in a dark meadow -- daryl dixon

the death of you

word count: 4227

Nobody slept that night. Especially not Andrea.

Avery tossed and turned for an hour before she declared her efforts futile. She spent the remainder of her night sitting under her tent's canopy, resting her chin on her knees as she watched Andrea. She cradled her sister's face, silent tears falling down her cheeks until they dried.

Avery had always wanted a sister. A sister to borrow clothes from and to share secrets with. Another voice to fill the empty hallways of their home. Someone to grow up with. A lifelong friend An ally for life. Andrea's had been wrenched from her.

"She still won't move?" Rick asked the following morning, his eyeline trained on Andrea. The group had reassembled, already working to move the dead bodies out of their camp. They made use of the holes Jim had dug, while the walkers were to be burned. Pick axes were buried in the skulls of the infected, to ensure they wouldn't rise again.

"She's been there all night." Avery added quietly. Her eyes throbbed.

"She won't talk to us." Lori placed her hands on her hips, bowing her head slightly. It was only a matter of time before Amy would succumb to her bite. "What do we do?"

"We can't leave Amy like that." Shane said, his eyes locked on the two sisters. "We need to deal with it, same as the others."

Rick nodded. "I'll talk to her."

Avery watched him approach the blonde, but as if Andrea had predicted what he was going to say, swiftly withdrew her gun and pointed it at Rick's face. A threat or a promise, Avery couldn't tell, but Rick backed off slowly in response, hands raised in surrender.

"Y'all can't be serious." Daryl scoffed at the group's inaction. "Let that girl hamstring us? The girl's a ticking time bomb!"

Rick turned to him. "What do you suggest?"

"Take the shot from here. Clean, in the brain from here. Hell, I could hit a turkey between the eyes from this distance."

"No," Lori cut in, appalled by the suggestion. "For God's sake, just leave her be."

Avery was relieved to hear Lori speak up and was ready to drop the subject entirely. Daryl felt the opposite and stomped away from the group, not afraid to let his displeasure show. She watched him angrily put on his gloves before helping Morales move corpses out of the campsite, one by one.

In the crawling hours of the night, she had thought of Daryl. She replayed the moment, over and over again, until the dullness of a headache forced her to think of anything else. Him standing in the moonlight. The precision of his arrow. The dead man falling like a sack of potatoes, defeated. She also couldn't stop herself from imagining what would've happened if he hadn't saved her. The walker tearing into her flesh like tissue paper. Blood like a free-flowing canyon. Her resurrecting into something else.

Avery watched him work, his muscles flexing under the weight of another dead body. She wanted to thank Daryl, but that didn't seem appropriate. Did Hallmark even carry those kinds of cards?

"Jim's bit! A walker bit Jim!"

Jacqui backed away from the man, her declaration drawing everyone closer. Jim's eyes darted around him, watching himself become surrounded. Avery noticed the fresh splotches of blood that had soaked through his shirt.

"I'm okay," He tried to reassure the group, slowly backing away as they moved around him. He appeared like a frightened animal, his grip tightening around the shovel in his hands, ready to swing. A man backed into a corner. "I'm okay."