"Gave me one reason why I shouldn't kill ya," he said and Dwight turned around.
Daryl was holding him at gunpoint.
"If you wanna kill me do it, you've wanted this for a while. I'm not going to beg you." Dwight said. Strangely he did not seem too bothered by Daryl's gun pointed at him.
"You don't deserve to be here." Daryl seethed.
"I know," Dwight recognised. "Negan's ass is in a cell today, you guys won. But you're gonna have to accept that I had a lot to do with your people winning."
"So what ? You want a medal or something' ? You did this for you. Cuz' ya wanted revenge just as much as we did !"
Daryl's fury was burning and it took everything he had to not pull the trigger right here and there. But would he truly feel better after this ? Would it truly help ?
"Ya think you're so good because you helped us but it don't change who you are. I saved ya. I saved yer wife and in return ya took my shit and killed my friend. Ya were Negan's bitch because you were too weak to resist."
Daryl lowered his gun but did not get any less threatening, Dwight took a step back. As he approached him, Daryl continued his rant :
"Ya were part of the group that stopped my people that night in the forest after ya shot me. Ya put me in a cell like some fuckin' animal and gave me dog food, ya tortured me, showed me picture of my friend's dead body." He stopped for he was out of breath. Every time he thought of Glenn, it felt like a punch in a stomach. And every time, he wished he could just trade places to give Glenn his life back.
Daryl grabbed Dwight by the collar and pushed him against the nearest wall. And Dwight did not even try to fight back, because part of him knew he deserved it.
"You don't deserve to live." Daryl grunted.
"Why did you say that you get it then ? Cuz' that's what you said remember ? Everything I did, I did it so that I could live, so that Sherry could live," Dwight sputtered.
Daryl was holding him so tight he had difficulties breathing.
"Ya chose the easy way."
"What if it had been Carol uh ? I saw how you guys were during the war… What if her life had been at stake ?" Dwight asked.
"We ain't you."
"Negan would have taken her away from you and …"
Dwight could not finish his sentence for what he had started to say was the final straw for Daryl who threw him on the ground and punched him. Daryl did not care that he had a gun, he wanted to hurt the man who had put him through so much with his own hands. Dwight tried to fight back but Daryl was too strong, too heavy for him. Each blows he gave was a kind of payback for everything Dwight had done to him, to Denise, to all the people his actions and choices had hurt. He kept hitting over and over and would not stop until he felt better.
"Enough !" someone yelled. But Daryl did not listen, he needed to let out his anger. Small hands grabbed his shoulders and he tried to reject them with a shrug. But the hands resisted.
"Stop it Daryl!" Carol screamed. Hearing her felt like an electroshock, like he was brought back to reality after a bad dream. He stopped hitting and looked at his hands, they were covered in blood and so was Dwight's face. The man was still conscious but breathed hoarsely. Carol was crouching right behind Daryl, her arms around him as she held his forearms. She waited patiently for him to come around.
When he finally got up, he looked at her, lost. He felt ashamed too for he wished she had not seen him like this. But she was not mad, she was not judging him either and when she spoke, her voice was soft :
"You go home, I'll meet you there. But I need to get him to the infirmary first, okay ?"
Daryl nodded, left her in control of the situation and headed for the house he shared with her, Rick, Michonne and the kids.
Carol looked down at the man in pain.
"Can you get up ?"
Dwight grunted something which sounded like a yes and she helped him get to the infirmary. When they arrived, Rosita got up from Tara's bed side :
"What the hell happened ?" she asked.
"He got a bit of what he deserves," Carol snapped. She was out of breath for he was leaning heavily on her.
"Let's get him to the other room, I don't want Tara to wake up facing the man who killed her girlfriend."
Carol agreed and both women took Dwight to the adjacent room to lay him down on the last bed available.
"I need to go check on Daryl…" Carol started. She was worried about Daryl and not being with him made things worse.
"Go, I got this." Rosita reassured.
