Yeah, so sorry for not updating in forever, it seems like, but a combination of family problems and me being sick, kinda took all the kick I had out of writing. So finally, without much ado, here's the long awaited next chapter :)
This chapter, as well as holding a character death in it, also deals somewhat with Daryl and his father. I've always thought that was a topic and a situation that could be fun to write (especially Daryl and his mother) and who knows, I might do it in the future but for now, I've kinda set up the scaffolding just in case I do wanna it in the future. If you guys know me, then you know that its entirely possible :)
HaloHunter89: Thanks for the review - glad you love it! I've been getting shouts for more Ethan and Daryl bonding time all over the place and I'm pretty sure another father/son chapter is coming up soon, I just don't know exactly when yet. As for the rest of the questions - keep reading ;)
HermioneandMarcus: Keep liking the chapters and thanks for reviewing :)
scoobydoo0811: Thanks for liking the chapter so well and if you know the old saying, "An artist always doubts his work", you'll know that, that fits me to a 'T'. Normally I'm not so bad and the last chapter wasn't nearly so bad, but yeah, I have those insecurities from time to time lol.
- Nagiana
Favorite Line(s):
It was a fact that Merle never once recovered his jealously from – the fact that in his own twisted way, Daryl was Will Dixon's favorite, not just because he knew with one hundred percent certainty that he was his, but because he had managed to do what Merle couldn't: Daryl brought home a girl Will Dixon knew his son wouldn't be ashamed of.
The whole world had been quiet when the three men silently led the pleading teenager towards the barn. The scruff of his shirt was caught in Daryl's steel-like grip and when they pushed open the doors to the barn seconds later, his grip tightened as the kid started struggling even more.
"Put him over there." Rick ordered, his voice brooking no argument, and Daryl nodded as he led him to the center of the barn aisle. Shane stepped behind him and took over the hold of him as Daryl willingly backed away a little. Normally, he wouldn't have given two shits that he had to accompany Rick and Shane to witness an execution – after all, his kill count since this damn apocalypse began was starting to go through the roof, however, he couldn't help but start to feel a little sick to his stomach. He didn't know if it was because of what Tessa had told him before he moved to join the two men by the shed or what, but either way, he felt the vague urge to vomit.
"It's all gonna be over soon." Shane promised the kid and he turned a frightened gaze onto the black headscarf that Shane was currently unfolding before him. Daryl's teeth gritted slightly.
The least the fuckhead could do was have a little tact and unfold he kid's blindfold where he couldn't quite see it so easily. He shook his head, nonetheless though, as the kid started crying and pleading with them again, especially when Shane started tying the blindfold around his head. Shane had never been fond of subtlety and he supposed this time especially was when it didn't interest him.
Rick moved to stand in front of him and took out his gun, where he quietly checked the chamber for bullets. Satisfied, he flipped the chamber back with a well-oiled 'click' and pinned a coldly expressionless gaze onto the kid. Daryl had to admit . . . the man appeared to be as cold as ice.
Shane backed away when the kid was blindfolded and left him standing there, fighting to stay on his feet as Shane and Daryl moved somewhat closer to him, their bodies primed for action should the kid make the extremely stupid decision to run.
"Would you like to stand or kneel?" Rick asked him and the kid could only sob and blubber out useless sentences in response. Rick pursed his lips and glanced at Daryl. Without hesitation, he kicked the kid's legs out from underneath them and he kid fell, sobbing to the floor of the barn. Grasping him roughly underneath the armpit, Daryl yanked him none-too-kindly to his knees before the leader of the group. His grip became a little bit gentler when he realized how rough he was being with the kid, and calmed down slightly. He wanted to get back to Tessa the same as when he walked in, not the person he walked out of the shed as the first time.
He crossed his arms in front of his chest and when Rick's slightly uncertain eyes connected with his after connecting with Shane's, his jaw hardened slightly and he gave him a terse but subtle nod. Like he had told Tessa, he wasn't the one that was going to be killing the kid – Rick had that labor. Rick would have to be the one to live with himself afterwards – not Daryl.
"First time ya kill a man, son, ya come to a crossroads in ya life – ya learn somethin' 'bout yaself. Ya don' learn what ya capable of, or how bad of a person ya are, or any of tha' fuckin' bullshit. Ya learn if ya can sleep at night or if ya can'. Ya either haunted by it or ya not."
A six-year-old Daryl turned a solemn blue gaze up to his father walking tall and indomitable beside him as they moved silently through the woods tracking game - like he and Ethan would do decades later - and waited for him to continue. When Will Dixon did, it was after heaving a sigh. "I was sixteen when I killed ma first man – one of ya momma's brothers. He had slapped her for somethin' tha' no longer even matters when she was pregnant with ya brother and 'fore I knew it, I done stabbed a knife into his heart," He glanced down at him, his eyes red-rimmed with alcohol, yet firm as well, if not slightly crazy. "Ya hear me now, boy, and ya understand me - so don' go 'round bein' ya normal dumbass self! Don' ya ever lay a hand on a woman, Daryl! We's men – we can handle it. But women . . . no . . ." He shook his head. "Women are an absolute no-go."
