5

"How many," his dad mumbled.

Daryl gaped at him, confused. He felt the side of his face starting to bruise. "What?"

"How many packs, you fuck," his dad yelled, beating him back down to the floor.

Daryl lay on his stomach and stared at the cheap and peeling linoleum. "Four," he whispered. "Just four.

"Ain't 'just four'," Dallas said slowly from above him.

Daryl didn't know what he was talking about, but he heard his dad unbuckling his belt. He began to scramble on the floor, trying to get up and away. "No," he muttered, "no, no,no," as he was knocked back down to the floor.

"You stay down there," Dallas continued darkly. "You're gonna count. Just four."

The belt was nothing new to Merle, but it was to Daryl. Maybe this was why Merle had made himself so scarce as they had gotten older. The belt buckle was heavy and solid, and its leather had been aged well over the past few years. Daryl saw no way out of this, so he closed his eyes and locked his jaw in preparation for the inevitable. He heard a grunt, a swish of air, silence, and then the stars exploded in front of his eyes. He let out a scream like a wounded animal.

"That's just one, you little bitch," Dallas spat at him. "Say it."

"No!"

But it happened again. "Say it!" Dallas screamed, and Daryl felt blood.

"One," Daryl replied meekly.

—-

As Daryl dropped into the sanctuary of the boxcar, he felt a wave of exhaustion hit him. He hadn't had a chance to look at his back, but he knew that there were a lot more than just four stripes back there. He lit a lantern, and sat down on a mattress. He tried to take of his shirt, but found to his dismay that it was bound to him by blood. He let out a frustrated cry, threw himself down on his stomach, and finally fell asleep.

He woke up to sunlight and birds singing outside the boxcar. He went through the motions to try to get up, and found himself wincing. The night before came flooding back, and he decided he wasn't going back there anytime soon. He located the backpack he and Merle had stashed there, and found a clean shirt. A baggie of meth fell out of the balled up shirt.
"Goddamn it," Daryl cursed as he kicked it across the floor. He wanted to know where the fuck his brother was. His shirt was still stuck to him with his own dried blood, so bit his lip and yelped as he yanked it off like a bandaid. He held the dirty shirt in his hand and surveyed the damage.

The two reddest areas on the shirt were up by his shoulders. This made sense, because they still felt like they were on fire. He threw the shirt across the room in disgust. Merle would have at least tried to fight back, he thought to himself angrily. The air felt good on his back, so he lay back down on the bed on his stomach and let himself fall back to sleep. ¸

He slept for hours, completely undisturbed. He didn't dream about anything. He shook himself away when he heard a soft voice calling his name. "Ma?" he muttered groggily.

"Daryl?!" the voice called out again."Daryl Dixon?"

The voice was getting closer, and he realized that it was Sadie. He leapt from the floor, threw on the clean shirt and shoved the drugs under the mattress. "Sadie?" he called up. He saw her dirty blonde hair pop over the side of the overturned car.

"Daryl!" she cried out happily.

Her smile made him blush and he thought her voice was the most beautiful thing that he had heard in a while. "Come on down," he encouraged. There was a ladder, but he wanted to see if she would do the free fall jump that he and Merle had perfected. She did, and she landed with a level of grace that had never been seen in the boxcar before.

She surveyed the inside of the car. "This is cool," she said with a giggle. "I've never seen the inside." She stood shyly in front of Daryl, still smiling.

"Why're you here?" he asked gruffly.

She looked taken aback by his demeanor, but continued anyway. "You haven't been in school for a while. People were starting to talk."

"Oh, were they," Daryl said with a sneer. He realized he probably sounded like his brother.

"I was worried about you, that was all. I'm sorry, I won't do it again," she answered huffily. She looked around. "How do I get out of here?"

"Well, you dropped in. So you gotta run and jump to grab the door a bit." She looked at him skeptically and he couldn't help but smile back at her. "Come on, it ain't hard, go on," he gestured. She made a valiant attempt, but was was too little to reach. She landed a few feet away and spun around, visibly annoyed. He let out a laugh. It echoed in the car, and he realized he hadn't heard his own laugh or had had a reason to for a while.

"Stop laughing at me!"

He walked back over to the mattress and sat down. "I'll go get you the ladder in a second," he promised. He realized that he himself should have brought the ladder down, because it would be agony to climb back out. She walked toward him and studied his face. "You've got a black eye," she stated.

"So?"

"Was it your brother or your dad?"

He pushed himself farther away from her and glared. "What makes you think it was either of them, anyway?" But she looked at him in a way that he knew was pointless to argue with. Besides, you can't argue with the truth anyway.

"You're not like them, Daryl," she said softly.

He felt her eyes on him and refused to meet her gaze. "You don't know me. I could be just like them."

She sat down next to him. "I don't think you are."

She smelled like strawberries and he could feel warmth emitting from her skin. He attempted to get his ragged breathing under control. In his peripheral vision he saw her tiny hand flutter toward his shoulder. Her fingertips barely even grazed his shirt, but he instinctively jerked away from her touch.

The look he gave her broke her sixteen year old heart. "When my daddy gets mad at me, he takes the batteries out of my walkman," she began. "I carry on like it's the end of the world."

Daryl stared intently at the floor. "I'm sorry things are rough for you," he snapped.

She let out an exasperated sound. "Look, I'm sorry. Don't make this about me, though. Just because I can't relate doesn't mean I don't feel things any less!" She got up and began to make another attempt to get out of the car.

Daryl sighed, and stretched back out on his stomach again, "Don't go, though," he said loudly. "Please." He finally found her eyes. "I know I can be an asshole. I'm sorry."

She a big smile and sat back down next to him. "You're a smooth talker, Daryl Dixon."