AN: I don't know if I need to say this, but this is only going to follow the show loosely. There are a lot of changes that I'm going to be making throughout the story.
At any rate, here's another chapter.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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The Walkers could sometimes be a great deal stealthier than others. Sometimes they had the benefit of hearing them coming, and other times it was a surprise.
That night it had been an unpleasant surprise to say the least.
Amy was the first indication that they were surrounded by Walkers. She was bit before she even knew that they were surrounded. The giant herd of Walkers plowed through the camp, killed whoever they could, and did their best to feast on the flesh of everyone else.
They weren't prepared. That was going to be their downfall in the end. As a group, they were truly ill-prepared for the world that they called home now.
Most of their group members were unarmed. They had been enjoying dinner and they'd acted like they were untouchable. They'd forgotten that their reason for being out there like they were wasn't a family camping trip at the rock quarry. When the Walkers had surrounded them, they'd had little choice except to run—and running really only got them so far.
Of course, many of them, even if they had been armed, would have been pretty unable to protect themselves. They were counting on others to be able to keep them safe during everything that happened. Only some of them were really able, though, to protect themselves and offer protection to others.
Daryl was made for this world. He and his brother both were. It wasn't bragging as long as it was truth. That's what Daryl believed. And both Daryl and Merle had skills that were necessary to keep themselves and others alive.
Daryl was always armed and he always had something else close by to increase his ability to protect himself and others. Rick, Shane, and Dale also typically had some kind of protection. Still, that much protection didn't go far when the Walkers were everywhere and people were scrambling for safety. Daryl had helped to keep off as many of the creatures as he could while Rick had helped to get arms in the hands of those who might be able to use them. Then, together, they'd all done their best to get rid of the monsters one by one.
When all was finally still, it was still dark. Everyone was shaky, mourning their lost, and afraid that every little shifting sound belonged to another Walker that was waiting to take a bite out of one of them. There was nothing they could do until the morning came. They couldn't bury their dead—they couldn't even find most of them—until the sun rose. At that point, using flashlights or lamps to work in the dark would do nothing except draw more Walkers to their camp—more than the ones that would probably come following all the sounds that the night had offered—and they certainly weren't prepared for that. Everyone did what they had to do, and they simply found a place to sit and wait until they could see enough to figure out what their next moves were.
Dale sat with Andrea as she kept vigil over the body of her little sister—the first to die. Lori had taken her son inside the RV that Dale had brought with him, along with some of the other children of the camp, and Rick and Shane kept watch like sentinels outside. Each of them kept something of a guard over opposite ends of the RV. Here and there, people huddled together and tried to soothe each other's suffering.
Daryl found Carol sitting only a short distance away from everyone, but slightly removed, on some old car seats that they'd placed around to serve as a place to rest. He invited himself to sit with her without a word, though he made sure to put a little empty space between them. He didn't want her to think he was encroaching on her space, he was simply sharing the seating area.
In her arms, the baby slept.
"You don't hardly ever put her down, do you?" Daryl asked.
"What?" Carol asked.
She was clearly not paying attention to him. She was clearly lost in her own thoughts—and of course she would be. They knew enough to know that the Walkers had come through the back part of their camp. It was the area where their tents had been set up and most of the tents had been torn down as the monsters had come stomping through them. A quick trip back to that area to make sure that the Walkers were done roaming around had confirmed that anyone back there was no longer a living member of the group.
Carol's husband, Ed Peletier, had been in their tent recovering from the mincemeat face that Shane had given him earlier.
Carol was a newly minted widow and, more than likely, she had a great deal on her mind. Daryl didn't know much about how one was supposed to go about comforting someone else. He especially didn't know how one was supposed to address a new widow. Maybe it wasn't even proper for him to be speaking to Carol and, perhaps, he wasn't supposed to speak to her about anything except her now-deceased husband.
But Daryl didn't want to talk about Ed Peletier, and he knew enough about their marriage to guess that Carol probably didn't want to talk about him too much either. Besides, Daryl had always cared very little for what one was supposed to do in any given situation. So, rather than try to come up with something more suitable to talk about, he simply repeated what he'd said in case Carol hadn't heard him before.
"The baby," he said. "You don't—you don't hardly put her down."
He heard a sound come from Carol and she readjusted her daughter in her arms.
"Sophia," she said.
"What?" Daryl asked.
"Sophia," Carol said. "Her name is...Sophia. The baby. She's...Sophia."
Daryl swallowed. Maybe he understood. Everyone talked about "the baby". The baby didn't sleep as much as they wanted her to, even though she slept a great deal. The baby made too many sounds, and she got too loud, even though many of them were a little over-the-top if they were trying to keep quiet. The baby cried too much, even though she hardly ever cried in Daryl's opinion.
The baby was a threat to all of them.
But the baby was, actually, just a baby. And her name was Sophia.
"Sophia," Daryl said quietly. "Sophia. Yeah—I got it. Pretty name."
"It was my grandmother's name," Carol said.
Daryl hummed. He wasn't too sure how one was supposed to respond to that, but he felt he should offer something. He'd already said it was a pretty name, so there was no need to reiterate that.
"I don't know my grandma's name," Daryl said. "She was dead—at least as long as I could remember. My grandfather was Norman."
Daryl was pretty sure that he heard Carol laugh quietly.
"I like it," Carol said.
"I liked him," Daryl offered. "He died when I was a kid."
"I'm terrified to put her down," Carol said after a moment of silence had passed between them.
"What?" Daryl asked.
"You said that I hold her all the time," Carol said. "I'm terrified to put her down."
