I was a little iffy about this chapter and I tried several times to rewrite it but nothing felt right like this one did. Hopefully, you all agree. This is the first time, and last time, during this story that I've went into the POV of an OC. Hopefully you all like it. Thanks for reading!

Chapter Seventy Five

Damon hung back with Odin, listening as they explained the plan to Shane. He couldn't stop glancing down at his hands. There was blood there from where he had put his hands on Sophia's back. Her shirt had been soaked with blood from the hit she had taken to the back of the head. She was gone now. Buck had followed Daryl to the hospital to have her head checked out. He couldn't stop looking at the blood on his hands.

His fists clenched and he leaned against the wall. He knew something that the others didn't know. She had told him because she knew that it was something that he could handle quietly. She told him because she knew that he wasn't going to let somebody get away with trying to hurt her. He was three days away from his eighteenth Birthday. Three days. He had almost made it.

His mind drifted back to a day three years ago. He had been sitting on the roof with Daryl while Daryl got high...

"Can I ask you somethin'?" Damon asked as they gazed out at the setting sun.

"Shoot kid," Daryl answered after a coughing fit.

"Me and Piper were in the back of the garage earlier. We were hidin' out cause we both ditched today. We didn't think anybody would be there other than you so when they showed up we hid in the stairway. My dad and Buck got to talkin' about somethin'." He sat there for a few long moments collecting his thoughts.

Daryl glanced over. "Well, that's a fascinating story, Damon. You got a point?"

Damon rolled his eyes. "Yeah. They mentioned some shit that you did back when you were even younger than me." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Daryl tense but he needed to know. "They were talkin' about you killin' somebody."

Daryl took another hit, his eyes hard and guarded. "Yeah. You know as good as I do that sometimes shit like that happens."

Damon nodded. "I know. It just got me to thinkin' I guess."

Daryl met his eyes. "You thinkin' about whether you'd be able to do it?"

"Not really. We have to do what we have to do, right?"

Daryl sighed. "I'll tell you what, kid. You won't ever be put in that spot, alright? Things like that don't happen unless we let our guard down and our people get hurt. We don't let our guard down anymore, okay? So as long as we take care of each other, watch each others backs, your hands will stay clean. That's my new mission. Keepin' you from killin' till you're at least eighteen." He laughed and then surprised Damon when he passed the joint over. He'd smoked weed before but he didn't want his mom finding out about it. Then again, Daryl wasn't really one of the adults around here. He was something in between. That's what made him such a cool guy to hang out with. If you wanted somebody to give it to you straight, he was the man you came to.

"Is it hard? Killin' somebody I mean?" Damon asked. Deep down he wasn't sure if he would ever be able to do it. Sure, he could hurt people. He'd been in plenty of fights. He liked it. But actually taking someone's life, that was different.

Daryl gazed off, his face relaxed now and his eyes calm. He shrugged. "No."

Damon shook off the reverie when Odin clapped him on the shoulder.

"I'm guessin' you're wantin' to head on over to the hospital now? Your mom is with Piper, who is probably giving her a damn hard way to go since she don't know what the hell is going on. That girl ain't used to being in the dark. Buck's with Sophia but I think she'll get released soon," Odin said, his blue eyes studying Damon closely.

"Yeah, I'll go home, get cleaned up. Maybe I'll stop at her place and grab her some clothes. Hers are all bloody."

Odin gave him a stiff nod and then stopped him when he tried to walk away. "Hey, I know you feel like you shoulda been the one to take those assholes out. I don't know why the hell you're so fuckin' eager to spill blood, but I couldn't let you do it."

Damon held his gaze. "Long as they're dead I don't guess it much matters, right? And maybe I ain't as eager as you think"

Odin slapped him on the back and steered him towards the door. "I'm actually a little relieved to hear that son. Anyway, they ain't gonna be hurtin' no more girls. They paid for what they did here tonight."

All except one person and Damon wasn't about to open his mouth and say anything about it. "I'll meet you all up there."

"When Sophia gets out you go ahead and take her on to Buck's. I ain't stupid enough to think you're comin' home tonight. Just tell your mama when you get there."

Damon cranked the radio up in the car, trying to drown his dark thoughts with The Rolling Stones. He didn't speed. He didn't run any stop signs or red lights. He parked his car at the garage but didn't even bother looking at the building. With the comforting pressure of the gun at the small of his back he took off walking towards Ed Peletier's house. If the man wasn't home, he would wait. It would give him more time to think about how he was going to do this. Depending on how he felt when he got there, he may not even need the gun.

Maybe he would use his bare hands.

The back of the house was dark and he didn't expect to get lucky enough to get through any open windows so he went to the door instead. It was locked but the deadbolt didn't seem to be engaged so he fished his license out of his wallet and jimmied it until the doorknob turned in his hand. He carefully wiped it off before he stepped into the kitchen, careful not to touch anything.

The kitchen was dark but there was light spilling in through the living room, into the small dining room but it wasn't strong enough to reach the kitchen. He was in shadows and he took a moment to get his breathing under control. In his minds eye he remembered that night he had climbed up the porch roof and came into her room. The night he had thought that Ed had hurt her. The look on her face. The desolation in her eyes and the way her body shook from fear. He clenched his teeth and stepped further into the room.

He heard a soft sound, like a cough coming from the living room and stopped.

