Chapter Text
He's not dying.
It's the first thing Daryl thinks to himself any time he gets hurt. It's reflexive - after a nasty wipeout on Merle's bike, nursing busted ribs and black eyes from bar fights, that time he fell off a roof working construction in Amicalola, coming down from a bad trip with panic in his chest, after eighteen years of living with his old man - after something's gone bad and he's hurt, the first thing he thinks is, he ain't dying. It helps somehow. Because if he's not dying then the only thing to do is suck it up, keep moving, get himself put back together. No other option. He's either dying or he ain't, and if he ain't, the only thing to do is get up. And so far, he's always been right. Daryl's gotten the shit kicked out of him more times than he can count but he's always gotten back up again. He hasn't died yet.
I ain't dying, Daryl thinks to himself, but it's the first time he's not sure if it's true.
He blinks, tries to get the blood out of the corner of his eye. His side feels wrong, bad, stuck through on his own arrow like a fucking joke. The first time he'd fallen, landed in the water, he'd half-swum his way back out, tied himself up with his shirt, found his fucking bow, and gotten on with it.
"Y'ain't dead," Daryl'd mumbled under his breath as he pulled himself up the side of the creek bed. "You ain't dying, you dumb sumbitch. Come on. You've done half. Stop being such a pussy."
As the ground gave way under his hands and he fell the second time, Daryl thought maybe he spoke too soon.
The air above him is hazy and unclear and Daryl blinks once, twice. His eyes won't focus. That's bad. That's a concussion thing, that's -
"Whyn't you pull that arrow out, dummy? You can bind your wound better."
Oh, no.
The air is still hazy but somehow Merle is ultra-clear, kneeling over him, his face almost amused. Which Daryl thinks is a good sign because Merle's seen a lot of shit and if he thinks there's something funny here, it means Daryl's not as bad off as he thought. He feels a smile over his own face but it makes his whole head hurt and he closes his eyes again.
"Merle."
"What's goin' on here?"
"Shitty day, bro." His head is throbbing in time to his side, his shirt sticking to him wetly (with the water, from the creek, not from blood, he ain't dying), his mouth tasting of dirt and iron, and all Daryl wants, desperately, is to wake up on the shitty couch in Merle's trailer with a hangover and bruised knuckles and for the past couple months to have been nothing but dipping into the wrong part of his brother's stash.
He misses what Merle says next but the tone is so familiar, wheedling at Daryl like some kind of fucking kid, some baby needs taking care of, and Daryl knows the response to that even without hearing the rest.
"Screw you."
"Huh-uh. You're the one screwed from the looks of it."
And he is. Daryl's fucked. Punctured with his own arrow, bleeding in the bottom of some creek bed, horse gone, nobody there to watch his back. Because Merle's gone.
Oh. Merle's gone.
"You're gonna die out here, brother. And for what?"
Maybe he is dying this time. Even Merle thinks it. And this Merle isn't real, because Merle is gone, running around one-handed somewhere, if he's still running at all.
Maybe he's really dying and Merle is already dead and he came to find Daryl.
"Girl," Daryl says, because that's what he remembers all of a sudden. He doesn't need Merle to come find him, because he's the one out looking. He's looking for Sophia, he remembers now, and it makes something kick in his stomach, something get clearer around his vision. "Lost a little girl."
"You got a thing for little girls now?"
"Shut up," Daryl says, something sick crawling in his skin. It ain't like that. He ain't like that. Merle knows he ain't -
"Cause I notice you ain't out looking for ole Merle no more."
Oh. That's what it is. Yeah, Merle talked a big fucking game, taking care of Daryl, always having his back. But he'd disappeared for huge stretches at a time, juvie or prison, the army, out on a bender who knows where and only rolling back into town when he ran out of money. But Daryl was meant to be there for Merle, have his back, twenty-four-seven, never stop, never have a life (Merle cackling, "What would you even know what to do with a life?") -
"Tried like hell to find you, bro," he tries to explain, but Merle ain't listening. He never listens. Not to Daryl, anyway.
Daryl loses another chunk of the conversation somewhere. He knows Merle is talking and he's talking back - conversations with Merle aren't hard, especially when the Merle he's talking to is either a ghost or made up in his own head - until he hears "You his bitch now?"
