Knife Edge [Daryl Dixon]

Chapter Twenty-One - One Still Strong Man (2/3)

     By his height and gait, Rick was easy to spot. Even at night he didn't break stride. Not while he spoke with the guards outside Bennett and Kyle's house before heading to the gate. Hardly seeming to blink at what waited for them over the mountains.

Daryl chose to blend into Alexandria's shadows. The road curved away to the gently lapping pond. The houses squatted in the dark around him, as if they were reluctant to accept this sorry day was truly over.

Daryl knew how they felt.

Lying on the couch at the thrift shop with Sarah in his arms, he had imagined all he needed to do was tell Maggie he was out and that would be it. Problem solved. He was a fool. When did not looking at a problem make it disappear? In his experience, most times it did the opposite.

That was brought home to him when he ran around the corner that afternoon, careening from vein-chilling fear to desperate relief when Sarah wobbled to meet him covered in blood. Only for his relief to zip straight to guilt when he almost tripped over Will's body in Negan's cell.

He had refused to see Negan since they put him in there, and now he had been to see him twice in one day. The first time when he was carried though the door by the pace of the attack. The second when he went to find a path through the dust of the day.

Negan had been sitting on his cot in the darkest corner of his cell. If he remembered they had been in this position before, except this time Daryl was on the outside of the bars, Negan didn't let it show.

He pasted on a toothy grin and drawled, 'Holy crap, Daryl. I can't tell if you look great or like shit.'

Daryl waited him out. Will was dead, and Sarah nearly died. He would shoot Negan without another word rather than help him drag together the remnants of his threadbare bravado.

Waiting worked. Negan's grin barely staggered to the end of the sentence and a silence fell between them. A blanket. Then a smother.

'Honestly Daryl,' Negan blurted, his drawl vanishing in a snap. 'If you've nothin' to say, just fuck off. You're creepin' me out.'

But Daryl did have something to say. Something he wanted to ask Negan since he watched him strut around the Sanctuary. Three little words.

'Who was Negan?'

Daryl lived with Merle all his days. Hard as nails on the outside, scared of any kindness, always ready with a punch if anyone needed a little encouragement. Daryl recognized bluff and bluster when he saw it. In spades. All that, I am Negan, shit. He may as well have hung a sign.

Negan gasped then covered it by pointing at Daryl. The grin resurfaced, 'I was wrong about a lot of things Daryl, but not about you. If I coulda gotten you on board, Rick woulda followed right along.'

Daryl let the meaningless words fly. His gun was more than ready. In a world of last chances, this was Negan's. He wouldn't ask again.

When it came to it, Negan folded like the cheap suit he was. 

He stared out of the narrow window to the street as if there was something to see in that black square, 'He was my granddad. A farmer. The fairest man I ever met. When the world went to shit, I thought if everybody could be like him then things might just be okay. So, I became Negan...'

'Your granddad,' Daryl spat. 'He in the habit of beatin' people to death with a baseball bat?' The image of Glenn and Abraham dead at his feet was all too fresh in his mind. Will looked just the same that afternoon, and his blood still stained the floor.

'No,' Negan said, fast enough for it to be true. 'Everythin' I got right, that was him. Everythin' I got wrong, that's on me. Truth is, he'd be ashamed of me.'