Time After Time

Thank you to anyone who put this story on alert or on their favourites and who reviewed! Hope you all enjoy this chapter and keep the reviews coming! The first chapter was kind of an introduction to this story, so this chapter will be set a month after the previous one.

Chapter Two

Lyra

A month on and the world was still shit…if not worse. The only good difference was that I got on with the people in our group now. Well, everyone except for Daryl Dixon. I still wasn't sure if he even counted as a person, to be honest. He never spoke to anyone except for when he was screaming at them or going to attack them. Cole had been on the wrong side of his temper enough times. It often ended with me screaming the place down and getting shouted at right back or getting called a bitch by Daryl, but nobody was allowed to hurt my little brother.

Every time I argued with that man, Cole bitched me out for it. He always went on about how Daryl was only trying to do right back the group. This was only because Cole was in awe of him. He wanted to be just like him. He wanted to sound badass, he wanted a crossbar and, most importantly, he wanted to kill a walker.

I, on the other hand, was not too happy about this idea. I didn't want him anywhere near one of those things. Even if there was a zombie apocalypse going on around us and my little brother was going to inevitably have to face death, I still didn't want him killing walkers just yet…much less want to.

"Lyra, even Carl is getting ready to face up to it" Shane sighed. I had heard this speech a million times whenever one of the boys tried to give Cole a gun. That was not something that I ever wanted to see in his hands.

"That's Carl you're talking about" I snapped. "He's not Cole. I do not want him to have to kill a walker."

"Lyra, you're not my mom" Cole hissed. He always had an attitude problem…and was always convinced that I was an embarrassment to him. "If I want to do this then I will." I certainly didn't appreciate him talking back to me.

"You're sixteen, Cole" I reminded. "You just don't understand. What I say goes." If you told me a few years ago that I was going to act like this, I would have laughed right in your face. I had always been the irresponsible one when we were younger. I had been the one that always went out a got drunk and tried cigarettes and drugs. Here I am, a few years later, telling my brother that he wasn't allowed to shoot a gun if a walker was coming at him. What the hell was happening to me? I guess it was safe to say, at that moment, that I was losing my touch.

"Lyra, I don't want to tell you how to treat Cole" Dale began. As soon as I heard his voice, my ears pricked up. He was one of the only ones in this group that I was willing to listen to. He was the only reasonable one. As soon as this infestation with the walkers started, everyone seemed to lose their minds…everyone except Dale. "He doesn't have to go out and hunt these walkers. None of us should be doing that. It's too risky. Don't you think that he should be given a gun…for defence? What if a walker somehow gets into camp? It could mean the difference between life and death for Cole."

"I don't say this very often, but Dale does make a pretty good point" Shane agreed. It was the first time, since I met him that I had ever heard him agree with anyone. Stunned, I waged on and on in my head. Should I really just let him have a gun? Is that only a wise choice?

At that moment, I knew that if a walker was hurrying at him and he didn't have a gun…I would never forgive myself. I simply couldn't. It would be my fault if he died under that basis.

"Shane is going to teach you how to shoot" I sighed, snatching the gun out of Shane's hands. "If I hear that you've been messing on with this, I will be so disappointed in you and you can forget about ever getting your hands on one again. Understood?"

"Understood" He promised as he held his hand out for the pistol with a grin on his face. Reluctantly, I handed him the gun and looked straight into his eyes. I was desperately trying to figure out if he was serious about this. I had to know if he was going to use this gun for good reason or if he was going to go insane with it. Knowing him, he wouldn't take this as seriously as he probably should. "Lyra, I promise."

I nodded with a small smile. Surely I should at least try and act as though it was normal to just hand him a gun and tell him to shoot whatever attacks him. Damn Shane for putting me in this situation.

"Go help Dale with dinner" I sighed. "No playing with the gun." I'd probably be saying that to him at the end of every job I gave him to do. He nodded, but I could see him rolling his eyes at me. Great. He did think this was just a joke. "I'm serious" I added.

"I won't play with the gun, Sis" He sighed. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he was growing annoyed and impatient at my constant accusations and orders. Well, if it meant that it would keep him alive in this godforsaken world for just a little longer, I was all for it.

