Daryl's eyes are starting to feel chalky with over-use, but he can't sleep. His head throbs to the tune of his heartbeat (which is finally slowing down but pounds double-time whenever he hears something he can't immediately identify) and it flashes white-hot with pain at every bump and jostle. He's sore all over. He hasn't slept for more than forty hours now, he's been on the move for most of them, and exertion and adrenaline have left him hollowed out and scraped clean. But he can't sleep.
There are strangers in the RV. There are strangers everywhere, and he feels the wrongness of it like ants under his skin. They're unknowns, they could be dangerous, or stupid (and so dangerous), and he is cut off from parts of the group.
He doesn't know what the hell happened out there in the darkness at that farm, and the need to know is eating him up.
And.
And Daryl's three rescues are huddled together in the little kitchenette, and Glenn's got his arm around the older girl. She's got the smaller, blonde, bawling one wrapped up in her arms, but Glenn's got a hand on the older girl's back, and she keeps giving him these desperate, grateful looks. Like he's the only stable thing in a world suddenly set spinning around her she keeps looking back at him, reorienting herself. Daryl knows the feeling. (He might be projecting, just a little.)
Each time he looks it twists him up tighter, but he can't stop.
She's pretty enough. A soft, kind face if you weren't paying attention, if you missed the stubborn set of her chin, the fierceness in her eyes. (Daryl is absolutely paying attention.) She looks sweet and sharp and pretty. She looks like any number of things that Glenn deserves. Things that Daryl decidedly is not. And Glenn's arm is curved around her protectively, hand steady and constant on her back and Daryl wants to break something, needs to get the violent, destructive jealousy out before it burns him.
He's trying to pace, but he must look dangerous, because the more he moves the more Sophia shrinks in on herself, and that makes him feel sick and wretched, so he sits and stews until he's almost vibrating with it. He's trying really hard not to look aggressive or menacing, watching the girl from the corner of his eye until her shoulders come down from around her ears.
"Daryl? Think you could come up here and help me out?"
The interruption is really, really welcome. The old man doesn't need to know it, though. He hunches down in the seat and glares a little. "What d'you want?"
"My eyes aren't quite what they were. I hoped you could sit up here and watch the road with me for a while?"
Daryl relaxes a bit, tips his chin down and smirks over. "Sure thing, old man. Traffic's pretty bad tonight, huh?" Dale snorts, smiles gently.
"Hah, yeah, upside to the end of the world: no more traffic jams."
"Right, right, keep on the sunny side." Dale is giving him a strange, side-eyed look. "What?"
He looks away quickly, too innocent all of a sudden. "Hm? No, nothing. Nothing."
"Just spit it out, will you?"
"You're much sharper than you like to let us think, that's all." Daryl stares over, brow furrowing, but Dale is studiously watching the road, avoiding his eye. He wants to squirm and hunch in on himself, but with embarrassed pleasure rather than angry humiliation. It's a strange feeling, to have someone assume that he is more than he appears, to feel so secure in this man's esteem, to be so casually complimented.
"Huh," he grunts. "That's me alright. Hidden layers. Like an onion." He doesn't trust himself to smile, afraid of what might be showing in it. But he relaxes, lets Dale's chatter wash over him like elderly, opinionated waves. He leans his head back onto the seat, savouring the stretch in his neck, and lets his eyes slide shut.
Daryl has nightmares. Less than you might think given the whole, dead walking the earth thing.
Anyway, what they lack in frequency, they're trying to make up in intensity; he comes to with a name on his lips and illusory teeth bare inches from his throat, thrashing against grasping, restraining hands and sweating enough to soak through his already filthy, stinking clothes.
There are real hands on him, gripping at the shoulders and panic closes a cold hand around his chest (if this much is real then what about the rest-) and his senses are still foggy with sleep but he's up and out of the chair and slamming the other body into the RV's side wall-
The RV. The events of the last night come back, and he loosens his tunnel-vision focus enough to hear "Daryl? Daryl, c'mon man, it's alright, we're fine, it's safe-" and to see the face he is just inches away from.
