes the others were more like that, capable.
.
Hershel directs the two to the bathroom to get washed up before he does anything serious. Glenn is covered in three-day old grime and a warm wash might make him feel calmer. Hershel had noted an anxious look in his eyes and said nothing else.
The bathroom is quite large and the house is mostly empty. Beth and some boy are down with the camp talking while Maggie has perch on the porch watching the fields. Glenn is seated on the floor while Daryl is adjusting the taps of the water, feeling for the temperature. Eventually Daryl turns to him and Glenn flinches.
It's that look that the hunter gives him that makes him realize that it's game over.
He understands everything now.
The way his clothes look distressed and the way way the one bruise on his neck looks too angry to be from anything else.
"C'mere," he says softer than Glenn expects. When he doesn't move any closer Daryl does. "You'll feel better when you're cleaner."
He won't ever get any cleaner, he wants to tell him.
Taking a knife Daryl cuts his shift off his body, not bothering with trying to take it off in one piece. It reveals an arrangement of bruises and cigarette burns that make Daryl hiss. Glenn tries to say don't but his words don't seem to work any longer. Suddenly he's standing and Daryl is undoing his pants, sliding them down so gently he doesn't know what to do.
.
He stands in the shower with Glenn. One arm supports him while the other hand is running through his hair. He left the kid in his boxers and Daryl is standing the same but in jeans still. Hershel was considerate and left clothing outside the bathroom door and Daryl hopes that some of it is for him.
"You're going to be okay," he says awkwardly because he doesn't know what to say. It's terrifying holding onto the younger boy so small he can feel the bones beneath skin. That annoys him, because he doesn't want him this tiny. Upcoming days he's going to be adding food onto Glenn's plate he already knows.
The two have never spoken much before but they did on some basic level understand one another. Daryl was good with hunting and waiting while Glenn was an expert at always moving and knowing where to run. They are both survivalists, no matter how different. Stuff like that deserves proper respect these days, when they're surrounded by a group of people barely qualified to pick mushrooms on their own.
Daryl liked Glenn, honestly. He wasn't an idiot. He spoke when he needed to and the kid was always good about not asking to many questions. Out of the entire group, he'd pick the Korean boy any time. Ironic, thinking about what his brother would have to stay about that.
"Didn't give up on you, you know," Daryl tells him quietly, words almost washed away by the shower running. Glenn hears them all the same, tilting his head up slightly. The hunter has him caught up in a hold that has him leaning entirely against him, legs unsteady to support whatever Glenn happens to weigh. "Spent the days lookin' up and down that town."
There's an understanding in Glenn's eyes suddenly. "Slashed their tires."
"Damn right," he feels proud. "Stupid pricks, strolling on through like they own the place."
"They didn't get the memo then, that this is your territory then." He looks so tired and small standing against him. His words have no real energy behind them anymore.
"All my territory," Daryl informs him sharply. "Don't you forget it."
.
It's disorienting.
Hershel won't let him leave the spare bedroom for the night and he's so tired and confused he doesn't really understand where he is. He knows he's on the farm and that everyone is here but it just feels so disjointed because he remembers being at the bar with strangers and now he isn't there because they're all dead.
Daryl has perch over by the chair and he's busy running a cloth over his crossbow. Hershel eyes the weapon without voicing an opinion and somewhere, somehow the man remembers his manners and thanks him for everything.
Glenn was somehow in clean clothes that smell freshly washed and the sheets are pulled back but he doesn't know what to do now. His arm is trussed up in thick bandages and in a sling while his mind feels vaguely like cotton from whatever pills Daryl had forced him into taking.
"What are you pussy footing around for?" Daryl demands suddenly. "You look like dead walking."
He wonders if he means that literally, the way it sounds now or if it's just some old expression. His words aren't working any longer to ask it seems so he just mumbles some wordless sentence and paces at the foot of the bed. He remembers making a nest of blankets and pillows in his old closet when he was a kid, hiding from the angry man with the angry fists. Glenn hadn't stopped thinking about that damn closet for the past few days, and now he wants to be there more than anything.
Daryl had seen the angry bruises on his thighs, had seen the way he recoiled from his touch. He knew and Glenn felt filthy.
The hunter puts the crossbow down gently on the floor and stands, looking like he's waiting Glenn to have a violent reaction to something. Maybe he will, though. He feels unhinged like he's drunk and high all at once and he hates it. "You with me, kid?"
With one hand he feels for the bandaged up arm, grabbing it just a little too aggressively. Pain shoots up his limb and he bites back a hiss of pain. It helps clear his mind but Daryl doesn't like that. The man has a grip on him now and is directly in his face. "I need to get away," he's slurring his words now. "Shouldn't touch me."
