WARNING *** This chapter contains non-graphic descriptions of child abuse *** WARNING
This is in italics at the beginning of the chapter - please pass by this portion of the chapter if you feel it may upset you.

A/N: I know it's been a while since I've updated, and this chapter is short! I'm so sorry! The next one should be up faster and should be longer. Both this chapter, and the next one take place during the void between season one and two, so I've taken some liberties (but still pulled from season two's script a bit!) I hope you enjoy it!


"I want to get this straight, Daryl. You're coming to me because you want to start hormone therapy, right?"

"How many times do I gotta say it? Yes."

"Okay. All I need you to do is answer my questions. Eventually we'll figure out if that's right for you or not."

"Eventually."

"Daddy, let go of me!" Daryl hates his high pitched voice, but he can't help the scream. "You're hurtin' me!" His father's fist tangles easily in Daryl's matted hair and the drunken man drags Daryl's body from his room. He can't help it when his flailing limbs smash into the walls, but at least his adrenaline rush keeps him from feeling the small pangs. "Stop it!" Daryl hates being a 16 year old girl more than anything. His body is small and he feels weak when all his dad has to do is move his arm to make Daryl's body follow.

His father hauls him into the living room, some black and white program is playing on the TV and there's two drained bottles of Jim Beam on the floor. Daryl tries to get up from where he's been thrown, just next to the faded sofa, but a heavy boot on his back stops him.

"You don't want to be my daughter no more?" his father's words are slurred.

"Just let me get up." Daryl tries to be quiet. His dad always beat his mom the worst when she fought back. Maybe if Daryl shuts up, he won't get hit too hard.

"No, that's fine," his dad spits sarcastically. "Now I can give you the beating you deserve. Can't hit a girl, can you?" His dad reaches down and rips the back of Daryl's shirt, exposing his small back. "You can hit a boy though. Nobody ever said nothing against that." Daryl tries to crawl away from his father, keeping himself low on the floor. He's just reaching for one of the empty bottles, hoping he can knock his father out with a well placed swing of the glass container, when a sharp pain blossoms on his back. His father has hit him with something; it feels like a whip with metal on the end. Daryl drops flat on the filthy floor with a shout of pain. His father seems to revel in the yelp he coaxes from Daryl and hits him three more times, letting out a grunt of effort with each blow.

"Daddy, please stop," Daryl says, doing his best to sound like a little girl. He's wearing jeans and button down but he's still got on the training bra his mom bought him before she died and his filthy hair is still long. He only told his brother and father yesterday, so he's hoping that maybe, just maybe, the fact that he still looks like his daddy's little girl will save his ass. As the implement comes down on his back again, Daryl sucks in a breath. The skin on his back is lighting up with pain and whatever his father is using to beat him slices through his bra, shredding the garment with two quick blows.

Daryl tries to lift himself up on his forearms while his dad catches his breath, heaving with the exertion. When he turns a little to look at his father, he can see the extension cord the man's been using to beat him, limp and bloodied in his father's hand. Daryl risks crawling over to his father, staying low on the ground as he shuffles over on knees and elbows. "It's me," Daryl says, loathing himself for what he's about to say. It's a lie and he knows it, but Daryl doesn't know how far his father will take this. He's terrified that the man will kill him if he isn't able to put an end to it. "It's me, daddy, your little girl." His gut twists as he pushes the words out, struggling the move his mouth. He feels ill just saying them, but if they will save his life, he will say them over and over again.

Daryl's father looks up him through heavily lidded eyes. He's so wasted, he can't even see straight. He stares at Daryl for a moment, and Daryl thinks that maybe, just maybe, the filthy lie has earned him a reprieve. But suddenly his father lunges, drops the cord and wraps his hand around Daryl's tiny throat. "I don't have no little girl," he hisses in Daryl's face. The boy sputters and tries to pry his father's fingers off of his neck, legs kicking out from under him in desperation. He can't speak, his vision is going black around the edges. He arches his back up, trying to gain some leverage from where he's sitting, but his father his bent over him, stronger than Daryl, even in his inebriated state.

The door bangs open and Merle stumbles into the trailer, drunker than their father. Daryl and the eldest Dixon both look up at Merle in shock, Daryl's small hands still wrapped around his father's. "What the fuck?" Merle hisses, but he's already bounding over to where they're sitting, stuck in their sick tableau. He rips his father off of Daryl and picks up his little brother, swinging Daryl's suddenly limp body over his shoulder, fireman style.

"Leave her the fuck alone," he says, voice dangerously low. "I ever find out you laid a finger on her again, I'll kill you myself." He carries Daryl into his bedroom and drops him on the bed, leaving and closing the door without a word.

