Ominous silence festered over the atmosphere as the minutes ticked by. What could happen in the coming days looming over both of us. I pulled my knife into my lap, watching the amber light dance with shadows over the gleaming blade. The gleam that once proved to myself that I could handle anything that came at me, now seeming more & more foreboding of a day when I may have to use it against someone who I once believed had my back.
I remember the Shane Walsh I met on the first exit off that road. The night after they dropped the first bombs in the streets of Atlanta.
The night I met Glenn. One of the most important people in the world to me.
I remember accepting his handshake, despite not trusting him yet. I remember looking at Carl with his mother standing behind the man. I remember seeing Carol with her daughter, and my immediate wariness of Ed.
I remember Shane trusting me to find water even though we'd just met, and bring it back to everyone.
And when Glenn & I returned with Dale, Andrea, and Amy in the RV with that water.
I remember Shane being skeptical but saying he trusted my judgement. I remember being consulted on collecting so many survivors, and finding a place to set up because we both knew we couldn't live on the road forever.
When we found the quarry, the man asking if I thought it was a good place; Weighing the pros & cons together before asking the others.
I remember being sent out for food and coming back with two more mouths when I helped Daryl & Merle and spent two hours leading them around to find stuff and weigh whether or not I could actually trust them.
Shane didn't like it(Merle in particular), but because I had brought them in, he agreed to let them stay. He trusted me, and I trusted him. Not in the way I've grown to trust Daryl. I've never trusted anyone the way I trust the man next to me. But I trusted Shane because he was a good person. I knew he was, and not because he used to have a badge, but because of the way he looked out for everyone.
He reminded me of one of the older boys in the shelter I was a frequent flyer at. Always lookin' out for the kids, keeping the peace, and making sure that when kids fought, they made up because the only people who were really on our side were each other; even though many of us didn't even know one another's names and most of us were trouble.
That was the only shelter I was ever in out of the 3 or so, that felt like I could depend on someone else, even just a little.
I remember deferring to Shane's judgement. Watching his back on the runs he accompanied me & Glenn with when we went to risk finding ammo. I trusted him then.
I trusted him when I found out (in the most unfortunate way) about him and his partner's widow. And I didn't say anything because I trusted he knew what he was doing.
When Rick came back I trusted he would step back, or at the very least stop sleeping with the man's wife.
What happened?
Where did that person go?
How did that dark seed plant itself in his eyes? Where did it start? Why didn't I see it happening? Could I even have stopped it if I had?
Where will it spread from here? Being hurt is one thing, overreacting is another. I recognize that sickness in the mind that bleeds through the eyes in bone-chilling calm rage. But when I first encountered them, I was too young to know exactly what I was looking at. Too young and too scared to wonder If there's a chance he could wipe the fog away and see clearly again. If he knows where the lines are? Or if those are gone for good.
It's one thing to see those eyes on someone supposed to protect you. It's another to see it festering in a friend. Growing like a choking vine and not knowing how to stop it. If it's even possible to do so. Not knowing if you're even capable of seeing clearly through your own fear.
Fearing a friend. Looking at them and the earth shattering moment when you realize, you don't recognize them.
Wondering if they're even still in there. Lost somewhere in that black behind their eyes. If there's anything left of the person you knew, to save.
I'm used to living in uncertainty, but I haven't felt this uneasy about the future in a long time. And I had hoped— I had promised myself I never would again.
I don't make promises I can't keep though, and I don't intend to start now.
"Not to keep beating a dead horse but… Why do you wanna leave?"
Daryl shifted. A somewhat distant look taking over. "Just do. Have ya seen the state a this group as of late?"
"Yeah" I sighed, but it was heavy. Heavy enough that somehow my chest feels even more weighed down than before.
"They rippin 'emselves apart. I don't want no part of it."
"None?" I looked at him but to be honest… I'm not sure If I was asking him, or myself. He noticed what's coming in the group long before I did. Where I got caught up focusing on Shane, he was looking at the whole picture and watching it fracture.
"Nope. I ain't goin' down with this ship. I don' owe these people nothin'."
I can't argue with that, but I can't say I entirely agree either. Maybe it's just nostalgia holding me back, but I need to know. If I'm actually gonna make this decision, I have to know it's the right one. "What changed?"
"What d'ya mean?"
"You didn't hesitate to help when Soph—… when Sophia went missing. What changed?"
Daryl looked away, glaring down at nothing with pursed lips.
"Sophia wasn't your fault, Daryl." Believe me. There's nothing anyone could have done. Except...me.
