Of Monsters and Men
Cider Sky
Before sending Daryl to the arena, the Governor decides to speak with him. Things don't go well for Daryl. Gen. Torture.
A/N: Just wanted to post a trigger warning for torture and waterboarding, as well as mentions of child abuse. Written for the TWD-kinkmeme.
There's too many of them – it's a couple dozen against five so he tells them to go ahead without him. Not a moment later and he runs out of ammo. Daryl looks back towards where Rick and the others had headed and spots Oscar, laid out on his back, a pool of blood under his head, and curses.
He doesn't see anyone else and he can only hope that means they've gotten away, that he's done his job right.
The sharp, loud ping of a bullet against metal has him shrinking down behind the bench he'd previously been firing over – he's pinned down, he realizes with a rush of adrenaline.
There's a lull and he can hear them shouting and then the scrape of boots. He doesn't need to look back to know they are rushing his position. Daryl takes a moment to steal himself against the small thrill of nervous energy – the one that is reminding him he is very exposed and in no small danger of getting mowed down by one of their AK-47s – and makes a run for the bus.
"There's one of 'em– stop'm!" The voice – male – cuts through the residual sounds of gunfire and confused shouts, and as soon as the man finishes, bullets are nipping at his heels, dust and bits of concrete shooting up at him.
Daryl barely has time to register how well and truly fucked he is before rough hands grab at his vest, dragging him to the hard concrete.
Gotta' buy more time, he thinks as the man – not Merle, the voice to low and gravelly - shouts out for help.
He throws an elbow out, an instinct born of years with a brother like Merle, and he catches something hard – his attacker's face, hopefully – and he manages to roll away.
"Fuck –" the man sputters and Daryls up.
There's a handgun, just feet from him, probably his assailants and he lunges. He wonders how far the others could have gotten by now, just as he wonders whether Merle is there in the fog, trying to kill him.
He makes it another two feet before the hands are back – groping and uncoordinated. Daryl twists and manages to make the bastard stumble, but the man kicks out, catching him in the shin, and they both topple over.
Daryl grunts as he meets pavement again and this time he goes down hard, the weight of his attacker making him see stars and feel breathless.
Another pair of hands claw at him, then a third pair and he's fucked. They take his crossbow and someone slams the but of a gun into the back of his head.
They shove a bag over his head and someone presses a knee into his back, pinning him against glass-covered pavement as they bind his hands.
"Fucker broke my nose." A breathless man complains and Daryl feels a rush of satisfaction; if he hadn't been so outnumbered he would have done more than just broken the shit's nose.
"Stop complainin'. Besides, he'll get his, for what they've done –"
They chuckle humorlessly – it's intended to scare him, to intimidate him, but Daryl doesn't let it get to him. The others got away, he was sure, and that was enough.
Daryl fights the whole way, shrugging out of their grasp when he can, kicking out when they get ahead of him, until someone yanks at him, pushing him down into a chair – it's so forceful he almost takes it down, toppling to the side, but whoever is holding onto him has a good, bruising grip, and keeps him upright.
He's breathing too quickly and the inside of the sack is hot and stuffy – he takes a minute to slow his breaths and strains to catch words through the commotion outside. He listens selectively as he works on the knots around his wrists, listening for any word concerning the others.
He doesn't hear anything that would suggest they've been captured. Good.
"Tie him down –" Another faceless man says, and his arms are forced over the back of the chair. He pulls away, grunting in pure insolence, but it's a useless movement – within seconds his already bound hands are tethered to the chair and his ankles follow suite.
An instant later, the bag is ripped off his head and Daryl winces against the sudden stab of pain it sends through his head. He catches a bare glimpse of the man –Hispanic, backwards ball cap, strap of an AK-47 stretched across his chest – before a fist connects with his cheekbone.
He can feel his skin split and the bones in his neck crack ominously as his head whips to the side.
