A/N – This chapter is a bit of a backtrack. In the last chapter, Daryl walked in on Carol and his old man inside the house. And he was none too pleased. Before we find out what happens next inside the house, I wanted to broach what Daryl was thinking in the moments before.
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Chapter 8
Daryl grabbed the arrows he could find inside the shed and took them and the crossbow with him as he made his way back to the truck. He was itching to get out of here… the place was creeping him out. He'd spent the last ten years of his life building up whatever shred of confidence his father hadn't cut out of him, and being here seemed to drain it all away in a matter of moments.
He wished he hadn't come, but when Carol had said she needed to have a weapon… well he'd known exactly what she needed.
There were a number of places that he knew of that sold bows, guns, knives, all kinds of weapons. And he could have driven to any one of those places. But newer didn't always mean better, and he'd rather her have a bow he trusted than a bow that was simply convenient to get.
Daryl knew Karla's crossbow nearly as well as his own. They'd learnt together on them, hunted together… the man who had made his crossbow was the same man who had made Karla's. Old man Charleson who used to live down the road and had taken pity on the two ragamuffins who passed by his house every day on the way to school. He'd been a good man, taught the two of them a few things about hunting, and built them both crossbows about a month before he'd died. They were sister bows, built from the same wood source, which he supposed gave a sense of camaraderie to the two weapons.
A sense of camaraderie he wasn't yet ready to admit he was feeling himself… with Carol.
He cared about the woman. He'd spent a lifetime building walls around himself; walls that he only let a few people beyond. Walls that he'd only fortified even further after Karla left. There wasn't room for caring about anyone beyond those he absolutely had to care about… and by the time he'd come upon the quarry and the group, the list was short – consisting of just himself and Merle. And Karla, although he'd stopped actively caring when he'd failed to find her.
He had searched for his sister. He was defensive about that in his head. When he'd left home, he had searched and searched. He checked all the places Karla had ever talked about going to, but he'd never found her. A piece of him had died at that point, when he had accepted that his sister was simply gone. It became easier to stop caring at that point.
So he had made himself strong under the guise that all that mattered was himself… and Merle, when his brother had come back around. And then the world shifted, the dead started walking again, and Merle and he were thrown into some ragtag mix of people Daryl never expected to like. A ragtag mix of people that included Carol.
And Carol… Carol had reached him. On a level he hadn't known needed to be reached. It happened long before Sophia had actually disappeared, in such an unassuming moment even before she'd smashed her dead husband's head in with a pickaxe.
Daryl hung back, scowling behind Merle as Merle went ahead and introduced himself and his brother to all of the group. It was in the beginning, at the quarry, but before Jim, T-Dog, Jacqui, and Morales's family had come along to camp. Merle could be an ass, but he could be a charming ass when he wanted to be… and he was putting the moves on now. Putting the moves on these unsuspecting people who were all camped out together awaiting some kind of word from the authorities.
Daryl wondered what the game was but said nothing at the time to his brother.
He nodded hesitantly at the one who introduced himself as Shane, the leader of the pack apparently. He looked cocky, annoyingly so, and his smile was more of a sneer. If anyone would peg Merle, it would be this one, Daryl was sure. Daryl averted his gaze and looked at the others – a stick skinny woman with long brown hair, hovering next to Shane… his woman perhaps. A little boy next to her who must have been hers, but didn't look a thing like Shane.
The rest – an older man with a floppy fisherman's hat, a pair of blonds that looked like sisters, a chinaman with a baseball cap pulled low on his head, and some others – were all hovering in the background, watching carefully but not willing to get involved yet – unsure about these strange men who arrived by way of a truck and a motorcycle. Daryl held the crossbow, some rabbits slung over his back and he offered to gut them to share for supper with everyone.
"I'll take them," she had said, her voice light and soft as she stepped over. Her eyes flickered to his for a moment and then shifted away quickly. He hadn't noticed her before. She had moved away from a little girl that had stood next to her… a tiny bit of a girl who must have been her daughter – blond, big blue eyes, with a wary smile.
The woman's hair was shorn close to her head, graying and she moved with grace as she approached. There was an uncertainty to her movement though, as she glanced back into the area where the others were, as if she might be looking for someone.
"I can gut them, make a stew…," her voice was soft as she spoke, he wondered if anyone else was even listening.
He let her take the proffered rabbits and her eyes met his again. He noticed she had the remnants of a shiner around one eye, healing but still a slight puce tinge to it.
"I'm Carol," she said, and offered him a slight smile, her eyes shining with a kindness that he didn't see in the others.
He nodded, "Daryl," his voice was gruff, and his brother's eyes had landed on him for a moment before turning back to whomever he'd been talking to at the time.
He hadn't met Ed until later that same day. But he'd instantly recognized the source of that bruise he'd noticed around Carol's eye.
He stayed clear of her for a long time after they'd met, unsure really what it was that drew him toward her, that made him slowly start to care what happened to her. That made his walls start to feel confining and not securing, start to feel claustrophobic instead of safe.
Daryl reached the truck and felt a flash of anger when he saw she wasn't inside. Wha'. The. Fuck.
He'd had one request and she hadn't followed it. His head turned and he looked at the porch of the house. Only one place she could have gone. And she'd better have had a good reason. He put Karla's – now Carol's – crossbow into the bed of the truck, and gripped his own a little firmer as he turned to face the house again. His stomach clenched with an anger and an anxiety he hadn't felt for years, and he made his way up the stairs onto the porch.
