"Hey, this'll work," Rick said as the small group approached an abandoned car in the middle of the road. They had been sleeping in makeshift camps and traveling along the tracks for the last couple of days, and the car was a good place to get some secure sleep. After killing the walkers around, Camila went inside the truck and made room for people to sleep in shifts. As it got dark, Rick and Michonne agreed that Carl and Camila should rest.
There wasn't much of any food, just some small animals they had found from time to time to cook, and water was just as scarce. All that time in the prison with available livestock and a garden made it easy to forget how difficult it used to be after they had left the farm.
Daryl handed Camila part of the rabbit he was eating. He had hunted that morning and didn't find much. Once dividing the meat among the group, none of them hand enough to actually satisfy their hunger. Daryl saw her give Carl most of her share, just like she had done about every other time they found food for the group. She tried to refuse the extra food from Daryl but he just shook his head.
"You gotta eat somethin," he told her as he kept his hand up to her, containing the meat.
"I'm fine, really, you have to eat too, I'm not taking your share," she tried again.
"C'mon I know you've been givin yours away." Camila looked down when she realized she was caught, but she smiled to herself at Daryl's concern.
"Thanks," she whispered as she finally took it. She thought for a moment before saying "it's stupid to think about how I used to willingly skip a meal from time to time."
Daryl stared at her without saying a word. He thought about it himself, and he was used to skipping meals when he didn't have enough money or couldn't find anything out on his own hunts. However, he knew that Camila grew up with a lot of money, and he found it crazy that she used to skip meals. "You could have fancy food every day and you chose to starve," he stated with a small scoff.
"I know," she sighed and shook her head. "But it's true. Sometimes I would look back on the week and realize I ate three full meals a day for a few days in a row, so I would force myself to eat one meal a day max for the next week. I was paranoid about gaining weight, but I rarely had time to properly exercise, so I would just skip meals sometimes. I never really saw it as a problem, just a way to prevent overeating. However, overeating in my mind was anything more than 2 small meals a day." She paused for a moment and then continued "like I said, it was stupid. Feels like most of what I used to worry about was pretty stupid when you look at our lives now."
"Maybe it made you stronger, helped you now," he suggested.
Camila smiled slightly. "Maybe," she said. However, she thought about how her life was before and after the dead started walking. She knew she was very lucky with the amount of money she had growing up. She never worried about hardships that so many others faced, that she knew Daryl lived everyday with. It made the shift to living at the quarry, then the farm, and then on the road a very drastic one.
As Camila reflected again about that time after the farm as well as before everything, she knew there were parts of her life that felt like she was finally free of, and it was a blessing to her. She never had to see her parents again. It pained her to think about how much love she had for them despite everything they put her through. All she ever wanted was to feel that love in return but she didn't get it from them. She didn't get that love from Mark either. She only ever got it from Lori, and then Carl and even Rick. They were her real family. Slowly the new group of people she met became her family as well.
Then above all, she found true love with Daryl. Daryl, who loved her fully and as deeply as she loved him. Daryl, who genuinely enjoyed spending time with her, and put her first in his life. Daryl, who she would do anything to see him again because she missed him every minute since they left the prison.
Camila soon drifted off to sleep next to Carl in the front seats of the truck, and without recalling any dreams, she woke to tapping on the window. She jumped awake, always on edge whenever she slept anymore. As she looked out the passenger window, she saw an unfamiliar man tapping the glass with his knife. Camila immediately woke up Carl and pulled him close to her.
He saw the man she saw and tensed in her arms. They both then were distracted by another tap, but this time on the driver's side, closest to Camila, and he was holding a gun. It was clear that they were confronted with a group, and by the looks of the faces by their window, they were not friendly at all. She quickly assessed the situation and tried to look through the front window to see if Rick and Michonne were still okay, but it was too dark. She heard voices outside and could only pray they had time to figure it out.
Camila only had a knife on her, the gun was given to Michonne to help with being lookout. She took in a deep breath as she simply pulled Carl closer to the middle of the truck, not knowing what to do.
She strained her ears to try and hear what they were saying. She heard a man loudly counting down until he was interrupted. Her and Carl turned their face to the direction of the interruption, and could make out someone new behind the man next to the window on Camila's side. It was Daryl. She knew it was Daryl. She could see him as he walked past, but she could hear what he was saying. She took a deep breath and squeezed Carl a bit tighter. "It's Daryl," she whispered to him.
Her thoughts were interrupted as the man by her door looked closely at her face and then away at Daryl and back at her. Before she knew it, he opened her door and grabbed her leg tightly and yanked her out of the car.
"No!" Carl yelled as he tried to hold onto her. Camila tried to pull herself away from the man but wasn't strong enough. He yanked her all the way out and threw her onto the floor.
"This here's Daryl's girl," the man sneered as he kicked her closer to the rest of the group. Camila held in a yelp from the pain, trying not to let them know how scared she was. "The one in the picture Len had," the man elaborated.