Daryl's eyes look like bright pieces of blue glass, all lit up inside. Glenn doesn't know why people are scared of him, he's really just tough but soft man which only makes sense in his head, now that he thinks about it. "You shouldn't fool around with your arm like that."
"Don't tell me what to do," Glenn bites back, words numb and confused. He tries to step back and escape the steel grip that is on his arm currently but the man doesn't relent.
"You aren't in the mind to be talking tough, kid. You're gonna listen to me now and you're gonna listen to me well. Ain't nothing wrong with you but that busted up arm of yours. You don't need to feel like you ain't right." As he speaks Daryl is guiding Glenn backwards until his legs hit the bed and suddenly he is tilting backwards. Backwards and down, pillows soft and blankets coming to rest over his unresisting form.
Glenn doesn't want to let go of Daryl, now it's his hand that is clinging desperately onto Daryl's. He can't verbalize his desperation yet, barely able to think it.
Daryl gets it anyways and spends the night lying on top of the blankets, knife on the bedside table and one arm wrapped around Glenn.
.
Kid nearly sleeps for two days straight and when he wakes up he looks like he could sleep for a few more.
Eventually Glenn protests enough that Hershel allows him to move outside with the others, Daryl protesting is ignored. Rick takes him to the side, talking with him for a little while. Snippets of their conversation floats back to where Daryl is standing eavesdropping the best he can without it looking overly obvious.
"wanted to try.."
"couldn't, blood was low.."
"never wanted you out there…"
Rick looks ten years older and close to death. Carl getting shot in front of him seemed to destroy something that made him him. Daryl can't blame him too much for that.
Later when they're sitting around camp in lawn chairs awkwardly like some weird get together Glenn is the target of every side glance possible. Lori and Rick are inside the house with Carl, still unconscious but breathing, thankfully. The evening had been tolerable so far, ignoring Shane not taking his damn eyes off the scrawny kid.
Dale had cooked up some type stew for dinner and Maggie had brought over dinner rolls freshly cooked earlier. It's one of the bigger meals they have had in weeks. Glenn had attempted at some bird like serving for himself before Daryl added another spoonful to the plate. "Eat it, or don't get up." He remembers holding Glenn earlier and feeling bone beneath skin and Daryl isn't overly keen on feeling the kid melt away to nothing. He has enough memories of his mother starving herself and cutting up her wrists that he won't dare let the kid even think twice about thinking that reckless.
"So what happened?" Andrea asked finally because she knows the least boundaries. "Thought you went for a run that night and just got lost."
"I'm not that stupid," Glenn said slowly. "I got caught up with some people on the road that night. Didn't have a chance to leave a message." The cigarette burns on his shoulder crawl up to his neck visibly.
"So what, they just took you?" She kept pressing. It's been so long since they have seen anyone, the Green family seemingly stand up figures amongst the ending of the world. It's hard to imagine that much people can be terrible now, in the stillness of the country life.
Daryl set down his can of beer he had been working on, leaning over and fixing Andrea hard with a look. "Just what the kid said, he got caught by some people. What part didn't you understand? The Korean comes back with a broken up arm, they weren't giving him no tea parties."
"Who were they with?" Shane cut in. His voice is heavy. Heavier than usual.
Glenn shrugged. "They didn't talk to me much. I was mostly handcuffed to a table with a blindfold. They had a bigger group somewhere but they were scouting the area, supposed to be moving out in a few days to make a meet with them."
Shane nodded. He's taking this serious, despite whatever absence of concern he had before. "You know why they took you?"
"They were bored."
If that doesn't make Daryl clench his hands into tight fists nothing will. "The bigger picture here is that they're dead. Maybe if y'all cared a bit more earlier he wouldn't have been with them longer than a few hours."
Dale looks horrified.
"Wait, you killed them?" Andrea demanded, her food long ago discarded.
"Damn right I did. Weren't worth saving."
"You can't just say that!" Dale cut in loudly, waving his hands. From the distance the cows startle at the noise.
He snorted. Glenn looks ready to fall asleep despite barely making a dent in his food. "Course I can. These are the dimwits that broke Glenn's arm and beat him like a damn piñata. People like that don't get second chances." He knocks his leg against Glenn's knee and reminds him to finish his plate.
"Man has a point." Shane pointed out as he settled into his chair. "Besides, what's done is done. Our group is together again so there isn't much reason to fight about the minor details."
"Minor- you call killing men in cold blood minor details?" Dale is in shock, fumbling over his words.
"They had their chances." Daryl told them with a sharp smile.
.