This is the first piece of fanfic I've ever written, I was thinking about Rick and Daryl's relationship and it just sort of happened. They give me a lot of feelings, I guess. Please feel free to give constructive feedback, though I don't know if I'll ever write anything else unless I am inexplicably inspired again. Nevertheless, hope you enjoy!
Takes place after their scene together in "A", though I guess it doesn't really matter when it takes place since it's really more of a character study than anything. Whatever.
It was after their words faded out, sitting by that car with his face still covered in the stick and stiff of another man's blood, that Rick began to remember. He remembered Shane's hostile words to him a lifetime ago, arguing together on a barren highway.
You can't keep them safe.
Now, over a year later, he still had his son. He had lost almost everything else – his wife, his daughter, his best friend, and most of the new family they had somehow built from the ashes. He had lost part of himself in there, somewhere, too. A part that had been severed from him and withered away long before he sank his teeth into another man's neck. For Carl's safety, it was worth the price. He could accept what he'd become, wondered what Shane would think now.
And as he so often did, he found himself thinking of Shane. Shane, whose name Carl had angrily thrown at him just the other day, a shot aimed to wound deeply.
You remember him?
Every day.
It was true. Rick remembered Shane every day, but not the man he had killed as they stood together in the moonlight on the farm so long ago. He remembered the brother he'd had before, who he'd played hookey with through high school, who he had gone into the force with, who'd gotten him drunker than he'd ever been at his bachelor party and stood as his best man a few days later.
To Rick, that Shane had been dead when he'd awoken from his coma. He didn't know it then, but the man he found was not the brother he knew. This Shane was different – he didn't trust Rick, he undermined and second-guessed his every step, he tried to take his wife and child. He tried to kill him. Even now, all those good memories from before were tinged with a hint of bitterness and anger, never able to recapture their purity, covered by a shadow of how it all would end.
But somehow, even though he had lost his first brother, he'd found another.
Daryl wasn't Shane. Where Shane was loud and wore that broad, jockey grin, Daryl gave only rare smirks. Where Shane would joke, Daryl held a dry sense of humor that didn't show itself often and could easily be missed if you didn't know the man.
Where Rick and Shane had so often brought physical expression to their brotherhood – touching foreheads together, a firm hug – touching Daryl was often brief and fleeting. It was a momentary pat on the shoulder, or a brushing of his fingers on Rick's stomach.
But their trust in one another, it had become what Rick had lost with Shane. It began slowly, blossoming over the winter as so much withered around Rick. His failing relationship with Lori and the pressures of leadership bending him like a broken reed. But he began to find himself turning to Daryl, looking first to him as backup or a second opinion.
He hadn't wanted to let another person in like that, not after Shane's betrayal. Daryl could never fill those shoes, and even now he still didn't. But he didn't need to.
Daryl wasn't Shane. He followed Rick with a trust that sometimes seemed too deep, an unbending belief that Rick would always make the best call. He filled the gaps Rick left open, stepping up to lead the group when Rick was lost. Saved his daughter. Saved Rick's own life, too, more than once. Where Shane sought to lead, Daryl sought to support, always sidestepping glory.
They'd fallen into a sync Rick had thought he'd never have again. A silent understanding, entire sentences of meaning put into a single look or brief nod shared between the two. Their disagreements were understated, not the fistfights and yelling matches he'd had with Shane. Even when Daryl had been livid with him just a few days ago, he'd never hit Rick, never pressed him against the wall and threatened him.
And after everything, when they'd found each other again, Rick felt them slipping back into their routine like it had never been lost.
You're my brother.
He'd not said those words since Shane. He'd said them knowing what it meant for them both, each having lost his first brother. He said them to a man who had stepped up and filled those empty spaces even when Rick had kept them so guarded.
He said those words to a man he knew he could trust with his own life, with the life of his son, all he had left.
Daryl wasn't Shane, because he didn't need to be. Daryl was just Daryl, his brother.