AN: Here we are, another chapter here. We'll have a few little time jump/scene setting chapters here as we progress. There's been a little time jump here as everyone's been getting settled into their new lives.
I hope you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!
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Like most people, Daryl had never killed a person.
There had been times he'd thought about killing people—and maybe that was wrong in itself—but he'd never actually killed a person.
Daryl had wanted to kill his old man more times than he could count. He'd imagined ways that he might do it. Even since the old man had been dead, there had been times that Daryl almost wished he could go back in time and kill him before he'd had a chance to fuck everything up. It would have put him wielding some kind of weapon before he could actually remember, and before he could walk or talk, but his imagination could sometimes run away with him and suggest that there might have been a moment when he could have ended it all and saved everyone in his family a hell of a lot of heartache.
Daryl had wanted to kill Ed Peletier, too, since the moment that he met Carol. The more he'd come to love Carol and Sophia, the greater his desire to see Ed Peletier wiped away from the face of the Earth had become. Barring extreme circumstances, however, he never would have actually done it. To kill Ed Peletier would have been to land himself in prison for pretty much the rest of his life, and to guarantee that he couldn't spend that life with Carol and Sophia. When he thought about it that way, he'd rather spend his life making up for what Ed had done, in the realest and most sincere way that he could, than spend the rest of his life rotting in some cell over a man who never deserved to be alive anyway.
Daryl had always thought that, for all his fantasizing about how easy it would be to kill someone that deserved it, it would really be incredibly hard to pull the trigger on a living human being and end their life.
Daryl was a hunter. He had been killing since he was a kid, and his brother had taken him out to teach him. Merle had let Daryl hunt since he was confident that the kickback wouldn't knock him flat on his ass every single time he pulled the trigger. Daryl was no stranger to killing living things, but he didn't even take that lightly. He respected the animals he hunted. He believed they deserved that respect. He ate what he killed—or he used it to feed others—and he didn't believe in killing for sport. He didn't kill because he enjoyed killing. He killed because it was the way of life. He killed to eat and to be sure that others ate.
Even the first time he'd had to kill one of the rotted corpses had been difficult.
They didn't know shit about the corpses except that they were moving fucking corpses that were set on attacking and killing the living. They knew enough from the reports they'd heard, before the radios had gone off the air and the whole world had seemed to go quiet, to know that the corpses were dangerous. There was something in the virus—whatever the fucking virus was that was determined to destroy the whole world—that made the corpses reanimate once the person died. Any swapping of fluid from the corpses, or from anyone who had been infected with the virus through some swapping of fluid with one of the corpses, would result in death. It was not a pleasant death, either.
The first time that Daryl and Merle had encountered one of the corpses outside of camp, Daryl had hesitated to take a shot. It was unnerving to see a corpse—this one with half his face torn off and a great deal of chewed out places on his body—limping toward them, snapping and growling as he came. Merle had hesitated a little less, perhaps more prepared for something like this from his brief stint with the military, and he'd fired a bolt directly into the chest of the creature.
The bolt had barely slowed the thing down for half a second. Panic had set in, then, as Daryl had started to wonder if and how these things could be stopped. And, if they couldn't be stopped, what would happen when they reached the camp and, subsequently, reached his family?
He'd reacted, then. His first bolt had gone a little wild and struck the thing in the throat. It had kept coming. Merle had panicked and run forward to slam the butt of his rifle against the corpse's head—it had become impossible to see it as a human any longer. It became nothing more than a horrifying monster set on destroying everything either of them held dear. The blow knocked it down, and Daryl's next bolt went directly through the thing's eye as it struggled to rise.
That was how they had discovered that the only way to kill the walking corpses—Walkers, as Merle decided to dub them—was to destroy their brain.
As the time ticked on, Daryl had grown accustomed to killing Walkers. Many of them had. They cleared the surrounding areas, several times a day, to get rid of any who might stumble anywhere near their camp. Killing Walkers, though, was not at all like killing a living person.
Still, it had been easier to do than Daryl had thought it would be.
Daryl had practically fallen to the ground when he'd reached the spot that he'd chosen for himself to sit in the tall grass. He wasn't at all sure why he'd chosen this particular spot. It was just the right spot, and he'd dropped to his knees in the dumbest way possible. No intelligent person would go down like that, but Daryl wasn't feeling quite intelligent as he'd hit the ground.
He was foggy. Something was foggy. Everything was foggy. Grass and dirt stuck to his hands and he'd wiped them on his shirt to clean them. The sensation of so much dirt and grass clinging to his fingers was uncomfortable and undesirable. It wasn't until he put the cigarette in his mouth, fished from his shirt pocket, that he smelled the copper scent of blood. He flicked the lighter, lit his cigarette, and looked at his hands.
Daryl had thought of killing Ed Peletier before, but he'd never imagined that he'd actually do it.
It looked like the asshole had lost most of the blood in his body. He couldn't put blood back in him no more than he could have scooped water back in with his hands after a dam broke.
Ed came over the line. And, in coming over the line, he'd decided that he had a right to talk to the little girl that—though she was the biological result of his coupling with Carol, once upon a time—didn't care for his presence and didn't identify as his daughter. Carol had intercepted him, as Carol was simply going to do. Daryl had been halfway across the camp. He'd been cleaning a deer he'd shot earlier. He saw when Ed grabbed Carol by the upper part of her arm. He'd seen, like in some kind of slow-motion dream, when Ed had landed three or four hard slaps across her face in rapid succession. He'd heard Sophia screaming. Crying. Moving his body had made him feel like anvils were tied around his ankles. But then, somehow, he'd found his momentum.