When Daryl wakes, he tries to ignore the unwelcome memory and the pounding his head. He drops his head back to rest on the arm of his sofa in the dark, cold space. The group found a storage locker depot just a short while back, empty except for a few walkers. It was easy to take them down and find some space for the group to hunker down safely, at least for a while. He discovered an empty locker with a moldy, old sofa in it and claimed it for himself. His privacy now means that when he wakes, with a gasp, he can at least enjoy the relief of knowing that no one will hear him and ask what's wrong.

Every night since he's told Rick the truth about who he is, just over a week ago, Daryl's been having nightmares: memories that morph into something else, fucked up and disturbing. Sometimes it's exactly like it really happened, but sometimes a drunken Rick is beating the shit out of Daryl and even though he's grown man, Daryl still pleads like a naïve little girl who's petrified of angering her daddy. Those dreams are even worse, because Daryl wakes up feeling sick to his stomach and humiliated.

But the worst nightmare, the one that makes it hardest to close his eyes in the dark, it when it's him: a grown Daryl looking down on a sweet, 16 year Daryl, bringing that extension cord down upon himself with a heavy, violent hand, and looking so unrepentant while doing it. Daryl rolls over on the rank sofa, and wonders what his therapist would say if she knew what was going on in his head right now. She'd be having a field day, that's for sure.

A knock on the corrugated steel door jerks Daryl from his thoughts and he falls off the sofa to lift the door. T-Dog and Glenn are standing outside, looking as shitty as Daryl feels. The depot may be safe for them, but the storage lockers are freezing and offer no daylight whatsoever. They've only been here for a few days, but Daryl's thinking everyone could use a trip outside, into the sunlight.

"What is it?" he asks, his voice still rough from sleep.

"We were thinking of going down to the lower levels, see what we could find," Glenn says. He holds out a flashlight for Daryl. "Maybe some of the lockers haven't been picked over yet. You in?"

Daryl nods and takes the flashlight without a word, picking up his crossbow on his way out the door.

"We can't stay here much longer," T-Dog says. Daryl can hear him chatting with Glenn, the two of them hang back while he clears the corners in the stairwell.

"Why not?"

"It's not healthy. Living indoors, no sunlight. Man, I know Rick says this isn't a democracy, but we've gotta talk some sense into him."

Daryl waves the all clear signal at the couple and they hasten to catch up with him. "I know you don't like it in the dark," Daryl grunts, opening a door to a long hallway, "but this is the safest we've been in a long time."

"Thank you," Glenn says, shuffling sideways down the hall to take out a lone walker. "I can't seem to talk sense into the man."

"I ain't saying I disagree with you," Daryl mutters. "I'm just sayin' you're gonna have a hell of a time convincin' Rick." He remains silent while the other two continue to bicker back and forth. They don't find any other walkers while they scavenge the storage lockers in the lower levels, but they do find some canned goods and box of cereal that looks like there aren't any bugs inside. There are a few sleeping bags and blankets and Daryl shoves everything into a large Rubbermaid bin, which he hands to Glenn to carry back upstairs.


They've been in the storage depot for two weeks – Daryl's been keeping track on the wall by scratching marks for each day. He's been watching everyone, especially Rick, for funny, sideways looks. He's been waiting for someone to kick him out in the middle of the night or attack him in his sleep. But no one is treating him any different, not even Rick, so Daryl has to assume the man has been true to his word.

When Daryl was 16 and told Merle (as a test run for his father) that he thought he should live his life as a male, Merle ignored him for at least a month. (Assuming his father would do the same, Daryl told him only three days after…and boy, had he been wrong.) But, after the month of silence was up, Merle had had a lot of questions. "Is this just 'cause you like girls? 'Cause it's better to be a dyke. Or do you still like dick? Are you gonna be a fag now? Does this mean you're gonna get a dick, or somethin'? What's gonna happen to your tits? Where did this come from? Is this just 'cause you're jealous of the boys?" The questions went on and on, most of them just as offensive as the last.

So after telling Rick, Daryl is surprised when the man doesn't show up in the middle of the night to drag him out of bed and terrorize him. He's surprised that the man doesn't squat next to him when they're hunting and ask him something humiliating and inappropriate. Daryl only has the reactions of his brother and his father to go on, and he's surprised by the decency with which Rick is handling the situation.


