Hey guys! :D Sorry for the slight delay - I've been very busy lately indeed! :0 Loads of essays and bits of work have been piling up recently, sigh. -_- Ah well - on a lighter note, my birthday's on Sunday! YAY. :'D Very excited indeed. :3
As usual, hope you all enjoy the chapter - it's pretty dramatic and angsty, so I hope that suits you all. It's happening straight after Glenn got upset with Daryl throwing the walker bodies in with their other campmate's. I was always quite struck by how uncertain and affected Daryl looked when Glenn got upset - before his defence mechanism kicked in and he became so angry. :'/
Isnotamusedsir - Yay, Abuelaaaa! :D Awk, she was lovely, I really liked her as well cause she's so sweet - we'll just make it our head-canons that she's still going strong, rocking out with Mr Gilbert and her chihuahuas, haha. Thanks for the review, hope you like the new chap! C:
Leyshla Gisel - Oh, you make me blush! :'/D Haha, thanks, I'm glad you liked it so much :'3 Hope you enjoy this chap too - have fun! :)
Fuchsia Grasshopper - Thanks, glad you liked that - I thought it'd make it a bit more interesting to read :D Yeah, it's fun writing their burgeoning friendship - although, as you'll see in this chap, it's not all plain sailing with someone as emotionally damaged as Daryl :( Haha, I had hoped you'd get a laugh out of the cause lol XD Thanks again, hope this is fun for ya! :3
Macalla - Oh wow, thank you very much! :'D I'm so glad you like Jeanie, I've really enjoyed making her - and I completely agree with you about Lady Daryls...one's enough for me haha! XD Well, hope you enjoy this, m'dear - thanks again for your lovely wee review! :')
Amethiste - Ah, awesome, so happy you liked it! :3 Oh, that's so nice of you to say, thank youuuu :'D Hope you have fun with this chapter and the Jeanie/Daryl interaction as well, thanks again! C:
DISCLAIMER: Me no own-y. ;A;
Chapter 14 - An Intrusion
Shoving an errant branch out of his way, Daryl let loose a furious snarl.
With every step he took, he just seemed to get angrier. It was building and building, his rage, and he couldn't quite seem to stop it despite the little, quiet voice in the back of his mind that told him he had to calm down and realise the danger he was putting himself in. He didn't even know where he was going – his crossbow was back at his tent, and he hadn't bothered to even look in the direction he had chosen to storm off in, so entrenched was he in his sudden anger. But he kept striding onwards, his heated footsteps sending hiding animals scattering off as they tried to escape his burning path.
At his back, the camp was deadly silent. Even as he got further away to the point that their voices would start to fade, nobody spoke – nobody dared. Glenn was probably still staring at the spot he had disappeared from, posture still slumped, that stupid fucking expression still on his face—
He held back the sudden urge to punch a tree he passed, hand curling tightly as he firmly continued onwards, shoulders twitching about. He must have been even more absorbed in his anger than he had thought as he now had absolutely no idea where he was, the camp long behind him, naught but a melding mass of identical trees at his back. The only thing he could hear apart from his harsh, strained breathing and the squawking of far-off birds was his boots ripping roughly through the dirt, tearing up grass with his cleats – before, abruptly, the barely noticeable bubble of a river came from up ahead. Without even thinking about it, he made his way in its direction, head still down, thoughts still buzzing, muscles tensing. When he came out to the peaceful little river, he suddenly realised that it was the same one he had met Jeanie at – just slightly further upstream. It made sense, he distractedly realised: there were only so many water sources around the campsite, and he hadn't been walking that long. He probably would have recognised it sooner if it wasn't for how goddamned livid he was.
The mere thought of how angry he was made him even angrier, ridiculously enough, and so he immediately kicked at a downturned tree trunk that had collapsed next to the water bed, its rotting bark crumpling inwards at his vicious strike. Ignoring the writhing mass of bugs that poured out when he pulled back, he kicked it once more before turning, giving a stomp to the water without the slightest care as to how absurd he had to look, standing there as a full-grown man that was throwing a tantrum worse than a three year old's. A curse finally escaped him as he shoved a loose boulder into the disturbed water with a final slam from his now aching foot, his feral holler ringing out around him, uncaring as to any walkers that it might attract.
As he finally stopped, chest heaving, sweat dripping from his temple, he looked down to face the rippling water, grimacing. Staring without a sound at his unsteady reflection, breaths shaking his frame, his shoulders slumped, eyes darkening. Just as he was about to curse again to himself, a hand coming up to shove roughly against his temple, a soft rustle at his back whipped him around, prompting him to grab a tense hold of his hunting knife and wrench it out at the ready, a snarl curling his lips. However, against his expectations of finding yet another rotten walker stumbling forward to make a failed attempt on his life, something else entirely stood there – Jeanie, her gentle gaze watching him silently as she stood quietly off to the side.