"What did ya learn deddy?" He asked after a moment and Will Dixon turned a scowl down onto him.
"What'cha blabbin' 'bout?"
Daryl gave a shrug of his tiny shoulders. "Ya know . . . when ya killed tha' man - momma's brother. What did ya learn?" Will Dixon nodded in understanding and eventually gave a flippant shrug.
"I learned tha' I could sleep like a baby every night afterwards."
Daryl stayed silent as his father's words echoed throughout his mind. Will Dixon was indeed one of the few men in the world that could kill a man – no matter how brutally – and then sleep as soundly as a damn baby every night afterwards – Daryl had grown up seeing it. He might have been a little fond of the bottle like his mother was but he had no idea if that was purely because he liked to drink or because it was the only thing that made him completely numb to those pesky feelings of his. If Daryl thought Merle was tough, though, then Will Dixon was made of even tougher stuff. Man could eat a crowbar for breakfast and then shit out nails that night before he went to bed. Daryl hated to say it, but Rick was not made of the same stuff that his father was - no one was.
And of course, Will Dixon had been known as quite the lady's man, despite his drinking problem and physical abuse he showed towards his boys. He was still a good looking man – tall and whipcord lean with a thick head of dark brown hair like Daryl as well as looking ever-so-slightly like a classic Hollywood actor's. He had always said that Merle had gotten his looks from their momma whereas Daryl looked more like him (a fact that never once made him back down from his assertion that Marla Dixon had been unfaithful once – especially when he was feeling his whiskey) and he had been quite taken with Tessa the day that Daryl brought her home and called her his girlfriend. It was a fact that Merle never once recovered his jealously from – the fact that in his own twisted way, Daryl was Will Dixon's favorite, not just because he knew with one hundred percent certainty that he was his, but because he had managed to do what Merle couldn't: Daryl brought home a girl Will Dixon knew his son could be proud of.
In fact, if Will Dixon was even alive to know what Merle had done to Tessa in the barn, he probably would have ripped his good-for-nothing oldest son's throat out before Daryl even figured out. Their father might have been as mean as a damn hornet and as quick-to-strike with a beer bottle as a cobra was with his venom, but under no circumstances were you to ever touch a woman in a way that was not respectable. At least he had that one redeeming quality.
Yeah, Rick was nowhere in Will Dixon's league.
"Do you have any final words?"
Rick's no-bullshit voice brought Daryl out of thoughts of his father that he was having, and back into the present. The kid started sobbing and begging in greater abundance and it would have taken a fool to not notice the hesitation in Rick's eyes at the kid's sobs and whimpers. Daryl let out an amused huff. Wasn't so easy when you envisioned your kid in the kid's place, eh? Not too easy when you envisioned it being Carl you had to put a bullet through.
He pulled up the gun to plant it squarely at the kid's head and they heard a 'click'. No one noticed, however, the thirteen-year-old boy that slowly moved to stand in the opened entrance of the barn, a slightly awed look on his face until he spoke. "Do it, dad. Do it." Rick, his eyes widening in an emotion that Daryl couldn't rightly place, glanced at Shane who shook his head in angry exasperation and moved towards Carl, where he quickly and none-too-kindly dragged him from the barn.
"Are you kidding me? What did I say to you – what did I say to you!"
Rick tried to bring himself to pull the trigger after Carl was gone but then gave up in frustration and shook his head. "Take him away, Daryl . . ." He murmured and Daryl gave him a slight look of disbelief before grasping the kid by the shoulders and hauling him to his feet like he had done in the shed.
"Get up!" The kid whimpered through his gasps of relief and Daryl shoved him towards the entrance of the barn, Shane quickly moving aside Carl as he did so.
He was sure the searching gaze that Rick pinned on Carl and the completely expressionless one Carl returned to him, was akin to the look of relief Tessa shot him and the expressionless one he gave her back as he continued on to the shed.
Like Tessa had thought previously, the night only snowballed downhill from the meeting.
"Help - we're over here! Someone hurry up!"
"Daryl, what's going on – oh my God!"
Tessa came to an abrupt stop mere feet away from him, her eyes immediately widening in horror at the sight of Dale lying in the field beside him, his guts practically ripped out through his stomach and a dead walker lying feet away from them. The older man was gasping painfully for breath and when the rest finally met up with them, Maggie immediately took Tessa in her arms as tears starting streaming down her cheeks and sobs started erupting forth from her lips. Ethan skidded to a stop beside his mother and his eyes grew wide with horror too as Andrea and Glenn managed to make themselves go all the way over to him, where they dropped to their knees on either side of him. The rest of the people grouped around them, Daryl's eyes seeking hers through the crowd of people.
