As usual I own nothing, but here is some strong angsty internal Daryl, and oh my gosh I have missed writing him so much!
Daryl stumbled his way towards the cliff, dirt coated hands grasping at the gaping wound in his side. He could feel his vision blurring, blackness flooding his view as he struggled to remain upright. His hands were sticky, coated in the thick and oozing blood leaching from his body.
His chest rattled as he desperately tried to fill his lungs with air, struggling to breathe as his body ached from both the fall that should have killed him, and the ever-present chill that had his body keeling over with the shakes. His clothes were sodden, soaked to the bone from the river he had tumbled into, he could feel himself growing weaker with every second that passed. His hands were seizing up, trapped in a claw-like position as he rested the crimson coated limb against the rocky wall behind him, a last ditch effort to remain stable and upright.
He hadn't planned on going out like this.
He'd always thought he'd end up dead from his fathers hand, the way he had beaten him as a child had never left Daryl feeling safe or secure in himself. It was no wonder that he hadn't expected to live that long, in fact, Daryl could remember the days when he wished that it would all be over. When he would pray that one day, his father would accidentally hit him too hard and he wouldn't have to deal with the lashings of pain anymore. He knew that being free from Richard Dixon was a dream that nobody could fulfill, not his mama, not Merle, and definitely not himself. He'd learned to cope with the pain, to deal with the bruises and the lashes, the expected hits that Daryl could never avoid. It just became a part of life in the Dixon household.
Somehow though, after everything he'd been through, going out like this seemed like a betrayal to his younger self. The young boy who had taken those beatings daily, who had suffered every damn day of his life without even a slither of freedom on the horizon, didn't deserve to die from a bolt to the side. Especially not when the bolt came from his own dam crossbow. He deserved better, he needed better. He needed more.
Daryl needed to know that he had done something good with his life, he needed to make his younger self proud of the person he became. He needed to find Sophia and bring her back to the group, back to her mother who cried every night. Daryl knew his mother would have never cried for him. He was so close to finding her, the doll clutched in his other hand was proof of that, proof that he hadn't been blindly wandering around in the woods for days with no just reasoning. He had been searching endlessly for any damn sign he could think of, and he'd found it in that doll laying abandoned in the creek bed. He couldn't give up on the little girl now. For the first time in his life, Daryl knew that someone depended on him, Sophia depended on him finding her, saving her from all sorts of monsters that roamed the woods and bringing her back home.
Even as the blackness overtook his vision, as he slid down to the floor, his back pressed up against the craggy wall behind him, Daryl knew that he had a purpose right now. As he faded from consciousness, desperately seeking relief for his broken body, Daryl knew that he had work to do. He had a little girl he needed to find. For the first time in a long time, Daryl could see that tiny slither of freedom crack open, a glint of relief, hope and the promise of family was so close he could practically taste it on his dry tongue. There was no other option, if Daryl was to finally have all those things he craved from life, he needed to find Sophia.
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