"Another nice day," Bob observes, busting into Daryl's wool-gathering, falling into step with him at the back of the pack.
Halfway through day two of marching for miles and miles and Daryl isn't even sure they've made it halfway yet. He's kept a headcount, and an ear focused behind them for sounds that aren't theirs. He deals with walkers that trail after their noise. Sometimes he wanders into the woods, hoping for some game, or water to refill the bottles they'd gone through, but he never goes too far. Ain't found much, neither.
"Peachy," Daryl replies, readjusting the crossbow on his back and the strap across his chest.
"Sun's shining. Not that cold yet. Not a ton of dead around today." Bob points out, like he's trying to convince Daryl. Like he's practicing for the little game he and Sasha been playing sometimes. Daryl overheard some of their back and forth: Wet socks. Cool feet. The hot sun. A glorious tan.
No privacy. A captive audience.
Danger everywhere. Never a dull moment.
The good outta the bad, Sasha called it. Daryl shakes his head.
"You're real chipper these days," Daryl drawls.
Bob's smile is carefree, his shoulders shrug with an ease Daryl hasn't felt in who the fuck knows how long. "Broke the curse."
Bob gestures ahead of them, to their slow-rolling, ragtag caravan. "Prison fell, but we didn't. We're together. We got a goal."
We made it.
Daryl just grunts. Hard to be enthusiastic when his throat's sore, he's still got a headache. They're wide open exposed tramping along these routes as fast as a slug. He's too focused on gettin' where they're going, and then, making sure that place is actually safe, too.
But he's got no urge to stomp out his high spirits. Would feel too much like kickin' a happy dog just cause he was wagging his tail too hard.
Only their tread punctuates time, their boots scuffing asphalt the secondhand of the clock. He can hear the girls ahead of them chattering back and forth, but he can't make out the words. Abraham's boisterous, too-loud laugh makes it all the way back to them somehow, from where he struts along next to the coupe Glenn's driving.
"Yeah," Bob starts again conversationally, like there wasn't a long pause. As if Daryl had argued him. "We been through some shit. But we've been lucky too. Maggie and Glenn findin' each other. We got out of Terminus. Sasha and Tyreese together again. ...Somehow that baby made it out the prison, and somehow we found her, too. I don't know about God, but that's a damn miracle."
Bob would find no argument on that last one from him. That Asskicker is here at all is a damn miracle. A blessing from somewhere.
Bob's smile is too cheerful to be sly, but it's close. "We found your girl, too."
Daryl follows Bob's line of sight when Bob's face turns forward, where Beth walks next to Carl, Judith strapped to his chest with the sling Carol'd had. Maggie, Tara and Rosita along with them in a small group, talking, grinning, jokin' together. Fawning over Jude and making her smile, too.
He tries to roll the agitation off his shoulders and grumbles, "She ain't–"
my girl, he's gonna say, but he can't get it out. A pernicious voice in him whispers, Cause she ain't yours? Or cause you can't deny it?
So instead, he grouses, "It ain't like that."
"Huh," Bob shoots him a pretty incredulous look, his tone clearly doubtful when he asks, "No?"
What it is like, he tries to pin down. Family, definitely. Friends? The word seems appropriate, but it ain't right, either. Protector, yeah. Any other words he tries on for size only make him irritable and embarrassed.
"Nah," Daryl replies shortly, searching the woods around them again. Seeking movement through the trees. Listening for rustling or crashing in the brush. Anything but starin' at the back of the girl who isn't his, but kinda is. In some way.
"Hm," Bob repeats the disbelieving, thoughtful sound, falling silent for several long strides. They pass another lonely farm, far off the road, not much different than the one Daryl and Beth slept at. He can see the front door's open, a dark hole on the porch. The windows are only partially boarded.
This road's been a long stretch of not much but places like this for a while, broken-down, scattered, pillaged, soulless. Seems a lot longer than the drive was, but maybe he'd been too focused on his ratcheting anxiety, too caught up in her voice, thinkin' about touching her.
Then Bob asks, "Well, why not?"
Daryl squints over at him, finally starting to get a little prickled. Annoyed with his own discomfort, his inability to explain it even to himself. "You been in the booze again, man?"
Bob laughs, such a light-hearted sound it feels out of place. Daryl hasn't heard a real laugh in a while, one that isn't hardened with scorn and harsh irony, or bitterness, or sharp with madness.
"Nope, not since…" Bob doesn't finish, but he doesn't need to, Daryl knows when. "Thanks, by the way."
Bob throws it out quick and nonchalant, not expecting a response which suits Daryl. He wasn't his fucking sponsor or nothin', he'd just threatened him and that didn't deserve gratitude. And he hadn't thought about it since then. Once the Governor rolled up on them, Bob's habit didn't matter a good goddamn. He's one of their people and he fought with them.
Daryl thinks about thanking him, too– out loud this time– for being the first one to volunteer to search for Beth. But Bob's not distracted or deterred, he speaks again before Daryl can decide: "I'm just sayin'. We got the time we got now. We gotta take advantage of it. We still get miracles. There's still good things for good people."
Daryl chews at his cheek, not sure what to say. Like with Beth, when she asks him shit like, Don't you think that's beautiful?
Their perspectives, their persistent idealism, is the absolute opposite of everything he knows. The shit he grew up knowing, what he'd been taught, scarred into him with belts and extension cords and whatever else his pops could get his fat hands on. Burned into him in the house fire. Worn in from the years drifting with Merle.
And he hears what's behind the words, what Bob really means, and he don't know what to say to it.
It's a well-timed relief when he sees the flash of a dirty aquamarine shirt between pine and maple and oak trunks. More, too, other slow, steady, clumsy shifts deeper in the branches and brush.
"It's what we're fightin' for, right? …We'll regret the things we don't do," Bob offers more carefully, like he suspects he's crossing the line into pissin' Daryl off, but it doesn't stop him any more than it ever does Beth, a real pain in the ass. "...when time's up."
Daryl swings the bow from his back, angling toward the three dead men heading their way. One of 'em gets caught up in some downed branches and falls flat on his face– no reflexes bringing his arms up– tearing skin away. Another follows, farther back, called by the growls.
The group ahead of them has already hustled Judith closer to the crawling vehicles, he doesn't have to worry about them. Maggie lags behind them, walking backwards, a machete gripped stiffly by her side. Guarding the others' backs and keepin' an eye on them, too, ready for anything.
Daryl nods to the tree-line, directing Bob's already-turning attention, "C'mon, Tony Robbins, let's get where we're goin' then I'll worry about that carpe diem shit."
"Kinda ironic if you put off seizing the day," Bob says with good humor, drawing the knife from the hilt in the front of his pants, picking up his pace off the road.