Author's Note: Fair warning, this will be a little less polished than my usual. I like to do several editing passes before I post, but I can't do that and get this out before Real 7x10 happens, so…
Setup for this contains spoilers through 7x09. I know nothing about what happens in 7x10 so everything past 7x09 is just what I imagine might happen.
This fic is for Joanna-484 who said something I really needed to hear, at exactly the moment I needed to hear it, even though she had no idea that's what she was doing. Your words make a difference in this world, my friends. Even when you don't realize it's happening.
Can't Change Your Stride
Her tracks were all over the damn forest. A spiderweb of them dotted with the bodies of walkers. Sometimes animal blood or fur from a skinned kill, the discarded guts long gone to more walkers. The tracks got thicker and thicker in one direction, until they all converged on one little house. Thing had a graveyard. And a mailbox.
Daryl couldn't figure out which bothered him most. Who the fuck buried their dead right out in the front yard, before? And why the shit did this place still have a mailbox? Looked so fucking normal, at first he couldn't even bring himself to open the gate. Like it was somebody's house, 'n they'd wanna know what a damn Dixon was doing prowling around.
Wasn't that far off. He wasn't welcome here. First time he hadn't been welcome where Carol was since her husband died. He didn't like the feeling.
He grabbed the top of the fence and yanked himself up, then stuck a boot in between the narrow iron spines, smearing mud across the wrought iron. Already messing stuff up and he hadn't been here five minutes.
She wanted to get away from us. From everyone.
But fuck it. What else was he gonna do? Sit around and watch the kiddies shoot arrows when he didn't have no bow? Go back and growl at that king on his fucking stage with his great big cat? Thing might as well be a tabby for all the balls it lent the guy.
Daryl didn't know why that asshole had let him stay. They didn't like each other much. Made him twitchy, wondering. So he had borrowed a knife and got himself gone within an hour of Rick 'n them leaving. Figured he'd start casting around for the start of Carol's trail. Or whatever was left of it, so he could mark her direction and follow it once this shit with Negan was over. He needed to know she was whole, okay. And if she wasn't okay, she was alone. Nobody who loved her to put her down. He wouldn't leave her to walk, forever.
Hadn't expected the tracks to be so fresh. Hadn't expected there to be so many of them. She was gone, alright. But she hadn't gone far.
Maybe he oughta wait and puzzle out what that meant, but he couldn't force himself to be still long enough. There'd been a clock tick-tick-ticking in his head ever since he cracked open the door to his cell. Negan was coming after him, and he had more guns and more men than Daryl had seen in one place since the turn. There weren't no time left to fuck around. And he could still hear Denise in his head, shouting at him to deal with his shit. Just like she had been, right up until the last second she was alive.
He knocked, but he would have busted straight in if he thought for an instant she wouldn't shoot first and recognize him second.
The door came open, and as soon as her gaze locked onto his, her eyes went slick with tears, her hand leaping to her mouth.
"God damn it, Morgan," she gritted out, half-turning away.
"You ask him to lie for ya?"
She took a breath, her shoulders that drawn-back sort of brittle as she stared off into her house.
"He said you was gone. Didn't say how far. Looked guilty." Daryl shrugged. "Even if he said nothin', woulda found you anyhow, soon as I went outside. Changed your boots, cain't change your stride."
Her eyes squeezed a little tighter at the corners. She still didn't look at him. He kept his feet planted on her porch. Tried to look like he had any fucking clue in the world what he'd do if she asked him to leave.
"Said you didn't want to see nobody. I get it."
"Do you?" she said tartly. "Because it doesn't look like it."
"Don't want to get pulled into our shit." He didn't blink. "Don't want me to get ya killed."
Her chest jumped under a sharp breath. She wore a delicate white tank top under a looser denim shirt that didn't quite cover the quiver of her body beneath. He watched her body language, since she wouldn't give him words. Her knife rode her hip, had a gun on the other. That was something, too. She hadn't given up yet. And she wasn't lying to herself about the world, like Morgan.
"I didn't leave because of Denise." Her voice was softer now, more like her.
"Rick said ya left right after that. I's drinkin'. Was a mess."
His fists knotted at his sides and he fought the urge to go, disappear into those fucking trees so her looking at him wouldn't make his skin feel so dirty. His daddy's shirts used to stick to his chest, with that one spot where Southern Comfort would dribble when he fell asleep with the bottle propped on his belly. Daryl could feel the same spot on his chest and he told himself his shirt was sticking from honest sweat, but it didn't feel like it.
"Ain't drank since," he said baldly.
"That's not why." Her fingers curled against the doorframe and she leaned against it a little, the curves of her body more their old grace than the stubborn straight lines of a moment ago. But tired.
She looked at him, looked away.
"I just don't want to be responsible. For all of you. I love you too much." Her voice went tight. "There's nothing I wouldn't do, and I can't do those things anymore. You of all people should understand that."
"Think I'm askin' you to look after me?"
She met his eyes. "You and I both know you'd never have to ask."
He shifted his weight, coughed at the tickle in his throat, but couldn't kick it loose. "Ain't askin' you to come back. Not now. Ain't safe. Best you're off over here. Out of it."