As soon as he was out of the way with Dale, I was ambushed by both Shane and Daryl. Oh, this was so not going to be good. They both looked incredibly mad at me and both were glaring hard. It also didn't take a genius to figure out that both of these men standing right in front of me hated the living hell out of me. That was the one thing that those two could agree on.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Daryl snapped. As much as he hated me, he rarely shouted when he was angry. He'd always speak in that inaudible tone and mumble horrible things, but he rarely shouted…unless something really angered him. So far, this was the first time I had properly been on the receiving end of this kind of his wrath.

"What are you talking about?" I questioned as I fixed him with a hard glare of my own, but something told me that there was no way it could match the one that he was giving me at that very moment. His almost made me tempted to wince and shy away from it.

"Oh no, you know fine well what he means" Shane pointed out. "Why are you completely discouraging weapons? Why are you treating Cole like he's five years old? He's sixteen, woman! He can make his own decisions."

"Hey, you don't know what it's like to see your little brother go through this" I hissed. It probably wasn't needed, but when I was around people like Daryl, I would say virtually anything to get one over on him.

"Stop playing the victim every time" Daryl muttered. "He's growin' up and you can't handle that. He ain't gonna be a child forever, you know?"

"I know that, Daryl" I snapped under my breath. "But I am going to protect him for as long as I possibly can. There's no problem right now. He's got his stupid gun, okay?" I could tell that they still weren't happy with my apparent wrongdoing but, at that moment, I couldn't have cared less if I tried. The world was going to shit and I was supposed to care about what a dick like Daryl Dixon thought of me!? I think not!

Even though they had so much more shit to say to me, they both let the matter drop. I could tell that there was a war going on inside Daryl's head. He did not went to let the matter go…he wanted to scream and shout at me until he turned red in the face. It was a real struggle for him to walk away. Luckily, he had more sense in his head than I thought and he managed it without muttering any insults at me as he retreated.

That's just how it was around here now. Ever since we were under attack by the walkers, the atmosphere was constantly tense. It wasn't often that a nice word was said around here. To be fair, most of us were sitting around in wait of our untimely deaths. When you have that factor hanging over your head constantly, you tend to stop thinking about being nice to people.

When you're thinking about how long it will take for a walker to rip you apart, you don't think about the consequences. You get touchy. Everything about the world annoys you. No one can blame Daryl for feeling like that.

Woah. That was probably the first time I had ever thought about something in Daryl's defence. I guess a zombie apocalypse really does change you.

Daryl

Man, I just wanted to teach that lady a lesson. She tries to justify the fact that she wants her little brother to be defenceless against walkers. She ain't no good big sister. She ain't looking out for him. Stupid bitch.

I still managed to bite my tongue around her. My momma always taught me to look after a lady no matter how annoying she can be. My daddy, on the other hand, well he thought women were just 'a piece of ass.' The only think they were good for was to cook, clean and make babies. Done. Simple.

Man, a world like that sometimes sounded pretty darn good to me, but there was no way in hell that my momma was going to let that shit go down. That woman was tough.

I guess Lyra's tough in her own way. She's feisty. She's probably the only woman to ever pick a fight with me. That still doesn't excuse her from being an irritating summbitch, though.

She was pretty too. She wasn't like a doll. I couldn't stand those girls, but she didn't let herself look like a tramp. Under these conditions, no one was expected to look good, but she managed it. Her annoyance killed everything good about her, though.

Man, I don't know how she did it, but she managed to get under my skin like a bad itch. She'd work her way into my grooves and she'd push every single button she could until I felt I was going to explode. I knew I had a short temper, but this was something else.

Sometimes I'm glad she's here and part of our camp. She provides me with some kind of entertainment. Some of the arguments and bickering that we have can be kinda fun. She can actually be kind of interesting when she's not shouting her mouth off about everybody else's business.

On the other hand, she can make me want to tear her head off. She makes me so annoyed that I can't even think straight. When she's acting like this? Those are the times that I wished I had never met that summbitch.

So a little bit of insight on Daryl's feelings! Hope you all enjoy this chapter and please leave me a review. Any constructive criticism is welcome and any ideas that you may have for the story you can send me them in a private message. Hope you liked it XD