"Martinez – " Daryl spits a wad of blood and is careful to turn back towards the two men with care, not wanting to set his head to spinning. He needs his wits about him, that's for certain.
"You shouldn't do that. We should wait for the Governor –" the man who hadn't him in the face says it in a calm, almost bored manner, as he backs to the door, peering out to see if the man in question is coming.
"Probably not, but still – puta broke my nose." The man is with wringing out his knuckles – apparently his face had been harder than expected – and Daryl takes the opportunity to check out his surroundings.
It's a room in a warehouse, more than likely, but it's not exactly what one would expect when dragged around, tied and blinded. There's an aggravating drip drip drip of water into a bucket – why they'd bothered with the bucket was a damn mystery because the whole place is concrete with paned glass windows, everything grungy and wet.
But … there's a fucking record player in the corner, pictures on the walls, a chair upholstered in felt – fuckin' creepy.
"The Governor will want him fresh for the ring." Other guy says – black, large and with a stoic expression that suggested he wasn't the friendly type – and Daryl fixes him with an unimpressed stare.
It's then that he realizes the bastard has his crossbow.
"Best not touch that." Daryl's voice is low and threatening and though his throat is feeling rough, his voice doesn't sound the least bit hoarse.
"Yeah? Or, what?" He hefted the crossbow up, putting Daryl into his sights.
"Come closer and see you pussy." Daryl his fists clenching as he pulled lightly against the bonds, testing their strength. If he was fast enough he could probably kneecap the fuck –
The man takes a step forward, his body language broadcasting a right hook.
"You piece of shi –" Before either of them can make a move the loud creak of the metal door splits the air, and it goes cold – dead silent.
The door is behind him, so Daryl can't see who is entering but he can hear his boots against the concrete and he can see the way the man in front of him backs away, relenting, forgetting his anger.
"Now, is that anyway to treat a guest?"
"Sorry, Governor, was waiting for you, but the bastard's got a mouth – " Daryl can feel him coming up behind him and then, suddenly and with no more than a shallow scuff, the sound of his boots comes to a stop. He must be right there, standing behind him, this fucking 'Governor' he'd been hearing about for the whole damn day.
The silence stretches on, but Daryl resists the urge to crane his head to the side.
"You and yours caused a lot of trouble tonight, killed a lot of good people –" The Governor starts and damn, if it weren't slightly unnerving to be having this conversation with his back to the man; Daryl had never been a fan of keeping his back to trouble.
" – you see, I'm not an unreasonable man, I just want answers. Something I can give to the good people of Woodbury in face of all this unnecessary carnage –"
The Governor is moving again and Daryl tracks the sound with his eyes, glancing towards the right of him where he can hear rustling, a sound that's too nondescript to be identifiable.
A moment later a record begins to play; it's a song he's never heard before. It clashes terribly with the unpredictable drip.
The two men before him shift their weight and it's the first sign of discomfort – then come the boots and no more than a second later, the Governor is standing in front of him.
Daryl looks up, taking in the bandage over the eye, the splatters of blood on his clothing, the scratches on his neck – a small thrill of anxiety wells in his stomach; it could have been any of them. Maybe he'd been wrong and this bastard had already killed one of them, his family – maybe, all of them.
" – and if you give me the answers I'm looking for, well, you'll be welcome to stay here, with us, with your brother." If Daryl hadn't already known that his brother was here he wouldn't have been able to guard his reaction. But he does. It's still surprising, hearing confirmation of his brother's presence here, but he doesn't want to give this twisted shit anything.
The Governor's brow furrows for a mere millisecond, so minimal and quick that Daryl would have missed it if he hadn't been looking for the confusion, the disappointment over his under reaction.
But it's quickly replaced with a smile as he turns back to his men.
"Thought you said he had a mouth on him." It's meant to sound like a friendly joke and they laugh accordingly, even as the Governor grimaces.
Whatever faux friendliness the man had been playing suddenly disappears and something ugly crosses features as a hand ghosts across his injured eye.
