Chapter Forty
Dinner was tense. It had started raining again so there was no escaping the awkward tension that enveloped everyone sitting around the table. Daryl wasn't used to it. Over the last couple of days the women had gone out of their way to try to make the mood as light as they could and he hadn't realized how much he appreciated it until now.
Katherine didn't say anything at all, picking at her meal and occasionally scowling into her plate before her brow would smooth back out and she would go back to simply looking distracted. Carol offered him reassuring smiles when she would catch him looking at her but she didn't really say much either. Sophia had been quiet all week so her mood wasn't surprising but the blotchy cheeks and blood shot eyes were new.
A clap of thunder had them all jumping in surprise and it only added to the dark mood. Piper hadn't said a word since she had come down and yelled at Merle, calling him out on his bullshit in true Piper fashion. Daryl had never seen his niece so mad.
"Here, Merle." Everyone looked over at Sam, who was sliding her biscuit towards the man.
Merle eyed it and then looked at the girl from under his brow. "Eat it. You're too damn skinny as it is. You need to worry about fattenin' yourself up for the winter."
Sam pulled the offered food back towards her plate and looked down. It was painfully obvious that she was trying to make amends with the man without even knowing what she had done to make him dislike her in the first place. Not that he didn't like her. Everyone knew he liked the kid well enough but she didn't understand why he had said the things he had.
Daryl sure as hell didn't envy his brother at the moment.
Hell, he didn't envy himself either because he was about to have to bring up everything that him and Merle had talked about. He didn't want to take them off the mountain but he couldn't leave them. There was no way he would ever be able to take off and leave them there.
"I guess we need to talk about what our next move is gonna be," he said, his voice quiet but carrying easily to the others thanks to the awkward silence. Even the girl's attention was fixed on him. "We all know they shoulda been back. Even if none of us will say it out loud."
Daryl felt Carol tense next to him but there was a look of resolve in her eyes. She knew this was coming and she would do whatever he needed her to do to make it easier on him. At the moment he loved her for it.
"You're gonna leave, aren't you?" Sophia asked, her voice filled with emotion as her eyes bore into his.
He nodded. "That's what me and Merle talked about. We gotta try to find them. All of us."
Carol's eyes widened and everyone seemed to sit up a little straighter. "All of us?" she asked, not sounding very put off at the thought of leaving. He realized then that to her, going down there and facing those things would be easier than staying up here and worrying about him.
He nodded. "We have an idea where they went. Ain't too many towns to hit that's close, so we go look for them, keep an eye on each others backs, find the others and get our asses back home."
Daryl met Carol's eyes and she nodded firmly. She knew that they needed to get their people back and would do what she had to do to get it done. It was Katherine he knew would have the biggest problem with it, and rightly so. He looked over and sure enough her eyes were filled with worry and they glued to the little girl next to her. When she looked up she cleared her throat.
"I don't suppose we have the option of staying here?" she asked.
To Daryl's surprise it was Merle that spoke up. "We can't just assume we're invincible up here. Can't take a chance on something happening to the two of you while we're gone. You can come and there'll be enough of us to keep an eye on the girl. It's the best way."
That worry faded from the woman's eyes and was replaced by a cold anger that Daryl had never seen before. "Stop pretending to give a damn about what happens to either one of us. It isn't your job to do anything so I'll protect my own damn child. I don't need your empty reassurances." She stood up and stalked out of the room, going straight to the bedroom and slamming the door shut.
The rest of them shared surprised looks and then went back to eating. All of them but Merle, who was glaring at the closed bedroom door.
Daryl understood the woman's anger. It wasn't easy for any of them and her walking up on Merle's little outburst earlier had caused a lot of tension between the two of them, not to mention the tension that was now thick between Merle and Piper. The man just couldn't win today.
To Daryl's surprise Merle stood up and stormed into the room behind the woman, leaving the rest of them staring after them worriedly.
~H~
The last thing he needed was to deal with some type of bullshit like this. It wasn't like he'd sought the goddamn woman out and gave her hell. How the hell was it his fault that her and the damn kid decided to come out there while he was in the middle of a fucking fit?
"What the hell is your problem?" he snapped, slamming the door behind him, even though he knew what her problem was.
She was sitting on the bed and when she looked up at him she was glaring, dark eyes stormy. "Do you really think this is somehow harder on you than it is anyone else up here? Are you really that blind, or that selfish, that you have absolutely no regard for the feelings of anyone else?"
