Rick
"For he today, that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother."
Rick couldn't remember the house ever being occupied, even when they'd first arrived in Alexandria. It was on a little curved street at the back of the development, where the homes were ranchers with bay windows and long front yards. The more modest options inside what had once been a community for the wealthy still wanting to play suburbia. Nobody lived back there now, they'd even parked spare vehicles on some of the lawns. Which is what had led him there in the first place, looking for Daryl after his less than pleasant departure from the meeting. He was the only one who ever came back here regularly other than perimeter check, to fiddle around with the motors in the automobiles.
Everyone else had seemed to gravitate towards the bigger homes near the gates, most of the unattached bunking up frat house style and what was left of families and couples opting for their own space. Rick's children were the last in Alexandria and there was only a handful of homes with people still dwelling inside them. Aaron was right, the only expansion they'd been able to accomplish was that of their cemetery. They had a lot of nerve thinking about building their walls out when they were living in a ghost town.
The house at the end of the street stood out because someone had cut the lawn, whereas most of them were overgrown and weed ridden. He'd given Carl that responsibility at their home and it had felt odd in his throat. Just months ago, his son had stood beside him in battle and taken men's lives, now he was assigning him household chores as if the world had never come to a crashing halt. The incredulity of the situation had been evident on Carl's face, but then he had laughed and accepted the duty without a fight. Rick was grateful that his even his son was content to be living some semblance of normality for once.
A faint sound echoed from inside the house and Rick tilted his head to listen, that was definitely hammering. He walked up the path and tested the knob, it was unlocked. He let himself in and the pounding of a nail into wood became more clear.
The home had all but been stripped clean. There was no furniture, plastic tarp laid out over the hardwood floors. What had once been a wallpapered accent wall in the living room had been scraped down to white plaster. He and Lori had taken on that daunting task once, when they'd moved into their first home. About half way through the job he'd secretly begun to regret fighting her on hiring professionals, not that he ever would have admitted it. She was pregnant with Carl, sat in their hot, not yet air conditioned home with her feet up and laughed as he scraped away all night.
A heavy metal toolbox sat in the center of the room. Daryl was down on his hands and knees, a few nails gripped between his teeth, hammering with excessive force at a baseboard.
He'd heard Rick come in, of course he had, because that's just the way they were. Sometimes Rick was certain he and the other man could communicate telepathically. They'd carried on more conversations through nods, grunts, points and shoulder bumps than they ever had with words. Daryl stopped for just a moment, glared over his shoulder and Rick had to hide his smile because he remembered that look well.
When he'd first arrived in the quarry camp, reunited with his family, he'd felt that glare following his moments most of the time. It had unnerved him, just for a bit. Maybe until they were in Atlanta, until they went storming into that mechanic shop ready to lay down serious fire in exchange for Glenn. Daryl used to call him Chinaman, gruffly insist that Glenn was usually in the way. He'd been willing to risk his life in exchange for the other man's that day though and Rick had realized then that the younger Dixon brother wasn't anything like his older counterpart, not by a long shot. Something about that glare, even though the look itself could bring most men down a few notches, gave Rick a hopeful swell in his chest. At least that was Daryl, he was still there. It was much better than the ghost they'd gotten back in return for their friend from Negan. Of course, ever since Beth had come back bits and pieces of Daryl had been coming back too, day by day.
He opened his mouth to speak and then let it fall shut. Daryl raised an eyebrow at him, as if approving his decision to choose his words carefully.
"It looks nice in here," Rick stated dumbly, shrugging at Daryl as if to acknowledge that he was taking the easy route starting the conversation. The other man's eyebrows came together in an annoyed peak, annoyed because he knew that Rick didn't really care how angry he was. This talk wasn't going to be avoided.
"Been working on it for three weeks," Daryl grumbled, falling back to sit on his heels and pointed to the clean wall, "had to get rid of all that shit, forgot what an ass job scraping wallpaper is."
He stood up, brushed dry wall dust from his knees and gestured to the ground where Rick stood.
"Knocked a wall out there, made it all one big living space."
Rick was genuinely impressed. From what he'd gathered Daryl had worked lots of odd jobs in his time before, landscaper and house painter and mechanic. The kind of jobs that allowed him to drift, pick up work between whatever messes Merle was trying to drag him into.
"Never been much a carpenter myself," he mused, "I always tried but Lori would end up hiring someone to fix whatever mess I made."
"Don't blame her," Daryl snorted, dropping his hammer into the toolbox with a heavy clang, "seen ya try to build a fence before."
Rick chuckled, memories of their early days at the prison playing in his mind. They'd been trying to assemble a fence around the gates, the kind he'd seen at Morgan's hole up. Glenn had gently tried to suggest he take a rest, Daryl had finally grown frustrated and straight up dismissed him from the task, "Never gonna get it done if we gotta keep fixin' everything you muck up."