Carol thanked her and grabbed some bandages, gauze and antiseptic for she knew -given the state of Dwight's face- that Daryl's knuckles would be in bad shape. Then, she hurried home.
Oddly enough, the aftershock of what had happened with Dwight did not last so long. Daryl was no longer petrified by his action. He was just pissed again. It seemed like anger was the only emotion he could feel these days. Would he ever find peace ?
He was pacing in his room. The night before, right after they realised they had won, Carol had told him that things would get better. "We live on until things get easier" had been her exact words. Deep down, he knew she was right, they had overcome so many hardships already, before and after the turn. They would get over this too, he knew it but how was that possible if he saw Dwight's face everyday ? He was a living version of his nightmares, a constant reminder of all the things that happened since the day he decided to save him, Sherry and her sister in the burnt forest. He had saved them because that's who he was, he was stuck with that. And he still was, that was why he had not pulled the trigger earlier. Because somehow he understood Dwight even though he hated it, he loathed that fucking empathy he wished he did not have. Dwight did not deserve compassion, understanding. He did not deserve someone like Carol helping him, getting him to the infirmary…
Daryl hit the wall with his fits and instantly regretted it for his knuckles were killing him. He sighed and tried to calm down because the pacing, the anger had made him out of breath. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and headed for his bathroom. He was washing Dwight's blood and his own off his hands when he heard Carol entering his bedroom.
"Daryl ?" She called.
"M'ere." He said coming out of the bathroom and she immediately gave a look at his hands. Even though he had been through worse than a couple of grazed knuckles, she gave him a worried frown because she could not stand seeing him hurt.
"Sit," she said indicating the window seat. "I need to clean these wounds and you need a bandage."
Daryl complied and they sat next to each other on the window seat. Carol put some antiseptic on a gauze and started with his left hand. There was nothing intimate about cleaning someone's wounds he thought but he could not help but appreciate the moment. Her hands were soft, always gracing him with kindness, always soothing him. He looked at her face, she was focused. She was close enough for him to be able to see every single one of the freckles scattered all over a beautiful face.
"You can breathe you know," she said without looking up from her task and he realised that he had been holding his breath while he was staring at her. A bit embarrassed, he decided to change the subject.
"Ain't you gonna yell at me ? Tell me I was wrong ?" He asked. To his surprise, she chuckled.
"Is that what you think of me ? That I'm some kind of moralist who nags all the time ?"
"You do like proving people wrong," he pointed out. She chuckled again because he was right, she finished wrapping his knuckles with a bandage and sat up straight.
"Look, I'm just sorry you hurt yourself in the process. And I'm sorry you're so angry." She stopped to look him in the eyes, " I just wish I could make things easier for you."
He gave her a lopsided smile.
"When they took me…" he began, idly twiddling his thumbs, and avoiding eye-contact. Carol knew this was a sign of him being insecure and nervous, so she patiently waited for him to find his words.
"After they took me, they wanted me to kneel and say I was Negan… But I wouldn't... They locked me up, took my clothes and wouldn't let me sleep... Was naked for days, listening to the same music over and over... I've never been so cold and exhausted in my life."
Daryl was talking slowly and silent tears were rolling down Carol's cheeks but she remained quiet. This was the first time he was truly opening up about what had happened to him at the Sanctuary.
"Tried to escape once, I was stupid… it was a trap, they let the door opened to test me. I got beat up. Several times. Dwight's part of all this. Hell, he was the one who gave me dog food, made me look at Glenn's dead body… He did all this and I ain't even able to kill the guy"
Daryl's voice broke and he buried his head in his hands. Carol felt like throwing up, she was horrified, disgusted. And her heart broke for the man next to her, wishing she could take all his suffering away. She wished she could take all of his bad memories and let them hurt her instead of him. She put one arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. She knew that no words could lessen his pain so she hoped that her presence, her touch would be enough to somehow comfort him. She hoped he could feel how much she loved him by simply staying by his side.
They stayed in the same position for a while, she knew he was silently crying, as she was. For his pain was hers.