Without saying a word to her, he turned, shoved the knife away with an unnecessarily rough slam from the butt of his hand and threw himself to the ground, boots licking the water, legs bent upwards before him, gaze focussing away into the distance. A tense silence engulfed them, the river flowing on without a care, the same as it had ever been since before all of this awful shit had happened to the world. Even as his stormy thoughts continued to rage inwards, Daryl clamped down on his frame in his stony silence, forcing his muscles to stop twitching and his posture to straighten, gaze becoming shielded. When Jeanie made no move towards him, he spoke, voice low and tense, "What d'you want."
There was a long pause before her even footsteps softly padded over to him, quietly trudging through the baked dirt and into the wet grass, a barely audible rustle of clothing coming from his side as she settled down next to him. He didn't turn around, gaze hardening as it fixed on the distance, posture tautening all the more. The bubbling of the river was all that they could hear for a moment before, finally, Jeanie's gentle voice softly broke the silence, "Glenn's just upset, you know. He didn't mean to snap at you like that."
He didn't turn around to face her as he answered tightly, "I don't give a fuck about that."
Her brow dented, voice falling, "Then why did you leave?"
He didn't answer. She stared at him in silence, uncertain of what to do or say as she waited to see if he would break his quiet – until, quite abruptly, he finally replied, "I ain't gonna stand there and take that shit. Not from him. Not from any of them."
She stared at him. A flicker of something passed in her gaze, turning her away for just a moment, shoulders shifting about. After a slight pause, she looked back and spoke, gaze dented with a quality he wouldn't have been able to pick up on if he had even bothered to turn to her, her voice soft as she told him, "Well, we can stay here, then," she leaned quietly back against a protruding rock, feet gently slipping out to touch the water's edge, "until you feel better."
A silence fell over them. The sounds of wildlife had started to creep back up near them after Daryl's fury had calmed a bit, the apparent danger of his presence lessening when Jeanie sat down beside him. Jeanie had looked away from him, gazing out wordlessly at the hushed river, hands picking quietly at her dirtied knees where dust was trapped indefinitely between the worn fibres of her clothes, caught beneath her well-worked fingernails. Daryl had turned to stare at her, eyes tinged, still saying nothing as he watched her sigh silently. She seemed tired today – although, when he thought about it, of course she was. She hadn't slept a wink all night, he knew. Even when Rick had exhaustedly told her to get some rest upon seeing the heavy bags beneath her eyes and the returning limp to her leg, she had only sat in her tent for hours on end, staring up at the dark plastic without a sound. She didn't know, but he had checked on her a few times in between shifting corpses about, finding her just laying there in silence, eyes uncomfortably blank. After a few hours of nothing, she had eventually turned up at his back, wordlessly helping him pull up yet another corpse, mouth a thin, tight line, silent.
This was the first time she had spoken all day, he abruptly realised. It was strange to see her being so quiet up at camp – but the solemn atmosphere made everyone lose the drive to speak. Nobody could think of anything to say even if they had wanted to. Not with so much death around them.
"What was Merle like?"
He halted. It took him a moment of gaping out at the trees, brow raised, to figure out if he had imagined that or not. When it became apparent that he had not, he turned to find her gazing softly at him, expectant, sitting up attentively. After a moment of staring at her in silence, he furrowed his brow and answered, "...What?"
"You never really talked about him." She paused for a moment, brow furrowing, "Nobody ever asked."
He stared at her, sitting still where he was, expression struck. Then, voice abruptly gruffening, he looked away again and spoke lowly, "You knew him. Why you askin' me?"
She shook her head, "I wasn't his only brother. I barely even talked to him," she shifted slightly, eyes glancing away as she remembered her previous decision to withhold informing Daryl of his brother' lechery even though he likely knew of it himself, "and I didn't know anything about him. You're different," her voice fell, "he cared about you."
That hitched his guard back up. He stiffened instantly, form shifting slightly away, an awful sort of discomfort grabbing him. Jeanie noticed immediately, her gaze whipping back up to him, voice suddenly tentative and unsure, "Daryl?" He didn't turn to her, muscles suddenly taut, mind lurching between utter blankness and a horrible sort of business, rendering him silent. She halted for a moment at his catatonic pause before gently shifting forwards, voice softening all the more, "...I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. Let's talk about something else, like – I don't know–"
"–Fuck, Jeanie, do you not get it?" He suddenly whipped around, gaze blazing, his coarse voice abruptly violent, his frame rising as he barked out, "I don't want to talk!"