"Oh my God . . . Holy shit - Dale!" Tessa sobbed out, tears running down her cheeks as Maggie kept a strong grip on her struggling, sobbing friend. "Oh my God, Dale – no!" She collapsed to her knees on the ground then, her body heaving with sobs and it was Tessa and Andrea's sobs, not Glenn or Carl's, that got to the group the most. Tessa was well liked within the group but she had been the closest to Dale other than Andrea and Glenn. He had been a surrogate father figure to all three of them and his pain and suffering and his impending death was hitting them all particularly hard.
They looked up when they heard the 'click' of a gun and saw Rick standing over him, his hand shaking as he fought to keep the gun barrel level with Dale's head. Tears came in greater abundance at the sight, including the one falling from Rick's own eyes and slowly, so slowly that it took them a minute to realize that he had done it, Daryl's hand appeared on the barrel of Rick's pistol, where he gently pushed him out of the way, his gun taking the place of Rick's. They shared a look, one that Rick nodded at before moving to take care of his family.
"Sorry, brother . . ."
Slowly, when the gunshot could be heard echoing around them like a damn explosion, was when Tessa finally collapsed onto her side, like a great, crumbling colossi hitting the ground. Her hand caught her before she could hit the ground, though, but Maggie could tell her complete fall wasn't that far off. The younger woman turned a gaze up onto Daryl then, her eyes wide and pleading.
"Daryl – she needs you!" She called out, and Daryl nodded as he slowly turned away from the now dead Dale, where he headed over to Tessa, holstering his pistol as he did so. Gently pulling her up onto her knees, he took her in his arms, where he allowed her to sob her eyes out into the crook of his neck as her arms moved to wrap around his neck.
"Daryl, please, get her out of here!" Lori murmured to him, her voice full of concern as she gazed at the torn Tessa and as she held on to her equally as torn son. Daryl nodded as he picked her up in his arms and headed back to their tent, Ethan following close on his father's heels. Tessa sobbed the entire way and when they finally reached their tent, he ducked inside and placed her down on the blanketed air mattress. Ethan waited anxiously outside as Daryl took a kneeling stance in front of her. She continued to sob as she slowly fell onto her side on the bed, her face covered by her hands and as her body curled in on itself like some wilting flower. Daryl shushed her as he ran a gentle, loving hand down her hair.
"Tessa, it'll be alright, I promise -!" He began but Tessa adamantly shaking her head, causing him to come to an abrupt stop.
"I always thought Dale was going to be there, Daryl . . . when I have the baby," She sobbed as she finally took her face out of her hands and turned a tear-stained gaze onto him. His heart twisted in his chest and he shushed her gently as a particularly gut-wrenching sob came from her lips. "He told me . . . he told me that I had nothing to worry about – that I was strong and that I was going to survive the birth and that if I ever needed help with it, that I knew where to find him . . .!"
Her sobbing face moving to bury in her pillow then, and Daryl sighed and pursed his lips as he got to his feet and moved over to the tent entrance. He stepped outside and Ethan glanced at her over his shoulder, a worried gaze pinning onto her. Daryl sighed as he shoved his hands down into his front pockets. "It's hit her pretty hard, as ya can imagine." He told him and Ethan nodded.
"Yeah, well, do you blame her, deddy?" He asked, and Daryl shook his head.
"Not a bit . . . not a bit. I know how much Dale meant to her. She gonna have some healin' to do after this." He replied as he turned his eyes onto him. "Tell ya what, I'm gonna stay here with her - make sure she don' do nothin' stupid. Why don' ya go make sure how tha others are doing - maybe help with Dale?" Ethan nodded and Daryl patted him on the back as he left the tent then and started making his way back to the field where everyone was still grouped loosely. Daryl ducked back into the tent and while Tessa still continued to sob, though the sobs were nowhere near as deep and prevalent as they had been. They were only mere cries and mewls of pain now.
Daryl sighed as he kicked off his boots and moved to undo hers from her supine position on the mattress. She flinched at his touch but he undid them anyway before moving onto the bed behind her. He pulled her close so that her back was pressing against his front and he wrapped his arms around her in a protective embrace.
They lay like that for a moment, in complete and utter silence as Tessa lay there and continued to sob out her anguish and pain and it took a moment afterwards for Daryl to realize that Tessa was no longer sobbing. "Tessa . . .?" He asked, his eyebrows furrowing in slightly confusion and the words she replied to him with almost made him freeze.
"He wasn't the first man you had killed, was he?"
Daryl glanced down at her. "Ya mean other than ma old man?" Tessa nodded.