"He told me things would have been different if you'd been there too." Daryl said, he was no longer crying but one could hear the pain in his voice.
Carol did not fully understood what he was saying and gave him a confused look.
"Sherry… I told ya about her, she married Negan so that Dwight could live and Dwight became Negan's bitch so that she could live. He did all this for her."
Carol finally understood his point.
"We'll never know." She said simply, but Daryl looked confused.
"What I mean is that it's impossible to know what we would have done in the same situation. Simply because you never know until it happens to you," she explained.
"But I would do anything for ya, and it scares me. It fuckin' scares me because it's like I got no limits," he admitted.
"And I think that's why you didn't kill Dwight. Because you get him. You know what it's like to be able to do anything for..."
She was going to say "someone you love" but stopped herself because she was afraid he might just run away out of embarrassment and leave a Daryl shaped hole in the bedroom door.
"And you know what true evil looks like."
He nodded, as always she was right.
"That's one of the reasons why I left." She admitted. "I never told you but it scares me too, what I would do for you, what I would do to make sure I will never have to live without you."
He gave her a weird look.
"Paradoxical, I know." She smiled, apologetically. "I'm not sorry that I left, because I needed to. But I'll forever be sorry for making you think that I could live without you."
They looked into each other's eyes and in that moment both knew what the other was thinking. Both were remembering the conversation they had shared over four months ago :
"I'm not mad at you, Daryl," she said.
"I'm not mad that you lied to me."
"You ain't ?" He asked, turning around to look at her. He looked so vulnerable in that moment that she had to fight the urge to hug him.
"I know you,' she said with a smile. "You wanted to protect me. That's what you always do."
"But I ain't good at it," he said looking down.
"Daryl…"
"I lied because I didn't want to hurt ya, I didn't want ya to deal with them psychos out there but here you are... dragged into our fucking mess." She could feel that he was getting angry, not with her but with himself.
"I'm here because I want to Daryl. I want them to pay for what they did," she reassured.
"After…" he hesitated. "After Sophia, I told myself something," he was struggling to find the right words but she waited, she wouldn't be able to speak anyway for hearing Sophia's name -especially- from Daryl simply immobilised her.
"I told myself, I'll keep ya safe. I'll keep ya safe from every shitty thing I can 'cause you've been through enough, ya was married to an asshole, ya lost yer little girl. But I didn't do so good now did I ? Ya said ya wanted a man of honour remember ? But I couldn't protect ya, I never could. Not from Rick when he send you away, not from whatever happened on the road after the prison with the girls. And then ya had to face a bunch of cannibals to save us, then the wolves… all by yourself," he finished and looked at her apologetically.
"You've always done the best you could Daryl. You can't control what the world does to me, to us. You can't protect me from everything, you know it's impossible," she said, trying to hide how overwhelmed she felt by his confession. He did not responded and looked down again.
She started to approach him and Ezekiel's words echoed in her head : "Where there's life, there's hope, heroism, grace, and love…" Daryl represented all these things. She wrapped her arms around him, the same way she had on the day he had found her outside the Kingdom. And he did just the same, burying his head in her neck. And they stayed like this for a while, holding each other. The kind of embrace that was worth a thousand words.
Eventually she whispered :
"You're the best man I know. Never doubt that." She moved her head to face him and added : "I forbid it." She had that smug smile on her face that he loved so much and he nodded.
They both let go of each other but their body remained close, so close it was almost painful, her heart was beating fast for there was one thing she needed to ask him. He looked at her knowingly, the way they could understand each other without talking would always surprise her. She had never felt so strongly connected to anyone before.
"I can't right now…" she began. "But when this… When this is all over and if we're still here…" For once, she was the one struggling to find words. So he spoke instead, for her :
"We deal with all that shit and if we're still here, we start over. You and me. I mean… if ya wanna put up with me."
"I'll put up with you," she said.
And here they were four months later, seating next to each other on the window seat of Daryl's bedroom, still here despite the war and more than ready to start over and leave the demons within themselves behind.