She didn't move. The horrible suddenness of his outburst shifted her shoulders up an inch, but her expression stayed the same, her gaze unflinching as she stared up at him, utterly silent, mouth shutting slowly. For Daryl, however, something within him had finally exploded, and he continued on, anger slowly gaining again from its slight lull at her arrival, his frame starting to gain some of its wildness once more as he stood, tall frame drowning her, "You people can't just leave me alone, can you?" Something flickered in her gaze at that, but she kept quiet, "You chain my brother to a pipe – and then you wanna find out more about him?" His lips twisted into a bitter snarl, "None of you even gave one solid shit about Merle – you think I couldn't tell, that I couldn't see the fuckin' looks you all gave him? Do you really think I'm that fucking stupid?"
There was only silence at his back in response. He expected, turning back to face her again, to find some kind of anger in her in response to the horrible, uncontrollable poison spitting out from his mouth, some kind of emotion flickering in her expression. But there was none. She was blank. And that just made him even angrier. He stormed forward up to where she sat, eyes growing feral and wild in the fury, his finger coming forward to jab the air in front of her as his livid voice roared out, "You wanted me to talk, didn't you?" At her steady lack of response, he grew all the more livid, his bitter snarl of a voice ripping through the air and reverberating around the forest, the sounds of the peaceful little river drowned out by his brutal fury, "Well, are you happy now? Huh?"
She didn't answer. By now though, he had had enough, and so, with a final, bitter order of, "Stop pretending to give a shit about me," he turned unceremoniously away in another direction from the one he had travelled from camp, his boots splashing loudly over the water, gaze burning firmly ahead, thoughts steaming away madly. It seemed to him that he had been given a final push from his already unsteady footing, leaving him boiling in the snarling growl of a thought that everything was even more fucked than he had thought as he strode determinedly towards a vast, blank expanse of foliage, no destination in mind.
And then, just as he reached the edge, an arm pulled him back.
He whipped his head around, disbelief written plain across his features when he found Jeanie there, her hand forming a solid grip around his limb, determination etched into her stone-like expression. Before he even had a chance to angrily tear himself away, a vicious bellow ready to burst forth from his chest as a demand for her to fuck off and leave him alone already, something flickered in her that halted him where he stood.
Anger.
"I give a shit about you." Her blunt, low statement rolled out firmly from her strong lips, her eyes sparking, burning, ripping through the air, "I do, and that is not going to change, no matter how much you want it to."
There was a long pause. He turned to her, muscular frame still towering over her own, but no longer furrowed aggressively downwards, his violent posture loosening. No words brewed up in response to her, his mind abruptly blank for things to say. Feeling his muscles drop slowly, eyes still fixed intensely on hers, he abruptly noticed how pale and tired she looked, even as her grip stayed steady and firm where it sat. Something lingered horribly in her expression which he suddenly recognised as grief – pure, sheer despair. She was miserable. He hadn't thought on it before, not really, but she had been friends with Andrea's young , fallen sister – the sister who now lay unmoving before the camp, her horrifyingly ashen body limp in the arms of her sibling, gaze dim and unfocussed as it drained away to a place none of them would ever be able to see. Jeanie had lost one of the first people to have cared for her – to have really, truly, sincerely shown her affection and warmth – since the start of the hell she had been left alone in, grasping and lurching forward for someone to find her. But she had come to speak to him anyway. And she had stayed.
She let go of his arm and moved back, slowly withdrawing her hand, brow steady.
"Stop doing this to yourself."
Her gaze stayed firmly on his own - certain, unmoving, blazing in the sharp, harsh beams of the sun. She waited a moment, silence engulfing them, the faint, barely there wind whistling faintly through the verdant trees – before, without another word, she turned and walked away.
Daryl stared after her as she disappeared back the way she came like a ghost, footsteps silent, form eliciting no sound. His brow was furrowed, gaze unsure, struck, floundering for the first time in a long time. He stood stupefied for hours, days, months, utterly silent, time melding into nothingness, his anger shaking around and cloying in his mind, no longer so certain.
Then, at long last, he stepped soundlessly forward and made his way back to camp.
Oh Daryl, you and your defense mechanism...WHY CAN'T YOU JUST ACCEPT DAH LOVE. ;A; On a slightly brighter note, I quite enjoyed having her declare her investment in Daryl through something other than 'we're friends' or 'I care'...Nah, with our Jeanie it's just 'I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU. OK.' Haha XD
Well...did you like that? I don't often get to do much angst, so any feedback would be appreciated, I do hope it wasn't too 'emo' for you guys haha! :L I had fun writing it at least, even though the ending struggled a bit to be tamed :0 Anyway, hope you enjoyed it as usual! I'll see you all later, plus one year to my name, haha - bye bye! XD