Chapter Text
Daryl lay on his back on the damp creek bank. He was in and out of consciousness, the arrow in his side barely even throbbing anymore. Merle had come to him, berating him, goading him to move. He was only dimly aware that it wasn't real, that his brother was gone, probably dead, and that this was his mind trying to make him get up and fight. Fight the overwhelming heaviness in his limbs, fight the lack of will to move. He felt Merle kicking his foot, telling him to get up, get up before he had to kick his teeth in. It was so familiar he couldn't accept that his brother was not really here, not when he was left with no one else in the whole world, when he was probably going to die.
The kicks became more insistent, Merle was grabbing his leg and shaking it violently, and suddenly what Daryl's half-open eyes registered forced him to fully awaken. A walker had his leg in it's grip and was attempting stupidly to gnaw through his boot. Panicking, he kicked wildly until the thing was dislodged. His eyes lit on the only weapon he could put to use, a thick broken tree branch. He grabbed for it and tackled the walker onto its back, bashing it's skull repeatedly with the stout piece of wood until it's forehead collapsed and he had breached the brain case.
Before he had time to recover, another was shambling at him too quickly for him to retreat in his injured state. He knew didn't have the strength to outrun it. What had been too scary for him to attempt before now became necessary. He acted without thinking, grabbing the crossbow bolt trapped in his flesh and yanking it out, the white hot flash of pain nearly robbing him of his remaining strength. With the snarling corpse nearly bearing down on him, he threw his weight backwards enough to have room to cock his weapon and loosed one bolt through it's head. The body thudded down next to him, cracking its jaw as it landed and laying still.
He collapsed onto his back, catching his breath, just taking in the fact that he was still alive. The exhilaration almost felt like a drug. His eyes caught on Sophia's doll and his heart sank suddenly. Those walkers, the discarded doll. No, no, not like this. He was so close, he could have found her. If he'd gone longer the other day, if he'd been more careful with that fucking horse and not been thrown. Merle's words came back to haunt him, she wasn't his kin, why was this so important? He didn't know and wasn't in mood to think on it when suddenly he heard the sound of a little girl crying.
His head whipped around, looking for the source. Nothing had moved in his surroundings, the creek was still. What the fuck ? It sounded so close.
"Sophia!" he yelled out, as loud as he could. He barely had the strength to make a decent noise and he cursed himself. That had to be her. He looked in the direction the sound had come from. He was hearing it again, as clear as if she was standing right there. But she wasn't.
He was ready to pass it off as another hallucination, but then suddenly the formless crying ceased and he heard something else. She was praying. "Our father, who art in Heaven..." and then he knew without a doubt that it couldn't have come from his mind.
He re-bound his wound tighter, and heedless of the pain, took off staggering towards that voice. The voice became surrounded by other sounds then, the raspy moaning sounds the walkers made as air rushed through their decaying windpipes. He started to panic again. As he pushed through the brush, he became confused, then frustrated as he didn't see the source of the noise yet. She had to be close.
The praying continued, he heard her as clear as day now, her voice was getting louder and stronger as she chanted the words, beginning the same prayer as soon as she had ended the last round without a break. And the sounds of the geeks that he realized were surrounding her got louder as well. He had no idea how she still lived. The enemies were right there with her, if he was hearing correctly.
Finally, after he'd gone at least a half-mile, his eyes found what he'd sought. She had climbed a tree, a tall one, and he couldn't see her through the leaves but he heard her, and he saw the three walkers scrabbling at the base of the trunk, too stupid to make the climb a twelve year old girl had made easily.
The relief that flooded through him nearly made him drop, but his body responded automatically, cocking and firing his crossbow, reloading and repeating, felling the three corpses before they even had the chance to turn on him. He stood still, taking in the bodies he'd dropped, the realization that he'd done it, he'd found that little girl. Just like he'd said he would. A feeling unlike anything he'd ever felt washed over him. He'd really saved her, when no one thought he could ! Then the ground seemed to jerk underneath his feet and his vision shuttered into blackness as his body collapsed.
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He awoke to smells and sounds that overwhelmed him. Blooming flowers, all the different types at once, assaulted his nostrils, creating one heavy wall of scent that made him want to hold his breath. Chirping birds, buzzing insects, croaking frogs, the gently rushing water of the creek he left behind, all the noises of the woods were filling his ears with a deafening drone.
He felt something warm squeeze his hand and his eyes fluttered open. Sophia. There was a quiet, steady heartbeat in his ears suddenly that was not his own and he realized instintively that it was hers. The sounds and smells that had blanketed his senses so uncomfortably started to recede, replaced by that small rhythmic thumping, and he started to regain his bearings.
She was looking down at him, her brow furrowed with concern. She squeezed tighter as she saw his eyes open. "Are you gonna be ok?" she asked in a quavering voice. He realized he looked like shit, filthy and bloody. He didn't want to scare her.
"M'fine," he mumbled.
She must have known he was full of shit. "I'm gonna help you up, we have to find a place to hide," she said insistently, tugging on his wrist to encourage him to get up. He let her help him up and together they started to move.
"Is my mom ok? " she asked nervously.
"Your mom's fine, " he grunted, just staying upright was taking all of his effort right now. "We ain't hidin', we gotta get back."
"But what if more of them show up?" she whimpered. "You can hardly walk."
