Chapter Four: What's Deserved
The roadway is a crumbling artery, scarred and ripped open.
Daryl is standing with the forest brush, as if he's becoming a tree. His shoes would take root against the roadway if they could, but the crows warn him that something is wrong. Daryl can feel the change in the air, like something invisible.
Rick had gone on ahead as he sometimes does and Daryl followed his footsteps; followed the crows. It's then the worry set in, like something snapped loose inside him.
This is fear. The kind of fear that rises up out of nowhere. The kind of fear that stopped him dead in his tracks against this torn up roadway. Rick is standing out in the wide open and a woman, who looked to have crawled out of the mud, is pointing a pistol at him. She's shrieking at Rick, crazed. She wants what he has on him. She wants his bag, his boots, his life. She hasn't noticed Daryl. Not many people do, especially when he wants to blend in.
There's a desperate rage about her, the kind that develops over time; grown from grief. Daryl didn't spend much time brooding over who was who and what others deserved. He doesn't care about this woman's story or her struggles. All he cares about is the simplicity of her actions. She's going to shoot. She's going to destroy two existences in one gunshot.
The crows caw louder and remind him that they're bound by something changeless. They know their fate is lined with an inevitable miserable end but it wasn't here. This isn't it.
The decision was already made when he walked on the muddy path towards the dread.
He holds up his crossbow and fires.
She collapses limp, lifeless, almost soundless. Rick is standing there startled into silence, looking straight at Daryl, as if he always knew he'd be there. The crows knew it too. They go silent and take up into the air. Their deed is done.
Daryl steps out of the brush and walks on the roadway. He could feel the tension crawl up into his throat and stay there.
"I could've talked her down." Rick grits.
"You always tryin' to save everyone but yourself."
"She could have been one of us. We've been that desperate before or have you forgotten?" Rick admonishes, like he's speaking to the air rather than to Daryl.
They were either angry at each other or comfortably silent, there didn't seem to be anything in between.
Daryl sets his boot to the woman's temple and rips the arrow out to drive his silent point home. Rick clenches his jaw and stalks towards the woods. He lets him get a head start before he tracks his boots through the mud. They're always easy to find. He favored his right side oftentimes.
He wondered how many scars marred Rick's skin. Would they match his? Daryl imagines he was around for the creation of most of them. To him, they've always been like road maps of where they've been and what they'd had to do to keep on trudging through the wasteland.
His tracks veer off into thicker foliage and down a steep incline.
"I ain't about to spend the night chasin' you through the bushes." Daryl says to no one.
That was a lie.
The twigs snap and crack at him like bones as he passes through. Why did it always feel like they were moving on? When in truth they were just walking in circles, not venturing too far into the unknown.
Daryl hated Alexandria. He preferred it out here, where things were tangible. He didn't belong in a nice house with a white picket fence. He didn't want to belong there. Daryl knows that he's the town Wolf, a pet they like having around. Rick is more acquainted with the etiquette required but Daryl knows Rick isn't the man he was when this all started. Daryl thinks they leave pieces of themselves behind without meaning to, never to be found. Merle was one of those pieces; scattered.
He hears a grunt and a gurgling screech. It tears him from his ponderings. He jogs forward, crossbow at the ready and he spots Rick finishing a lone walker with his hunting knife. The walker falls to the mud and Rick leans against the trunk of a tree, catching his breath.
Daryl stands there for a moment observing him. He's feeling dangerously open today and it made him especially irritable. Rick just stays there, leaning against that tree, thinking on what's deserved.
Daryl finally approaches him, stepping over the body of the walker. Rick glances at him but the eye contact is fleeting. He's pretty pissed off but that's fine. Daryl can be pissed off too. They can share in this rage together.
"You wanna know what's deserved?" Daryl asks and his voice is louder than he thought it would be. His heart is a drum and the fight is boiling up under his skin. Rick looks at him again in that odd way he often does.
"You breathin'... that's what's deserved. You breathin' here with me now." Daryl confesses.
He watches the fight drain out of Rick, like someone pulled the plug. There's just vulnerability left behind in the wake of it and it sets Daryl even more on edge.
Rick is slowly moving closer to him, as if he's about to tell him the most important thing in the world and Daryl felt transfixed by it. Did he want to hear it? Did he need to?
Rick doesn't say anything though, he just sets his hand gently on Daryl's shoulder and squeezes lightly. They are face to face, breathing the same air. Alive.
His hand moves to grip the collar of Daryl's shirt and Rick watches the dirt below them, a pained expression on his face.
"I ain't about to listen to you tell me what's deserved." Daryl continues but he doesn't really know why he's still speaking. Rick looks up at him again and softly says, "I know."
There's a small moment in time that it dawns on Daryl what's about to happen. He has no time to brace himself for Rick's lips meeting his. The inevitable collide. It isn't anything heated or violent. It's just the soft pressing of lips on his.
It's over before he can blink though and Rick is pulling away, looking disorientated and confused. Daryl is neither of those things. He's calm, calmer than he's been in a long time. Rick doesn't look at him, he just starts forward and makes a gesture to signal he's headed back. Back to Alexandria; where nothing makes sense.
Daryl wasn't about to stop him. If this is Rick's way of coping with whatever this is then he'd let him have it. Daryl accepted it, the way he accepted the woods. They'd always be a part of him, the way Rick always would too.
Even if Rick never came out here with him again, he'd stand here forever reliving that fleeting moment when Daryl was worth more than his crossbow.
The rage he felt earlier had left behind a deeper crueler clarity. The things they loved were never long for this world.