Disclaimer: I do not own the world of Walking Dead or its characters.
"Wake up. We're movin' out."
Ophelia rolled over, pulling her blanket off her head. She had slept like the dead, which was saying something. It had been a long time since she had slept somewhere that wasn't a tree or a dirty ditch. Daryl was gathering his things together and Ophelia quietly berated herself for sleeping so soundly. She wasn't safe. She didn't know this man. . . .
But if she was being honest, part of her knew she didn't have to worry. If Daryl had wanted to hurt her, or let the others hurt her, he would have done so by now.
Ophelia sat up, pulling out two apples as she stuffed her blanket and hat into her backpack. Everyone was packing up their things, cleaning out the cars. The man they had beaten last night was gone but there was blood on the floor where he had lain. She stared at it a moment until Daryl stepped in her line of sight, his hand held out. "Ya ready?"
She stood on her own, hoisting her backpack on her back. She placed one of her apples in Daryl's outstretched hand, meeting his eyes. In the brighter light, she took him in. He was a good foot taller than her, but that wasn't something entirely new; Ophelia had always been short. He had this sort of wild edge to him, in the way he stood, in the way he held the crossbow on his back, his bluish green eyes a bit squinty but alert, hair scraggly. He was a redneck if she ever saw one, but she thought that might be an unfair judgement. If she was going to be stuck with him for a bit (until she could figure out how to get her knife and get as far away from them a she could) she might as well be nice.
He seemed to understand that the apple was her way of saying thanks as he nodded, taking a bite from it as he turned and led the way out of the carport, juice dribbling down his chin. Ophelia followed him slowly, one hand gripping onto her backpack strap again as she bit into her own apple. By the time she got outside Daryl was standing next to a bloody and broken body, an arrow sticking out of its eye. Daryl had picked up a tarp but he tossed it back on the ground, starting after the group.
"What was his name?" Ophelia asked, causing Daryl to stop walking, turning to face her with a frown.
"What's it matter?" Ophelia shrugged but she didn't move from her spot. Daryl sighed. "Len. He don't deserve no kindness," he added when she bent to pick up the tarp he had abandoned.
"Who does?" she responded, laying the tarp across the man. In the few minutes she had known Len, he had been an asshole, called her out of her name, tried to get Daryl beaten up or worse. . . . But he had probably been someone's asshole, at the very least, someone's son. Nobody just deserved to be left on the ground if you could help it.
When she looked up, Daryl was watching her with the most curious expression. Shaking his head, he walked off again, leaving her to follow behind him and the group. She dropped her partially eaten apple back in her backpack, her appetite suddenly gone.
Ophelia walked a few feet behind Joe and Daryl as they continued across a field towards another set of train tracks. The older man thrived in this kind of environment, she could tell, heard him even mention as much to Daryl. She supposed he had a point. Trackers, hunters, survivalist . . . it was like the apocalypse had been made for them, to weed out the weak like her. Ophelia had grown up in a gated community, gone to a good college, gotten a degree, worked in an office with business casual attire and everything. She had never gone camping, never knew what it meant to survive for a few days or more without food. She hadn't been prepared. Joe and Daryl were the kings to her pauper in this type of world.
Joe cast a glance back at her before looking back at Daryl. "You ain't worried she's gonna run off on you?"
Daryl looked back at her, his expression blank. "I've got her knife and she don't really got any other place to go."
Ophelia glared at him as he turned back around. Playing a part or not, screw him. She survived for three days before she even found that knife. Honestly, she could probably take off right now. Varsity Track had to pay off for something, right? But her feet wouldn't let her run. As terrifying as it was to be the only female in a group of men in this day in age, she was tired of being alone, tired of talking to ghosts. As soon as they found another group or she could figure out a direction that seemed best, she'd leave. But for now, she'd trust Daryl a little while longer and avoid Chet and his wandering eyes.
The group reached the train tracks, a sign sticking up from the dirt.
"Getting closer," one of the men mumbled.
Daryl walked up to the sign and Ophelia stopped beside him, reading it quickly.
Terminus, it read, Sanctuary for All.
"You seen this before?" Daryl asked Joe, gesturing towards the sign.