He gaped at her, anger causing his pulse to pound behind his ears. "You're gonna sit there and tell me that my family bein' gone is as hard for you as it is me? Are you that stupid?"
She stood up, fists clenching at her sides. "No, it isn't. I didn't even get a chance to know them! But your brother isn't lashing out and hurting people and I'm sure that he has just as much at stake as you do! He just doesn't feel the need to blow up and hurt people."
Merle scoffed. "So that's what this is, huh? I should be more sensitive? Get the hell outta here with that bullshit."
She shook her head. "No, that isn't what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, it's okay to be afraid and it's okay to hurt but it isn't okay to take it and turn it into something cruel and that's what you did. I've never asked you for a thing and I don't expect you to go out of your way for me but please, can you at least pretend to be a nicer person when it comes to my daughter? That's all I want from you. She's lost a lot. Her father didn't give a damn about her and Richard pretended she didn't exist, Brody picked on her, made fun of her. You were nice to her and she feels safe with you. I don't care if I get my feelings hurt but I can't stand to see her suffer anymore. Not for something as senseless as you needing to lash out."
He had already gotten an ear full from his daughter over all of this and he wanted to make things right with the kid but he wasn't planning on standing around and letting this woman guilt him. "I didn't say a damn thing to that kid and you know it. I can't help what the hell you two walk up on."
Just like that all the fight seemed to fall away from her and she regarded him with those large brown eyes. "You know what, you're right. You're right," she said, defeated. "This, all of this, is yours and I'm just someone lucky enough to get a free pass. You didn't come looking for us so you could rant. We should have stayed up here and we never would have heard you."
If she would have kept up that angry front he would have been able to let her pass but she hadn't. She had given up before she had ever started, probably used to losing, and as much as he hated to admit it, this was what finally got to him. He grabbed her wrist, stopping her before she could get out the door.
She looked up at him then, uncertainty in her gaze, and he couldn't think of a goddamn thing to say. He really didn't want her to think that she was just a guest up here. Hell, all of them were a clan now. Maybe they weren't all blood but they had a responsibility to one another now and they didn't need friction.
"I'll talk to her," he said after the silence went on for too long.
She smiled then and he couldn't believe how quickly she could let go of her anger like that. "Thank you."
He dropped her wrist and glanced over his shoulder, eyeing the door. "It'd help me out a lot if you'd do the same."
She frowned. "I already talked to her."
He shook his head. "Nah, not yours. You can talk to mine. Somethin' tells me if you don't then I'm gonna wake up with a knife wound. For some reason she loves that kid."
She chewed her lip for a moment and then shook her head. "No. You're on your own. I can forgive you because it's in my nature but you've earned the wrath of your own spawn. Good luck, Merle."
He scoffed and then watched her slip out of the room before following her out. He felt better but he knew she was right. That kid had taken a lot of hits, even before all of this happened, and he needed to make it right. Maybe it wasn't his responsibility to coddle everyone but she was just a little kid and she had been through hell and back. He ignored the looks from everyone else because it was almost embarrassing. He almost missed the days before he ever became a father and grew a conscience. Sam was watching him, her eyes the same as her mother's, wearily following him.
He walked right up to her and pulled her up from the chair, stuffing her under his arm, still ignoring the others and ignoring the fit of laughter that suddenly erupted from the kid at being handled like a stuffed animal. He walked her out the front door and then sat her down on the porch, his eyes scanning the rain drenched yard before he looked down at her.
"Am I in trouble?" the girl asked but he could tell by the look on her face that she knew he wasn't mad at her.
"What you heard down there, that was just me bein' a big shithead, alright? Ain't no other place I'd rather you or that infuriating mama of yours to be than right up here where I can keep my eye on you, you got me?"
She looked down for a few long moments before meeting his eye again but she offered him a quick nod. "Piper told me that already."
"Well, now I'm tellin' you."
She smiled and he found himself feeling a hell of a lot better. Goddamn why the hell was he such a goddamn bleeding heart pussy all of a sudden?
"So, we good?" he asked.
"We're good. You might wanna talk to Piper though. She's really mad at you."
He laughed at that. "Go talk your mom into talkin' to her for me. She won't listen to a damn thing I have to say right now."
"It's cause you're an ass, huh?" she asked, no humor in her voice but a mischievous glint in her dark eyes.
He snorted. "Get your little ass in the house, girl, before I let your mom know Piper is teachin' you to cuss like a grown man."
The grin this earned him made the awkwardness of the situation well worth it.