One night, they're all gathered by a fire which they've set in the office where there's a window, waiting for the rabbits to cook. Daryl is next to Carol, who leans into him comfortably. Beth and Maggie are sitting with their father, Glenn hovering awkwardly at Maggie's elbow. Rick, Lori and Carl are all huddled together under a comforter from their storage locker and T-Dog is on watch. Carol's gentle warmth is a welcome presence for Daryl – she's been a strong physical presence around him since they left the farm. He's not sure if she's flirting with him or not, and he wouldn't know how to respond even if she was, but he's not going to refuse the kindness she's offering.

Across the fire from him, Beth has a small frown on her face as she turns the spit that holds the rabbits, her father's arm draped around her back. She's young and reminds Daryl a little of himself before he started therapy. She's kind and gentle, much more so than he ever was, but meek and scared of the world – and Daryl's always been terrified of the world around him. He can see in her big eyes just how cautious she's being around everything, tiptoeing around like she can keep shit from going wrong just by being careful. She doesn't look anything like he did when he was teenager, but he can't help being reminded of himself back then.

Daryl remembers the year he finally admitted to himself something was wrong, when he finally told his family that a change needed to be made. He had always been something of a tom boy, growing up in a family of hunters had made that impossible to escape. Once, when he was 11, his mama had stayed home sick from work and let him play with her makeup, and he remembers feeling so beautiful. The soft brushes sweeping powder over his cheeks, bright red, tacky lipstick holding his lips together and dark eyeliner. He worked so hard to get the makeup to look like his mother's, but never quite succeeded. Even now, decades later, he feels a gnawing guilt when he admits to himself that enjoyed wearing the cosmetics. It's something he's never told his therapist, because he was sure she'd have held it against him.

Regardless of the makeup wearing and the training bra shopping (also with his mother), by the time he was 16, Daryl knew he was supposed to be a boy. The hormone therapy had taken almost seven years to start, and his father had made Daryl pay for it all by himself. Daryl remembers being 23 and feeling like his life was just finally beginning and going right – pre-pubescent acne flare ups notwithstanding. He remembers when the Testosterone started really working, being excited by the deepening of his voice, and the darkening of the hair on his body.

Daryl had always been a tiny thing, easy for his father and others to pick on, and when he started on his hormones, he also decided to start working out. He wanted to be strong – he wasn't going to let anyone fuck with him anymore. There were countless push ups and sit ups done and when he was around 27, his father finally started letting him hunt with the boys (albeit begrudgingly).

"Daryl?" Lori's voice rips Daryl from his thoughts. She's holding a plate with some meat and canned beans in front of him. "You in there?" she asks, a small smile on her face.

"Yeah, sorry." He takes the plate and nods his thanks, picking the rabbit leg up with his fingers and tearing into it.

"What do you think?" Glenn asks him, looking at him skeptically.

"'Bout what?" Daryl speaks around the mouthful of meat.

"About leaving," Glenn sounds as though it should be obvious. And maybe it should be – Daryl isn't sure how long he spent in his Beth-induced flashback.

"Leaving?"

Rick nods, and it's clear from his expression that he's the one who put forth the idea. "Winter's on our tails, and it might be enclosed here, but there's no heat, and no food left. We've picked this place clean and we sure don't have enough to last us all winter."

Daryl can't help but agree with the man. It may feel safer to hunker down, but he knows they'll be better off if they continue moving, looking for more food and warmer locales. He swivels his head in a sort of nod, and ducks down to shovel some beans into his mouth. He's never much cared for being part of the decision making process. "Not much good huntin' left around here," he finally grunts, when the group's silence tells him that they are waiting for an answer.

"Right." Rick says. Daryl isn't looking up, but he can hear the miniscule triumph in his friend's voice.

"Where will go, though?" Maggie asks.

Daryl rarely agrees with her, but he likes Maggie Green alright. She's got guts, and she's never afraid to speak her mind – even when her opinion is fucking stupid.

"We'll find a place," Rick promises, his voice is still gruff. Daryl knows that whether everyone agrees or not, they're going to move on from this storage depot. Rick hasn't wavered in his leadership since his pronouncement of dictatorial leanings. "We'll find a place with more firewood and hunting around. We're too central here – too close to the city."

"So is it agreed, then?" Hershel's voice is quiet, but there's a finality to it. He only ever seems to chime in once he's sure everyone else agrees with him. Or if he's sure everyone else disagrees… "We'll leave tomorrow?"

"We'll leave at daybreak," Rick agrees. "Everyone pack it up and get some rest tonight. No telling how long we'll be goin' out there."

Daryl swallows the last of his dinner and sighs.

"Do you know the name for what you're experiencing?"

"What does the name matter? Don't matter what it's called."

"It's called a sexual identity crisis. You're struggling with your perception of your sexual identity."

"I ain't strugglin'. I know what it is."