Chapter 12
-Daryl-
"Rick it's so good to-" Lexi began, reaching out to embrace Rick shyly, but the words died in her throat upon seeing his face.
Carl, who had been hugging his Aunt Cait with a look of confusion and sympathy on his young face looked up at his dad with alarm. He left his aunt's arms and began to move towards Lexi, a genuine smile on his face at the slight of her.
"Hey Lexi..." he said almost bashfully reaching out for a hug, but Rick through his arm in between them, escalating the tension that was already starting to build.
'This is gonna be bad.' Daryl thought moving around from the driver's side of the car to stand beside Lexi. Rick was his partner, and he trusted him implicitly, but Daryl knew in his heart that their leader was still too broken from Lori's death to make decisions on his own.
"What happened to her." Rick growled, leaning down over a clearly bewildered Lexi.
'He doesn't even see her,' Daryl realized as he watched Rick's eyes grow more and more crazed. 'All he can see is Shane.'
"She hasn't been right since I found her in the hospital... I got there as soon as I heard they'd deployed the Guard there... One of the nurses told me she'd run after them in the halls pleading with them not to shoot her patients for 20 minutes before remembering that Ian was still in the trauma ward... She was still trying to resuscitate him when I got there..." Lexi explained quietly, her eyes filling with tears.
"Rick I am so sorry, I've done the best I can." she pleaded, reaching out for him again. But rather than accept her explanation he sank deeper into his delusion, grabbing her wrist and twisting her arm down painfully.
"Rick what is wrong with you!" she said her eyes searching his face. The hurt in her voice was killing Daryl. He'd heard that tone in his father's girlfriends' voices before, the first time he'd hit them. He didn't know what was worse, the sound of the pain, fear and surprise in their voices, or the fact that by the third time it happened it always went away.
"Rick! Have you lost your mind! What the hell are you doing? Shane would kill you if he saw you pulling Lexi around like that!" Caitlyn yelled, pushing her brother bodily away from her friend, accusation and anger lining her pretty face. At the mention of Shane's name Daryl noticed Glenn and Maggie glance at Lexi suspiciously, but luckily she was too overwhelmed with Rick's behavior to notice. Things were bad enough without bringing her brother's death into the conversation.
His sister's shove had affected Rick, but as Daryl saw his eyes dart around wildly he realized it hadn't been for the best. Rick was staring down his unhinged sister, who despite her clear departure from reality still seemed to be a force to be reckoned with. Something in his stare though made Daryl uneasy. He wasn't looking at her face but seemed to be trying to stare a hole through the oversized Emory hoodie she still wore over her pajamas.
" Caitlyn, give me your sweatshirt." he ordered.
"What? Rick what is wrong with you? Honestly what's happened to you?" she said alarm pouring from her blazing blue eyes.
"Your sweatshirt Cait. Now."
Still looking at her older brother with concern, the younger Grimes' sibling, reached for her sweatshirt pulling it over her head with an exasperated sigh. Daryl glanced sideways at Lexi and found her paralyzed with fear, unable to stop the events that were playing out before her.
"There," Caitlyn said balling the hoodie up and tossing it at her brother, "Although I don't see why it's so important to you. God Rick the way you're carrying on you'd think something was seriously wrong."
Daryl watched Lexi's eyes fall to the ground and moved between her and Rick the second before he lunged. Catching him in a headlock Daryl lowered his friend to the ground, speaking under his breath almost tenderly in an attempt to calm the older man. After everything he'd been through, an insane AND pregnant sister was just more than he could handle.