"Ain't nobody's bitch," Daryl says, automatically, that same feeling crawling in his stomach. It ain't like that. Who are they even talking about? Rick. Merle's saying he's Rick's -
"You're a joke is what you are, playing errand boy to a bunch of pansy-asses, niggers, and democrats. You're nothing but a freak to them. Redneck trash. That's all you are."
He doesn't need Merle to tell him this. He knows it. That's the only reason Merle can tell it to him - because it's something he knows, understands, deep in his bones.
"They're laughing at you behind your back. You know that, don't you? I got a little news for you, son. One day they gonna scrape you off their heels like you was dogshit. Hey."
He can almost feel Merle smacking at his chest, trying to get him to pay attention. But it's so hard.
"They ain't your kin, your blood. Hell, you had any damn nuts in that sack of yours, you'd got back there and shoot your pal Rick in the face for me. Now you listen to me. Ain't nobody ever gonna care about you except me, little brother. Nobody ever will."
Yeah. Daryl's known that his whole life. Ain't nothing new.
"Don't be dead."
He ain't dead. Not yet. But he's close, he figures. Someone is shaking at his shoulders again now - the touch too light to be Merle. He groans and tries to pull back.
"Please don't be dead. Please, please -"
It's a woman, maybe. His ma? She wouldn't want him to be dead. She's dead herself though, so why would she care -
"Mr. Daryl, wake up. Please wake up."
Wait.
Wait.
Daryl's eyes feel almost glued shut, it's so hard to open them. But he manages somehow, he pries them open and he squints and -
There, directly above him, is the worried, freckled face of Sophia Peletier.
No. Oh, no.
"I'm sorry," Daryl croaks out, and Sophia's face floods with what looks like relief.
"You're awake!"
"M'sorry," he says again. Because she isn't real. Merle was here with two hands and now here's Sophia and that must mean they're dead, all three of them. All his looking was bullshit. He didn't find her in time. He wants to scream somehow but he doesn't want to scare her.
"Where's my mom?"
Ghosts are meant to know that shit. Ain't they? Daryl doesn't know a lot about ghosts. He grew up on ghost stories Merle told, shit that made him scared to go to sleep, where ghosts strangled you in the dark or drove you crazy or possessed you. He didn't know shit about sad little girl ghosts who wanted their mamas.
"Back at the farm," Daryl says. "Worried."
"I - where's the farm?"
"C'n show you," Daryl slurs. He waves a hand. "When it's over."
"When what's over?"
"When'm all the way gone."
There's a long pause and when Sophia speaks again, her voice is choked and rough.
"No, no. Please don't die, please, please - we have to go, the walkers -"
"M'sorry," Daryl says again, and something tugs on his shirt, hard.
"Wake up! Don't go to sleep, wake up, please, you have to help me - please please please -"
For a ghost her grip is strong. He feels her hands on his chest and they somehow feel more real than Merle's. More solid. He can almost feel the heat of her hands through his wet shirt, warm on his clammy skin. It's so real he opens his eyes again and sees her. Her lip is wobbling like crazy and her cheeks have two red spots of color in them.
Sophia's dirtier than last time he saw her. Her hair is all tangled and there's a smear of dirt over one cheekbone and her arms are all marked up with what looks like pricker scratches. Her pants are ripped at the knees and grass-stained and her face almost looks older. Maybe because she's scared, or maybe because she looks a little thinner than she did four days ago.
Merle hadn't looked like this. Merle had looked exactly the same as he had the last time Daryl saw him. Daryl shakes his head a little, groans as the movement jars his brain. There's something missing here. There's something he's not getting.
"Please stay awake," she says, and she sounds like she's going to cry. "I - I don't know how to get out of here by myself."
"I'll getcha out," Daryl says. It sounds like a promise. How fucking stupid is he, making a promise to a ghost?
"Don't go to sleep," she begs, and he nods again as his eyes start to close.
"No, no no no -" he hears Sophia saying, and then Merle is back.
"You're dumber'n shit. You find this girl and you're gonna let her get eaten?"
"Gone," Daryl mumbles. "We're gone."
"You ain't dying, you fuckin' moron. Now get up 'fore I have to kick your teeth in."
Something splashes somewhere nearby.
"Let's go!"
