AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl knew that they'd given him something for pain. Alice had given him something for pain. Hershel probably wouldn't have done the same considering his last experiences in a bed with the old man taking care of wounds. And now his head was spinning oddly. He wasn't one for drugs. Drinking he could handle. He knew what to expect. He knew what it felt like from the first drink all the way until he couldn't remember the night before. Drugs? Drugs just made him feel entirely outside of himself and out of control. It wasn't something he really cared for, even when he appreciated the numbing capabilities of them.
That was why it had always been Merle who had been into the drugs and not Daryl. They were available to him, but he didn't want them.
It was hard to focus on anything. He could see, and he could see perfectly fine…his vision wasn't affected…but his brain didn't feel like it was processing the images correctly. Even reaching for a glass of water seemed, at the moment, far too monumental a task once he'd tried it. He just wanted to forget, now that he'd moved, about the water and go back to sleep.
"You want something to drink?" He heard a familiar voice ask. "Hey…thirsty?"
Daryl forced his heavy eyelids back open to find Alice in his field of vision and he felt her touch the glass that she'd retrieved to him to his lips. He accepted the water and woke just a little from the heavy headed state he was in.
He looked around. He appeared to be in a bed, one that he hadn't been in before, though he felt like he was getting the grand tour of this monumentally sized farmhouse, and he was alone in a room except for Alice who, given her state of undress, was apparently sleeping in the room with him.
He barely remembered making back it to the farmhouse. He remembered catching Sophia. He remembered knowing that she was fine. He remembered knowing that she'd been returned to Carol.
And somewhere along the way, he remembered that the pain had been too much and he hadn't been able to keep going with it. He wasn't sure if he actually blacked out or if he'd only come close to it. He didn't know, actually, how he got back to the farmhouse, but it must have been owing to Merle's, and maybe Carol's, efforts.
He didn't really remember too much after he lost the fight against the pain, and he wasn't sure how much of what he remembered were actually lucid moments and how much had simply been things that he'd dreamed while unconscious.
"I don't like this," he muttered.
Alice laughed.
"The water?" She asked.
He hummed and tried to find the water again and she offered him more of it.
"What the fuck did you give me? Damn…can't feel my fucking head," Daryl said.
Alice laughed again.
"Good shit," she responded. "If you were asleep, you wouldn't care. You were supposed to be asleep, you know that, right?"
Alice put the glass down on the table and crawled onto the bed beside Daryl, pushing his head down toward the pillow slightly. She trailed her fingers in his hair in a scratching motion that was actually quite soothing and he closed his eyes for a moment.
He didn't have the strength to fight her off from the affectionate action, even if he'd wanted to.
"You messed yourself up today," Alice said, her voice low…something he didn't usually associate with her. "You're not leaving the bed for a few days. Doctor's orders. I'll drug you again if I have to."
Daryl perked up again then, cursing in his mind over how much he wanted to sleep and how much he didn't want to sleep, the feelings fighting it out in his brain.
"I can't stay here," he said.
"Oh you're staying," Alice said. "That little move you pulled? That would've fucked up your muscles if you didn't already have a hole through them."
He shook his head at her, sitting up as best he could. The pain in his body was there, and when he moved he was aware of it, but it felt like it was distant at the moment. It was his, but it wasn't entirely his.
"Carol? Sophia?" He asked.
"They're fine," Alice said. "I gave them both something to sleep and cleaned Sophia up. They're resting."
Daryl moved around and became more aware of the pain as he moved. Being still made it duller. Moving made him throb until he almost wished he could go back to the numb that he'd felt when he'd first woken up.
"Where?" He asked.
"Where are they?" Alice responded. "Downstairs, in one of the rooms. You been around this place much? Creepy as fuck. My theory is it's haunted. Lots of people have died here, I'm sure. Fucking hordes of them. And I'm not even talking about since all this shit happened…"
"Al!" Daryl barked, his voice reminding him that even though he'd drank water, his throat was still dry. It got Alice's attention though, and in response she offered him more of the water that he'd been drinking. He accepted it, but the moment that she'd moved the glass away he got her attention again. "I want to go where they are."
