Author's Note: So, the first chapter was written to honour Carol for the Carol Appreciation Week on Tumblr and, I just couldn't let it go. Ideas kept hitting me and so with nothing better to do *cough cough*, here is chapter two. It actually really feels good to go back to this time in their journey, to have Lori back and know that Merle and Andrea are still out there somewhere. I don't know if they will be in this story at all, or even how long this crazy thing will last, but even writing this ideas are coming to me. So, if you're reading and you're enjoying and want more, please say hey! I do love to know what everyone is thinking. Also, this gets my mind off life which right now is ever a good thing!
~~ Megan
Chapter Two
He agreed to take watch before the sun had fully dropped out of the sky. Light was a precious commodity these shorter days and without the benefit of a fire the others would bundle up and settle in for an early night. After all, the fun to be had in the dark was limited and traditional sources of entertainment were less appealing when everyone was crushed together inside one room within easy view. Splitting up was a risk no one yet felt brave enough to take, the wounds inflicted by losing the farm-Andrea, Patricia, Shane and Jimmy-were still weeping and sore, even months later. Looking at the blonde teenager sideways still resulted in her bursting into enough tears to make Daryl wince and walk away.
Daryl spat in the dirt as he made his way silently across the yard, affording the house a quick glance before he unzipped his pants and pissed against a tree. He liked the dull sound as it hit the bark, keeping him focused, keeping him interested. The deed finished, he fixed himself and shuffled the crossbow strap a little on his back. The strap was leaving a groove in his shoulder but that was no price to pay for the advantage of the weapon. He scanned the yard, or what he could see of it at least. As darkness fell he searched out the moon and shuddered at the brush of cold emitted by thick clouds shielded it from his view.
"Shit."
"What's wrong?" Rick was practising getting the jump on him, learning to be quiet in a world where noise got you killed, but he hadn't quite succeeded yet.
"Gonna rain," Daryl spat out, suddenly pissed off with all of it-the running, the reliance of others, the unpredictable nature of life and his growing fascination for Carol. She was settling down for the night, betraying how vulnerable she was. How reliant on him she always was to keep herself safe. "Can't see for shit," he added for good measure. Storms and rain were their enemy, forcing their never-ending run through Georgia to be cold and wet, digging the misery deeper into their psyches.
Rick chuckled, like he'd expected surly Daryl to finally come back out of hiding all along and quite irrationally that pissed him off even more.
"Sick to fuck of all of 'em in there little better than sitting ducks if it all goes to shit. We gotta get on with training. Gotta get smarter," he accused as he tapped an angry finger against his own head, making it known that he was smarter so why the fuck weren't the rest of them?
Rick nodded, hearing him, agreeing with him and that was another thing added to Daryl's list of grievances. No one ever gave a shit about listening to him before the world changed and even though they had been on the road for months, sometimes the novelty of it sideswiped him completely.
"You're right. Some don't have the confidence to even try to hit a practise target, let alone a walker if it gets too close. We'll start planning tomorrow," he decided on the spot like it was wholly spontaneous to finally train their group to survive. "Talk to the group. See how they want to go about things." Rick tapped a torch against his leg, its light absent for now as he attempted to get used to seeing movement in the dark. There weren't none, Daryl snorted. He'd checked twice. They seemed to be isolated, sequestered inside a little house that had been on the end of a long road that seemed to go fucking nowhere. It made him nervous, even though the grand majority of the group had cheered for somewhere warm to sleep. Some place protected from the wind and the rain. Some place that had no signs that walkers had been about. It was that very absence that was doing Daryl's head in. He didn't trust the silence, the cleanliness, the fully stocked cupboards. He didn't trust the full belly that made him just a little more sleepy that usual, dulling his usual focus so he felt like he had to stay wandering to make sure he didn't miss anything.
After a while Rick seemed to grasp that he was done talking for the night. Daryl didn't see the point of providing a steady thrum of noise to attract any unwelcome attention and tonight was no different. He already felt on edge, in direct contrast to the satisfied stupor his body wanted him to succumb to after their generous supper. He watched Rick as the darkened shadow of his body disappeared back into the house and then turned to do another check of the perimeter. He had nothing but miles of night to think, and it seemed to be some kind of cosmic joke lately that his mind replayed every single word that Carol said to him each day, that his body remembered exactly the places she'd rest her fingers so casually as she told him something, or her palm in order to offer comfort, to attempt to tease the beast out of him and in fact doing little more than goading his body into some kind of rage. He didn't understand the sensations that erupted within him whenever she was near. There was a violence there he was familiar with, but the lack of impulse to lash out physically confused him. He inevitably ended up wondering if she felt it, too, if there was some kind of fury stirring to life beneath her skin and if she was any more equipped to understand what it meant than he was.