"Oh yea," Joe answered, sardonically. "I'll tell you what it is. It's a lie. Ain't no sanctuary for all. Ain't gonna welcome guys like you and me with open arms."
The older man followed the rest of his group down the tracks, Daryl quickening his pace to walk alongside him again, Ophelia falling in behind. "So is that where we're headed?" Daryl asked.
"So now you're asking?" Joe responded with a chuckle.
"That's right."
"We were in a house minding our own business," Joe started, "and this walking piece of fecal matter was hiding in the home. Strangled our colleague Lou and left him to turn. Lou came at all of us. He lit out. We tracked him to these tracks, one of those signs, and thus we've got a destination in mind."
"You see his face?"
"Only Tony." Joe gestured to the man walking in front of them with the giant gun resting on his shoulder. "That's enough for a reckoning."
Tony stopped, and Ophelia felt her heart clench for whoever it was they were tracking. Even if what they had done was in self-defense, she couldn't imagine this group taking it easy on them. Daryl's eyes caught onto whatever Tony had seen and he darted forward. "Claimed."
He gripped up whatever had been on the ground and brushed it off. Tony walked off, disappointed. Joe grinned and followed after the group again. Daryl came to stand next to her, holding out a purplish object to her. "Mushroom," he offered by way of explanation.
Ophelia thought this might be his way of apologizing for his comment early. Hesitantly she took it, taking a bite. It wasn't the most pleasant thing she had ever eaten but all she had had recently was a bit of that apple so it was better than nothing. She handed it back to him as they kept walking, watching him take a bite as well. She pulled her hair tie out of her pocket, pulling her hair into a messy bun on top of her head, zipping up her jacket against the breeze. Again, she glanced over at Daryl, watching the way he kept a wary eye on the men in front of them. He trusted them just about as much as she did.
"How long are we gonna stay with them?" she asked in a hushed voice. It occurred to her that she had said 'we' but that's what it was. They would split from the men and then, soon after, she would split from Daryl, keep trekking on her own.
"Not much longer," Daryl responded, not acknowledging the pronoun she used. "I ain't for stickin' around to see what they do to the son of a bitch who killed their friend."
They continued to walk, for what seemed like hours, while the sun got lower and lower in the sky. Even traveling by herself, Ophelia was used to stopping once the sun started to set, finding the closest thing to shelter. The night was scary; the dead could sneak up on you easier at night. After a moment of walking, Joe motioned for some of his group to go into the woods, quick and quiet, to see if they spotted anything while the rest of them sat down on the train tracks. Ophelia made sure to stick close to Daryl, too nervous to eat or even rest her eyes like he had suggested.
A rustling in the trees had them all scuttling to their feet. One of Joe's men appeared, a wild grin on his face. Joe nodded, turning to the rest of them, a manic gleam in his eye. "Let's go meet that piece of shit."
Joe and his men started into the woods, spreading out so that they could form a circle around the poor bastard. Daryl didn't move, so neither did Ophelia. "What are you doin'?" she asked.
He tightened his grip on his crossbow, before looking back at her. "We should leave."
There was that word again, 'we'. "Then why aren't we?"
Daryl shook his head. "We ain't gonna make it out here, just the two of us. We need them till I find my people."
"Screw that," Ophelia argued. "I was just fine on my own before I ran into all of you. I'll still be fine," she added, holding out her hand, "once you give me my knife."
Daryl stared at her for a moment before he removed the knife from his belt loop, holding it out to her. When she reached for it though, he snatched it back, glaring right back at her. "How much longer do ya think you'll be fine out here by yerself? Couple o' days? Another week? Aren't ya tired of bein' alone?"
"You can't trust people," she told him, angrily. "They're worse than the monsters."
"Not my people. Not us."
"Why do you care what I do? You don't even know me."
"I ain't for losin' people. Not anymore. Not if I can help it."
He started into woods, still holding on to Ophelia's knife and she was forced to follow him, more confused than she had been when they first met. Why was he being so adamant? She could survive on her own, hadn't she proved that? What was worse was that he was right. She craved company as much as she craved food and water these days. But the monsters were terrifying, people were worse. At least with walkers, you knew what they wanted. People could turn on you in a snap. . . . Daryl didn't seem like that though. She had trusted him to watch her back while she slept the night before, trusted him to keep Chet away from her. . . . Since he still had her only weapon, she supposed she was going to have to trust him a little further.