She crossed her arms, fully leaning against the doorframe now. The wind swept through the yard and riffled her silver hair against her forehead. "Then why are you here?"
He couldn't tell her why he didn't come before. Couldn't tell her why he needed so badly to see her now. Because she was right, he wouldn't have to ask—all he'd have to do was tell her what had happened since she left and she'd be back in the fight. The safe bubble she had here would be gone. Everything she didn't want to ever do again, she'd be doing it by nightfall.
Those new boots weren't any disguise at all.
"Worried about ya," he said instead. "Missed ya."
It was true as hell. It'd been burning a hole through his brain ever since he didn't see her in that circle the night they met Negan and Lucille. The group had the RV and Maggie was sick as shit. They'd obviously been taking her to the doc at Hilltop and there was no way Carol would stay behind when she was the closest thing they had to a midwife. Especially not when the roads were so dangerous.
The day Negan dragged him back to Alexandria, he couldn't breathe for wanting her to be there, alive. And for wanting to trade anything else in the world for her not to be there, so she'd never see him kept like Negan's fucking pet dog.
He realized he was staring at her boots and lifted his gaze. He was free. He wasn't kneeling no more. Not even for a second, not even with his eyes.
She was chewing on the inside of her lip, her eyes wet. A tear was starting to wick into the tiny crow's feet at the edges of her eyes.
He didn't know what to say. He wanted to come in, but she wasn't asking.
His guts wrung uneasily, and all the gastric gymnastics knocked free a deep, throaty grumble from his stomach.
"Sorry," he muttered. He couldn't seem to eat enough since he got out of the Saviors' compound. A sandwich a day was plenty to live on but it was like his anger was torching through every scrap of sustenance he could find, his muscles twitching like they were growing by the hour, impatient to be put to use against Negan and his men.
Carol smiled. "C'mon." She stepped back. "You can at least eat before you go. I have plenty and unless Rick's gotten to be a lot better farmer, it's been a while since you had fresh fruit that wasn't an apple."
"Rick ain't no farmer."
His stride across the threshold was too fast and he had to jerk to a stop to keep from colliding with Carol's back. But she didn't comment, just led the way inside.
She opened a side door and retrieved a few pieces of fruit—stuff he hadn't seen since grocery stores—and carried it into the kitchen. He thought about offering to help, but Carol had her own rhythm in the kitchen and she rarely so much as let him chop anything, even though he hated not having something to do with his hands.
Instead he wandered through the living room, squinting at the floral couch, the ruffled curtains. He'd never been inside a house that was just Carol's before. He squinted at a picture of misshapen, cartoony birds and fruit.
"How long you been here?"
"A few weeks."
He snorted.
"Decorating hasn't been my highest priority," she said dryly.
The living room was clean, neat except for the drips of wax on a piece of cardboard laid beneath the wall-mounted candles. Two books rested on the coffee table next to an empty mug with brown dregs in it. Maybe whiskey. Probably tea.
"Quiet round here." He picked up one of the books, but it looked like something his grandma would read. Something boring enough he'd rather sleep, about people talking and talking and acting rich and depressed.
"Quiet enough to read," she said as if she'd been watching what he was doing, though when he glanced back, her eyes were focused on her mixing bowl. "Ezekiel keeps the walkers to a minimum, near the Kingdom."
"Playing king," he said derisively. He and his friends used to do the same thing, in the woods out back of their house. Gave it up when he was about six, and realized no Dixon was ever gonna be king of anything.
"He plays at being a king," Carol said, "but he's dead serious about looking after his people."
Daryl came closer to the kitchen. He wouldn't have figured Carol'd have any use for a puffed up idiot talking like he was in a kid's play. But then, Ezekiel's people were always training, even the kids. The walls were strong, the gardens bursting, the streets clean. More'n he could say for Alexandria right now.
She peeked up at him. "I laughed, too. When I first met him."
"Talks like an asshole."
A laugh jumped out of her, but she turned away and he couldn't tell how long the smile had lasted on her face. "Do you want meat or fruit?"
Both. He wanted both, in piles. Everything went down easier than that dog food and stale bread, and anything Carol made would taste like it was served straight off an angel's wing. "Don't matter. Whatever you can spare."
She turned a peach over in her hand. "How's Maggie?" She didn't look at him.
"You really wanna know?"
She sighed. "No."
He spun a chair around, sat backwards in it. If she knew, it would eat at her. If she didn't know, she'd wonder. In his cell, he'd had his fill of both. "Baby's okay," he said.
She nodded.
He propped his arms on the back of the chair and stared at her. Weren't no point in pretending like he wasn't and the sight of her kept catching him off guard with how real it was.
All that time, stuck in that cell waiting for Negan to kill him, he'd wanted one goddamn thing.
He'd wanted more.
Just like Negan and his fucking goons. It wasn't just about getting by. Just wasn't. It was about getting it all. Difference was, he didn't want other people's stuff. He wanted his own.
