I do not own, nor do I profit from anything having to do with "The Walking Dead, be it TV show, or comics. I am writing this for personal reasons only.
In the Nick of Time
Chapter 10
From in the shadowShe calls
And in the shadowShe finds a way
And in the shadowShe crawls
Clutching her faded photograph
My image under her thumb
Yes with a message for my heart
She's been everybody else's girl
Maybe one day she'll be her own
Everybody else's girl
Maybe one day she'll be her own
Girl by Tori Amos
Daryl picked up a leather bag and hauled out a large rabbit he'd killed earlier that morning. After placing the rabbit on the bag,
he walked over to his tent and took out 3 metal rods. Two formed
a Y shape, and were about 3 feet tall, with the Y at the very top, branching out about 5 inches on both sides. The third rod was almost 4 feet long with a right angle at one end that was around 5 inches long as well. He forced the two Y shaped rods into the ground on opposite sides of the fire.
He then picked up the rabbit, took it further away from the fire
so that Gaelynn would not be able to witness the skinning and dressing part, he figured it would probably be disturbing to a girl who had been through all she had been through with Russell. He had no idea the depths of pain and abuse she had experienced in her short lifetime.
Once the rabbit was ready to be cooked, he forced the carcass
onto the straight end of the 3rd rod and pushed it to the middle
of its length. He put the rod over the fire, setting it down on the two Y shapes. The right angle at the end of that rod was for turning the meat as it cooked, so it cooked evenly.
Gaelynn, though disgusted at first at the thought of eating a
rabbit, was sort of impressed by the simplicity of the cooking apparatuses and how quickly Daryl was able to prepare and begin cooking their dinner. After a short time the aroma alone was enough to chase away any remaining reservations.
"How long will it take for that to cook?" She asked, trying to keep her voice flat, without any emotion.
"Be a little while, he was a big'n for a hare, so bout an hour or
so, I guess. Maybe you should get yerself some rest while it's cooking." Daryl answered.
"Oh no, you are not getting off that easy. You have some explaining to do while we wait." She shot back this time
allowing some impatience to be heard in her voice.
"First of all, you need to tell me where you know that Merle
person from? He definitely sounded like he hung out in your neighborhood, with that redneck accent of his!"
Daryl did not respond right away, he was trying to figure out
how best to explain it all without giving her the wrong idea,
but 'Hell' he thought to himself, 'females are always taking
things the wrong way', from what he knew from his rare and irregular experiences with them. Women made him feel so
nervous and stupid; they had so much fucking power over
men, mostly right between their legs. He knew of more than
a few men who ended up really fucked over by a woman. He thought it was best to stay as far away from them as he could;
only making contact when his own needs grew too strong for
his hand to satisfy, even if it turned out to only be slightly more satisfying. Knowing in advance how this was probably going
to go, he just plunged forward with his story.
"Reason I know Merle is he is my older brother. I ain't seen
him for months and from what I saw by the way he's acting earlier today, I ain't planning to hunt him down for no family reunion
any time soon."
Before he could say anything else, Gaelynn, with wide eyed
shock, said "I knew it! You're not some 'kind stranger 'who just happened to be in the right place at the right time; you are part
of this whole thing, aren't you? I bet you plan to either fuck me yourself as soon as you get a chance, or you're going to hand
me over to Merle yourself, save him all those drugs he planned
to pay for me." She was almost shaking with anger by the time
she was finished with her accusations.
Daryl just lowered his head a little, it stung to hear someone
accuse him of something so against his nature, the rape part. His ma taught him to respect women, and he had never purposely
hurt a woman in his life.
He started out quietly but soon his voice began to develop into
an angry growl," Now you just wait a fucking minute," he
began, and was soon snarling her. "I ain't nothing like my
brother! Well, not the way you think, he was a lot older than me, was raised by my pa, who was meaner than a snake when he was drunk, which was most of the time. Merle weren't around much when my ma was raising me, and she taught that I was supposed
to be respectful to women. I saw how my own pa smacked her around whenever he felt like it, and how much it hurt her, and it killed me not being big enough at the time to do anything about
it. I ain't ever raised my hand to a woman, and I definitely have never taken what weren't freely offered!" he was almost
shouting by this time and more pissed off than he expected
to be. So as a last jab at her, he finished with "Besides, you
ain't my type! I don't want nothing to do with a kid barely out
of 'er training bra, who ain't got no idea how to rekkenize a pig from a man who just wanted to help ya!" he finished feeling a
little drained and emotional. 'Damn females, getting a man all worked up before they know anything about what's really goin' on!' he thought to himself, not knowing why he was letting her
get to him like this.
