Disclaimer: Not mine, AMC's!
Notes: The Poem from this chapter (and the single line from the last one) is by Robert Frost and is one of my favorite titled "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". I think of Daryl as a very intelligent character that would have probably hidden a lot of his awkwardness and insecurities growing up behind books if it wasn't for the heavy influence of his brother Merle. The last paragraph of the poem has always been something I thought was perfect for his character. I hope I weaved it in well enough here.
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Chapter Twenty-Three
(Daryl's POV)
"Daryl Come on we have to go!" Glenn's shout barely reaches his ears over the repeated crack of gunfire. Muzzle flashes and hot metal casings fill the air. More glass shatters on his left. Someone is yanking on his arm, trying to drag him away.
He draws back, slams Robert into the wall again, slams his fist into the man's face feels his knuckles slip coated with blood.
"Daryl!"
"You fucking killed her!"
He can still see her jerk against Robert's hold eyes wide, the glass shatter, her rolling across the porch shingles, falling away into darkness; into a sea of waiting hungry hands. No weapon, no hope of survival…
She didn't even scream.
"Daryl!" A fist connects with his jaw, jerks his attention to the right ready to attack…Glenn.
Glenn is staring at him, eyes wide with fear the sound of snarls reach his ears again, the whole room lurches back to life with a crack of gunfire from the Peacocks' still on the porch firing down into the sea of hands. Hungry…reaching…their previous victim already gone and forgotten.
Fucking, gone
Just like that.
Tyreese is waving to him wildly from the doorway screaming something about Sasha…
Fuck. Sasha and the kids.
His hands leave Robert's throat lets him slide to the ground. Somehow he lets his feet carry him out into the hall, down the stairs. Tyreese runs to the kitchen meets them in the hall, hands him another shotgun. He takes them to the back door…all the commotion on the front porch roof keeping the way out to the woods from here blessedly empty.
He should go back up there kill them all…
Glass shatters in the front of the house the snarls grow louder. They're pulling the house apart…
She's out there somewhere under the porch…
"Daryl!"
"I got it!" He draws air into his burning lungs. Follows Tyreese off the back porch leaping the railing and shrubs into the yard. Arrows at the ready, spare shotgun slung over one shoulder.
Sasha would have moved in this direction; he takes the lead finds a few tracks in the soft ground barely visible by moonlight around the house near the basement window they escaped through.
…one set of tracks going the opposite direction.
Seraphim's footprints…
His throat burns.
He ignores it, swallows around the rock somehow lodged in his windpipe.
Words from a poem he still remembers from high school absently drift through his mind as they move through the darkness. Hyper vigilant for movement; sound anything precluding danger.
He remembers Merle finding him in his room; the book in his lap, his hands clenched on the filthy material of his bedspread. Reading the lines over and over again.
Merle'd told him to stop being a pussy, nothing good ever came from a book and dragged him out to the car off to some random house or another to sit staring at the wall while he got drunk and high and started fights….the words near the end still circling in his head.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
He wasn't good with words, never had any luck with them. They jammed up in his throat, stuck in his chest until he just stood there like an idiot, blushing with nothing to say. The line was so true, it haunted him. He could never word it that way; make it come out right…but here it was on a page in a book, perfect.
But I have promises to keep.
He'd wondered back then what kind of promises could draw him out of the woods; his only sanctuary from his Father. Hell, from Merle even. Always calling him a bitch, and a pussy, shoving him when he got shit faced drunk and loaded. Always pushing him at girls he had no interesting in sitting next to let alone taking his pants off with.
He didn't understand what the words meant back then with no one to answer to…no one to give half a shit. Who could he possibly owe enough to not only make promises to them, but to keep them?
Now at the end of all things they finally make sense.
The desire to run back into that house fling every last Peacock off the roof to the same death; the half-mad need to blast his way through the swarming mass of bodies till he finds her, useless as that would be. At least they'd have something to bury. He's faced with the prospect of another empty grave to visit. His hands shake when he thinks of bringing flowers to an empty cross behind the warehouse.
If not for promises to the people around him now the ache to run deep into the woods lose himself in the darkness and solitude just like he did as a young man would be too much…
But he doesn't, can't; he has to just keep moving his feet one in front of the other.
There are miles to go before he can sleep.