"He's gone," Daryl said. "He won't hurt her now." Immediately Daryl realized that his words had slipped out of his mouth without checking with his brain first. He'd thought it and he'd let it come out. He'd never backed up to think whether or not he should say that to a new widow—or to any woman at all. "Sorry," he added quickly. "Fuck...I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Carol said. "You're right. He would've hurt her. And he was one of the reasons that I never put her down. But he wasn't the only reason. It would only take a second and one of these—monsters..."
"They all cleared outta here," Daryl said.
"For how long?" Carol asked. Daryl got the feeling that the question wasn't really directed at him as much as it was simply a question that she was asking the universe.
Daryl relaxed into the car seat. With everything happening around them—people talking in hushed tones, and the sound of weeping coming from nearly every direction—it felt like they were a world away. It felt like they were removed from everything and watching it from a distance. It felt like the two of them, sharing car seats in the Georgia woods, were in some kind of remote bubble.
And, as out of place as the emotion felt, Daryl felt comfortable and relaxed.
When they'd first gotten there, Carol hadn't spoken much to Daryl or his brother. Daryl had figured, at first, that she simply thought that she was better than them like everyone else at the camp. She would've been right, too. Most of them, probably, were better than any Dixon. It didn't mean, though, that they didn't still appreciate being talked to like people every now and again.
As time had gone on, though, and Daryl had become aware of her situation, he'd realized that Carol's reluctance to speak to the two of them had very little to do with them and very much to do with her husband. He simply didn't want her to speak to anyone and she tried to what he wanted—lest he take his frustrations out on her body.
She was easy to speak to when her husband wasn't overshadowing her. He'd only been gone a matter of hours at the most and she already seemed like an entirely different person—the kind that didn't mind sitting and talking to a Dixon like she would anybody else, like they were friends.
"They gone for the night at least," Daryl said. His stomach twisted a little. He knew that it wasn't just the Walkers that she worried about. It hadn't been just her husband. The grumbling about the child wasn't exactly kept under wraps, and she had to be aware of it. The worst part about it, perhaps, was that the grumbling was unfounded. It was just a way of finding something or someone to blame. It had, unfortunately, been the woman's child who had caught the brunt of that blame being tossed around like a hot potato. "Nobody else's gonna bother her none, either," Daryl offered after a moment's thought. "But you oughta get some sleep. She's gonna need you to be awake tomorrow. On your game. We got a lot we gotta do."
"I can't sleep," Carol said. "Not like this. Not after tonight."
"Gonna be a lot of tonights that you gotta sleep after," Daryl said. "These seats ain't half bad as far as places to sleep go these days."
Carol sat there a moment, cradling her daughter, and stared off at nothing. Daryl might have thought she was sleeping, but there was just enough moonlight to catch the moisture in her eyes and tell him that she was awake.
"I'ma be up," he offered. "Keepin' watch. Get some sleep. Don't need everybody staggerin' aroud half-dead tomorrow."
"She'll wake up soon," Carol said.
"Then you'll deal with that when you come to it," Daryl said.
Daryl wasn't sure how she'd respond to him being somewhat forceful with her, but she seemed to take it well. She listened to him, at least, and she stretched out over the car seats surrounding her. Stretching out caused her to touch Daryl as she lie down with her head next to him and her daughter cushioned between herself and the back of the seats.
"Sorry," she breathed out.
"You fine," Daryl offered. "Don't bother me."
And he realized that he wasn't lying. It didn't bother him at all. In fact, he liked her being so close to him. He had always been the kind that got lonely. He'd always been the kind that craved some kind of closeness.
A fucking enigma.
That's what his brother, Merle, had always called him.
A fucking enigma. The sweet one. Baby brother.
Daryl couldn't stand people because he'd learned, for the most part, that people were despicable on the whole. However, that didn't mean that he didn't long to find some good people out there that could fill his need to be around them. So far, he'd only really found Merle that he could stomach since they'd lost both their parents. Merle liked to pretend that he and Daryl were completely different, but they weren't. Not at all in a lot of ways. Merle craved connection with people as well, but he simply sought it in different ways than Daryl. And maybe Merle—big brother and never baby brother—wasn't what one would typically label as sweet, but he wasn't who he pretended to be, either.
They had stuck together as long as they had because neither of them, if they were being entirely honest and their masks were stripped away, could stand the idea of being alone. They needed each other because they both needed someone—and nobody else would ever be there for the likes of them.
Now Merle was gone, though.
Daryl didn't know if he wished that Merle was alive out there, or if he preferred to think that Merle was dead because he didn't like to think of how his brother might feel—abandoned on a rooftop by group members that didn't know who he really was, or at least who he wanted to be, to cut off his own hand for survival against the elements. He didn't want to think how his brother might feel wandering around, hurt and alone, without anyone or anything.
It might be better if Merle were simply dead somewhere. At least, then, Daryl might believe that he'd found some of the peace and comfort that he'd spent most of his life searching for in some of the worst ways possible.
Dead, for Merle, was probably a great deal better than alone.
Because even though they pretended that they didn't need a single soul, being alone was a hard thing for a Dixon to stomach.
For someone who couldn't sleep, Carol's breathing had evened out pretty quickly. Daryl could feel the warmth of her from her proximity. He didn't miss the fact that she'd fallen asleep in his presence—under some pretty terrible circumstances—lulled by nothing more than sheer exhaustion and the promise that he was keeping watch. He didn't miss that fact at all, and it made his chest catch in an odd sort of way.
Daryl shifted and got comfortable, but not comfortable enough so that he would fall asleep and fail to keep his promise to the woman sleeping next to him with her baby girl hugged safely against her body.
At least tonight, Daryl wasn't going to be alone.