Author's Note: Videos for characters canon and original, can be found on my Youtube channel via the link on my profile.

'She came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something I have never felt for any other human being.'

Charles Dickens

If It Weren't For Your Wings

You hear me shout when no one's about

You find me where I can't be seen...

"What the hell is that you're doin', Grimes?"

Frowning, Lilian raised her head, her leg still propped up on the makeshift barre, her hand clasped around her ankle. Standing in front of her was Daryl Dixon, crossbow slung across his shoulder. He was the last person she ever wanted to see. Ignoring him, she resumed her position, wincing slightly. She wasn't as supple as she used to be, not having the time or energy to practice, but she reasoned bitterly that's what happened when the world went to hell.

Her father, Rick, had been a sheriff's deputy who'd been shot on duty just before the dead had risen, consequently falling into a coma, and he had died in hospital during the ensuing chaos. His best friend and Lilian's godfather, Sheriff Shane Walsh, had tried to take Lilian and her family to Atlanta, the government issuing orders for a mass evacuation to the shelter there. But that night, they'd became trapped on the highway to Atlanta, where they'd watched the city being bombed by the military. The next morning, they'd fallen in with some other survivors in the same situation, leading them to set up camp in a nearby quarry, where they'd remained ever since, Shane inevitably assuming leadership of the group due to his former status as a senior law enforcement officer.

"What, cat got your tongue?" Daryl taunted, his grey gaze briefly flickering over her, before coming to a rest on her furious face again.

Blue eyes narrowing, Lilian appraised Daryl, the corners of her mouth curling downwards in contempt. Daryl was the kind of person her mother used to cross the road to avoid, teaching her children to do the same, but Lilian no longer heeded Lori's homespun wisdom, not now, not after seeing her mother and Shane together in the woods. "I'm warmin' up," she said stiffly, holding the pose, "what's it to you?"

"Thought you woulda snuck out with Glenn and the others," he said, surprising her. "Instead of takin' Shane's shit lyin' down."

Lilian stuck her chin up in the air. "Let's just say I'm bidin' my time," she then said coolly, hiding her anger with ice. When she had initially expressed a wish to contribute more to the camp, Shane had stuck her on laundry detail, Lilian enduring it, waiting for a better opportunity. When Glenn Rhee, a former pizza boy who usually went on supply runs alone, had raised the idea of trialling taking a group with him to Atlanta, Lilian had seized her chance and volunteered to go. She was all set until Shane had found out and put an end to it, humiliating her in front of Glenn, treating her as if she some stupid little kid instead of a seventeen year old adult.

Daryl's jaw tightened. "You shouldn't be so far from camp without a weapon," he then said gruffly, shouldering his crossbow higher. "Ain't safe."

"I've been out further than this."

"I know."

Lilian lowered her leg to the ground, before straightening up, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder. Daryl just stood there, eyes unreadable. In the silence, secrets hung unsaid between them. He had been there when she'd seen Shane kissing her mother, Daryl witnessing her world fall apart all over again. Every day she tried to deny what she'd seen, but how could she when it underpinned every look and word her mother and godfather exchanged?

Since then, Lilian had often caught Daryl watching her, and not in the way her ego imagined she should be looked at, teenage maudlin dictating she should be gazed upon with desire and reverence. Daryl just looked at her with contemptuous pity, his scornful sympathy making her silently writhe. But she was bitterly grateful it was Daryl in the woods that day and not his older brother Merle, who had bestowed the nickname 'Jailbait' upon her and had never ceased to call her it ever since. The Dixons were the camp's resident rednecks, their presence barely tolerated because of the meat they brought back from their hunts, nobody else their equal when it came to catching the group's next meal.

Daryl cleared his throat, ruining her reverie. "Where did you get that thin' anyways?" he asked, jerking his chin at the barre, looking genuinely curious.

"It's not a thin'," Lilian snapped, "it's a barre – or the closest to it nowadays."

"A what?"

"A barre," Lilian explained impatiently, "it's a stationary handrail to give support when doin' bar work."

"Oh," Daryl said, looking not the slightest bit enlightened in the least. "What's the set-up of this, uh, barre thin', then?" he then said, gesturing at it with his free hand.

Lilian hesitated, nearly losing her nerve since conversation with Daryl was usually limited to him grunting and glaring at her. "Um, it's basically three wooden poles," she then said awkwardly, "the bottoms of the two base poles have been carved into points so they can be staked into the ground. But see the tops of the base poles?" she added, holding them up. "And both ends of the main pole? That's basically a bastardisation of a tongue and groove joint so they can be slotted together. The interlockin' aspect makes it secure, but means it can also be taken apart easily."

"Did you make it?"

"No, Jim did," Lilian said, shifting uncomfortably on the spot. "I mean, I designed it and he made it. But I had to do his laundry for a month in return."

"Hard work should have its own reward, huh?"

"Hey, I don't take stuff for nothin', Dixon."

"Your tone's tellin' me otherwise."

"I might have my faults but I'm no freeloader," Lilian said through gritted teeth, trying to keep her temper, "just Jim's the only one of the men who likes to do his own washin', so I saw my openin' and took it. He realised the advantage of the deal in the end."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really!"

"Is that why he was hollerin' the other day about havin' hot pink boxers?"

Lilian flushed hotly. "Hey, I've seen your smalls, Dixon," she spat, "they aren't anythin' to write home about either."

"Hey, my smalls have never been the same since you got your hands on them," Daryl spat back, jabbing his finger at her, "whoever assigned you laundry detail must have been off their nut!"

"Blame good ole Shane for that," Lilian said bitterly. "I was supposed to go to Atlanta and he sent your goddamn brother in my place instead."

"Mebbe you got the better end of the deal this time," Daryl said just as bitterly, before turning on his heel and heading into the heart of the woods.