A/N: Updating was so much easier when I was unemployed. I swear, one of these times I'll actually mean what I say.
xxxx
Then I'll go out back and I'll get my gun
I'll say, "You haven't met me, I am the only son."
- Mumford & Sons, "Dustbowl Dance"
The forest was quiet and the air was thick, surprisingly heavy with humidity even though the months had stretched into the fall. His eyes and ears were alert, poised and ready to pounce at the telltale rustle of leaves or the snapping of tree branches. Most days, Daryl tracked and hunted as a form of meditation. He harnessed his focus, pulling it near to him, gathering his straying thoughts and squeezing them into the dark recesses of his mind until they disappeared altogether.
And yet, that very afternoon, while his sense and reflexes were sharp, his mind was not. Too much sleep. Yes. That must have been it, making him groggy. Or maybe too little sleep, his tired mind too weak to properly string two thoughts together. Whatever the reasons were, deep down, Daryl knew they were bullshit. His eyelids felt weightless, legs limber and arms strong. The previous night's sleep had been one of the best he'd had in a long time, worries pushed aside once his head had finally hit the pillow.
He didn't really have an excuse for his mind being so out of focus – at least, not one that he could dwell on. Not when he had so many people depending on him back at the prison.
To make things worse, the forest was damn quiet; no animals to be had. He'd been spoiling everyone recently, bringing back rabbits seemingly every other day. Once he'd even nabbed a wild turkey that had been dumb enough to practically stake itself onto his loaded crossbow. But he had a nagging feeling the spoils had run out, at least for this day. He scolded himself for not having left earlier, when the wildlife was more active, before it got too hot. How the hell had he been able to sleep in so late?
He didn't wear a watch when he was tracking. Never had before, either. Still, he was pretty good at estimating the time, and he figured he'd been on the move for about an hour already and had yet to see any other life forms worth the effort to catch. It was strange, really. He couldn't remember the forest ever having been so empty, except maybe... once. He blinked hard and made his way around a felled tree, its rotting trunk too thick to climb over. Patience, baby brother. He stopped for a moment, ears pricking at the sound of a busy pattering, slowly growing louder until he could feel the arrival of an early afternoon rain shower. Nothing too bad, but rain nonetheless. Peering up through the canopy of dying leaves, he saw the clouds, low-lying stratus, light grey in colour, and continued onwards. If nothing else, the light rain would make it easier to identify animal tracks – assuming there were any animals to be caught in the first place.
He'd been walking for at least a half hour when he found them. Two sets. Side-by-side and amiable, like their owners had been out for an afternoon stroll. But he knew that wasn't it. Nobody sauntered into the red zone unless they were desperate – or worse, determined.
He followed the tracks for a hundred yards, stealthily, as if he were hunting a paranoid doe. He stopped often, listening for the sound of voices, for he knew, by the evenness and directness of the footprints, that these humans were still alive.
The tracks ascended a gradually sloping hill, and Daryl looked down when he reached the edge to find a small drop – only about ten feet – ending in a winding, slow-moving creek. Two young men – boys, practically – barely older than Carl sat back-to-back on a nearby boulder, eyes lazily scanning the trees nearest them for signs of movement. Daryl had to suppress an unimpressed grunt at the sight of these two kids and their poor attempt at keeping watch. One of them looked slightly older than the other, but both had the same hunched posture and hooked nose.
Brothers.
"What kind of building are we looking for again?" the smaller one asked, as if he should have known the answer already.
The bigger one shrugged. "Didn't say, exactly. Just that we'd know when we found it."
"It's getting cold out. It'll be dark soon. What if we don't find it?"
The smaller one reached down and massaged his right ankle, wincing as he did so. He cast a death glare at the small pile of leaves by the creek, underneath which was an abandoned rabbit hole just big enough to fit a human shoe. He'd been fool enough to think the foliage would cushion his landing.
The bigger and presumably older one shrugged again. "Dunno. Maybe he'll pick somebody else for the next run." The boy spat and withdrew a gun he'd been keeping in the waistband of his pants. Looked it up and down, as if it were some new toy he'd just opened for his birthday.
The younger one spun around, wide-eyed, and grabbed his brother by the arm, causing the older one to jump and fumble the pistol. It landed softly in the leaves at his feet.
"You don't think he'd choose somebody else to actually do it, though, do you?"
The older one shrugged his brother's hand off him roughly, and reached down to swipe the gun up off the ground.
"I don't know!" he snarled, "Jesus, Max, calm down. He already said it'd be one of us, just calm down."
He put on a tough face but he lacked conviction, as if he didn't really believe his own words.