And then Sophia is shrieking and Daryl's eyes snap open faster than he thought possible. Because ghosts don't sound like that, ghosts don't sound scared, ghosts don't scramble over him with sharp little knees digging into his wounded side as they try and get away from walkers.
Walker.
Sophia.
He found her.
Or more to the point - she found him.
He's not going to lose her again. Not now. Not after all this.
Daryl kicks out with pure instinct, but it's enough to move the walker off to one side. Daryl's scooting back on his ass, hand flailing out for his bow, and he backs into Sophia.
"What do I do, what do I -"
"My bow," Daryl yells, and he slams his weak fists into the walker, turns it onto its side. "Fuck girl, gimme my bow!"
"Where is it? I can't see it, I -"
He grabs a stick near him and slams it into the walker's mouth over and over until the head is a wet, pulpy mess. There's not even hardly time to register that the walker in front of him is finished when he sees the next one staggering out of the woods.
"I've got it! I've got -" Sophia's crawled over to his bow and is lugging it back towards him. "I -"
Fuck. This is going to hurt.
Daryl doesn't scream when he pulls the bolt out of his side - he's not some pussy, and he ain't dying. But it hurts like a bitch and he hears himself, a sharp little whimper as the fletching tears through his skin.
"Bow!" Daryl yells out, and the bow is there, in his lap, wet from being soaked in the water, but solid and real. Drawing back is harder than it's ever been, even when he was just a weedy little kid lugging around his dad's Barnett Thunderbolt. But he manages to pull back and nock the arrow just in time.
The walker falls, the arrow piercing through its skull, landing right between him and Sophia. He can hear her breathing behind him, shaky and quick.
"Y'a'right?" Daryl asks. He's panting too. His side is on fire. He can feel the blood leaking out of him, soaking into the sandy grit of the creek bed. But somehow he feels better too. Livelier. Less confused.
Merle ain't here. But Sophia is. And he's got to get her home.
She nods at him. But her eyes are welling up with tears and she sniffles, once.
"Ain't no time for that," Daryl says roughly. And there isn't. There's a lot to do to get home, with him fucking skewered like a shish kabob and the horse spooked off who the hell knows where.
"I - it's not - I'm not scared," Sophia says, her lip wobbling like crazy. "I - I just - I didn't think anybody'd find me."
"Yeah, well," Daryl says, propping himself up against the rocks so he can get a good look at her. "Din't find you. You found me."
She nods but her lip doesn't stop wobbling.
"I gotta - I gotta rest a minute," he says. It's different than earlier. He doesn't feel like he's about to pass out or hallucinate anymore, but his whole body is screaming from what he'd put it through the last few minutes. "Then we gotta go."
Sophia bites her lip. "Okay."
Daryl looks at the walker near him. One last push. He reaches over to the front of the skull, where the fletching of the bolt pokes out. He grips it tight between his fingers. Its slippery with blood - his own? Or the walkers? Not worth thinking about. He pulls the bolt out. Grits his teeth as he cocks the bow one more time. That really takes it out of him. His arms feel like spaghetti or some shit. But the bow is cocked and loaded. He beckons the girl over.
"C'mere."
She looks almost scared as she comes near him. He doesn't blame her. He's covered in dirt and blood and walker shit and he's holding a fucking crossbow. But he just waits till she sits next to him and he holds out the bow.
"Don't fire 'less you need to. Try an' get me up first. But if somethin's comin' an' I ain't wakin', you pull that trigger here, a'right? Aim for the head."
Daryl tries not to think of the likelihood of this little girl in her rainbow tee shirt having good aim. It's better than leaving her totally unprotected. It'll have to do. He leans back against the rock and closes his eyes. Feels something digging into this back. Reaches around and pulls.
"Think this is yours," he says gruffly, and he holds out the sodden doll, now stained a little with his blood. Maybe she doesn't want it anymore, all gross like that. But she takes it with one hesitant hand, tucks it in the crook of her elbow. It looks weird, cradled there, the bow gripped in her hands right next to it.
"Where you pull to fire?" he asks as his eyes start to close.
"The trigger," the girl says promptly, even though her face looks pale and scared. She bites her lip. "You - you promise you'll wake up, right?"
The bow looks heavy enough to break those little stick arms of hers, and Daryl scoffs.
"Course I'll wake up. I ain't dyin'."
He isn't. And neither is she.
Not if he has anything to say about it.