Gaelynn was a little taken aback by how angry he became and immediately started to rethink who this man was, and what his intentions were. She was not ready to trust him, far from it, but maybe she would listen to more of what he had to say before drawing any further conclusions. From her past experiences, all men did was look for a chance to get laid, with or with a girls consent, especially now when pretty women were not only a
rare commodity, but the chances of one being attracted to a
man once he did find her was pretty slim. She felt a tiny bit
sorry for him, even though he was sort of handsome, his hick ways, and redneck accent was most likely a big turn off to any woman who went beyond a high school diploma level in her education. She imagined that, if he was as respectful as he said
he was, it had to have been a good while since he had been with
a woman. She had no right to completely prejudge him; he did, after all, save her from the next horrible chapter in her painful,
loveless life now that her Tristan was gone.
He was surprised at how defensive he was acting; normally
he didn't give a rat's ass what anyone thought about him. And
he could not remember the last time he had talked to anyone
about his personal life. What was it with this girl? She was not much more than a kid and here he was letting down a little of
his defenses and sharing parts of his life he had not spoken
about with any of others in the group he was currently out
hunting for food for. With them, he found it easy to keep his defenses up and it was those defenses that kept him separated
from the rest of the fucking world.
Even though Gaelynn felt several different emotions during
this discussion, she knew she still could not allow him to see
any weakness in her. She continued to speak with nothing but annoyance in her tone.
"Ha! Not your type? Oh darling, I am not any man's type. I can imagine your type though. Let me guess, bleach blonde, with
ugly roots, too much make up, with either large boobs or a bigass! Men are all alike as far as I am concerned. You are all just hungry animals waiting for their next prey to step into one of
their traps." she finished and was horrified that tears began to
well up in her eyes. 'This was not happening' she thought, 'No
one has made me tear up in ages, not without physically harming me, what the fuck?'
Now, to Daryl's surprise, she had tears in her eyes. She tried
so hard to fight them but some came anyways.
At this point, the exhaustion, the trauma of the past week, the
lack of food all conspired to break her down. On the tip of her tongue was the long sad shameful story of her own life, something she had not shared with anyone but Tristan in years. The words were so close to spilling out; she stood up and walked further
away from the fire in order to collect herself.
She could not tell this near stranger about how her step-father started molesting her when she was only 10 years old. He got
her pregnant by the time she was 13, and that her morning sickness was the only reason anyone noticed there was something wrong. The nurse at her school took notice and called Child Services, and she was finally set free of that hell hole of a home
of hers. They took her to a group home, and then she was placed
in a series of foster homes that were barely better than her home had been. She kept running away and taken back to the shelter where she was bullied and beaten on a regular basis by the bigger girls. The last foster home had not been nearly as bad and it was there that she met Tristan, the champion of her life, the reason to stay in one place for a while.
Daryl had expected her to be defensive, but was shocked at that
he had made her cry; he figured she would just get more pissed
off, but hurting her was never his intention.
He felt responsible for something, for the first time in ages and
felt he needed to man up and apologize, something a Dixon rarely, if ever, did.
He walked over to where she was standing, with her back to the fire, and said gently "Look, I didn't mean to be such an asshole back there, guess maybe this whole dead world and trying to just stay alive was getting to me more than I realized. I swear to you,
I ain't gonna hurt you. And I won't let anyone else hurt you either. Tomorrow morning, I'm gonna take you to a really nice farm where there are good people who will help to protect you, and give ya some time to heal up."
He paused to see if she would speak, but after a few moments of silence, he continued, "If you wanna take off on your own, I ain't gonna stop you, you got the right to do whatever you think is best for you, but you gotta know there is a good chance that things will get a whole lot worse out there for a girl on her own. So come on,
I kinda need you to try to believe and trust me, even though you don't know nothing much about me. I swear on my ma's grave, I ain't gonna lay a hand on you."
Gaelynn felt drained and allowed a few more tears to fall before she took a deep breath, which helped to settle her pounding heart once more, then started to feel close to normal again. She looked
at Daryl, square in the eyes, and said "Give me your biggest hunting knife. If you so much as move too quickly in my direction, I swear I will kill you. And if you do as you say you plan to do, and take me to this farm, and the people there do turn out to be nice and harmless I will return it then. But until that time, I need
to feel like I can protect myself; it's the only way I will stay here."