He could almost hear her voice in his head, whispering his name. Feel her arms around his waist as they sped down the highway with the others. Hear her laughter and see the way her eyes danced mischievously. All of that could have been taken away tonight. And even if they had found her eventually, she would have been so broken that his Sophia would never be back. She would be someone else. Someone haunted. The things those men would have done to her. What they would have forced her to do. He felt bile rise in the back of his throat. Knowing that the only person to ever touch her at all had been him, even in the smallest ways, and knowing that those men would have used her up like she meant nothing at all made something inside him grow cold and dark with hate.

She meant everything to him and this man... no... this fucking monster, would toss her away to a pack of wolves to be used and defiled and...

He stopped in the doorway to the living room and heard the television and then a small chuckle. Ed must have been watching something pretty funny. The man's own blood could have been out there being tortured right now and he was sitting on his ass watching T.V. like nothing in the world was amiss.

"Enjoyin' yourself tonight, Ed?" He asked, pulling the gun around so the man would see it when he looked up.

Ed nearly fell out of the Lazy-E-Boy he was lounging in at the sound of Damon's voice. His head shot up and his hand reached for the phone sitting on the table next to him. Damon clucked his tongue and shook his head.

"You see the funny barrel on this gun here? It's a silencer. You touch that phone and I'll fill you full of lead faster than you can dial the first number. Nobody will hear a thing."

"What the hell are you doin' in my house?" Ed barked, standing up and taking a step back.

Damon came towards him fast, grabbing him by the back of the neck and hauling him towards the dining room. He shoved him into a chair and then grabbed one for himself, sitting in it backwards right in front of the man before he ever said a word. "I'm here to get answers. That's all," he lied. He wanted to know why. That was all he wanted to know and he knew if Ed knew he was here to kill him then he would never get those answers.

"What's this about?" Ed asked, his eyes flicking frantically around the room.

"This is about the hand you played in what happened to Sophia tonight. Did you really think that you and your friends would get away with that?"

Ed shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Damon forced himself to remain calm. This must have been how Daryl felt the day he had talked to Ed. "We got there before the buyer was able to take her anywhere," he said, successfully keeping his voice under control and his hands from shaking. "All those men are dead. Sophia didn't tell Daryl you were there. She didn't tell Buck or any of the others. She just told me. And now I'm here cause I wanna know how. How the hell could you do somethin' like that to her? She's never hurt a goddamn soul in her whole life. She never could. So how? Just answer that question."

Ed's eyes grew colder and he sneered. "How? After everything her and that bitch mother of hers did to me!"

Damon was having trouble keeping himself under control but he forced himself to. He was here for answers. That and retribution. "What they did to you, huh? I don't recall Sophia doin' anything to you. And the only thing Carol did was get away from an abusive piece of shit that didn't treat her right."

Ed seemed to have forgotten that Damon was the one in control here. He leaned forward, anger turning the lines in his forehead into deep creases. "What does it matter to you, boy? Huh? Do you really think you're any better than me? Do you think that girl won't turn around and fuck somebody else behind your back just like her mama-" Ed screamed as a bullet tore into his thigh. Damon had moved so fast that the man didn't see it coming.

"Don't," he growled. "Don't you fuckin' talk about her like that or this is gonna take me all night. I can make it hurt or I can end you quick. You remember that. I'm the one with the gun here. I'm the one that makes the calls. How much longer you live. That's all up to me. Don't forget that. Now I wanna know why."

Ed was sobbing, holding his leg. "Because she don't matter," he bit out between clenched teeth. "She's never mattered. Carol never mattered. I didn't want that life. I was destined for more than that and then Sophia came along and everything was ruined."

Damon realized then that he wouldn't get any answers because he would never be able to understand Ed's logic. He would never understand how a man could look at his own child and think the things that Ed had thought about doing. He would never understand how Carol could mean so little to someone. His own father worshiped the ground his mother walked on. He was raised to put family above everything else. Ed didn't understand anything like that.

Suddenly he felt tired. Extremely tired. He was tired of listening to Ed's rambling and he was tired of the pained whimpers that fell from his lips as he covered the wound in his leg. Damon leaned forward slightly. "Carol had a son tonight. Daryl, he risked dying for Sophia tonight. When the sun comes up tomorrow, our lives are gonna start goin' back to normal. We're still gonna be happy no matter what happened tonight. Carol and Sophia, they have everything they ever wanted. Family. Security. A life. I want you to think about that. I want you to think about how happy they are. I want you to think about how, no matter what you did, you didn't break them. You weren't strong enough to break them.

"Why the hell would I do that?" Ed spat. "I don't care how happy they are. They. Don't. Matter."

Is it hard? Killin' somebody I mean? His own voice, much younger, sounded in his head.

He thought about Sophia again. Let images of what could have happened to her tonight crash into his mind. He thought about the blood on his hands. He thought about a future where she was always looking over her shoulder, never knowing what Ed was plotting next. He thought about the things Ed wanted to do to her. It was Damon's job to keep her safe. He needed to make sure that what happened tonight, never happened again. It wasn't that he wanted to kill anyone. It was that, if it came down to her safety or the life of a potential child molester, a monster, then he would choose her safety.

No. Was the answer that Daryl had given him that day on the roof.

Damon raised the gun so it was just a few inches from Ed's face. Ed's eyes, glazed with pain and shock rose up to meet his. Without a word Damon pulled the trigger.