Camila looked around and saw about half a dozen men with their weapons drawn. Rick and Michonne had guns to their heads, and Daryl was standing there with his own crossbow down. He looked at her and she could see the fear in his eyes, but he remained calm.
"These here are good people," Daryl said to the man with his gun to Rick's head.
"Now I think Lou would disagree with you on that, of course I have to speak for him because your friend here strangled him in a bathroom" the man replied. "And I find it interesting how your pretty little wife would want to associate with these killers." Daryl's eyes flickered from Camila's and back to the leader of the group. Camila felt her entire body shake slightly at their situation. She made any movement from the ground she was thrown to, and these men would start shooting. She couldn't even see Carl anymore from where she was, and that scared her even more.
"You want blood, I get it," Daryl said. He threw his crossbow on the ground and said "Take it from me, man. Come on." Camila wanted to scream at him to stop, scream at them to not take his offer, but she couldn't do anything in fear of making things worse.
"This man killed out friend," the man said. "You say he's good people. Now that there is a lie!"
Daryl put his hands down and sighed and before Camila could register what was said next, the men closest to Daryl threw him against the truck and started punching him. She screamed and tried to jump up to stop them but she was grabbed by someone else. She then heard Carl's cries as he was pulled from the truck. She struggled in the arms of the man holding her to reach either of them, but she couldn't get out of his grasp. He had her stuck on her knees as he was behind her, one arm wrapped around her entire body, and the other hand grabbing her neck tightly.
She could still breath as he mostly pinched the sides closest to her jaw, but it was a strong grip that made it hard for her to move at all. She tried to reach her knife as her hands were pinned close to her body. She heard Daryl's grunts as he was now on the ground still getting beaten by two men, and she heard Rick's yells for it to stop.
"First we'll beat Daryl to death, then we'll have the girls, then the boy, then we'll shoot you and we'll be square," Camila heard the man tell Rick from behind her. He started laughing loudly and Camila was breathing hard in a panic. She saw Carl get thrown to the ground and she struggled to get to him.
The man holding on to her started whispering in her ear. "You want me to help you, baby? I can protect you. If you'd be with Daryl, I'm sure you'd have a fun time with me." She tried to ignore his words and his increasingly tight grip on her body and jaw, but then he licked up the side of her face. As she tried to move away, he kept her in place, so squeezed her eyes shut in disgust.
Then a gunshot went off behind Camila and she froze in terror. The man loosened his grip on her so she was able to reach her knife in her pocket and push it back towards him. He yelled out in pain and she stabbed him again. Soon the man who had Rick was bleeding on the ground, she had no idea how Rick had managed it, but she got out of the man's arms. Michonne had shot the man closest to herself, and then one of the ones attacking Daryl. Daryl was standing again, and killed the other man before grabbing the man that had been holding Camila.
He was still shocked from the two stabs that Camila gave him, so he didn't have a moment to fight off Daryl before Daryl shoved him to the ground and stomped hard on his head. Camila fell back to the ground in shock, but then whipped her head over to Carl. He was being held with a knife by the man who was previously on top of him, but soon it was Rick who took him down and began stabbing him to death. Carl was held safely in Michonne's arms, and Camila looked around to see if anyone had been missed. Nobody else from the group of malicious men were alive anymore.
Daryl stumbled over to Camila and lifted her up and towards the truck. They both fell back against it and sat on the ground, his arms wrapped around her silently and she buried her face in his neck. The screams of the man Rick took down were loud at first but then slowly began to die down as his life came to an end. Daryl just continued to hold her head gently against his body until the road was silent once more.
"I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing, Daryl," Camila sighed as she sat next to him in the prison courtyard they cleared on their first day there. She had helped clear the walkers alongside Maggie and the rest of the group, but she had come very close to being taken out by one of them. She was knocked to the ground fighting it off before Daryl had shot it in the head and pulled it off her. She hadn't come that close to getting bit before, and it freaked her out.
"You're doin just fine," he told her but she shook her head.
"You don't have to lie to me. I almost got myself killed today. I thought I had enough practice to help you, to protect myself, but I was clearly wrong."
"You're better than before. And you're good enough to keep up with us. It's why we go in a group, we have each other's backs."
Camila gave him a look and then nodded slightly. "I just get scared," she said quietly. "Do you remember at the farm, Randall? How terrible it would have been if his group found us? Well I think about that a lot. I can't even protect myself properly against a few walkers, how could I possibly begin to do so with a group of living people like that? I know I'm stronger than before all of this, but I still don't think it's enough. I just get scared that something, or rather someone, will be too much for me to handle."
Daryl grabbed her hand in his own before he spoke. "You don't have to worry bout that," he stated with confidence. "I'll protect ya, always." She smiled softly at him and then leaned her head on his shoulder.
Daryl thought back to that night as he held on to his wife. Back then they had been together for a few months but she was already his entire world. He felt like he failed her, like he broke his promise. As he was beaten and couldn't keep her safe from the very men he had found himself with, he knew that he failed to protect her.
I hope you liked this chapter! Let me know which are your favorite parts of these chapters: the present storyline we're following, or the flashbacks?