Angel (Daryl Dixion x Reader)

~69~

   Somehow you'd managed to fall sleep again. Not deep enough to dream, thank god, but just enough to doze off as your body physically demanded rest. Daryl barely slept at all the rest of that night. So preoccupied with making sure you were actually alright had utterly consumed his mind. He knew he had been so distracted and distant towards you after the outpost slaughter. He had been pushing you away for weeks and felt horrible about it. He also knew you were letting him because it had drug up everything you went through in the past. Knew it had completely mentally exhausted you. He just had no idea it was as bad as he now realizes it was. He should have though. You'd been better since he'd gotten with you. You hadn't had nearly as many night terrors as you did those first few months after he'd first met you. And you'd only had a record breaking two in the past couple months before the outpost. Now he realizes it was way, way worse than you'd been letting on. Worst of all, you wouldn't talk about it at all, and he didn't think to make you. Like you made him. Hed been so consumed by his own inner turmoil and guilt he hadn't really seen it. But he had seen the look in your eyes after last night. He'd seen it before in the only other relationship he gave a shit about years before you came into his life. He knew you were debating leaving him. Not because you didn't love him anymore, but because you loved him so more than you ever would be able to love yourself. So he sat there all night long. Just holding you. So terrified that you'd leave him in order to keep him safe and protected from yourself. Even if he knew as well as you did that it would permanently kill that last bits of happiness you'd managed to find. He wouldn't leave you though. He'd fight tooth and nail for you in order to keep you with him. You'd become the air he breathed, and he knew if you left him he'd die because of it. You leaving him would suffocate him, and he'd gladly let it. There was no him without you.

So there he sat, all night long. Trying to figure out a way to help you. Trying to come up with a way to prevent you from leaving him. Trying to figure out how to help get you both through this in one piece. He didn't care if you ended up hurting him physically. He was always ready for that chance when he slept next to you. It was just what came with loving you at this point, and it had never really bothered him. He knew you were so throughly trained to be lethal. That the trauma you'd accumulated over the years had made you so afraid of accidentally hurting the ones you loved it was staring to break you down. Because your husband knew you'd rather eat a bullet than hurt him or anyone else you loved. That you had been scared of yourself, because you'd unknowingly trained yourself to be. It was why you held back ninety percent of the time, even when fighting the walkers. It was why even now, after just over two years of knowing you, he still didn't know everything about you. He wanted to though. He wanted to know everything about you, everything you'd been through, everything you've survived. He wasn't afraid of you. He never had been. He saw you for who you really were. You were genuinely kind hearted at your core. Selfless and loving to the ones you cared about. Funny and an incurable smart ass. Dangerously protective over your family and friends, which was the only time you ever let that dark side of yours shine through. The dark side of you he didn't shy from. The brutally ruthless side of you that was willing to burn the whole world down in order to protect the ones you loved. The terrifyingly scary way your mind worked when strategizing against those who dared threaten your family. He had never been afraid of that part of you. If anything he admired your ability to be able to use the weapon you'd been made into. It awed him, and he didn't think that would ever go away. Even despite it all, he knew you acted like you didn't care about the assholes you'd wiped off the map. Deep down though? You cared. He knew you did. You'd tear yourself apart from the inside out after. You never forgot their faces. That was how he knew you did in fact care. Everything you've done before and after the world ended haunted you. You let it hang like this weighted shadow over you. He was just afraid that one day, you'd eventually be crushed beneath it. That your soul would eventually be unable to withstand this weight you carried around like invisible shackles. Apart of him was beginning to fear it already was. That you were beginning to crack.