Title from 'Little Lion Man' by Mumford and Sons.
five.
He gets out a little faster.
That's all it takes; all Daryl has to do is put on a little extra speed and he gets there in time, dodges that last walker instead of braining it, hears her scream.
The sound cuts off, sudden like the stop of his heart, and he's out on the road with his crossbow up before he can think. The walker's shuffling after him but Beth is struggling in someone's arms, flailing out as she tries to resist being shoved into a dark car and Daryl fires, still not thinking, just reacting, and the bolt catches that shadowy figure right in the head. It's instinct, by now, he might have justified… But he doesn't, doesn't need to justify shit when this man was taking Beth, taking everything good that's left, and Daryl would murder the driver as well without hesitation but he peels out of there too fast.
Beth falls to the ground, and Daryl skids to catch her in his arms, dropping to his knees as he tugs her close and says, "Beth, Beth, Beth, y'alright, Beth," trying to pat her down for injuries and trying to clutch her close enough to erase what almost just happened and trying not to fuckin' cry, "Beth –"
There's a horrible snarl behind him, and shit if he didn't forgot the damn walker. He dropped his crossbow, his arms are full of hurt girl, he's not reacting quick enough (and getting bit now would just be the icing on the fucking cake) but then a slim arm slips up past his shoulder, there's a flash of a blade and then a sudden dead (still) weight slumping onto his back, and wide eyes blinking up at him and – they stay there, breathing hard.
Daryl breaks the moment first. "Beth," he says again, and ignores the walker corpse sliding down his back to shuffle her closer, to run shaky thumbs down her arms, down her cheeks, "You okay?"
She's light like a bird in his grasp, just staring at him for what feels like days before she nods. "Yeah," she says, but ducks her head all of a sudden, presses her forehead into his shoulder. And – it doesn't sound like she's crying, but she's trembling (like he's trembling), and digs her head a little harder against him and just stays like that for a minute, for more, for as long as she wants because he sure as hell ain't thinking clearly enough to pull away any time soon.
"Let's not stay here," Beth says, quiet into his shirt and Daryl just nods, can't do anything but.
"Yeah, okay," he tells her. "Let's go," and they do, quiet in the night with Beth leaning heavy into his side, leaving all the dead behind.
-xxx-
four.
He reacts a little faster.
It happens in seconds, like these things always do. The whole situation, with walkers falling in through the fuckin' roof, has already gone from zero to sixty and when Bob is trapped time revs up even more. He's not thinking anything, it's impossible to think in situations like this, the blood pounding through your head is always too damn loud for anything but pure instinct to take over – and instinct is always telling him how to survive. How to get out alive, and fuck the rest.
That's how it's always been. Maybe how it should be, but lately that's been changing. Daryl's been changing. He can't do that anymore. Doesn't want to do that anymore, if he ever did, and finally feels like he can be different. All it's taken is the end of the fucking world, but it's finally happened because – because in a world like this you need people. Daryl needs people – maybe he could listen to those old instincts and survive just fine, but it wouldn't be any kind of life worth living. He's surrounded by people who trust him, now, people who count on him, who listen to him and smile at him (and ask if he was a homicide detective with complete seriousness – him). Somehow these people look to him as some kind of leader along with the rest of the council, and it may not be deserved but as uncomfortable as the admiration is, he wants to keep it. Wants to keep all of it, this home they've built, the family they've collected along the way.
He's goddamn sick of losing them, is all, and instead of running after yanking Bob out from under the shelf, Daryl reacts just a fragment of a second faster. Turns around in time. Grabs Zach by the shoulder and rips him forward just in time so the walker's teeth close on empty air instead of ankle.
It's as simple as that, but it changes everything because it's been a month now and no one has died, this makes thirty-one days and he's managed to keep even idiots like Zach alive, it feels like he's finally gaining instead losing.
They don't bring any supplies home but the next morning Zach comes up to Daryl at breakfast and says (with a smile so carefree it sets something deep in him to aching), "So, I really think I've got it this time..."
-xxx-
three.
He follows a little faster.
Chases a little harder, is all, fights a little more against that burning in his throat, that dread because he knows already what this is gonna be, knows from the moment he sees Michonne walking through that field alone, feels something like hate and something like love rising up in him (because finally, finally, this is his brother).