"Do you know what we do here, Daryl?" Daryl chews the inside of his lip, unwilling to play, as
"We build." Daryl huffs because it's pathetic and cliché, but the Governor continues, clearly serious, "Society is crumbling around us and we are here to bring it back to what is was, something better – "
"That why you kidnap kids off the road, torture 'em –" there's a loud, metallic bang and even the Governor's cronies flinch, if barely.
"You're failing to see the bigger picture." The Governor says as stands in front of the record player, leaning against the table, his back to Daryl. There's anger in it and, though it's difficult to tell, Daryl would swear up and down that the man's tense shoulders have taken to shaking.
Somethin's off, Daryl realizes.
He's known men like this, with these mannerisms, these ways about them. It's quiet instability, a simmering anger that lives just below the skin, an unresolved trauma turned into something powerful ugly.
"Martinez. Cooper. Round everyone up. Have them waiting in the ring."
There's no hesitation on either of the men's parts. Martinez brushes by him and murmurs a low, 'see you in the ring', but Daryl stares straight ahead; there's the slam of a door and then they're alone, just him and the Governor.
Fuckin' peachy. Daryl takes a deep breath, steeling himself against whatever is coming because the man damn smells like crazy and reeks of twisted fuck.
A long minute passes and the Governor still doesn't speak so Daryl takes the initiative, because why the hell not, he was already knee deep in it.
"Y' gonna turn that shit off? Givin' me a damn headache."
"This belonged to one of our residents here. Brought the whole collection on the road with him. Traveled with it for four months before he found Woodbury. Brought the folks a lot of happiness, allowed for some nostalgia where before such a thing was dangerous."
The Governor pauses as the song begins to skip – the record goes silent as the man lifts the arm and places it back on the stand.
"He died in this room." Daryl doesn't doubt it – it was a creepy ass room, half mad scientist lab, and half room from the 60s.
"You kill 'em?" Daryl snorts because he wasn't about to buy some sob story about their happy little community. What had happened tonight had been a consequence of this man's actions and was nothing compared to what they'd been through the past year.
"Cancer." The Governor doesn't drip any sadness into it. It's cold and factual and it makes his story seem useless, as if he didn't really care in the first place.
"'S your point?" That finally has the Governor returning his attention back to his prisoner and Daryl stares him down, wants to kill him for what he's done to Maggie and Glenn, Oscar, even.
"What we had here was special. We made people feel safe. Families could be families again. Your people – your people ruined that."
"We came here because you took some of ours. You did this!" Something about that sets the man off and he's lunging forward, quick to wrap his fingers around Daryl's throat, his thumb pressing deep into a pressure point.
Daryl jerks in the man's grip, resisting the urge to flinch as the chair tilts backwards.
"Groups like yours, they come in, one by one, killing our people, ruining what we're trying to fix, like a cancer –"
The Governor punctuates the last word with a tight squeeze and Daryl can see madness in his gaze and the gauze over his eye grows a small red spot in the center.
"Ain't nothin' to fix - " Daryl says in a breathless growl as he swallows against the hand around his throat. " – everyone dies."
The Governor's expression falls into something cold and calculating as his brow twitches and he releases his prisoner's throat as roughly as he'd grabbed at it, pushing the man back.
Daryl coughs in reflex but doesn't let the Governor out of his sight, even as the man backs away, turning and putting his hands on his hips as his shoulders rise and fall with sharp, angry breaths.
He watches as one of the man's hands goes up to his face again, just before resting them against a steel table, it's contents noticeable to him for the first time; a stethoscope, a glass jar, handcuffs, things he didn't recognize.
Maggie and Glenn had crossed the worst kind of folk, and his brother … what in the hell was he doing in a place like this?
Just as that thought ends, the Governor flips the table, and despite the show of anger, he doesn't make a sound as thinks go flying, breaking as they hit the floor, clanking too loudly against the concrete.