Daryl didn't say a word; he just pulled the knife from his belt, wiped it on his jeans to make sure no blood or tissue remained from the rabbit, and, turning the blade towards himself, gently handed to her.
Once she had the knife, Gaelynn felt a little better, but only a
little. Daryl was a strong looking man, and all he would need
is for her to be distracted for a second and he would have complete control over her.
Daryl, remembering something, asked "If ya hate men so much, why were you traveling with a guy? How did he get you to trust him? And why the hell didn't he protect you from Russell?"
"How did you know there was someone else" she asked, amazed that he knew about Tristan.
"Ya had to see the other backpack when you was changing clothes, when I picked up the pink one; I grabbed the other one too. Speed Racer? Had to belong to a guy, maybe not a very mature one, but it looked like a guy thing." he answered,
'God!' she thought, this guy is a lot more perceptive than I
gave him credit for being. I am going to need to watch myself
and stay on my toes around him, no telling what he would be able to discover about me based on something she said. She had so many secrets, and was ready to share a damn thing with anyone yet.
Tristan, she had not thought about him for several hours, but by mentioning his name so soon after she had lost some of her control, it was just enough to bring a few tears back to her eyes. She was so damned pissed off at herself, for not being stronger,
for letting this hillbilly see her weep! She blinked back these new tears quickly, got more control over herself and began to talk a little about Tristan, the only person she had ever truly loved in her whole life.
Was there really something different about this guy? Half the time he pissed her off so much, and then the other half of the time, she wanted more than anything to believe him, trust him. She wanted so much to have someone in her life that understood, like Tristan did, but she knew she was more than likely subconsciously wanting to fill the void left by Tristan's death. Letting anyone in too quickly was dangerous. She realized this and took precautions to keep on standing her ground. She whipped away any remaining tears, lifted her chin and walked back to sit next to the fire.
Once Daryl had joined her and had checked on the cooking rabbit, she allowed herself to talk a little about Tristan, she felt like somehow she was honoring his memory by sharing what a truly remarkable friend he had turned out to be.
"Tristan was only 13 years old when we first met, and on the small side. When Russell killed him, he was only 15 and still small for his age. There was no way he could have taken Russell, and I do not blame him for anything that Russell did to me. I trusted him, and came to love him so much because he was never a threat of any kind to me. He was gay. And he was the sweetest, kindest, most giving person I had ever met. His life echoed mine in many ways. He grew up being bullied and beaten on a regular basis at home and at school. His father completely disowned him when he found out his son was gay, even told Tristan that as far as he was concerned, he was dead to the family. This broke his heart so much, he decided to leave home. I couldn't let him go on his own,
the world was just beginning to break bad, and I knew if I didn't go with him, I would never see him again. I would have done anything to keep him in my life. I had never felt that way for anyone, and I knew that if I lost him, I would never have that again."
"So we packed up my old Mazda with as much of our things as we could fit into that tiny car, and we left town. We traveled that way for several months, by the time we ran out of money, all hell had broken loose, and we just started siphoning gas when we needed it, living off any food we could find once what we packed in the car ran out. Then about a week and a half ago, the car died, it was hopeless. We had to leave it and most of our belongings behind. We walked through the woods for about 3 days; we had no food and very little water when we came upon Russell. We were not in a position to be all that picky and we were just desperate enough to buy into whatever Russell was dishing out. That was my mistake, I was the oldest and I should have been more careful and taken better care of him. I will never forgive myself for getting him killed like that. I have been having nightmares almost every night since."
She noticed that when she had said that Tristan was gay, Daryl made a small face, barely noticeable but still, it displayed his dislike of gays.
"I should have known you would have a problem with Tristan being gay. I know you have certain biases, just from some of the things you've said, so I imagine a hick like you would be the type of person to jump Tristan given the chance, and beat him
within inches of his life and laugh the entire time you were
kicking his face in, right?"
Daryl really did not want to get into another argument with her, it had already been a long day and he was trying hard to
get her to calm down and trust him, so he thought carefully before he replied.