He's not gonna let him leave. Not again.
Daryl sprints till he's sweating and out of breath, a stitch searing in his side, and then he presses through the pain and just keeps going, slows a little but doesn't ever stop until he hears the sound of loud music mixed with gunfire, of screaming and shouting and walkers snarling, of good old-fashioned Merle chaos. He slows down, then, forces his breathing quiet, his steps soft, sidles carefully around behind the rotten buildings.
He sees when they get Merle. And it's all a mess of bodies tumbling around, nothing he can get a sight on, so he's left trying to get closer without anyone else catching him, and then the goddamn Governer's there, yanking an arm around his brother's neck and dragging him inside. There's no way he can charge straight in after them without getting caught by Martinez and his men, but no one has seen him yet and Daryl ducks behind a car, slips around the side of the building, trying to find another way in, trying to ignore the rapidfire of his heart and the sounds of the fight, thinking no one kills a Dixon but a Dixon, no one kills –
Merle screams.
Daryl gives up on subtle and busts in through the next window he sees, and doesn't have time to fire a bolt, just fuckin' smashes his crossbow into the Governer's head, dislodging his hands from Merle's neck, and then hits him again, and again, and again till he's not moving anymore.
Turns to Merle, sitting there with his face bloody, his hand – Jesus, his hand – and staring at Daryl like he's actually surprised by this (there's that burning in his throat, again).
"C'mon," Daryl says, reaching out to his brother, "we gotta go before they realize I'm here, c'mon."
Merle's lips twist and tremble and he opens them to say something – stupid, it'd be complete shit like everything else out of his mouth (but a Dixon, Daryl's mind is screaming in panic, Merle's the only one who can kill Merle) –
"Don't make me leave you," he begs.
Merle's eyes flicker.
Then he reaches up. Grabs Daryl's hand (blood slipping between their palms), and they fall out the back window even as the door's kicked in behind them.
They're bloodied and battered, bullets singing at their heels and no idea if the Governor's dead or alive behind them, but they make it out (together).
They make it.
-xxx-
two.
He leaves the shed a little faster.
There's no point to lingering with the kid, so he doesn't. Ties him back up, shoves a rag into his mouth and gets the hell out of there, heading back towards camp. He's walking quick, head ducked to watch the grass disappearing under his feet as he tries not to think about what didn't happen tonight – and that's probably the only reason he doesn't notice sooner. At the scream, though, he looks up.
Sees a dark shape toppling down beneath another, and he's sprinting forward. Realizes the man on the ground is Dale when he's about halfway there and his breath just goes, falls right out his lungs. He's tackling the walker a second later, killing it before he turns back to the old man, and shit, his shirt is all cut up, his stomach's bloody, shit, Daryl finds himself yelling for help, waving his arms in the air, falling back to his knees and saying stupid stuff, "hang in there buddy," he's frantic and he doesn't want to think why, as Dale gasps frantically, looks up at him with wide eyes.
Daryl falls back as the rest of the group arrives, ends up hovering in the background as they panic about the dirty cuts in his stomach, babbling over each other about infection, calling for Hershel, to get him inside where they've got hot water and antibiotics, quick–
He steps back in then. Pushes Andrea out of the way a little, easier to scoop Dale up in his arms and start marching back towards the house, not bothering to wait for anyone else.
"Don't worry, old man, I gotcha," he's muttering, and Dale groans but somehow comes up with a smile, and his eyes look wet.
"I know," he says, just before the crowd catches up, some of them running on ahead to get things ready, others walking in a desperate little circle round Daryl and Dale, not really helping at all but faces pale, steps unsteady. Andrea latches onto Dale's hand and it doesn't make carrying him any easier but she's crying, and Dale's gripping back hard (and she spoke up for Randall, in the end) – and Daryl doesn't tell her to back off.
He doesn't say anything, not for a long time. Leaves Dale in Hershel's hands and then steps back, well out of the way – at first in the corner of the room, but eventually he backs out of the bickering crowd completely and heads to his tent where he can finally get some quiet, away from all the pieces of what's left of this group.