The table knocks over the bucket of water he'd forgotten about and instead of the water making a drip drip drip sound it starts going thunk thunk thunk as it hits the floor. It's the only noise that permeates after the man's sudden outburst.
The sound seems to break through whatever the hell the man is thinking and he turns his head towards the sound, his attention fully captivated and it reminds Daryl, for a moment, of a dog.
As the man moves forward again, towards the thunking of the water, he speaks.
"You've put yourself in a unique position. Redeeming, even. For you. For your people."
Daryl furrows his brow as the man bends over to inspect the bucket, turning it over in his hands.
"You're going to help me to fix things, Daryl. You're going to help me get rid those people of yours in that prison."
Daryl tells him to fuck off, calls him a damn psycho, but he might as well have said nothing because it hangs there in the air, untouched, unheard.
The Governor stands up, bucket in hand and hell, the man looks crazier than a damn bag of cats. He disappears from view and Daryl can hear the sound of running water and the splash it makes as it hits the bottom of the bucket.
The Governor is quick to return, pulling up that ugly fucking chair and putting the now full water bucket between them.
"After all, an eye for an eye." It didn't take a genius to see that this was more about his fucking eye, that this vendetta was bigger than Daryl was aware of.
"I ain't gonna tell you shit." Daryl spits back at him, his voice low and angry. This man was getting nothing from him, that he could promise.
The Governor pulls a black rag from his pocket and drops it into the bucket and an understanding of what's about to happen begins to form, clearer and clearer, in Daryl's mind.
"We'll see."
The Governor stares at him, his one good eyes searching Daryl's own bright blue pair for weaknesses, for a place he can scratch at and, eventually, fracture. He waits for him to flinch as he pulls the sopping wet rag from the bucket.
Daryl gives him nothing even though his heart has skipped a beat and the adrenaline within him has turned his stomach sour. He manages to temper his breath, even as his body tells him to hyperventilate, telling him to forget his pride because he'll need the extra oxygen it will afford him.
No. He thinks, because even as the Governor huffs in amusement, mocks him, he knows that fear is intoxicating to men like this – men like his father who, when he recognized the fear and saw tears, would hit him harder and would promise to stop only when the sniffles and moans and cries did.
"Now, if there's one thing I've learned about you from Merle, it's that you will do whatever you need to survive. We could use a man like that. It is a shame you are so unwilling to negotiate and don't share your brother's … good sense."
Good sense. Good sense didn't lead a man to chopping his own damn hand off when he knew he had a brother who would never leave him behind. Good sense didn't make men do the things Merle had.
Daryl snorts at the sheer ridiculousness.
"Your outta your damn mind – you don't know nothin' 'bout my brother."
"And what do you know about your people? Hell, the girl – Maggie - sold all of you out for her boyfriend. You're keeping the company of liars, cowards, whores –"
He doesn't allow the man to finish – his mouth is filled with blood and saliva and he pulls back his tongue, forming a good size glob, and spits directly into his face, a good portion of it catching his good eye.
Prick.
The Governor grabs the back of his head, fingers clenching around hair he should have had Carol cut, and he winces as he grazes the blossoming goose egg on the back of his head.
The man yanks his head back and Daryl tries to kick out, forgetting for a moment his bound limbs.
"I will kill you tonight." The Governor is out for fucking blood; Daryl breathes a little faster, feeling trapped as the man leans over him and hisses at him, spittle landing on his cheek.
"Then your brother and then all those people in the prison – Glenn, Rick, whoever is left, maybe save the women for last, let my men have their fun."
Before Daryl can say anything, before he can even form a half-threatening response, the man before his slapping that black, water-soaked rag over his face, and Daryl just barely manages to choke in a deep breath as the water comes.
It comes, pouring over his mouth and nose, first flowing away and down his neck, but suddenly the rag saturates completely and it's in his nostrils.
He whips his head to the side, managing to catch a breath when the water hits his cheek – the Governor's free hand pulls at his hair, forcing his neck back further and he swallows in reaction and tries not to cough when water trickles down his throat.