Ophelia could hear Joe's voice as she and Daryl moved quietly through the woods. He sounded delighted, which meant that they must have found the person who killed Lou. She saw the old beat up station wagon first, a few of Joe's men standing on either side of it, one of them pressed up against the window. Then she saw Joe, his gun pressed to the temple of a scruffy man in a brown leather jacket. A woman with dreads was on her knees next to him, another of Joe's men standing over her with her own gun.
"Ten Mississippi," Joe was counting. "Nine Mississippi. Eight Mississippi –"
"Joe!" Daryl called out suddenly, walking forward slowly. "Hold up."
Joe leveled a glare in Daryl's direction. "You're stopping me on eight, Daryl."
There was a long tense silence as Daryl continued to move forward, the people on their knees watching him, and Ophelia came to the sickening realization that this must be the people he had been looking for. What a weird twist of fate. She moved forward too until she was standing next to the driver's window. Movement made her turn her head and she could see the fat guy in Joe's group leering at the person inside, a boy who couldn't be older than maybe eleven.
These people were insane.
"Just hold up," Daryl tried again and Ophelia had to give him credit for how calm he sounded, despite the adrenaline-charged situation.
"This is the guy that killed Lou," the man pointing the gun at the woman said, "So we got nothing to talk about."
"The thing about nowadays is we got nothing but time," Joe responded. "Say your piece, Daryl."
"These people, you're gonna let 'em go. These are good people."
"Now, I think Lou would disagree with you on that. I'll, of course, have to speak for him and all 'cause your friend here strangled him in a bathroom."
"You want blood, I get it." Daryl took one more step forward and then set down his crossbow. Standing up straight, he held up his hands in surrender. "Take it from me, man. Come on."
Joe stared at Daryl in disbelief. "This man killed our friend. You say he's good people. See, now that right there is a lie. It's a lie!"
The man standing closest to Daryl knocked him in the side of his head with the butt of his rifle, sending Daryl into the hood of the car. Ophelia heard the man, Daryl's friend yell for him as she did something she never thought she'd do: she ran to help. Despite not having a weapon, despite all of these men being much bigger than her, she'd be damned if she let them beat up on the only person who had shown her a lick of kindness.
She didn't make it far; someone grabbed her backpack, ripping it off of her before a pair of arms wrapped around her, grabbing her wrists and pinning her arms to her chest. She didn't have to look to know it was Chet. She struggled and squirmed but Chet was a big guy. "Let go!"
"Teach him, fellas!" Joe yelled as two of his men beat Daryl down to the ground. "Teach him all the way."
Ophelia heard the car door open and she looked over as the boy was yanked out of the car by the fat guy who had been leering at him. She watched in horror as he was pushed to the ground, the man holding him there.
"You leave him be!" Daryl's friend shouted and Ophelia felt another sick twist to her stomach when she realized that must be his son.
"Shh," Joe said, forcing the man to stay on his knees. "You'll get yours."
"Listen. It was me. It was just me."
"See, now that's right. That's not some damn lie. Look, we can settle this," Joe said in a much calmer voice. "We're reasonable men. First, we're gonna beat Daryl to death. Then we'll have the girl. Then the boy. Then I'm gonna shoot you and then we'll be square."
"What about this girl?" Chet asked giving Ophelia a little shake.
Joe looked up at them, a slight smirk on his face. "Daryl ain't got a claim on shit anymore. For all I care, she's yours."
"Sounds about right." Ophelia screamed as Chet gripped her harder, lifting her up so that the toes of her shoes just brushed against the ground.
"Daryl!" she yelled, knowing there wasn't anything he could do for her, not while those men kept punching and kicking him. The brush around them got thicker as Chet walked a few more paces, Ophelia kicking the whole time.
She yelled out when he threw her the ground, trying to scramble away when he gripped both her ankles, flipping her over and pulling her back towards him. "None of that, ya hear," he said, laughing as he hovered over her.
Hot breath on her face.
Groping hands.
Cruel Laughter.
Make it stop. Make it STOP. MAKE IT STOP!