The recently sharpened hunting knife might not have been Daryl's first choice for a weapon if he'd been picking from everything available to him, but I had been what was in his hand.
Some of the blood drying into the cracks of Daryl's hands and darkening to an almost black color had belonged to the deer. Some was Ed's. The rest of Ed's blood, at that moment, was likely seeping into the Georgia ground.
Daryl jumped at the feeling of pressure on his shoulder. He hissed a warning at whoever or whatever might bother him. He'd left his knife, and that was probably not the best thing to do, but he wasn't thinking too clearly.
"Shhhh…" came the soft sound of Carol's soothing. It was the same sound she used to calm Sophia after her nightmares—almost all of which had featured the monster that had been her biological father. "It's OK….shhhh…" Carol soothed. She sat down on the ground next to Daryl, her hand still on his shoulder. He didn't even mind being soothed like a child. For just a moment, he appreciated it.
"Weren't as hard as I thought it'd be to kill him," Daryl said. "I'd do it again."
"I know you would," Carol said. "But you don't have to. He's as dead as he's going to get. That knife through his eye socket probably did something to seal the deal."
"You hate me?" Daryl asked.
Carol laughed quietly.
"I couldn't hate you," she said.
"Sophia?"
"She's never going to hate you," Carol said. "She's shook up. Badly. And I shouldn't be gone too long, but Dale took her to Andrea so she and Amy could distract her with a chocolate bar he had squirreled away."
"She's too old to be distracted with candy," Daryl said.
"I hope that's not true," Carol said. "She's going to have some rough days, probably, and nights. She hated him. Still, seeing him murdered—seeing anyone murdered. It's going to take her a couple of days to come down. But—she'll be OK."
"It was seein' what he done to you that's gonna fuck with her most of all," Daryl said. "Just got her over the fuckin' nightmares every damn night about somethin' happenin' to you. Just got her where she didn't fuckin' scream every time she thought someone was gonna hurt you and now…"
Then Daryl looked at her. He felt his chest tighten. He felt his throat tighten. Beyond his control, he felt his face draw up. Her lips were busted. There was blood on her face. And, unlike the blood on his hands, the blood on her face belonged to her. Daryl touched her face, wishing his hands weren't dirty and bloody—wishing he had something clean to touch her with.
"He hurt you," Daryl said. "And I didn't stop him."
Carol smiled at him. Her eyes were filled with tears, and a few of them dropped down and rolled down her cheeks—cleaning streaks down her face as they went.
"You stopped him for good, Daryl," Carol said. "You stopped him—as much as anyone could. He's never going to hurt me again. He's never going to hurt Sophia again. He's never going to…to touch her. And tonight? Sophia might not sleep. And I might be up all night with her. But when I do sleep? Daryl it's going to be the best night's sleep I've had since I met Ed. And you gave that to me. You did."
"But I didn't stop him before he hurt you," Daryl lamented, his chest feeling like it might split in two. He brushed a finger over Carol's lips, lamented that his fingers were dirty, and then brushed them over her tear-streaked cheeks—angry to see that he'd only left a smudge of blood behind. "I'm sorry," he said. "I let him hurt you. And I got you dirty."
She leaned and carefully pressed her lips to his. He accepted the kiss. He tasted the salt of her tears and the copper from the blood of her split lips and he pulled away, growling to himself.
"I fuckin' hate him," Daryl growled.
"You can stop hatin' him," Merle said, his voice booming out as he approached. "Ain't no need wastin' your time an' energy hatin' worm food. It's the same as hatin' the old man at this point. You can do it, but you the only one hurtin' from it." Merle walked around, and knelt down in front of Daryl, supporting himself on one knee. "You alright, brother? You whole? Lit outta there 'fore I could tell."
"I'm fine," Daryl said.
Merle reached and touched Carol's face, tipping her chin up toward him.
"Ehhh," he mused. "It'll heal, Mouse. You go back to camp an' we can help you get that shoulder back in."
"I know it'll all heal, Merle," Carol said.
"Jesus," Daryl growled. "I ain't even seen he pulled your fuckin' shoulder out!"
"It happens, especially after so many times," Carol offered.
Daryl couldn't breathe normally, and he worked to suck in a few quick breaths to calm himself.
"Is he OK?" Carol asked, directing her question to Merle as she leaned against Daryl on her uninjured side. She leaned her head against Daryl's shoulder, and Daryl realized that all of this probably scared Carol. It disturbed him, too. The way he felt, though, somewhat outside of himself, told him pretty quickly that he was coming out of shock—he wasn't even all the way out of it yet. He reached a hand toward her and patted her.
"He's gonna be fine, Mouse," Merle offered. "Diggin' holes is good for the soul. Come on, brother. Gotta get back to the camp. Mouse's got a lil' pup to take care of, and you an' me got an asshole to plant."
Merle stood up, helped Carol to her feet, and then heaved Daryl to his. Daryl staggered a second, almost feeling like he'd been on a boat, but quickly regained control of his legs. Merle clapped him on the shoulder, but there was nothing else to say, really.
They would go and tend to Carol. Carol would tend to Sophia. Merle and Daryl had a body to bury.
Daryl had never killed a man before—at least, not until that day—but he didn't regret what he'd done; not even for a minute.