Daryl shifted in place, lying on his side with his back pressed against a tree. He partially hid underneath a bush, ensuring that while he had a clear view of the two boys, they had great difficulty seeing him. He knew he was in a dangerous position; anyone, living or dead, coming up the hill would see him lying there, vulnerable and practically defenseless. But something held him in place, an uneasy feeling in his gut that told him he needed to know where these two brothers came from.
He wriggled closer to the edge of the drop-off, his left foot snapping a twig as it dug into the soil for a better hold on the wet ground. Daryl held his breath, keeping his eyes trained on the two boys, but neither seemed to have heard him. He exhaled and tightened his grip on his crossbow, always at his side. He could already feel the wetness from the ground soaking straight through his clothing but didn't move any further.
"So when we find this place, do we have to do anything?" asked the younger one, Max.
The older one shrugged and stood up, stretching his arms towards the sky.
"Just scouting it out, I'm pretty sure." He ran a hand through his dripping wet hair and gave his younger brother a jab in the arm before striding purposefully away. "C'mon, we're wasting daylight if we wait any longer."
Max scrambled to his feet, smoothing his damp sweater against his front before reaching down to tighten the laces of his shoes. He straightened up and limped after his brother, right knee buckling slightly with every step he took.
From his hiding spot in the brush, Daryl brought a hand to his stomach and wrung out the excess water that still clung to his shirt.
xxxx
The rest of the morning passed slowly. Beth arrived only minutes after Daryl left, offering Carol a bowl of cold porridge from her outstretched hands.
"Daryl told me you were hungry when you woke up," she said, pulling the stool up to Carol's bedside.
The young woman gave Carol a small, expectant smile, refusing to withdraw the bowl even as Carol stared down at it, hands still glued to her lap.
"Did he have any himself?"
Beth bit her lip and lowered the bowl so it rested on her knees. Daryl had arrived in the kitchen area, taken one quick look into the near-empty pot and told Beth he'd already eaten breakfast up in the cell.
She blushed and shook her head. Sometimes she still felt like a child, believing the little lies people told her.
Carol smiled at the girl and reached out to take the bowl out of Beth's hands.
"But everyone else got some?"
Beth nodded. "You two were the last ones up."
"I don't think that's ever happened before."
The girl shrugged. "You deserve it, you and Daryl."
Carol looked up at Beth, hands clasped together in her lap, her face bright and open with an honest smile. She had a simple way about her, Beth did. Carol felt it would be a great disservice to say Beth was naive, for nobody still alive in their present world could afford to be so innocent. Still, the girl had a way of speaking that cut Carol deep; an ability to take her aback with few words, so full of meaning.
You deserve it, you and Daryl. She didn't understand why those words, so plain and unguarded, made her self-conscious, forcing her look back down at the bowl resting in her lap. Beth was talking about them as individuals, of course. Carol took a large spoonful of food in her mouth, suddenly ravenous. She and Daryl were often mentioned in the same sentence, side-by-side. She swore the others did it on purpose sometimes, just because their names sort of rhymed. Why did it sound so different this time, when Beth said it?
"A good night's sleep."
She and Daryl. Deserving something.
"What?" she struggled to get the words out around the mouthful of food she'd yet to swallow.
"I said you two deserve a good night's sleep more than anyone," Beth repeated, "except maybe Rick."
Carol finally managed to gulp down the lump of wet oats that had accumulated in her throat, hopeful that Beth would assume the pinkish hue of her cheeks was due to her almost choking on her breakfast.
"I'm not much use now anyways," Carol admitted, "unless it's something I can do sitting down, without moving."
Beth watched the woman as she took another mouthful. She was so graceful and calm, just eating oats and water out of a cheap ceramic bowl. Since they'd lost the farm, and especially since they'd found the prison, Beth had looked to Carol like a mother. She'd never said it out loud, for fear of embarrassing herself or even Carol, but she felt it just the same.
"I'll go crazy if I can't keep my mind occupied."
She remembered watching Carol through the windows of the farmhouse as she cooked and washed, constantly busying herself with chores, however mundane. She'd never seen a picture of Sophia but she imagined that the girl had been pretty, before she'd turned. It made her sad, even now, to think about what Carol must have been going through back then. The mind filled itself with the worst possible things when it had nothing else to think about.
"I'll find you something to do," she said reassuringly, reaching out to pat Carol on the knee.
Carol smiled at Beth in between mouthfuls and then went back to scraping the few remaining bits food out of the bottom of the bowl. Beth watched in awe at Carol's serenity as she sat in bed, almost surely in pain. If Carol had wanted Beth to leave her alone she gave no indication, and so Beth stayed, perched delicately on the edge of the stool. She wondered, deep down, if Carol worried about Daryl as much as she herself worried about her father and her sister, or if the woman had already come to accept whatever fates were sure to meet them sooner or later.