"Ehhhh…" she hummed.
"We're gettin' married," Daryl said. "I wanna go where she is."
"What the hell? Married?" Alice responded.
"Focus!" Daryl spat at her. "We said we gonna get married. That ain't what's important. I wanna…"
He stopped. His head was really not in the right place for this kind of conversation. If he'd known which one of the rooms in this maze of house she was in, and if he'd thought he could get there on his own without simply falling out from the drugs that made him want to sleep so badly, he would have just gone on his own.
"I gotta piss an' I wanna go where the hell they are," he said. "Promise…I'll stay in bed long as you want me to. But it's gotta be that bed."
"I can help you with the one," Alice said, crawling off the bed. "But we might fall down the stairs if we try the other. Everyone's asleep, Daryl. I can't move you on my own. And you can't even sit up…if you bust those damn stitches again I'm not even going to have anything to sew together."
Daryl bit his lip, worried for a moment he might bite through it if he tried the move he was about to try, and pushed himself up and rolled over, groaning against the crying muscles in his side that he had no doubt were torn and damaged.
"Whoa…easy…cool your jets!" Alice screeched at him, likely waking anyone in any room around them. "OK! You made your point…I'm coming. Let's just…we'll take care of the pissing problem first so if you fall on me and break my neck at least you don't piss on me too."
Daryl snorted and grabbed at his side, immediately regretting grabbing the re-injured wound where the arrow had gone through.
"Don't make me fuckin' laugh or I'll kick your damn ass," Daryl said. "Soon as I can breathe again," he added.
Once Alice knew that he was serious, though, and that he was going to attempt this trip with or without her, she did help him.
And he hadn't really realized, until he was attempting to put a good bit of his weight on her, that she wasn't, when he touched her, quite the woman that he thought he was when he simply thought of her. She stumbled under his weight enough that it reminded him to carry as much of his own as he could, even though his body screamed out about his decision to walk when his exhausted muscles just wanted to rest.
Somehow, they made it down the stairs, in the dark no less, and somehow they made it through the hallways of the house, the old wood creaking and groaning beneath their feet.
And Daryl thought Alice was right. At this hour of the night? You could almost hear the sounds of the ghosts that probably inhabited the place running around after one another. He half expected them to bump into one or two.
When they finally reached the room they were destined for, Daryl opened the door and let it creak open on its own, swinging with tilt of the settled house. The room beyond the door was dimly lit by a small lamp that was burning on a bedside table. In the room there was a bed that was just large enough to be considered suitable for two people. In the bed, Carol was asleep, and curled up into her, a tangle of arms and legs, was Sophia. Both were oblivious to the fact that they had lost their blanket and both were oblivious to both the passing back and forth of ghosts and of their new company.
"Right there," Daryl said. "I'm goin' over there."
"Hell yeah you are," Alice hissed at him, helping him toward the bed. "And I'm going to die now."
She didn't die, though, like she threatened. She helped him into the bed. He barely fit and he had to pin his body tightly against Carol's to keep from falling off the side, but he made a space for himself. She woke, slightly, when he curled into her and he almost held his breath for a moment to see what she might do or say.
But her only response, when she rolled her body against his just enough to identify him, was to offer him the slightest hint of a smile and then she straightened back out and dropped her head, moving her body just a little in order to back even tighter against him.
Daryl let out the breath he was holding and settled down, resting his own head then, one arm thrown over her loosely. As soon as he closed his eyes, his head and his body swam with the effects of the drugs that he'd been doing his best to ignore and push to the side. He felt overwhelmed, suddenly and completely, with the urgency to sleep.
And with her curled against him as she was, her body feeling even more real to him in the moment than his own, he felt like he could sleep. He felt like it could be the best sleep he'd had in a while.
He never noticed the blanket that found its way over him and the rest of his family, and he never heard the ghosts close the creaking door again to give them their privacy through the night.