That same night, in Georgia
He passed the two impaired walkers and went straight for the woman's forehead.
"Dammit, you are not dying on me, you hear me?"
Frantically, Daryl got up and took in his surroundings, as if anything had changed or appeared in the last few seconds. He hated feeling so helpless.
He looked at the sky, and wondered where Carol and Sophia were, trusting that Merle would be with them. He hated being away from them, he couldn't wait to be able to reach them and hold them in his arm, even his loudmouth brother.
"We should be a thrown stone from the quarry your family was at, you can go look for it in the morning," Michonne said from where she was lying down, sweaty from her fever.
"Sure, and you'll wait 'till I'm there to take your last breath."
"I will do my best to stay alive,"
"Bullshit."
She rolled her eyes at him, coughed then said:
"Oh well, I tried."
He went by her side and made sure she was comfortable. It annoyed him to no end to see her fight blood poisoning when he knew what she needed, some antibiotics. Ceftriaxone would be the best, but amoxicillin would be just as good while waiting for her to get better. He kept thinking about the bag his brother kept for when he got the clap and would treat himself that way.
Daryl pondered whether Merle could have left some behind for him just in case? It seemed unlikely in case someone who was not him came upon such a stash. Yet, Carol would have planned for everything if he knew his wife.
His hand went to the discreet he wore on his left hand, forcing himself to take calming breaths as he focused on his family.
"You should leave me behind… We're almost to that quarry. You told me the last time you heard from your family, they were settled there and waiting for you."
"If it's the right one, they must have left because I can't smell or see any trace of it being inhabited. It may not be the right one."
He desperately hoped it was. He needed it to be. After roaming in Georgia for so long, almost three months now, he was filled with anxiety. What if the quarry had been overrun? What if his family hadn't escaped? What if it wasn't the right quarry?
"Jesus fucking Christ," he said under his breath.
He almost apologized for his language, which he would have done with his loved ones. How was Sophia faring? He had taught her everything he knew, and she was the brightest girl he had ever encountered, rivaled only by her mother, but what if it was not enough?
"I'll redo your bandage," he told his travel companion, needing to be productive.
She wanted to fight him off but had too little strength. He changed the dressing of her wound, noticing it was not looking more nor less infected. He racked his brain, trying to remember any remedy for sepsis he had ever heard of. There was lobelia, but that plant only grew in Africa. What was the other one for infected wound? Some kind of elm, he seemed to remember, but there were thousands of those.
He looked around again and ventured into the woods further away from her. He came up to three different kinds of elms and got samples from each.
Michonne was dying anyway, worst case scenario, she'd stink from the paste he was about to brew for her wound while croaking.
He came back an noticed she was slightly less sweaty. He took some water, the fruit of his harvest, and turned it into a paste.
"Whatcha trying now?" She asked him.
"Just something…."
"Daryl Dixon, doctor extraordinaire and mazing public talker," she joked.
He figured she could not be at death door's step if she was still giving him shit, but then again, it was Michonne.
They had met almost four weeks ago, around Macon. He had been looking for his family, and she had helped him in a dire situation where he had been caught in a herd. After slathering himself in a walker's entrail, he had almost made it out, but had needed the woman's help for the last stretch of that escape.
Ever since, they walked together. She knew what he was looking for, and he knew what she was avoiding at all costs, namely Atlanta where she dreaded finding some family members turned walkers. She was not chatty, and neither was he. She had not confided in who she never wanted to see, but he could take a hint, given how great an interest she had in his daughter. He was also smart enough not to push her. They needed each other in this hostile environment.
"Tell me about your wife," she said when he was done.
He looked at the flames, and kept his mouth shut.
He just did not know what he could say that would make the woman happy, or more combative. Ever since she had fallen of a roof, and he had helped her, they had been fighting the sepsis from her wound, and they had not been victorious.
He dreaded she might not make it.
"Don't be a dick, Dixon, tell me about your wife. When did you meet?"
"Do you really want me to wax some poetry about something you don't really care about?" he asked, feeling defensive about his love story.
"There's a high chance I won't make it through the night. I need sleep to recover yet we both know I may never wake up. You'll kill me if the need arises, but in the meantime, tell me something pretty, something that has no place being told in the apocalypse we're in. When did you get married?"
