Chapter VII In Sorrow Thou Shalt Eat Of It
Daryl licks the blood from his fingertips, absentmindedly trying to clean off a little of the excess before he throws his hand against his trousers. Raw squirrel meat is the special item on the menu today. He makes eye-contact with the doll, he set it up on the end of the log across from him when he found it. It's Sophia's. It's got squirrel blood fingerprints on its face, and he tries not to remember precisely what finding Sophia in the barn was like.
There was no reason for him to head down here, besides that he saw that stupid doll. He got a little banged up, trying to climb down, but nothing too gnarly. He just wanted to get the doll. Didn't even question the urge. He'd been walking all day without a real destination in mind until he saw that doll, washed away from her little girl, maybe while she was turning, and getting found by Otis out there alone in the woods.
Carol will know by now, and his chest feels tight. It's not like he would've been any good there. Daryl Dixon is not the man you call when you need comfort.
He's the guy you go get when you need to murder a barn full of walkers.
Sophia's doll doesn't make for much of a dinner companion. Not that he wants anyone. Maybe having another squirrel around would be nice, since he's still starving.
The image of the little deserted house he found the day before comes back to him and he grimaces. Someone Sophia's size was staying there. By the time he got there, they'd taken off. No reason to think they'd come back. All the same, he's mentally charting a course in the direction of the house. He tells himself it was just because it would make for a decent, safe shelter to sleep tonight. It doesn't have anything to do with the kid who probably wouldn't come back anyway.
Maybe it's the heat, or maybe the meat was bad, but the rest of his day dribbles into nonsense. It reminds him of the crazed ramblings of one of Merle's military pals; the former soldier was riddled with PTSD. Probably one of the only one of Merle's friends who actually seemed like a decent person, through all the addiction and his poor choice of company. Daryl recalled a late night when the man tried to explain what it felt like inside his mind.
Uncomfortably, Daryl finds himself relating.
Started out as little things. I'd think back to memories from a few years ago, but I wasn't sure if they'd really happened––or if they'd really happened to me, or if I was just imagining something 'nother poor bastard had told me. Or maybe I dreamed it.
That's the first sign that something is wrong. Before the panic and the red alert, or the sensory overload, it's the memories. I used to have such a good memory, he told Daryl. Now I can't trust it.
When Daryl gets to the house, he actually wonders how he got there. His steps just fell along one path or another and here he is, just like he'd planned, but he'd never intended to actually come. He doesn't remember the walk. He isn't sure how long it took.
Dangling from one hand is the doll. He'd brought it with him?
The house is still deserted. Checking his pack, he has one less arrow than he thought. Had he killed a walker on the way here? He vaguely remembers killing a walker, but even those experiences are starting to blend together.
The little house is just as empty and disappointing as the day before. No supplies even. All it has to recommend itself is four walls and a roof. The furniture is barely more than splinters. He finds the little makeshift bed he'd noticed the day before. Crouched down, staring into the dark of the little cupboard he imagines the tiny body, curled up and trying to sleep, trying to pretend the world isn't full of hungry monsters. He sets Sophia's doll against the pillow, and tugs on the ragged blanket to tuck it in.
"Ain't that sweet."
Daryl doesn't look up right away. He knows Merle's voice, knows his shadow too, as it stretches over him to block out the relentless sunlight.
"Can't survive out here baby brother. Not all on your own. You needed me your whole life, can't expect to get through this without somebody to look out for your sorry ass."
"You never did nothin' for me," Daryl counters in a growl, finally standing up, but the apparition of his brother sticks in the corner of his eye. He won't face him. "I needed you––that's horseshit. You were gone. You were always gone."
When it mattered.
When he tries to look at him straight on the image is gone. His stomach feels empty and sick. He knows Merle isn't there. Merle is probably dead.
He turns away, and as he reaches the end of the hall, Merle's voice comes back, for one last parting jab, "You ain't come looking for me neither."
Daryl swallows with a dry throat and practically sprints up the stairs, remembering at the last moment to keep his footfalls soft. It probably doesn't matter, really. He's already cleared the house the day before and it's just like he left it. There's no one dead or alive, near enough to hear. All the same, Daryl even quiets his breathing as he moves into each of the bedrooms, doing a three-bears assessment of where he wants to sleep. On the uncomfortable bed, the really uncomfortable bed, or the really, really uncomfortable bed?
He goes with the uncomfortable one; just a bare mattress with signs of fire damage. He closes the door, but that isn't enough, so he goes ahead and laces it tight with shoelaces stripped from his own boots. It isn't an alarm system of any sort, and would barely slow a potential intruder down, but it's something, so Daryl takes it as his only comfort and lies down, determined to sleep.
Barely able to shut his eyes, he feels the mattress shift––the unmistakable sensation of someone else's weight pressing into the bed and moving it.
"Hey. Daryl."
Asleep? Dreaming? Still seeing things? Did Merle's pal with the PTSD ever mention hallucinations?
It takes all his energy to open one eye.
Beth Greene stretches out on her back next to him, gazing up at the ceiling, one hand lazily shifting a lock of golden hair between her fingers. She smiles over at him, big eyes wide and unblinking. "Would you mind killing a few more little girls for me?"
"I minded killing the first one."
Her glittering smile slides into a deep frown. After a moment, all the playfulness leaves her eyes and instead they shine with something like pity as she looks at him. "Please?" she asks in a soft voice, "I'll be your friend?" Like a python, she's around him again, squeezing and bringing back the sensation he'd tried to forget about from the day before, when they first met and she threw herself at him like… well, he didn't really have anything to compare it to.