"Yea, you and Glenn saved that job," he agreed, the slump of Daryl's shoulder at the mention of their lost brother's name not lost on him.
"Hell," Daryl mumbled, mostly to himself, wiping his hands on a bandana that had been shoved in his back pocket, "wasn't anything Glenn wasn't good at."
Rick simply nodded in agreement, leaned back on a wall and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
"So, what does Beth think, of all this?"
"She don't know," Daryl muttered, half embarrassed.
Rick beamed. Daryl Dixon who gutted and remodeled a house to surprise a woman reminded him a lot of Daryl Dixon who spent entire days in the woods, searching for a little girl who wasn't even his responsibility.
"You're doing all this, to surprise her?"
"Bout' time we got out of your basement," Daryl shrugged, "Not like we can go buy a plot of land, had to make do with what was up for grabs," he interlocked his hands behind his head and eyed up the joists in a part of the ceiling that was currently exposed, "didn't want it to feel like I was movin' her into a dead person's house though. Figured I'd make it new first, ours."
And then he spun around on his heel and that glare was back.
"So how long do I have?"
"Before what?"
"Before the devil goes down to Georgia," he snarled, laced with sarcasm, "before we take Beth on her death march."
Before. Before he might lose her. Rick sighed, let his head fall back against the wall behind him.
"Daryl…"
"No," his friend interrupted, "I gotta know when so I can show her before she runs off and gets herself killed."
After Daryl had left through the slamming door Beth had stood her ground, although something hurt and worried was evident in her eyes. 'He'll come around' she'd insisted simply, rebutting anyone else's argument that the mission might be too dangerous for her to be a part of. Rick understood, he knew Daryl understood too. That didn't mean they had to like it. He'd watched her try not to look like she was looking for him when they came back inside the gates, retreating in the house and locking herself in the dark basement.
"She feels like she needs to do this," he reminded Daryl with a sigh, "I don't like it any more than you do. But I never met a Greene woman, actually just a Greene in general, that I could get to stand down from something they believed in."
Daryl grunted, eyebrows almost hitting his hairline, staring down into his fingernails in that old nervous habit.
"You're telling me."
"You love her," Rick observed, not that it was any secret but they'd never discussed it. He'd been able to tell, when Daryl had told him the tale of losing Beth on the road, that he had lost part of himself too. Then she'd been back and he hadn't asked any questions, mostly because it wasn't his business to mind. They were both adults and they were both happy; if that meant they disappeared into his basement at bedtime, then that was just a minor detail. Daryl didn't wander the perimeter nightly anymore, he talked more, he laughed sometimes, he sat on the front porch with Beth and Judith and they took turns narrating picture books to her.
"Didn't mean to," Daryl's shoulders rose and fell, "but then she was asking me to burn down this shack with her and I was done for."
"Trust me I know how that works," Rick assured and then quirked an eyebrow, "actually not the arson part, but the not meanin' to."
"Beat myself up a lot about what her pops would think," Daryl admitted, rifling around in his toolbox.
"Hershel liked you a lot," Rick reminded, "always respected your opinion."
"Likin' a guy and likin' him shackin' up with your daughter are different."
"Hopefully it's a long, long time before I ever have to figure that out," Rick grimaced and then Daryl did too because Judith was almost as much all of theirs as she was Rick's and neither one of them wanted to imagine a world where she wasn't their sweet little baby anymore. "Hershel wanted his girls to find happiness in this world," Rick told him, "so I think if he could see the way you and Beth are together, he'd be more than okay with it."
They stood in silence for a while, Rick watching as Daryl puttered about with hammers and nails. Finally, he stilled and then like a clap of thunder kicked the toolbox across the room, leaving nails and screws scattering in its wake.
"I can't lose her, not again," he shook his head, working through something in his brain, "First time I ever wanted this kind of life."
"We're not gonna lose her," Rick promised and he wasn't sure why, but he felt like he could make those promises now, after everything they'd overcome. "We're gonna do it smart and we're gonna take our time planning this thing. We're gonna free those people, get the things we need," he crossed the room and clasped a hand over the other man's shoulder, "And when we get back, you're gonna live this life. You deserve this life Daryl."
"Nah," Daryl shrugged, "I don't. But Beth deserves it. Dunno if I even deserve to be the guy to give it to her, but I'm gonna try."
Rick smiled.
"You've gone soft Dixon."
"Bullshit," Daryl dismissed but his eyes betrayed him. "Go on," he told Rick, "got more work to do."
Rick didn't push the subject, dismissed himself with a nod, the one that carried so much; love, brotherhood, trust, promises that he didn't want to ever break. He left the house and started back towards his own home, hammering echoing behind him.
