The Walking Dead is property of its respective owners
I own my OC's Afton and Brian
*Sorry it took me so long to post a new chapter; my muse seemed to have abandoned me for a time. Hopefully were back on track now ^_^
Afton blinked her eyes open rapidly, shocked awake by a nightmare that was already beginning to fade. And she didn't really have to guess at what the dream had been about; they had all been the same since her life-altering experience on that deserted Interstate in downtown Atlanta, when she had (died) taken out those two Walkers – pain and chaos-filled, a relentlessly looped reliving of her death that over the last two nights had mercilessly pulled her from any form of restful sleep.
She sat up, scrambling to find her pink bow feather in the tangle of sheets on her bed as her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she suddenly remembered she was in one of the fully furnished, generator powered rooms in the underground dorms in the CDC. Edwin Jenner, the facility's only remaining inhabitant had shown Afton and Brian, as they carried a nearly unconscious Daryl between them, to the rooms after he had finally opened the CDC's doors to their group.
Afton turned and quickly flicked the bedside table lamp on, mentally forcing her breathing to a steady rate, and promptly located her feather up near her pillow. She clutched it tightly to her chest and felt a soothing calm settle over her. Letting out a long sigh, she looked around the room. The bedside lamp cast her small underground quarters in a soft glow, subtly illuminating the prim writing desk in the corner, the dresser against the far wall, and the efficient twin sized bed she was sitting on. There were no windows by which to judge the time, but Afton's internal clock had always been fairly accurate and she figured it to be close to three or four in the morning.
She got up from the bed, knowing full well that sleep was now a lost cause and dressed quickly in jeans and a tee shirt. She padded barefoot to the bedroom door, carefully making sure that her feather was still nestled in her palm, and stepped into the hallway of the darkened quarters she now shared with Brian and Daryl. She heard her brother's soft snores coming from the living room to her left at the end of the short hallway. Brian had volunteered to sleep on the couch after Jenner had shown them to the largest apartment available in the cluster of the CDC's dorms and they found that even though it was the largest, it only contained two twin-sized beds in separate rooms. Afton had been grateful for the chance to sleep in a real bed, hoping against hope that she'd finally get a full night's sleep. It didn't seem like it had mattered.
She gave her feather a comforting squeeze and turned to the right, heading the short distance to Daryl's room, feeling her heart splintering more and more with each step she took.
Daryl had held onto consciousness long enough for them to get him situated in the bed and had thanked them breathlessly, but his eyes had still held the skeptical distrustfulness that he had centered on Afton and Brian both during their walk from the RV. He had slipped away again shortly thereafter and Afton had fought very hard to contain the tear-filled hopelessness that had welled inside her. She had asked Brian if Daryl would ever regain any memory of her. Brian had said he couldn't say for sure, time would tell. She had walked numbly to her room then, not even coming out when Jenner had tried coaxing her to the cafeteria to join the rest of the group for a meal.
Afton shook the painfully fresh memories away sadly and pulled in a shaky breath as she stood at the threshold of Daryl's darkened room. She knew she was in love with him, her heart practically ached with the ferocity of it; she also knew, with a glaringly clear conviction, that she would always love him, would always cherish the moments they had shared, even if Daryl himself couldn't.
She stepped into the room slowly, wanting, needing, to hear the reassuringly steady cadence of his breathing – needing to make sure he was okay, especially now, when she had come so close to losing him more than once in the span of twenty-four short hours.
She walked the short distance to his bed in the dark and stopped, canting her head to the side and listening intently. Silence was the only sound that greeted her. Dread clenched at her heart painfully and her breath caught in her throat.
"Daryl?" She stepped forward slowly on shaky legs and reached her hand out toward where she knew the bed to be, miserably trying to prepare herself for the event that his body had finally just given out, that her fingers would touch on the coldness of his skin where once there had been such an incredible and enveloping warmth. She felt such a keening emptiness in that split-second of a moment as her hand reached out and she was utterly unsure of how she would even be able to function in this fucked world without him.
Her hand touched on the soft ripples of the wrinkled sheets on the bed. On the empty bed. She swallowed hard and her hand flew swiftly to the bedside lamp, flipping the switch with trembling, numb fingers. The room was suddenly illuminated in a soft wash of warm light.
She stood looking dumbly at the empty bed before her. The hypodermic needle from the PICC line that had been placed in Daryl's arm to deliver antibiotics and a simultaneous saline drip trailed faint lines of blood from where they had been ripped from his skin.
Afton placed her hand flat against the bed, feeling the last remnants of his body heat still lingering on the sheets. He had been taken from the bed no more than ten minutes prior, probably at about the time she had awoken disoriented and frightened from her nightmare. She had been so distracted she had not even heard anyone in the hallway outside of her room.
She rushed back to her room and quickly grabbed her bow and quiver from her bedside, forgoing the extra time it would take to step into her sneakers, and padded silently on her bare feet to the apartment door. She spared a quick glance at Brian as he slept heavily on the couch, before slipping noiselessly out the entrance. She needed to find Daryl, and knew she wouldn't hesitate in delivering swift justice to the one who had taken him from his bed.