"I used to have a lot of hate in me, hated niggers, chinks, spics, anyone I guess who was not white or weren't like me. I guess that included faggots, and didn't really matter what color they were. But now, I got some of them folks in the group I've been traveling with and I guess, I ain't got as much hate in me now. There ain't but two kinds of folks now, thems that are alive and the walkers. I guess I can't afford to be as picky, like you said, now days. "
She looked at him skeptically, but didn't try to keep the discussion going. She was so tired, and hungry. And she was trying to figure out how to get any sleep while keeping her eye out for any unwanted behavior from the man sitting across the fire from her.
Suddenly Daryl stood up, making her almost jump out of her skin and she grabbed the knife and pointed it at him.
"Shit, I completely forgot all about your wrists! You got em all covered up and with the cooking and arguing I forgot all about it."
He walked to his tent and pulled out a small box. This was his first aid kit that he carried whenever he went out hunting. He had rarely needed it, but it was a habit to bring it anyways.
He asked her if he could have the shirt she had taken off, and after looking for the cleanest places, he tore the shirt into a few long strips. He picked up a metal cup that sat next to the fire and poured some water into it, then set it closer to the fire for it to heat up some.
"I am just gonna have a look at them wrists, ok? You ain't gonna stab me for that are you?"
She shook her head but warily watched his every move.
He gently pulled her thumb out of the hole in the shirt so he
could push the sleeve up far enough to get a good look at the
wounds. Any bleeding had stopped a while back and was
now crusted around each wrist. He picked up the cup of water
and tested to see how hot it was, just warm, about the right temperature that he was shooting for. But, trying to appear
thoughtful, he asked her to check it as well and let him know
if it was too hot. She dipped a finger into the cup and said it
was fine. Daryl then took one of the strips of the shirt and put
the entire strip into the cup. Once it had absorbed all but a tiny
bit of the water, he pulled it out and gently wrapped the strip around one of her wounded wrists. The he repeated the
process, more water, heated it near the fire, and then let her
test it. He wrapped the second strip around the other wrist.
He turned his attention back to the first wrist he had started
with and, again, as gently as he could, he pressed the make
shift bandage against her wound. It stung a little but all Gaelynn did was flinch a tiny bit. He then slowly unwrapped the strip,
and once he could see the wound again, he used the cleaner
parts of a strip to dab at the stubborn crusts of blood until he
had the entire wound clean. He did the same with the other
wrist. Once both wrists were clean, or as clean as he could get them under these conditions, he opened the box and took out
some sterile gauze, a tube of ointment, and some sterile
bandages.
He squeezed a little of the contents of the tube onto his fingers
and lightly rubbed it into the wounds. This did hurt a lot more than what he did with the strips and she bit down on her lower lip
but did not make a sound. While he was this close to her, Daryl took a few glances at her face without her knowing. "Damn she was pretty, but such a bitch! "He thought. Then again, he
supposed she had every right to be an even bigger bitch than
she had been thus far. He was looking at her mouth, noticing how full and nicely shaped they were when she bit down on the bottom lip in pain. It was all he could do not to groan, and could feel himself stiffen a little. He fought this with all his strength; he
was an idiot to the thinking and feeling such things after all
she had probably been through with Russell. He hated himself
a little at that moment.
He finished up quickly without looking at her face again. Then
he moved away, back to the other side of the fire, where
he felt himself start to settle back down. He sighed quietly
with relief.
By then the rabbit was ready and they ate in silence. Once
they both had had their fill, he told her she could use the tent
and he would crash here next to the fire.
Again, he got the doubtful glare from her for his efforts, and wondered if he would ever get her to trust him?
She stood; made a show of picking up the knife he had given
her, and walked to the tent. "There anything in here you need before I get in? You'd best get it now, because if a hand comes
so much as an inch across the threshold of this thing, you will
be pulling back a numb, I swear."
He walked over, didn't like how close he had to be near her to
get what he needed from the tent, but she refused to move. He
took one of the blankets and left her the rest, a sleeping bag, and another blanket.
"It's all yours mame" he said as he took a small bow in front
of her. "Look, if it starts raining, I coming in there with
you, ok? I ain't normally bothered by the weather, but I been nursing a sore throat for a few days and really don't want
it to get worse. It's not like I can go the clinic and get me a shot
or anything. You need to make sure you control that knife, and I will make sure I have made my intentions clear before I come
into the tent, if it rains now, only then. We clear on that?"
After all he had done for her so far; she felt she at least owed
him a rain free night, should it start. But, she would have
the knife and was a light sleeper, so she thought maybe it would
be alright. So she just nodded and climbed in to try and get some much needed rest.