She may have been young but she wasn't blind, and she certainly wasn't stupid. She was observant enough to notice the subtle, almost subconscious glances that the others didn't. She was quiet enough to catch bits of stolen conversation when she really shouldn't have been listening. She remembered watching him when Carol was lost in the tombs and she remembered talking to her when Daryl had gone off with Merle. She recognized love when it was plain as day.
"It's nice seeing how much he cares about you," she said honestly.
"Daryl would risk his life to save any of us," Carol countered, "just like you said, remember?"
"I know he would." She gripped her fingers around the seat of the stool and watched her own boots as they tapped on the cold floor. "But he would never have stayed with Glenn all night if he'd been hurt."
Carol chuckled at the way Beth said Glenn's name.
"Be nice, Beth," she handed the girl back the empty bowl. Cold porridge or not, it didn't take long to devour a few spoonfuls of anything nowadays. "He'll be your brother soon."
Beth ducked her head and Carol could see a smile hiding behind the curtain of blonde hair that had fallen in front of the girl's face. As much as she knew Beth had only been imagining a hypothetical situation, Carol found herself compelled to reason through it regardless.
"Besides," she smoothed the hem of her shirt. "Glenn has Maggie."
Beth watched the older woman as she busied her hands with pointless gestures. She recognized that tone of voice, part defensive and part hopeful. Daryl has his code.
"I know."
She leaned forward and gave Carol a small peck on the forehead before straightening back up, empty bowl in hand.
"And Daryl has you."
xxxx
He waited until they'd almost disappeared from view before moving out from under the shrub. A little ways away he could see a tree down below that had grown angled towards the forest ledge. Daryl deftly used it as a ladder, landing lightly on his feet before setting off after the boys.
They moved with a smoothness that surprised Daryl, despite the younger one's injury. The older one walked proudly with his gun in his hand, careful with his footsteps to not disturb too much on the forest floor. Surprisingly, Max easily kept up with his older brother, still limping noticeably but seemingly having a decent tolerance for pain. He chose to keep his own gun holstered.
The boys eventually reached the edge of a clearing and Daryl cursed under his breath. He wouldn't be able to follow them if they went any further, and they'd hardly spoken two words to each other since they'd set off again. They were part of a larger group, that much was certain. And while Daryl conceded that they weren't completely inept, he just couldn't imagine them being valued members of their group. Max and his brother were definitely doing somebody else's dirty work.
Miraculously, before stepping into the clearing Max reached out and grabbed his brother's arm, signalling for him to stop. Daryl threw himself behind the trunk of an elm, and waited, listening.
"C'mon bro, stopping again?"
"I gotta fix my laces, okay? I think my ankle's pretty busted up, it's swelling."
Daryl could hear the defensiveness in Max's voice, his need to reassure his brother that he was still tough as nails.
"Go on, do what you gotta do."
From his spot pressed up against the old elm, Daryl sighed quietly. Apparently even the humans he was tracking weren't worth his time.
"Hey, Jamie?"
The older one sighed. "James."
"Whatever. The others can call you James, not me."
Another sigh. Daryl imagined another shrug, too.
"What if, in the end, he only picks one of us to go? Do you think we'll be able to share the reward?"
Jamie kicked at a rotting log and scoffed.
"We can't share the reward, dumbass. It ain't the kind that gets shared."
"How do you know?"
"You don't share recognition if it's only one of us who does it. You don't share respect like you do a hundred bucks." Jamie knelt down so that he was level with Max, who was still hunched over his injured ankle. "You've gotta earn it."
An odd gleam appeared in Jamie's eyes, a flickering of what could be, a challenge to his younger brother. Max considered this seriously for a few seconds.
"So this run today, this is like us proving ourselves?" Max deduced excitedly. He hastily shoved his foot back into his shoe, tying the laces with renewed vigour. "And if we find it, it'll just prove how deserving we are!"
Jamie looked both excited at this conclusion and disappointed that he hadn't been the one to reach it first.
"Guess so," he conceded through clenched teeth. "You know what I wanna know?" he wondered, in an attempt to change the subject
Max looked up at him.
"I wanna know what happened to his eye."
"The Mexican guy said he got in a fight."
"Shut up dumbass, you know what I mean." Jamie gave Max a shove, one that was a bit too forceful to be considered playful. "I wanna know details. Like was it a biter, or a human... What sort of weapon they used..." He trailed off, lost in his own thoughts of losing an eye in glorious hand-to-hand combat.
Max stood up and looked back down at his shoes, finally satisfied with how he'd tied the laces.
"I just don't understand what we're earning in the end, if all we gotta do for the big job is just go in there and wait."
Even Jamie looked stumped at this and he set off again at a brisk walk.
"Beats me. He said once we were in there we just had to wait it out a little, that everything else would get taken care of."
Max nodded and followed at a lopsided gallop, calling out to Jamie who never looked back.
Brothers.