"I knew that . . . I was there and I saw you do it, remember?" Daryl nodded.
"Of course I remember tha'. But why do ya ask?" Tessa shook her head as her finger worried as a moth-eaten hole in one of the sheets stretched out underneath them.
"It's just . . . the way you pulled the trigger on Dale – the way you so quickly jumped in Rick's place when you saw that he wouldn't be able to do it . . . it was just so cold and-and . . ." She trailed off and shook her head. "And when you did it, I remember thinking, 'Thank God! Finally, someone who can do the dirty work – who won't hesitate to get his hands bloody!" She shook her head. "Your attitude during the whole thing just shocked me that was all." Daryl nodded as they faded into silence again and this time, Daryl was the one that broke it.
"Ya know, there was one time tha' me and ma old man actually saw eye-to-eye," He told her and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
"What do you mean? You and your old man never saw eye-to-eye!" She told him and he chuckled and shook his head.
"This one time in question happened when I was younger – before I met ya. Me and ma friends would hang out at tha poolhall in town whenever we needed to kill time. It was a real shithole of a bar but tha waitress had tha biggest fuckin' tits ya had ever seen and ma friend used to spend all his time tryin' to get her to sleep with his pimply, sixteen-year-old ass! It was our prime source of entertainment!" Daryl chuckled for a moment in remembrance before continuing: "One day we're in there, I'm hustlin' some pool and all of a sudden, I hear ma name bein' called from behind me. I turn 'round and next thing I know, I'm in tha parkin' lot behind tha poolhall with five dudes kickin' ma face in in retaliation for somethin' tha' Merle's stupid ass had done before he was carted off for his next stint in juvie! Tha fuckin' assholes put me in tha hospital for a damn week! Two people sat with me tha' entire time - ma uncle Jess and his wife, ma aunt Rebecca," He fell into silence for a moment there and Tessa glanced behind her at him.
"What happened next?" Daryl glanced at her before he picked up from where he left off.
"Ma last day there, when I'm finally healed up and 'bout ready to leave, ma old man shows up, stone cold sober for once. He ends up leanin' in and slippin' me a piece of paper. It's got tha names and addresses of those guys who had put me in there. He looked down at me and told me that if I didn' do somethin' 'bout 'em, tha' he would – and tha' he'd kill them for layin' a hand on one of his sons."
"What did you do?" Tessa asked and Daryl chuckled.
"I took one look at ma old man and knew tha' I wouldn' make tha same mistake tha' they did! And tha' I never would again." Tessa shook her head.
"Do you regret that day?" She asked him and Daryl glanced at her, immediately knowing what day she was referring to.
"You mean the day tha' I killed ma old man?" She nodded and could feel him give a shrug.
"Most days, I don' really regret it – he was possibly tha biggest asshole on tha face of tha planet. And then on some days – a majority of those days – I think, hell no," He glanced down at Tessa. "Ya stepped in-between us Tess and if ya hadn', then he might still be alive. But when ya did and he accidentally slapped ya . . ." He shook his head. "Tha's what flipped me over tha edge – hearin' tha back of his hand connect with flesh and then seein' ya hit tha ground at his feet like me and Merle had millions of times before tha' . . ." He shook his head again. "But before him . . . I got a couple of ma boys together and we finished what those dickheads had started."
She nodded but Daryl's firm hand moving her onto her back before gently but firmly taking her by the arms, kept her from descending into her thoughts. "Those other kills, Tess, those were cold. But Dale . . ." He shook his head. "Dale almost killed me, Tess! I liked Dale, I really did – he was nothin' like those dickheads or even ma old man. They deserved it! Dale, though . . ." He shook his head, his eyes becoming mournful. "Dale deserved so much more than tha'!"
"Why did ya do it then?" She asked and Daryl shook his head.
"It was killin' ya to watch tha', Tess. And with Rick takin' as long as he was to pull tha damn trigger . . . I knew by tha time he had finally found tha balls to do it, ya would either be completely insane or as depressed as ya were, with Merle," He gave a half-shrug then as his fingers moved to traced light little patterns on the flesh of her stomach underneath her shirt. She shivered from the feeling. "Tha' and I've been thinkin' what ya and Dale had been talkin' to me 'bout – 'bout how we have more weight in this group than we like to think – more than I like to think!" He sighed and looked away. "I suppose I've grown up enough to realize when we got a pretty sweet deal here – tha' maybe I should give Rick a chance."
"Are you?" She asked with an upturned brow and he shrugged as he pinned his gaze onto her.
"What do you think?" She shrugged.
"I think I can tell you what I want to do but you're just gonna do what you think is best for me and the baby." She told him and he chuckled and nodded.
"Tha's a very good assumption but I have a feelin' I know what ya gonna say . . ." He replied and she smiled and nodded.
"Smartest thing you've thought all day!"