Not peace, not as long as they still don't know if Dale will make it (not with Randall in the shed; not with Dale in his head, telling him you're a decent man and acting like what he thinks matters; not when he would've killed that kid) – but at least quiet.
It's midmorning before Andrea makes her way over to him. He doesn't watch her coming, doesn't look up from sharpening a new bolt, doesn't say a thing when she stops and looks down at him.
"Dale's alive," she tells him. "He's gonna be okay. He wanted me to tell you thanks, for saving him and – and for not killing Randall."
Daryl glances up at her, then bites his lip and goes back to sharpening, trying not to think, trying not to – it was Rick's call that saved Randall. He didn't speak up against the execution because it made sense, cold hard survival sense (but he'd wanted to say…)
"No need to thank me," Daryl mutters (and remembers Dale's voice shaking; remembers the complete panic he'd felt when he saw the man under a walker; remembers the way Dale had sounded so confident in him, even while he was bleeding in Daryl's arms). He digs his knife a little deeper into the wood, flaking off a thin strip, and doesn't look up as he mumbles, "Tell 'im to take care."
"Will do," Andrea says, and it sounds like she's smiling.
-xxx-
one.
He walks a little faster.
Does everything else exactly the same, only difference is he lets himself boil up a little more when Rick tells him he's been let off the hook like he expects him to just stop looking for that little girl now. Like Daryl ever thought he owed them anything in the first place. Those words piss him off, and he knows he shouldn't but he sacrifices stealth for speed, doesn't make more than a casual attempt to look for tracks as he stomps along, getting as far from the farm as fast as he can.
He only slows down when he sees the house.
Goes inside careful like you have to be now, checks room by room across the ground floor, and maybe it's just in his head but he's learned to trust these instincts by now and something's whispering in his mind not alone not alone.
He gets to the kitchen last and stops altogether when he sees the can of sardines in the trash. Open. He picks it up, sniffs it – fresh, too. Can't have been more than a few minutes, since there aren't even flies.
Daryl pours the juice out into the trash can and hears a little muffled squeak. Looks straight up at a door that ain't all the way shut.
He's got his crossbow up cause he's not stupid, but right before he yanks the door open he finds himself holding his breath, tries not to think he hears someone else breathing tiny panicked breaths, can't help (stupid as it is, stupid as all of this is) hoping –
The girl screams when she sees him. Cowers in the corner and cries and refuses to calm down even after he's already dropped his bow and called her by name, said, "Sophia, Sophia it's me, it's Daryl, I'm not gonna hurt ya, Sophia it's okay –"
She tries to run, anyway, and he has to catch her around the middle and lift her up into the air and she's light as a bone in his grasp, dirty and starved and terrified and alive and he yells, "Sophia your mom sent me!" and suddenly all is still.
"It's Daryl," he says again. Sets her down, warily, and tries to look her in the eye. "Been looking for you, girl. Your momma's worried sick."
Her eyes are darting all around, nervous as hell but her breathing's slowing down a little, and it takes a long time but he just sits there and waits, until she finally looks at him and keeps looking, till her little hand reaches out and stops just short of touching his own.
"I want my mom," she whispers in a very small, cracked little voice, and Daryl nods.
"C'mon then," he says, standing up and leading the way outside.
They walk past a blooming Cherokee rose, and his mouth twitches up (with something he hasn't felt in a long while).
-xxx-
zero.
He runs as fast as he can.
Chases after his friends, yelling for them to wait up, chases after the sirens, shoes pounding on the pavement, heart pounding in his ears, and he can almost keep up, almost but he's not fast enough.
He rounds the last corner and they're all looking at him.
And it's his house burning (his mom, burning).
He stands there alone, gasping for air, and watches as it all burns down to nothing.
That's what they tell him, later: nothing. Over and over again: nothing, nothing, nothing.
"There's nothing left of her."
"There was nothing you could've done."
"There's nothing to do now but try and put it behind you."
And Daryl says nothing back. Does nothing when his dad gets worse than ever; grows up and becomes nothing, just drifting around after Merle.
(But he dreams about it, wakes up shaking for months, trembling and heart pounding and half-expecting his mother to come in because it didn't have to be nothing, it didn't, he could have changed it, gone in there and pulled her out, he could have fixed all of it, if –
if he was just a little faster.)