Glenn. Surprised, confused, but (ridiculously, stupidly) not afraid. Daryl's got him pinned to a wall with an arm across his throat and Glenn's just watching patiently. Not at all like nightmare-Glenn.
That is the real problem that Daryl is having with his nightmares. They aren't just about him, alone in the dark with monsters on his tail. He's been having those dreams since long before the monsters were actual monsters, walking around outside his head where they've no business being. No, this new breed of dream is a problem because they hurt him in a different way – it is a new and unfamiliar torture to see people he cares for hurt, unable to protect them. These days, his nightmares aren't the paranoid terror of being hunted, but a wretched, terrible awareness of failure.
The monster is indistinct, amorphous – sometimes human, sometimes a rotting, shambling mockery, sometimes something else entirely – but the victim is always too, too clear. And he was screaming Daryl's name, expecting a rescue that Daryl failed to deliver – it happened just once while he was awake, and then many, many nights afterwards in Daryl's dreams.
But he's here now, safe and whole and unhurt and unafraid and Daryl's hands slide of their own volition until they are clutching just a little bit desperately at Glenn's upper arms, digging in. Reassuring himself. Glenn looks at him strangely, jaw twitching like he's about to speak (and Daryl shouldn't know this, shouldn't be watching, noticing, remembering, but he is and he can't stop) and Daryl snatches his hands back, tries to control his breathing. Waits for his heart to slow from a terrified gallop. He turns away, only to catch Dale staring at him with wide eyes and surprised eyebrows (the man has very expressive eyebrows) and he snarls, uncomfortable with the attention and wanting to curl in on himself but too proud to let it show.
"Daryl, is everything alright?" Glenn, concerned and hesitant. "Only, just now, you said-"
"Nothing! I didn't say a damned thing. Not a fucking word," Daryl hisses, and Glenn shrinks back, frowns at him, and Daryl feels ashamed, but he will not take it back, and he will not apologize, and he did not say a damned thing. This is a lie; Daryl knows exactly what – who – he was yelling for, if he'd done half as much yelling aloud as he had in his dream (though thankfully he doesn't talk much in his sleep) he'd have screamed himself hoarse, and the less said about it the better, and Daryl is not going to apologize for this-
"Sorry. Didn't mean t'snap at you. Just surprised me." He snaps his jaw shut before anything else unexpected can pop out. Glenn smiles and shakes his head, as if to say 'all is forgiven' and Daryl smiles weakly back. And does not open his damned mouth until he can figure out how to keep from spilling his thoughts everywhere like a gutted fish.
He drops back down into the seat, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, and tries to calm the fuck down. He's almost there, when, "So, do you want to talk about it?" It's Dale, of course it's Dale, and no, he fucking well does not want to talk about it. Then again, he may or may not have been calling Glenn's name as he woke up, so.
"Those wanna-be gangsters," he mutters abruptly, not telling the whole story but enough of it to make sense. He opens his eyes just long enough to glance from Dale to Glenn and back again, catch the flash of comprehension. "And tonight. If we'd been late. I just-" he cuts himself off with a disgusted huff. Mouth's running away on him again.
He sits in stormy silence the rest of the drive, arms crossed and face closed off, ignoring all attempts to talk until the message is received and he's left alone.
The caravan finally pulls over some hours later, taking shelter in the worn down stone shell of an old building. The atmosphere is strange. Tense. They've won, essentially, faced down hostile strangers and a horde of walkers and not lost anyone (though maybe the new people are missing someone). But it doesn't feel like a victory, just another catastrophe, and it shows, everyone haggard and harried and worn around the edges, silent and subdued for the most part. But introductions need to be made, and so do decisions.
First, Daryl learns names. Otis and Hershel and Patricia and Jimmy and Beth. And Maggie. Daryl might not bother to remember the other names, but he has a feeling that he'll have trouble forgetting Maggie, even now standing very close to Glenn.