He wanted more time. A family. Or hell, at least people who'd back him up the way Rick had. Rick'd been coming after him. He knew it, never had to ask. That's why he was at Hilltop, under the radar with all his best fighters. Rick had tried the peaceful way, too. Swallowed his pride and asked in front of everybody if Daryl could come home.
And the devil drag him down to hell, but he couldn't do the same. Couldn't beg. Not even for that, not even right after Rick'd done it for him.
Still, wasn't his pride he missed in that cell. Was everything he never had the guts to reach for, back when he was free. The beautiful woman slicing nectarines in this kitchen. A home that really felt like one, not all this borrowed shit with birds on the walls or the houses back in Alexandria with kitchen counters that looked like bank floors. A name he made his own. Not just another fucked up Dixon like his Daddy, or even his brother.
Daryl wasn't nobody but him, but it meant little enough and that was his fault. When he burned the Saviors to the ground, everybody was gonna know what that fucking name meant. Because he wasn't going to shove anybody's faces in the ashes, drag out their tears and cash them in for food. They were going to see him win, know he could have stomped on their necks like Negan had, and instead, he was gonna walk away. He'd be back here before the fire went out, to try and start a future he could be proud of.
If he was still alive.
In that cell, he figured he had a week, maybe less. Now? Maybe less'n that. But Abraham had once asked him, "You ever think about settling down?" and he thought the man was crazy. Not here, not now in the midst of all this shit. As it turned out, Abraham hadn't had much time left at all, but even in that little bit, he'd had more life than Daryl had ever managed. Not one, but two beautiful women to cry over his grave.
He'd been somebody. Not like Daryl.
And now, Daryl wanted more.
His ideas about what that meant had been all tangled up with Carol. Except now that he was here, she didn't want more. Hell, she didn't even want the little they'd already had.
She had turned her back on him. First for Tobin, and then for nothing. The empty, walker-infested hell of the open road. She'd done what he told Merle was impossible—survived in this world without a single other person.
He stood up, his knees popping with the abrupt movement. "Imma go."
Her face went from relaxed to stricken in an instant. "What? But you haven't eaten."
"You wanna be alone. Shoulda listened."
"Daryl!" She'd come halfway around the kitchen island and he stopped in the doorway to the living room. Turned back.
He looked straight into her eyes. Nothing hidden. He'd be dead soon, or Negan would be. Most likely both.
"I know what I want," he said clearly. "Ain't what you want. Ain't Ed. Won't just take it."
Her hand rose, shaking, to her throat. "I can't go back with you," she whispered, achingly.
Daryl took a step forward, his heart pounding so hard it swung black shadows across the edge of his vision. He was so damn hungry. "Not yet. But it'll be safe again soon. Won't have to do nothin' you don't wanna."
He'd find enough dynamite to blow a hole in the state of Virginia and he was done sparing people who could come back to haunt him. He'd clean out the whole fucking east coast before he brought her home again.
He'd worked enough odd jobs before the turn; he knew where the explosives got hid. Mining camps, construction sites. Inside trailer walls and locked into tool boxes on ordinary-seeming trucks. People who liked explosives were paranoid motherfuckers, and he knew how they thought.
Carol would never have to dig another grave, not if he could help it.
"It won't ever be safe," she said. "Not in this world."
Disappointment flooded in. "Then what you doing here?" If Alexandria wasn't safe, this little ranch house with its veneer paneling was nothing more than a matchbox waiting for a strike.
"Having less to lose," she said, her eyes bright blue and luminous.
"Don't matter how much you have, or how little. You lose, all the same." He looked away.
"Least here, I'll die on my terms."
Daryl flicked his eyes back to her face. "I know you. You'll die on your own terms, no matter where ya are."
She made her choices, same as he did. She may not like them. He sure didn't, mosta the time. But nobody was pulling their fucking strings but them. Weren't no different here than Alexandria, 'cept she didn't have to watch nobody die.
The memory of Glenn's head smeared across the ground, Maggie's sobs ringing in his ears drove him half mad, because Carol was right and entirely fucking wrong and he stalked right up onto her toes.
"Listen," he snarled. "Ya decide what you do, whatcha won't do. You don't like it, make it different next time. You get to do that 'cause you ain't dead. I left people alive. Shouldn't have. You killed people when you didn't wanna. Then fine, don't kill 'em. Maybe gets you dead, someday. But you ain't dead yet. This the life you want?" He threw his arm out. "Books and graves? Got nobody. Nothin'."
She flinched, her face going tight.
"You wanna die on your own terms?" he growled, furious suddenly because that's very nearly what he had done. Until somebody left him a key, that's exactly what the fuck he had been planning on doing. And he hadn't even known she was missing. "Fine. But you ain't livin' on your own terms. This ain't you."
He glared at her, searingly, because he'd dreamed about this woman. Remembered her, talked to her in his head. Fantasized about her. And the whole time, she'd been gone. Disappearing into floral couches and ruffled curtains and nothing. Hadn't been thinking of him back. But he understood that. He didn't understand leaving your family. He didn't understand giving up.
Daryl walked out.
Author's Note: One more chapter to this one, folks. Maybe two. Gonna have to bust ass to get 'em out before Sunday.