phantom pains
Written for August Fic Challenge 2023, Prompt: Phantasm. Note: Established relationship. Goes AU early in Alexandria, in that maybe the abusive doctor isn't an asshole and doesn't go nuts and cause chaos when he could be helpful instead. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!
Daryl can feel everything.
He writhes in pain as every bit of skin rips apart, as every sinew of muscle pulls free. Blood flows freely from what has to be a deep wound on his abdomen, too enticing a target for the walkers that surround him now, the ones that finally got him. So many of them, hands pressing him down, making it so he can't fight, his arms and legs and body all pinned as they tear into him.
He is cold and hot and dizzy and nauseous and too damn weak to fight them. His vision blurs in and out of focus, goes dark and hazy around the edges. His ears ring so loudly that the only thing he can hear over the sound is the racing beat of his own heart. Hell, he can't even hear the raw screams that he's sure are tearing from his own throat.
He doesn't even know how they got to him in the first place.
One minute, he thinks, he'd been sound asleep in the bed he shares with Rick, allegedly safe within Alexandria's walls, within a house he'd secured himself and now he's here at their mercy. How had they gotten in? What about the others? What about Rick? And Carl and Judith? Glenn and Maggie? Carol? Michonne? Were they safe? Had the walls fallen to the walkers?
He forces himself to fight harder, searching desperately for whatever last dregs of strength he can find, his body flooded with adrenaline. He has to stop this! He has to save them!
Somehow, he gets an arm free and swings out, swiping wildly at whatever is responsible for the searing pain in his side. He makes contact with something vaguely human shaped and imagines the walker he just punched in the face staggering away from him. He tries to use the moment of respite to get himself up, to run, but he's still pinned by others and some part of his brain wonders at this organized attack.
He is further alarmed by the sharp stab at his arm – walkers do not use needles.
What the fuck?
What is happening?
It's not walkers that have him, then, but people - and somehow that's worse. He is well aware of what humans can do in this world (wonders at how the cannibals at Terminus found them, how the brutally cruel Claimers could have wandered all the way up the coast to follow him here for revenge – it doesn't matter that they're all dead, he's lost in nightmare images of phantom assailants as his mind swims under the influence of whatever drug they've just injected him with.
Hands slip on the sweat slick skin of his bare chest and that scares him, too – other people seeing all the scars that litter his body. Not so much the ones from these last few years, but the ones on his back, from before, no matter that they're half-hidden under tattoos. It's only compounded when someone shoves something into his mouth, probably to shut him up. Tastes like leather on his tongue – a belt, maybe? No, no. Not that. Suddenly, it's not the ghost of predatory thugs with a score to settle standing around him, but the ghost of his father, looming over him, laughing at how pathetic he is, can't even save himself. With one last defiant protest, he forces it out of his mouth and screams in raw fury.
But he can feel the fight fading from him as quickly as it had come, pulling him under once more.
But, then…
"Wait," someone says. "Just wait a minute."
There's a hand wrapped tight around his own, holding it down but holding on, too. A hand in his hair, fingers carding gently through the sweat-damp strands. A soothing, calming voice that registers somewhere deep in his brain as familiar, as safe, as family (and not the volatile kind of family he grew up with but the one he found for himself after the world ended). He doesn't understand what's happening, but there's that at least. He clings to it.
"You're okay," the words filter through the haze of the drugs and the pain. "Hey, hey, Daryl," Rick's voice calls out to him, pulling him up from the darkness. "Listen to me, okay?"
"Rick?" He chokes out, voice rough and wrecked from all the shouting. "W-what…?"
Rick's hovering in front of him, over him, still blurry but recognizable through his fuzzy vision. Daryl tries his hardest to focus on him and drown out everything else that threatens to swamp his dulled senses. "Calm down for me, alright? We're trying to help you. You got sick and you need surgery. I know it hurts, but I need you," he pauses. "I need you to trust me here."
"'Course," he answers, as if he could do anything else. "'M I turning?"
