He didn't need a mirror to know how bad he looked. Peeled, red-rimmed eyeballs, hollow with lack of sleep (and from bawling like a broken-hearted child, although he'd made sure no one had been witness to that.) All it lacked was a nice drizzle of blood and you probably could have mistaken him for one of those flu-wrought walkers.
It had all gone to shit. Here they'd come back with everyone in one piece for a change, bringing the medication and equipment that was supposed to help all those people in isolation with the flu…
While Daryl'd been out heading up a crew that was trying to save his damn family, his good pal Rick had fucking knifed him in the back.
He leaned in the doorway, just out of sight, listening to her voice, clear and steady, reading aloud to the kids sitting on the floor around her. It all was just so damn' normal, he felt like there should be some blue-haired grandma standing at a counter, stamping due dates and shushing anyone who talked, or even closed a book too hard. OK, so even he knew they didn't do that stuff anymore, although it had been a while since he'd taken a book out of a library, but that's how he always thought of it. He'd deny it if anyone asked him, but he'd stolen a lot of happy hours holed up at the library, meeting Rima in the South American jungle or riding The Black or exploring some creepy old house with Joe and Frank Hardy. It was nice, thinking that these kids could have some of that, too.
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
"And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
"I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me."
He remembered that one from school. It didn't piss him off the way so many poems did, because it was pretty clear what it meant - that hope was the one thing that kept you going, sometimes, and it was pretty hard to kill. He guessed that was mostly right, even now - how many times had they thought they were cooked, or that they'd lost one of their own, and had it come up okay somehow? They'd lost a lot - Sophia, and Lori, and T, and Dale - Merle - so many dead - but they'd come through more times than you would have thought natural, and sometimes it felt like the only thing that had kept them from falling completely apart was that stupid little feathery bitch, Hope. Now there was something you'd want embroidered on a pillow, wasn't it.
He could hear Carol now, explaining to the kids what the poem was talking about, and he didn't figure his interpretation would fit too good with her lesson plan, so he made himself scarce before he went in there and screwed it all up, talking about librarians and card catalogs and shit they'd never understand anyway.
"What about Carol? She up in A-block with Lizzie?" He hadn't seen her since he'd gotten back, but what with cleaning up all the walkers that Rick and Carl had taken down when the fence failed, he hadn't had a spare minute to go looking, either. Hershel's eyes were sorrowful, and Daryl felt his heart begin to race. He was sure they'd have told him first if she'd gone down with the flu, or got bit, but hearing that she was "okay" and Hershel's insistence that he talk to Rick did flat-out zero to make him feel any better.
He found Rick in the garden with Carl, picking peas. "So what gives with Carol, hoss? Hershel said you'd know, but he wouldn't tell me. If she ain't in with the sick and she ain't out here, where the hell is she?"
And the ground dropped out from under him.
His knuckles hurt like a motherfucker, first from mashing Rick's teeth in and then from being battered against the brick of the prison walls. He was pretty sure he'd broken something in there, but the worst pain was inside him, and there wasn't any oxy or morphine or even his old buddy Johnny Walker that could numb that. He didn't even remember hitting Rick, or thrashing around like a wild thing when Tyreese and Michonne pulled him away from the other man, keeping him from stomping his ribs in. He'd only backed down when Michonne drew on him, the flash of the katana in the sun breaking through his single-minded urge to drive Rick Grimes' face under the earth. He wasn't sure whether she would have used it on him. He wasn't sure that he cared.
Carol. Gone. It was enough to put him on his knees, and did.
He would have gone after her right then, and had meant to, but as Hershel tended to his busted-up hands, they'd heard shots, and all hell had broken loose out in the courtyard. The next hours were a blur of gunfire and shouts and the smell of cordite and blood. As near as anyone could make out, a small force of armed men had tried again to take the prison, cutting the fence at the furthest point down the line to gain access. Some of the Woodbury people swore they'd seen that one-eyed bastard, the Governor, among them.
Tyreese had taken a bad hit to the upper arm, and Hershel wasn't sure yet if he'd keep it. Four of the Woodies were shot dead, he didn't know which of them. Fuckers weren't even smart enough to stay down in a firefight. The old man Carol'd been fussing over, the one who kept talking about his dead wife, died in the mess hall, Hershel thought from a heart attack. Maggie had been hit in the calf, but the bullet passed through and looked to heal up clean. An older woman named Jessie died from the flu, just hadn't been strong in the first place and the medicine hadn't been soon enough for her. She'd been locked up in her cell in isolation, though, so when she turned she hadn't been a danger to anyone else, and they'd put her down as soon as the worst of the danger seemed to be over.
Now he was hunkered down on the balcony of the guard tower, watching for movement in the dim starlight and trying to fight down the panic. She'd been out there for more than a day and a half, alone. His brain just kept calculating the number of things that could have gone wrong for her, kept running little movies of Carol running, hiding, scared, hurt, bitten… it made him want to puke, or howl with fear, so much he had to clamp his hand over his mouth to prevent it. She could already be dead.
Every minute she got further away, her trail got colder. And although the prison wasn't under fire right this second, they needed every able hand to hold what they'd protected so long and bled so much to keep. Judith, Hershel, Glenn, Maggie, Beth, Carl, Lizzie and Mika, all of the fucking whiny-ass Woodies he couldn't keep straight - even that backstabbing motherfucker Rick, who he hoped was writhing in pain from his busted mouth right now - he couldn't just ride out that gate and ever hope to see them alive again. How was he supposed to choose?
She was as much a part of him as breathing. She was the thing that guided him home when he was feeling lost, his conscience and his steady spirit and he thought it would split him in two, to even think he could lose her now, after all they'd been through. But she was strong, and he knew she'd taken to heart everything he'd tried to teach her about how to survive. If she just laid low, and didn't take too many chances... Be smart, Carol, and hang on. I'm coming for you, just as soon as I can.
That Dickenson woman was dead wrong. As far as he was concerned, Hope was not some damn thing with feathers, like in that poem. Most of the time Hope was a sadistic little bastard lurking in a darkened alleyway with a razor, waiting to slit your throat.