She was crying and struggling and her hand, in her flailing landed on a something smooth and hard and sharp. She grabbed it up, not caring about how it dug into the wrap around her hand as she swung, smashing the rock into the side of Chet's head. Dazed, he reeled back and Ophelia pushed him over, straddling him as she brought the rock down on his face again and again and again.
She was a survivor.
"Ophelia."
She was not some man's plaything.
"Ophelia, he's done."
She was not weak. She was not weak. She was NOT WEAK!
Hands gripped her wrists, holding them above her head. She tried to jerk away but they held fast, causing her to look back. Daryl looked down at her, jaw tight. He was bloody, one eye slightly swollen, the other set on her. She must have looked a sight; she could feel that her hair had fallen out of her bun, her eyes were wide and wild. She must look like an animal. Slowly, she turned her head back around, to see what she had done. He wasn't moving, Chet, his body still underneath her. The first two hits might have done him in but Ophelia kept going. There was very little recognizable about his face, save a tooth or two, an eye.
Ophelia scrambled to her feet, out of Daryl's grasp, bracing herself against a tree as she vomited, mostly just stomach acid and bits of mushroom. She could feel herself shaking, her breath coming out in raged breaths and she knew she could not afford a panic attack right then. In her head, she listed off every book she could remember reading, even the kiddie ones, until the panic subsided, leaving her still shaking but more or less calm.
Turning back around, Ophelia found Daryl still standing there, watching her. She chanced another glance at Chet but didn't let her gaze linger too long. "I shouldn't have –"
"Don't," Daryl stopped her. "Don't ya apologize or regret killin' that bastard, ya hear me?"
Easier said than done but Ophelia didn't feel like arguing. She nodded, removing the wraps around her hands. Most of the blood went with the wraps but her hands were still stained red. She rubbed them on her pants, knowing it wouldn't work. She looked up at Daryl, avoiding looking over at Chet. "You came for me."
"I wasn't gonna leave ya' out here with him."
Ophelia wrapped her arms around her middle. She looked down at her tennis shoes before looking back up at Daryl, trying to hold back the tears, but they slid down her face anyway. She was just as much a monster as the ones walking around. When did she become like this? She had killed someone with her bare hands, hands that she used to create. What was this world doing to her? "I'm tired of being alone," she whispered, answering his question from earlier.
Daryl nodded. He cast a glance back towards the clearing where his people were waiting for him. "Ya don't have to keep bein' by yerself."
She hesitated, gripping onto the sides of her shirt. "Your friends don't know me. You don't know me."
"We'll get ta know ya." Daryl held out his hand towards her and Ophelia supposed the conversation was done, the decision made for her. She was starting to get used to that already. Casting one more glance at Chet, she placed her hand in his, letting him pull her back to his friends.
The woman with dreads was waiting for them when they got there. She was very fierce looking and probably just as fierce if that katana at her side said anything. She watched Ophelia warily, arms crossed.
"Michonne," Daryl said, gesturing to the woman. "Ophelia. She weren't no friend of theirs," he added as an afterthought.
Michonne continued to stare at her. She looked to Daryl but it was another moment before she spoke. "How many walkers have you killed?"
"Oh." Ophelia was startled by the topic and looked down for a second to think before she looked up at Michonne again. "A handful. I usually avoid places where I'd run into too many."
"How many people have you killed?"
Ophelia swallowed the lump in her throat. "One."
"Why?"
She couldn't form a coherent sentence for that one. Though it was in self-defense, that didn't make the knowing easier.
Daryl and Michonne must have had a silent conversation while her head was down because she felt a hand land on her shoulder. Michonne gestured towards the car. "You can get some rest in the back of the wagon. It looks like you could use it. Daryl's going to keep your knife though. I'm sure you understand."
Ophelia could do nothing more than nod. She left the two of them, heading for the back of the car, picking up her backpack on the way. The boy must have been in there too because there was no sight of him. On her way, she past the man; his mouth and hands were bloody and he had this haunted look in his eyes as he stared off into space. Ophelia shivered and hurried past him, climbing into the trunk and pulling down the hatch. It was quiet in the car as she curled up into the corner. Her body instantly tried to relax, even though her mind was racing, her limbs felt like led.
Guess she was going to be with Daryl just a little while longer.