The water continues to come and Daryl rationalizes that eventually the bucket will run out, that the Governor will have to stop and he will use those moments to collect himself.
Daryl holds his breath and goes still, energy renewed by his reasoning and the adrenaline this twisted fucking torture session had brought with it – he begins to count because there is nothing else to hold onto.
One, two …
He thinks about how this felt exactly and nothing like when he and Merle were kids, and how whenever they went to the bayou swimming hole, infested with snakes and filthy water that'd make you sick, held his head under water.
Exactly like it because his chest aches and there's that doubt, doubt the water will ever let up. Nothing like it because he knows this man is completely willing to kill him – will kill him, wants to kills him.
… fifteen, sixteen, seventeen …
Daryl thinks of the winter and how they'd had to cross that half frozen stream, how T-Dog had gone in, chest deep and how, when Daryl had tried to help pull him out, went down to. He remembers thinking, elegantly, cold-ass water.
… forty-three, forty four …
His mind drifts to that near two day period where it was so damn hot they hadn't been able to ration the water and all the creek beds they cam across had been dry and how they were all so dehydrated their muscles stuck together like glue. How they had given Lori as much as they could each spare and how he'd given his last sip to Carl.
He had been fucking thirsty, then.
… ninety one, ninety two …
Daryl wonders where Merle is, right now. Wonders what he could possibly be doing. Wonders how the hell he had fallen into this man's company and wonders if the Governor was the one who had found him in Atlanta.
… one-hundred ….. forty, one-hundred forty-two …
Daryl realizes that counting was probably a terrible idea – it makes everything stretch on and feel longer. He wants to kick himself because he was a damn idiot, he'd tried the same, thing long ago, when his father would hold him down and belt him till he bled, till he passed out.
It had only made it harder; torture, bound to time, runs slower, runs deeper and makes ugly scars on the mind.
So Daryl stops counting and just thinks.
He thinks about the others, one by one, and when the image of little ass-kicker floats into his mind, he sputters –
The cloth is tight against his skin, sticking on its own accord and the water, it just keeps coming and fuckin' Christ, how deep is that bucket? He jerks as a droplet of water, probably no more than a raindrop, trickles down, unwanted, into his lungs.
He tries to fight overwhelming panic as it forces him to cough, opening his throat, begging more into his lungs, making his body convulse as it tries to get him away from, to save him from drowning because that is exactly what he is doing.
Drowning.
Something inside of him calls out for Rick – not Merle, Rick – though he's not sure whether it's been said aloud or not. He thinks it has because he hears muffled words and then it just stops.
The rag is lifted and Daryl coughs, violently, sucking in precious air whilst choking on the water left in his throat, his mouth, and his lungs.
"Tell me about him. About Rick. The man who took your brother's arm. Tell me about him." The Governor shouts and watches him, impatiently, but Daryl's ears roar with his own heartbeat, his chest burns, his head spinning from lack of oxygen –
"Tell me!" The Governor is shouting again and Daryl manages to lift his head up, hardly aware that the man had relinquished his hold in the first place.
Daryl takes a breath and it's raspy, waterlogged.
"Fuck off –" his voice cracks this time and his voice is strained and weak.
The Governor grabs the bucket again and Daryl takes a moment to look down, to gauge how much is left – it's just over halfway full. The Governor notices his shoulders drop, the flash of panic and disbelief in his eyes, though brief, and gives him a crooked smile.
"It takes remarkably little to drown a man."
Daryl's head is jerked back again and the cloth is back over his nose and mouth.
"So I've been told."
The water comes, unrelenting.
"I don't seem him." Maggie says as she peers over a trio of stacked tires, acting as a sort of barrier.
"Yeah." Rick doesn't either and his gut is filled with disappointment and then dread. All that ruckus and he thought Daryl would be here, but no – he sees regular people, dressed in clean, fresh clothes. He sees men with guns, well fed, speaking amongst each other. He sees Merle Dixon, one arm turned into a weapon, a military grade knife glinting at the end of tough looking leather.