"It's okay. I'll be your friend anyway." The soft fall of her hair spreads over his shoulder and arms as she carves out a place for her body against his side. She takes a hold of his wrist and drags his arm around her.
"You gonna introduce me?" Merle holds onto the frame of the closet door, hanging into the room with a familiar leer on his face.
With a deep sigh, Daryl instinctively draws Beth in closer to his side. "Beth Greene, my brother Merle. Merle, this is Beth Greene."
"What're you doing wasting your time with the runt, Beth? He's worthless." Merle always had a way of saying the cruelest things with a smile that just got wider as he put off that deep laugh just long enough to watch you really start to feel like shit.
"Is that true, Daryl?" Beth defers to him, rather than offering her own opinion.
"Good for nothin'." Merle chuckles.
"He's just pissed at me." He wonders whether talking to hallucinations makes it worse. Maybe it doesn't matter if you're far gone enough to be seeing people.
"Why's that? Did you do something bad?" Her lips feel soft against his skin as she speaks into his neck.
At that moment, Daryl snaps awake, very much alone in the little three bears hell of a bedroom. A dream or a hallucination, he decides it doesn't matter. The house is dark. He's arrested, momentarily, by the impression that it was something in the waking world that pulled him out, rather than a start from inside his own brain.
The house is silent. The wind outside is mild. There's no sign of threat.
Did you do something bad?
He'd been so distracted by Beth's gut-wrenching purpose for him and the fallout, that he hadn't turned back to the very obvious purpose that he should cling to, now that he's his own man again.
He's exhausted, but he rises up, shaky, and sure he won't be able to sleep until his journey is well underway. She did him a favor, in the end, he decides, as he heads out. He was so intent on being useful to other people-to fulfilling their wants for him: find my daughter, talk to my crazy dad, kill the dead, protect my people-He wasn't thinking.
Merle might be a bag of dicks, but he is still Daryl's brother. The only person who gives a damn about him. Beth had said it a dozen times; they need people. Daryl needs his brother. Maybe the trail has gone cold, but Daryl doubts it. Merle will leave signs behind. Daryl will find him.
Something about the sight of the doll feels final. Beth holds her breath, waiting for the sensation to pass, for her resolve to redouble.
Daryl has led her on quite the winding trail. For three days, she's traveled all over the woods near to her home, with Nelly growing more annoyed. Just hours ago, she'd been thinking to herself how she ought to just send the animal home, and let her get a decent meal and some rest. They've both been foraging, and that kind of nourishment only sustains a body as long as that body doesn't need a sudden burst of energy to escape walkers.
In some ways, this is the worst place to give up. She's just found a walker still on the ground, with one of Daryl's bolts stuck in its head. The shack definitely seems to be where he would've been heading, if he was in this area-which the bold proves he was.
And the doll. All snuggled into a makeshift bed. It looks like the kind of thing Daryl would do if no one else was watching.
She'd really screwed this up. Upstairs, Beth collapses unto a bed, dropping her compound bow with a clatter and groaning. The mattress feel like a bag of rocks. There's little risk of her falling asleep like this. She's tired. She's out of ideas. After seeing that bolt, she had really been counting on finding him here. She isn't sure where else to go.
God had given her this gift. After getting shot in the head, she'd had a second chance, not just to survive, but to make things better. She already saved Otis and there is more she can still do. She can make sure they're prepared when that storm of walkers hits. She can save Jimmy, and Shane, and Patricia, and everyone else who died due to nothing more than being unprepared for the waking nightmare. She can help guide them towards accepting what they have to become, earlier, so they have a better chance of living. She can help them be smarter about taking the prison.
Hell, she knows exactly when Lori will go into labor.
Beth grips the rough mattress. It's too much. It'll never work.
And things are so different. She's already changed so much.
And could they do any of it, without Daryl?
She has a sinking feeling that his presence in the group is crucial.
And she wants him.
She needs him.
"We all need you," she sits up, addressing the doll in Daryl's absence.
Three days is too long. Her daddy will send people out looking for her if he hasn't already.
Beth gathers her things and starts to head back outside. "Nelly?" she left her horse just out front, now the lawn looks vacant. Nelly isn't tied up or anything, so it isn't too strange that she would wander, maybe looking for better grazing than what the foliage offers right around the shack, but she shouldn't have gone too far in just a handful of minutes, not unless something spooked her.
The wind pushes the long blades of grass revealing finer greens, patted down with hooves and boots. "Nelly?" Beth whistles, circling to the far side of the house.
She finds her horse, reigns gripped tight in the firm hands of a sickeningly familiar face. He's got five men with him, and some of them look familiar too. Her first instinct is to panic, or run, or something else that won't do her a whole lot of good when she's fatigued and outnumbered and hasn't had a decent meal in a few days.
"This skittish little beauty yours?" he asks.
It's almost a full year too early, but maybe that means he's almost a full year less crazy.
She greets him with a sharp incline of her head, "Governor."
I was very much hoping a lot of things. One thing I hoped was that I wouldn't go on a three year hiatus. Another thing is that, if I did, I would at least come back with a nice long chapter. What I'm trying to say, amazing readers, is that I'm sorry that this was short, but MOSTLY I'M SORRY ABOUT THE THREE YEARS THING, THAT'S GARBAGE OF ME.
If there's anyone still interested in reading this, know that I'm still interested in writing it :D
So much love to you all.
Agnes Obel - Familiar