"Twelve years ago, or so," he said, pretending to barely keep score, while he knew their twelfth anniversary had been four months ago, when Carol had told him about being pregnant.
He closed his eyes, reliving the rollercoaster of emotions he had felt at hearing their family was expanding.
"And you met her, when?"
He felt conflicted, his shyness coming up as it always did when it came to specifics.
"I met her over twenty-one years ago," he finally said, as he started sharpening some wood to make new arrows for his crossbow.
"But by then you were like…."
"Fifteen, and she was sixteen," he finished for her.
Sitting down with his back against a tree, his eyes on the dying embers of the fire, he started opening his heart.
"When I was fifteen, I was sent to leave with an uncle while both Merle and my father where in jail…"
He remembered it like it was yesterday. His uncle Barry lived outside of Georgia, in Florida with his girlfriend and her son, Murray. Daryl was instructed to ran around with the older boy. They would go join his friends, and he never felt like he wanted to hang out with them that much. However, at one point, one of them mentioned having seen girls in the wild, and it had intrigued the lot of them.
Daryl had found himself tracking this supposed herd of girls on behalf of the clueless boys, which allowed him to leave them behind and go on his own. One day, as he was doing his thing, he heard laughter and banter, and he knew he had found what the others were looking for. He went back to get them, and the five of them approached a clearing.
It was then he first sax her. She was drawing a magnificent bow, looking fierce, as the girls around her chatted and lived their happy teenage life.
"She was magnificent," he recalled. "She still is. Back then, she had long brown hair, and she was just…"
"Goddess-like?" Michonne offered. "As in Diana, the maiden goddess of hunting?"
"If our second kid is a girl, I hope Carol will consider naming her Diana. She was in her zone. This was a summer camp for girl, and Carol was into archery, as her mates were supposed to be too, whenever they took a break from gossiping."
He remembered watching her get in position, oblivious to the chatter, and shoot her arrow, hit dead center. She had looked up and met his gaze. He remembered feeling aware of his dirty clothes, and the fact that puberty had left him a lanky dude. Though not that tall, he was skinny.
A camp monitor had come running and had discarded the boys away.
He had thought of her in his every waking and sleeping moment. His whole world had become her, but the people in charge of the camp had decided to choose another clearing for the girls to train at.
A couple of days later, Murray told Daryl there would be a party in town, and people were expecting him to show up. Begrudgingly, he had done so.
There, he saw her again. She had shown up with a couple of girlfriends, obviously having left the camp without permission.
She made a beeline for him, and started chit chatting awkwardly with him, sipping on a ginger ale.
"I could not tell you what we said. Something about archery, for sure, I know I asked her about her bow, as it was just so amazing. She had blushed, and …"
"She was your sexual awakening, wasn't she?"
"Yeah. I know it sounds weird, but I did not care for girls. I cared for her."
"She made you feel warm in all the right places," the woman joked.
"Are you sure you're dying? 'Cause you seem to be having a blast breaking my balls while I try to grant you your dying wish."
"Please continue…."
"We got away from the others, she wanted to show me this constellation of stars named after a Greek mythological huntress, and I was hooked."
They had sat under a tree and looked at the stars. Well, she had stargazed, and he had looked at her. So many things were blurry about that night, but certain were as clear as if they had just happened.
"Is there something on my face?' she had asked worryingly, "you're staring."
"You're beautiful."
She had blushed and he did too, unsure where this pseudo smooth talk was coming from. She hadn't minded, had pushed her hair behind her ear, and smiled at him.
With great caution, he had lifted his hand to touch her cheek, and she had leaned into his palm. His other hand had gone to her hair, burying itself in the smooth mane. She had tilted her head up his way, and he knew what she wanted.
He had kissed her. The most chaste kiss ever, yet the most meaningful one too. She had sighed and encourage to do it again. And he had.
"Damn, I can't believe you waited so long after that to get married, you must have gotten hot and bothered pretty soon with each other…" Michonne said.
"She left the next day to go back home. I thought I would never see her again. And for eight years, I did not."
"Fuck, where is Shakespeare when you need him? The guy would have written incredible plays from your first kiss."
"Try not to die tonight, and maybe I'll tell you how I saw her again."
The woman huffed and puffed, then went to sleep.
He did too, thinking of his love.