Then the story gets a bit bizarre. There were walkers in the barn. They had been intentionally keeping walkers in that barn. No doubt thinking that the feds'd be by any day now with some special magic fairy dust to make everything better. He can't stop himself from scoffing, and doesn't try. It's worth it for the hurt, offended look on cowgirl barbie's face.
So, his own group had arrived first, been greeted with relatively open arms (not nearly enough suspicion for Daryl's taste, and he's wondering how they've lived as long as they have) and they'd been sitting inside a nice little farm house, shooting the breeze over some fresh-squeezed orange juice. Rick would have been trying very earnestly, Daryl has no doubt, to convince these people of the danger that may or may not be approaching, and (guessing from the sheer pig-headed naivety) probably having very little luck.
Then the other group had arrived. Unfortunately for them, they checked the barn first, and shortly thereafter the sound of screaming and gunshots turned the place into a miniature three-way battlefield. It still would have been over rather quickly, except the barn zombies were not the only ones on the scene. Just as the last of the barn walkers were dispatched, and most of the invading group of survivors, walkers started coming out of the woods. First ones and twos, then a trickle, and then a steady outpouring that looked as though there would be no end.
Then the barn caught fire. That's about when Daryl arrived, and he knows the rest of the story well enough (well enough, indeed, that it will without a doubt be entering his nightmare rota inside of a week).
There is the obligatory trading of sob stories, heading towards the almost foregone conclusion that there will be a consolidation of groups in the near future. Daryl is getting better at group dynamics, and he can see that this one is headless, lacking a leader, and Rick-the-paragon-of-virtue seems to be like a beacon for people like that.
Hershel is shaken, gaunt, tired, haunted – probably head of the household but taken away from his home and whatever solid foundation he had been resting on; Otis looks big and imposing but Daryl mostly gets agreeable from him, not a forceful enough personality to lead people through the kind of hells that they'll be facing; same for Patricia. Jimmy is young and stupid; Beth is young and scared; Maggie… Well, galling as it is, Maggie could have something. Too young, too sheltered from the new reality, too deferential to the father, but that'll all change real quick, and then she'll be something.
She-and-Glenn will be something and his chest squeezes like wrapping over broken ribs – dull and probably good for you, with an undertone of sharp and searing and hellish.
Daryl just concentrates on breathing, slow and calm and measured, like he's hunting.
Once he can do that, he returns to weighing the costs and benefits. There are the obvious drawbacks associated with any new additions – throwing the power structure and social ties into disarray, more mouths to feed, more bodies to draw walkers, more people to make mistakes, more personalities to clash. On the other hand, Hershel has more medical experience than a cop's first aid training, Otis looks like a solid, dependable guy, more people mean security, more hands in a crisis, more eyes in the night. He won't object to the fact that they're not city people, either – that usually means a bit more of a certain kind of common sense, a little more readiness to accept life's harsher realities.
And Glenn is smiling a little softer.
Daryl breathes some more. Because he can, damnit.
They're still talking, Jesus Christ. But Rick must have seen something in Daryl's face, because now he's looking over in askance. Daryl's gut pitches a little – this is responsibility again, beholden to others, weak, vulnerable – but he nods, once, terse, but affirmative.
A few of the hardest lines fade from Rick's face, expression losing its pinched quality, and Daryl supresses a shiver at the thought that it was his confirmation Rick was looking for, his approval that calmed the worst of his fears.
It feels like too much, pressing in on him from all sides, overwhelming. He can't imagine how Rick breathes.
Randall is trying to inconspicuously hide behind Daryl, while simultaneously trying not to stand too close to Daryl. He twitches whenever he's looked at directly. Daryl, through a judicious application of side-eye, notices that Randall is watching forlornly the same scene that Daryl is studiously avoiding – Glenn and Maggie drifting gently and inexorably together, like tectonic plates – and it's- Daryl wasn't looking for common ground, and he's not too pleased to have found it, but there you go.
