Lost ; Daryl Dixon

Chapter 2

Daryl sat alone in his cell, his back pressed against the cold wall, his eyes adjusted to the darkness well enough that he could see the opposite wall 6 feet away. He felt alone, and scared, but he refused to show it when whoever was on guard duty that day pulled the door back just far enough to hand him his rations - a slab of dog food in between two mouldy slices of bread. At least the darkness helped him to forget what it was that he was eating. For the first couple of days he'd refused it, but he'd felt himself growing weak with the lack of sustenance, and he needed to keep his strength up if he was going to get out of there and back to his girl.

Y/N.

Thoughts of her were all that kept him going some days. The animalistic howl of pain that had erupted from her when they'd dragged him away, as if her heart was being torn from her body, haunted him. The thought that surprised him the most was that he was actually surprised at her reaction. They'd drifted so far apart recently, and he knew it had been his fault. He'd pushed her away, bitter that she'd settled so well into the suburban domesticity of Alexandria. It would have been a foreign world for him even before the dead started walking, and he couldn't settle there, feeling constantly uncomfortable in his own skin, so he'd rebelled, refusing to clean himself to meet their standards of appearance, stripping his kills on the front porch, leaving the blood and guts to fester in the heat. He hated himself now. She was happy. That should've been all that mattered. He should have tried harder to make it work, for her. He'd do anything for her. It shouldn't have taken the events of that night in the clearing for him to remember that.

The painfully optimistic notes of the bubblegum pop song that they insisted on pumping into his cell at all hours of the day and night rang out, and he pressed the heels of his hands into his ears, trying to drown out the noise. He wasn't sure if the intention was to drive him insane or to stop him sleeping. If it was the latter, they were wasting their time. He didn't sleep without Y/N there, he couldn't. All his life, he'd been haunted by nightmares of his childhood, of the abuse he'd suffered at the hands of his father, until the first night he'd crawled in with Y/N. Somehow, sleeping with her in his arms drove his demons away, and he could never understand why. In all honesty, he could never understand how Y/N had weaselled her way into his life anyway. He'd found her at the side of the road, a little bottle-rocket of sass and snark, and something in him had felt compelled to protect her. Hell, she was pretty, of course she was, but he'd met a lot of pretty girls and they'd all left him cold. Y/N was different. She'd managed to worm her way in to his innermost thoughts, breaking through his walls, wearing away at his defences with her easy affection and unconditional companionship. She'd held him when he'd lost his brother the first time, rocking him like a child. If it had been anyone else, he'd have pulled away, wouldn't have let them see his weakness, but he'd relaxed into her embrace and let her soothe him. There was just something about that girl.

The music finished, only to instantly start up again, and Daryl slid his body along the floor until he could curl himself up in the foetal position and let himself drift into his memory: the first night he'd held her in his arms, the first night of peace he'd had in forever.

*****

Daryl could hear muffled sobs from inside her tent as he made his way back over to their little corner of the camp, ready to turn in after a couple of hours of clean-up, dragging bodies into piles ready to be either burnt or buried in the morning. He'd arrived halfway through the chaos as the walkers had stumbled into their makeshift home, just in time to put an arrow through the head of a corpse that was about to clamp its jaws onto Y/N. The intensity of the sharp piercing fear that had shot through him as he'd watched her struggle had shocked him, as did the urge to go to her now, to hold her and let her cry out her anguish.