"Don't need to walk, long as I got this, " he said , indicating his crossbow hanging heavily on his back, sounding as nonchalant as he could. He started limping towards the bodies.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
He didn't answer her, he didn't have the wind. But he yanked each of the bolts free of their rotten heads.
"Alright, now we're ready," he said, amused and relieved at the disgusted look on her face. It meant she was ok.
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They made their way slowly towards the farm. His senses were reeling again. Everything was so loud, and the sunlight was blinding him even though it was no longer that bright. Even his skin was over sensitized, not just his injury which was close to agonizing at this point but everywhere fabric was touching him felt like it was full of biting fleas.
Sophia was chattering as they walked, probably to soothe her own nerves, and he started focusing on her voice to stay calm, to remind himself that he had to stay strong for her. He found her, what would happen if after all that, she got killed because he couldn't handle his shit?
She'd found that farmhouse and holed up there, she was telling him. Daryl must have just missed her, it was the same one he'd been to just yesterday. She left to go find water and had found the creek where she lost her doll fleeing from a sound that startled her. She didn't know if it had been walkers or not, she'd just ran and ran, and then climbed up a tree to rest. And then she'd been trapped.
"I was praying and praying and then you found me," she finished breathlessly.
Daryl wasn't so fast to attribute that to God but if that's what made her feel better he was in no place to argue. But something weird was definitely going on with him, and it was taking a lot of effort not to collapse onto the ground again and shield his eyes and ears from the painful onslaught.
"Daryl, are you ok?' he heard Sophia's voice at his head level, high-pitched with concern, and realized he had fallen to his knees.
Alright, enough of this, he said to himself, stop being such a pussy and get this girl home. You can keel over and die after.
"Help me up," he whispered hoarsely and she leaned her shoulder in so he could use it. He got to his feet and tried to straighten up, but Sophia grabbed onto his arm and pulled it back over her shoulders.
"Lean on me," she said firmly, suddenly sounding unafraid.
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They kept moving, Daryl using Sophia as a sort of crutch. They stopped frequently, as he or she needed to recover strength.
He pointed out edible berries to her as they came across them, and they stopped at the creek to fill up the empty water bottle she had tucked away after leaving the abandoned farmhouse.
"If we need it, we'll boil it later, can't always trust creek water," he told her, and she nodded gravely.
She helped him up the steep embankment he had fallen down originally. She was a good climber, and was able to give him just enough of a pull here and there that he made it, though he was catching his breath for minutes once they reached the top.
He found that his senses were calming down as he concentrated again on her heartbeat, and her voice when she spoke. The confusing din of sounds began to break apart into individual parts-the frogs were separate from the buzzing flies,which were separate from the buzzing of bees, and were wholly different from the sound of a hummingbird's wings. It was just starting to dawn on him that there was no way a man could be hearing these things this clearly, and his stomach rolled with dread at that thought for some reason. It wasn't natural.
Before he was able to ponder that, he heard the sound of tearing flesh and froze. Sophia stopped short, keeping him braced against her. He listened, trying to focus on that one noise, to hear if there were more than one. There didn't seem to be, and he was relieved. It lay in the path of the farm but he could easily dispatch one walker. He realized all of a sudden that all the other sounds had faded as he focused his attention on his target. He could sense how far it was in relation to them, and knew it's victim, whatever it was, was too far from the farm to be one of the group.
"Daryl," he heard Sophia's voice next to him, sounding urgent. She was shaking his shoulder, sending little shockwaves of pain down into his bleeding wound and he realized he was on the ground. He had no memory of falling down.
"Shit, " he muttered. She was looking at him wide-eyed.
"What happened?" she asked. "Can you still get up?"
"Lost my balance is all, " he lied, shaking his head as though it would shake loose some kind of real answer, to himself at least. When it didn't, he let her help him up yet again.
He took his buck knife off his belt and handed it to her. She looked at him questioningly.
"If I fall down again and you can't get me up, you gotta make it back, " he said softly. "I can tell you the way now-"
"I'm not gonna leave you," she broke in resolutely. "We're gonna make it back."
He blew out a frustrated sigh and re-sheathed the knife. "Alright, kid, then we better move a lot faster."
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It was close to dusk by the time they made it back. He barely had it in him to keep moving once he saw the RV at the outskirts of the property. All the adrenaline that had kept him going seemed to drain suddenly and he swayed on his feet. Sophia was hardly able to prop him up. She was as exhausted as he was. They hadn't spoken a word since they'd started off again.
He saw Andrea on top of the vehicle. She was looking out at him through the scope of her rifle. He realized with a start that he was seeing her as clearly with his naked eye as she was seeing him through the magnified lens. She started calling everyone excitedly.
"It's Sophia! He found Sophia!"
Suddenly Carol was barreling out of the farmhouse. He heard her panting sobs as she ran across the open field. Sophia took off towards her mother and Daryl watched as they collided in a frantic, joyous hug that ended up with them both on the ground, laughing and crying at the same time. He felt an elation unlike anything he'd ever felt in his life as he stood there watching them.
But then Sophia was pulling away from Carol, he heard her telling her how bad he was hurt, that they needed to help him and then they were both coming towards him. In the distance, the men were all starting to make their way over as well.
Carol was thanking him, over and over as she closed the distance between them, and caught him under one arm as he started to fall. She wasn't able to hold his full weight and he was no longer able to stand. He felt Shane and Rick catch him under both his arms as Carol ducked away, and then he was out cold.