A fresh wave of panic – he doesn't want to pose a risk to his family. He'd rather they just shoot him than fuck around with chances like that – he's sure it's not an arm, a leg that they're messing with here. What can they do to stop it if he's been bit in the stomach?
"No, no," Rick promises him, puts that fear to rest. He reaches up with his free hand and wipes away tears Daryl hadn't even realized he'd shed. "Regular sick. Appendix. I came to bed and you were passed out. Your fever was so high and I couldn't wake you up…"
Oh. Right.
He remembers now. Going to bed with a stubborn twinge of pain in his stomach, something he'd chalked up to eating such different foods after so long spent on the road with scavenged canned goods and what little game he managed to find for them along the way. Here they were farming, hunting, cooking. They had a whole pantry of supplies – hell, Carol had made cookies.
Shit. No wonder this hurts so much.
No wonder it feels like someone's been ripping him open and digging around in his guts. That's exactly what's happening. He dreads what he's in for here because Alexandria might have a surgeon, but he's damn sure that they don't have half the shit they would in an operating room. There's no anesthesia here. No recourse if he bleeds too much. Nothing anyone can do if his appendix bursts before it's out. No telling if they're willing to share precious antibiotics with someone who's only been here a week.
"You're almost done," Rick assures him. "Just… just stay with me, okay? Don't fight it."
He nods, Rick's hand still grasped in his own. Someone else slips the belt back in his mouth and he bites down on it pre-emptively as the surgeon approaches once more, now with a black eye courtesy of Daryl's flailing attempts at escape. The pain is agonizing, perhaps moreso now that he understands what's actually happening to him, that he's not just dreaming up some walker attack to explain it all away.
"You're okay," Rick tells him, words whispered close to his ear as he rides it out with him, his free hand still drawing through his hair. "You're okay. I've got you."
He squeezes the other man's hand as tightly as he can whilst feeling the very disconcerting sensation of air in places it wasn't meant to be, fingers in places they weren't meant to be, organs in places they weren't meant to be, a weird tugging sensation all through his abdomen as the surgeon works his inflamed appendix through the incision along with some intestines.
It's somewhere around then that he finally passes out.
Later, when it's done, Daryl wakes.
He's not all there just yet, doped out on some kind of pain killer and as numbed up as he's going to get with whatever meager stock of medications they have here, with neat bandages wrapped around his stomach. There is, once again, a hand dragging through his hair and he lets out a groan. It feels so good. For a while there, it had seemed like he wouldn't feel anything but pain ever again.
The hand stills is steady motions.
He tilts his head to the side, unsurprised to find Rick settled beside his makeshift hospital bed watching over him. The look of utter relief on his face is overwhelming. "There you are," he breathes, easing his way closer until he can press his lips to Daryl's in a reverent sort of kiss.
It throws Daryl. While he and Rick have shared far more than kisses as of late, it's still not the kind of thing Daryl ever expected to find directed at him, that he could mean that much to anyone. The way Rick's looking at him leaves him no room to doubt his sincerity, and Daryl's head is far too muddled to try, so he goes along, the two of them clinging to each other in the moonlit darkness of the room.
"I… I can't lose you," Rick tells him, and there's a haunted sort of look in his eyes that Daryl hasn't seen since Lori. Another kiss against his lips, against his forehead, against the hand still clutched in his own.
"I ain't going anywhere, so long as I can help it," he promises, reaching out to grab a fistful of Rick's shirt. He hauls the other man in closer, until he's more or less lying on the edge of the bed beside him. "And, hey, can't get appendicitis again, can I?"
Rick makes some nearly hysterical sound that's something between a laugh and a sob, shaking his head as a smile creeps onto his face. "There is that, at least," he concedes. He settles a hand on Daryl's chest, well clear of the bandages but someplace where he can feel the steady beat of his heart. "Sleep," he prompts. "We should sleep."
Daryl grunts in reply, happy to oblige, especially with the combination of adrenaline crash and drugs pulling him back under whether he wants to go or not. Sleep comes even faster knowing that Rick is settled so close, a barrier between himself and all the nightmares that still linger in his head – the walkers, the people, the ghosts of his own past. He's sure they won't reach him this time.