"What do we do? What if he's dead?" Her hands tighten around her weapon – Daryl is part of her family now, just like Glenn and Carol, Rick and Carl, but she doesn't want to risk running into this mess if it's a lost cause, if Daryl was killed, just like Oscar.
It wasn't the time or place to admit it, but this place stirred a fear in her gut, thicker than any fear she had ever felt over a walker, over anything before. It's a fear that makes her feel like she's unraveling.
"We don't know that!" Rick hissed over the sudden rise in the town-people's chatter. "We're not leaving him here with these people."
"What's the plan, then? The deeper we go in, the harder it's gonna be to get out." She swallows her fear, pins back the string of her unraveling confidence and bravado and looks to Rick for an answer.
Maggie watches as Rick looks around – she's seen that look, seen him weigh the options, weight the lives around him.
"Fifteen minutes. If we don't find him in fifteen minutes … we leave." Maggie can see the last bit is hard for him; Daryl had become an important part of this group, irreplaceable and loved.
"Let's go." Maggie nods, pushing all that fear down, down, down.
Daryl coughs and gags as the fourth round ends.
The Governor doesn't say anything this time, even as Daryl turns his head to the side and throws up, water expelling from his stomach with each heave. He can't get the air in fast enough as every breath is somehow laced with water and his mind can barely form a coherent thought.
He had been trying to cling onto memories and facts he knew, but by the end of the third round those things had turned ugly and all there is now is water and choking and drowning. Slowly.
In the beginning he could understand the Governor as he leaned over and asked questions, stopping the flow of water just long enough to await an answer but not long enough to catch a breath.
The man asked him about Rick, the prison's layout, about the man dressed in prison garb, dead on their doorstep. The man had taunted him, telling him about Merle and the things he's done since – as if it would change anything – about men he has killed, and the men he would kill in the future.
Black spots grew in front of his eyes then, when the man mentioned a daughter, a child he and his people had murdered, and Daryl remembers thinking, ain't no way in hell.
But the man insisted, and his groggy mind thought of Sophia and, though he was certain the man was wrong, certain he had done no such thing, he was actually not so sure at all.
Daryl began to lose it, sometime around then, when breathing had become the only important thing, the only thing worth focusing on, when he couldn't discern truth from lie, fed to him by his mind and his torturer.
The rag comes off, but he's still coughing, still drowning.
The Governor grabs his face, hands rough and grasping at his jaw and he realizes that the mad, muttering din in the background is the man shouting at him to fucking look at him.
He manages to crack his eyes opens and glares – thinks he glares – as spots dance in front of his vision, half obscuring this bastard's face, a face he hardly recognizes and for a moment, his oxygen starved mind thinks it's his father standing there.
It ain't, his mind reminds him, over and over again, but his mind is admanant and though he continues to think, it ain't him, ain't him, he wonders what he did to make the man so damn mad, makes him wonder why his father hates him so much.
The man above him – not his father – asks him something and he can feel his frustration. Something inside him tells him he should be proud over this achievement, even though Daryl is very aware that even if he wanted to answer or curse him, his water logged lungs and oxygen thirsty brain wouldn't allow it.
He needs to say something though, something to assert that even though he's here, under another tyrant's thumb – again – he's not here at all, that this fucker wasn't getting an ounce of anything remotely helpful from him. That, though he was slowly trying to kill him, he's not afraid.
He coughs and feels the man, the Governor draw back, and he can tell, can see in the man's good eye that he thinks that maybe he's broken him, maybe he's fractured a piece of him.
"Screw … you." He rasps and it's only the vibrations in his throat that let him know he's said it, hasn't just thought it, as he always had as a child.
The cloth comes back and Daryl starts to drown all over again.
Thank you for taking the time to read! I hope you enjoyed it. Much love, Cider.