I didn't think he was gonna say anything as the silence passed the minute mark and looked down at the knife in my hands, to just let the silence take back over but finally he muttered, "I should'a found 'er."
The moisture began receding from my mouth; my talk with Rick bubbling back like boiling water in my head. "You shouldn't have needed to."
Daryl looked at me, face scrunching. "What's that s'posed to mean?"
I didn't answer and I could almost see the heckles raise as he stood up. "Yer the one who said she was gon' be fine!"
I saw the anger coming. I knew Daryl blamed himself but, we've all been doing the exact same thing. But I didn't know he blames me, too.
"And I have to live with that!" I shot to my feet.
His eyes were still angry but wider as he stepped back; jaw clamped shut.
If I had been in any better state of mind, I might have seen things differently, but in that moment I wasn't. Guilt is a potent thing.
For once in my life, someone else's anger fueled my own; feeding into everything I was already thinking. And I snapped. At him, or with myself, I'm not sure I will ever know.
"You think I don't know what I said!? What I believed?! You think I haven't spent every second since she walked out of that godforsaken gate to Hell wondering how I could have been such a dumbass!? At least you were able to do something!"
Daryl stepped back again as I stepped forward.
"At least you picked up her trail! Found her doll! All I did was get stuck in a hole!" I threw this goddamn knife into the tree and watched it plant itself an inch deep in the bark. "—Wander aimlessly through a forest I know next to nothing about!" I swung my arm back almost painfully.
"Nearly get myself lynched more than once! And for what!? To take away from the search cause I can't keep track a my own ass— much less hers!" My chest heaved, like I'd been running and my muscles were tight like I had but this is far from running.
"This never should've happened in the first place! Safety in numbers and all that BS— but she wasn't! Daryl. She wasn't safe— none of us are!"
"Ya think yer the only one who knows that!?" Daryl's angered flared back up. "You think if we could'a seen that that heard comin' we wouldn't have?! Wake up, sunshine! None a us could'a done a thing to help that little girl!"
"Yes we could have!"
"How!? By runnin' off into the forest gettin' everybody killed? Rick firin' his gun and bringing that whole train right back for us!?" He shouted in frustration. At the end of his rope.
"I was in the forest!"
Daryl froze.
Slow and cold, eyes dangerously honed, he stared me down and for maybe the first time ever, it was working the way it did on others. "What."
"While she was running for her life, the rest of us hid while Rick went after her, but I—..." My throat caught around the angry lump trying to strangle me from the inside, and I couldn't look him in the eyes anymore.
"If I had gone back through the forest when I thought to, instead of waiting for the herd to pass… I would've seen her." I hadn't planned on telling him this, I hadn't planned on telling anyone, ever. It was my cross to bear but it just… I couldn't stop. "I could've taken care those walkers in a heartbeat— Rick could've gotten both of them back. She would've been okay." My fists clenched so tight my fingers began to tingle; Grinding my teeth as I glared at the dust on my boots. I could see my own chest shaking with every breath but honest to god I don't know why. Whether it's sorrow, anger, fear, guilt— I don't know. I don't know anymore.
Daryl growled lowly. A twisting lack of any emotion at all in the single word that came out of it. "Where."
I didn't answer. I tried to but I couldn't force my lips to anything more than part. Thinking about that little girl's face the last time I saw her alive. And the last time I saw her period.
"Jesus, I thought you were one a the only people round 'ere that didn't need a babysitter!" I flinched when he swung his arm, even though it was towards camp and not at me, old habits die hard. "Where in the forest were ya!?"
"Close enough I could have gone back." I tried to speak louder but the only volume I could achieve was barely above a mumble.
3rd person POV
"Rick did everything he could to save her, you did everything you could to find her, but I could have done something to stop it altogether and I didn't."
Daryl was quiet, stood unnaturally still in front of one of the only people left in the world he trusted. While she admitted perhaps the biggest mistake of her life. A mistake that led to the brutal death of a little girl they all cared for.
"If i'd just gone back—…" Eve rubbed her frustrated, aching eyes hard enough to see spots; she didn't have the right to cry though she wanted to so badly it physically hurt. "Instead she died out there; alone and scared."
When her vision blurred though, she didn't bother trying to hide the angry tears stinging every atom of her glossing eyes. No amount of tears however could have filled the chasm in the three words that had been burning her alive from the inside out since she figured out she was the only person in the entire group who could have stopped it all from happening.
"That's on me."