The cave was still cool when she woke up, the early morning haze surrounding her in a moist fog as she stretched out her arms. The void of a missing person plagued her mind as she rubbed her eyes, searching for someone she wasn't even sure was there to begin with: Damon, David, Daniel…? Daryl! She sat up and looked around toward the mossy entrance, dim light painting the mouth of the cave a gray octagon with no outline of Daryl. Maybe he was just a dream, after all.
She shrugged off the thought, pleasant enough as it was. Another hunter to keep her company, to make sure she wasn't losing her mind in all of this solitude up in the mountain would have been nice. She sighed and gathered up her bow and arrow, getting ready for her day and the descent down the mountainside.
"You were right," a gruff southern accent echoed against the rocky walls. "Didn't see a walker all night."
She looked up from her hunting tools, aghast that the fading memory she had so quickly dismissed was an actual person and not a mirage. He had been there, broken bread with her and still chosen to stay. She couldn't help but smile as she looked him over, remembering every detail about his appearance.
"I thought you'd gone," she muttered, trying not to sound affected as she slung her quiver over her shoulder.
"Pfft," he waved her off, giving her the impression that the idea was absolute madness. "I kept watch most the night." He ran his hand along the wall of the cave, shaking the moisture off his hand.
"You didn't wake me," she stated.
"I slept here and there." He shrugged and shook the last few droplets off his fingertips, pointing out to the forest. "We should go into town and get some stuff for a perimeter, maybe check those traps."
"You've done that before?" She gripped her bow tightly. "A perimeter?"
"You haven't?" He turned and started walking down the mountain, glancing back only to make sure she was close behind. "Just enough stuff to make some noise if anything runs across the line. Doesn't have to be anything fancy."
"You did this at your old camp?" she prodded, stepping into his muddy footprints.
"Yeah." He leaned back with the angle of the mountain, taking slower and heavier strides as he touched her markings on the trees as they passed. "We kept movin'" he started, swinging his arms back and forth as he walked. "Every place we stopped, we thought we were safe. We used perimeters in b'tween."
"Were you safe at your last camp?" She leaned back too, grabbing those tree branches as she followed the hunter closely.
"Kinda," he offered, reaching his arm back to grab the crossbow off his back. "After a while we were… but not at first." He brought the weapon up to his face, searching for any immediate threat as they continued into the forest.
"Saviors?" She wanted to know what caused all that pain he carried with him, but couldn't tell if he was ready to tell her just yet.
Silence.
Maybe if she told him what happened to her, the horrors she had to endure, he might be more inclined to open up to her in return. It may have been a while since she had interacted with someone besides James, but she remembered feeling safe when someone else showed their vulnerable side. She took in a deep breath and decided to give it a shot.
"James always warned me against letting people in when we were together. He said what had happened to the world brought out the worst in people, that they would panic and try to take what we had." She straightened her posture as the ground leveled out near the foot of the mountain. "He said that history would repeat itself, and people would turn into savages." She paused. "I kind of thought he was just ranting and raving until the Saviors came."
Daryl grabbed the last tree with her mark aggressively carved into it, giving her a look to let her know that he was listening.
"James was out hunting that afternoon, but... he wasn't far off when they pulled up with their trucks and guns." She swallowed hard as the memories took over again, wrenching her insides together as she did her best to navigate her path. "We had a cabin in the woods, something completely off the grid that no one knew about but us even before the outbreak… but they eventually found it. James had been living off the land for years. People would call him the crazy old medicine man, Squanto, Chief, Tonto, you name it, but he didn't care. He liked it out there all by himself, loved it even. I'd only just remembered it when the outbreak happened, and he was kind enough to take me in."
She stepped in front of him, leading the way to find a rabbit squirming nearby in her trap. It was big enough to provide a decent meal for both of them as it shivered in fear inside the cage. It had no idea it was about to die for them, to give them the strength they needed, but they had gone long enough without a meal to let it go.
"There was a man named Simon… but then he said he was also Kegan…?" She closed her eyes and tilted her head to remember.
"Negan," Daryl whispered, an angry growl hidden in his throat.
"Yeah, that sounds right." She opened her eyes and pulled her knife out of its sheath, unlatching the trap and grabbing the rabbit by the scruff of its neck. "They were trying to tie my hands together when one of them said that Negan had never fucked an Injun girl before, and that I should get in the car and go back with them."
She bent down and whispered a prayer over the rabbit's soul, shh-ing it as it struggled against her grip. She closed her eyes again as she slit its throat, ignoring the final desperate kicks its legs pounded into the ground.
"He had snuck up from behind, killing most of them, silently, one by one before he got to the man in front of me. Only he missed one that was hiding behind the car, and they shot him." She opened her eyes. "Right in the head, they shot him… right in front of me!" She squeezed the life out of the rabbit, it's blood squirting violently between her fingers and into the dirt as her story progressed.
"I was too late to save James, to stop Simon from driving away, but I grabbed that man's gun and just kept shooting until there was no one left." Her eyes welled up with tears as the image of his head exploding replayed in her mind like an old movie stuck on a projector. She could feel the shards of bone scatter across her face again as if he were trying to reach out to her one last time. She knew that she told Daryl she had been out here for months, but the truth is she'd lost all track of time and purpose without James. It could have been years since that incident, and she wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.
"Hey." Rough calloused fingers made their way over the hills and valleys of her knuckles, coating themselves in blood as they held her shaking hands. "Hey," he whispered again, squeezing her digits gently.
The sudden sensation of being touched by another human led her eyes to his, bringing their blueish gray to her attention for the very first time. Years of torture and understanding washed over her with a single glance as his monstrous arms grasped her trembling figure. He held onto her until the blood ran out, the scarlet liquid dripping off both their hands before he loosened her grip on the animal like a police officer disarming a suspect.
"It's okay," he nodded, taking the rabbit and placing it on the ground. "It's over." He took her hands in his, holding them together as they quaked, and the blood started to coagulate between their fingers. "Least now we know yer traps work."