The edge of my partially closed gaze caught the movement of Rick's unsteady form as he stumbled a step toward us, slapping his hand onto the bonnet of the car to maintain his balance.
Daryl and I pulled slightly apart, watching as the sheriff leant back against the side of the vehicle and slowly began to sink down to the ground. His once-silver scruff was coated in a dark, shimmering crimson.
Daryl and I shared a look before he unwound his arms from around me and made a move to take a seat beside the shell-shocked man, reaching across the bonnet to grab one of our canteens.
The cool air of the early dawn found its way into my bones.
As Michonne gently coaxed Carl into the backseat of the vehicle, wrapping him up in the fraying blankets we'd found within earlier, I sunk down to the ground on Rick's other side and gave the sheriff a concerned once-over.
The look in his eye was one I knew well. I'd seen it many times before, both in my own reflection, and in the gazes of my comrades in the Organisation. It was the look of someone that had just realised the true extent of the atrocities they were capable of. And, as I sat there, watching the shadows swirl in Rick's gaze, a memory began to slowly materialise in the forefront of my mind.
A young child, no more than twelve, standing before a mirror in a rundown public bathroom, barely lit by the sunlight streaming in through the hollow brickwork that ran along the top of the outer walls. Dried blood coated her matted white-blonde hair and was splattered across her cheek, lining the side of her thin throat.
A black catsuit tightly clung to the hard muscles of her small body as she leant forward against the rusting metal sink and stared into the gaze of her own reflection. Her hands shook, the sensation of the cool steel a welcomed change from the hard leather handle of the blade sheathed at the small of her back.
My stomach clenched tightly, a hardness settling in my throat as I looked upon Rick and saw the memory reflected in his haunted gaze. That all-consuming feeling of shame and horror, the momentary burn of self-hatred, and the hollowness of that strange sense of grief for the loss of yourself. He didn't deserve it. Not for this.
Beside him, Daryl braced a foot against the dry ground and lifted his hips, reaching behind him to pull that stupid rag from his back pocket before unscrewing the cap of the canteen began to pour the water over his rag, an action that was apparently enough to draw Rick out of himself. The sheriff blinked and glanced over to the man sitting beside him, shaking his head slightly as a tight frown formed on his face.
"We should save that to drink," he remarked. His voice was hollow, almost as if he were speaking without thought.
Daryl shook his head in response before handing the damp rag to Rick. "You can't see yourself. The kid can."
That seemed to awaken the sheriff with a start, and he took the rag without another word, lifting it to his blood-soaked face. As he silently worked to clean the wet crimson from the coarse hairs of his greying beard, I lifted my knees up to my chest, feeling the cool air of the early morning brush against the bare skin of my thigh. The seeping gash that ran from the edge of my knee to the side of my upper thigh stung in the soft breeze.
I'd almost forgotten. My jeans were ripped.
Almost mindlessly, I pulled the small pin knife from my boot and began to cut the fraying denim, removing the loose, bloody flap of material and wrapping it around the open wound as a makeshift tourniquet.
YOU ARE READING
The Monsters Among Us ➳ Daryl Dixon
Fanfiction𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘭 𝘋𝘪𝘹𝘰𝘯/𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘍𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳 Not human. She was not human. They all knew it. Could almost feel it, but couldn't make sense of it. That was why they were afraid. Not because of what she used to be Before. But...