The night stayed quiet, Daryl finding a spot on the front stairs of the house where he could still sense movement out in the yard and hear if anything happened inside that would require his help. They were mostly sleeping, the night movements of the unconscious actually soothing his fears a little. But then he heard it and his mouth tightened against shouting at them to shut it, to get to sleep before the sun was up and they missed their chance. Last thing he needed tomorrow were two exhausted women holding them back. His irritation tipped further as he contemplated the likelihood that Rick might want to stay and take advantage of the more plentiful food while they had it, and with not encountering even one lonely walker, Daryl would be able to provide no argument against it. Lori needed rest, he knew it. He'd seen her wince more than once, worried every time she rubbed that growing belly with a frown on her face and a twist in her brow that it meant something sinister. That it could indicate another loss. And the kids...they weren't used to being on the road all the time. Beth was taking it hard—harder than all of them, still. She was pessimistic and morose to the point where even T-Dog walked away from her tear jags, shaking his head with frustration.
She wasn't crying tonight. Tonight she seemed to sleep peacefully, unlike Carol and Lori who fell into a conversation Daryl wished he was anywhere but where he was able to overhear it. Last damn thing he wanted to hear about at the end of the world was fucking Ed. Abusive asshole was worms in the dirt and it was best to let him stay there. Dredging all this shit up made his own skin crawl, he could only imagine what it was doing to Carol and Daryl wanted to go in there and give Lori a stern talking to over it.
Despite the subject matter, though, Daryl was quickly lulled by her voice, captivated by the occasional tremor that caused her words to waver in the air as the pain reached out to even him, held captive on the front steps of an abandoned house. She never talked much about her past, about the people that had been in her life other than Sophia, and even talk of the little girl was sparse. He knew she'd been mostly alone—made sense for how a beefy, bullying prick was able to get his claws into her. Now he had the confirmation of how vulnerable she'd been—like him, she'd had nowhere else to go. No one to tell her life could be better.
Hearing her talk about him without any expected lividity shocked him. Daryl had expected her memories to be peppered with anger, not remorse. Expected the survivor in her to kick out and banish her husband's memory for good. He didn't expect her to talk about feelings. Talking about love confused him—all the hate and fear of her relationship should have clouded her to the memory of love in the beginning. It should have ruled it out. Love never made her weak but this indulgence of remembering sure as hell did. Daryl bounced to his feet, annoyance in the spring of every jerky step. He had nowhere to go even though the soles of his feet itched to run far from there. Talk of weakness wasn't what he wanted to hear—he didn't need to connect his own life to hers. Didn't want to acknowledge his own past at all, yet her words had niggled into his conscience, stretching that space he'd thrown all his hateful memories until a couple slipped through.
He walked, walked with brittle purpose around the house, widening his circle as his boots hit the ground harder with each step, his agitation rising as he tried to see with minimal light from the moon. It fucked with his head that it was so silent, the calm before the storm and then before he knew what was happening the rage broke in his head and he remembered every shitty thing his asshole of a daddy ever did to him. Love made you weak? Hell no, shit no, in his family it was hate. Hate for his father made him stupid, kept him tied to that house that was never a home as vengeance kept his heart beating. As loathing stripped him bare of strength to fight back. As anger at his brother for leaving him behind obliterated any chance he had of plotting escape on his own.
He was completely lost in his own head that he shouted and violently struck out when a hand landed on his shoulder. He fell awkwardly back in the long grass, adrenaline thundering through his veins as he grappled with his knife.
"Whoa, whoa there, slugger. It's just me." T-Dog stood as a looming block of darkness and Daryl panted harshly, embarrassed but relieved. He felt stupid for being a dumbass, for losing track of his surroundings so thoroughly he never even heard the guy walk up.
"'Bout time you showed up," he growled, surly and humiliated, grateful for the darkness that hid the flush of red that betrayed how wrong he knew he was to lose it. How guilty he felt for forgetting his job while he was out there alone and the others huddled under the lie of his protection.
"I'll say," T-Dog chuckled, ignoring Daryl's fighting response to being caught out. He probably thought he'd been busy daydreaming. "I could've taken a chunk out of your ass and you'd not even know."
Daryl shoved himself off the ground, swung his bow into his hands and had no control over the sneer that fed his angry words. "You go sneakin' up on me in the dark again an' it'll be your ass that'll be missin' chunks." He stomped off, ego dented, tiredness flowing through him the closer he got to the house. They'd all been pushing themselves, Daryl pushing even harder, but it was what he was used to, what he knew to get through life if he wanted to live and in his mind, some of them weren't pushing hard enough. Hell, some of them weren't pushing at all.
As he worked his way into the room where they'd all spread out to sleep, Rick jammed in and slumped against a wall near the second exit to the room and out cold, Daryl scanned the bodies for Carol and was glad to see she was asleep. Come tomorrow, he was going to start pushing her most of all.