::Walking Dead::
Early light, not quite dawn yet finds them still alive. They have no idea what direction the herd they saw the night before might move in after leaving the house. No choice but to press on as long as they can; try to make it to the road. To a car hopefully with enough gas and battery charge left to start.
He's only vaguely aware of the protesting of his whole right side with each movement. By now deep bruises will have bloomed across his shoulder, down his bicep and hip from smashing repeatedly into the solid steel door the night before. His raw knuckles, cracked and caked with blood still ache with stiffness from wrapping around the gun stock of his crossbow for hours in the cold air.
He's numb, doesn't feel the cold against his skin, curling his breath in the air before him. Can only focus on moving forward, the other's following him, his bow limp, bouncing against his side, his eyes never rising from the leaves under his boots. If a walker happened on them now he's not even sure he'd notice till it took a chunk out of his arm. Maybe not even then…
Glenn follows closely behind him, one of the shotguns from the kitchen in his hands, let someone else look out for them, he couldn't give a shit.
Can't seem to keep the damn trees in focus…
fucking cold making his eyes water...
Fucking Pussy.
He needs to get his shit together, stop being a Bitch.
They've lost people before, they moved on.
Except this time, it doesn't feel like that.
The hollow ache is somehow worse than seeing Merle's dead glassy eyes; watching his own god damn flesh and blood bury his hands in dead flesh and tear into it with his fingers and teeth.
A Thousand times worse than the desperation he felt with Merle lunging at him…slamming his knife into his brother's skull over and over and over howling with pain, and rage at him for leaving him one last fucking time. Going where he could never follow, never come back…
It's worse than the ache of thinking about Carol out there somewhere, alone.
Carol. The first person he can honestly say became someone he leaned on; even a little bit.
A friend when the word; the entire concept sent him reeling back in alarm, alien and dangerous. Someone who wanted his company sought it out-the opposite of every relationship he'd ever had in his life, he'd been on edge for months unsure how to deal with it.
All life had ever taught him was that people walked away. When things got tough. When you don't know what to say; Hell, sometimes just because why the fuck not?
The last one had been Merle's fucking specialty.
Nobody ever gave a shit about him, why should someone with nothing to gain start now? But he'd wanted to be needed, after losing Merle the first time in Atlanta, seeing the way the others could talk to each other interact. Even if sometimes those interactions made no sense and drove him half-mad; he wanted to belong in some small way so badly it tore through him, terrified him.
He'd started seeking her out, little by little; just to make himself feel that tiny spark of life before he'd bolt away again too overwhelmed to deal with it for long.
He'd thought, when he'd given it consideration; that it was because she was broken too, and they could make each other feel less broken together maybe…he doesn't know.
Never got the chance to ask her…not that he would even if she were standing here.
He'd just started to let himself need her, expect her to be there when it happened again.
Somehow over time she'd gotten stronger, maybe she wasn't as broken as he was after all…and suddenly she didn't need him to save her anymore…
Somehow she stopped jumping at her own shadow, moved past her fears and he stood buried in them unable to fathom how she'd made the journey. When she reached for him he backed away, couldn't return the affection she offered him, desperate not to lose the one solid thing he had, knowing she could be ripped out of his life at any moment.
And he couldn't take that, the added pain of letting her in anymore then he already dared; and then he was right not to because she did leave him.
But not the way he feared… It would never have occurred to him in a million years that she would just drive off. Just like all the others.
Fucking leave him without so much as a goodbye.
He did the same to her when his brother returned, but that was different he tells himself… she had to know he didn't have the strength; the courage to say out loud what he felt; just the thought makes him tremble, shake like a child.
and now he's really done it.
He'd let her in…didn't mean to; still doesn't understand how it happened. How to fix it now her absence is destroying him from the inside out. Somehow she crept in when he wasn't looking; when his back was turned. She looked so Confident and strong bowing to no one, but through the cracks little by little he could see a vulnerable girl, hurt over and over again by the world they now survived, she intrigued him when he should have known better.
He still has no idea how she managed to imprint herself on his psyche, wind her way down deep down under his skin; haunting him even in his dreams: giving him a drunken half-mad kind of courage to reach for her when he found her next to him.
The stupidity to think he could hold her in his hands, let her touch him inside and out and not lose her…
Not have it all shatter like razor thin glass in his hands, slicing him to the bone, deeper than that…
Cutting through him layer after layer like a hot knife right down the wounded little boy he tries so hard not to be.
The damn trees are blurring again.