Complicated ✔

Ch. 95 - After the Storm

KATHRYN'S POV

Last night had been rough. Daryl and I had walked off to talk alone, figure out what we were going to do when we made it to DC. But before we could get comfortable enough to talk, we ended up noticing something strange outside. As the doors opened and closed from the wind, I could see something outside that didn't seem right. When I looked over to Daryl, I realized he'd seen the same thing and had made it way slowly over to the door to peer out as it opened once again. His immediate reaction to it is what had me on edge.

"Kat get over here," he shouted as he pushed the doors closed as fast as possible and attempted to try and tighten the chain holding the door closed. Not asking any questions, I quickly ran over to him, placing my back against the other door just as I felt something slam into it from the otherside. Giving Daryl a confused look, he quickly turned around to copy my stance before he spoke. "It's a herd," he said over the growing sound of the winds. "I don't think that's our only problem," I said as I looked up to the roof of the barn as the sound of the wind whistling got louder and worse.

DARYL'S POV

I looked over at Kat, I could tell she was scared. Before I could say anything, people in the group slowly started to notice that something wasn't right with what Kat and me were doing. One by one, everyone began making their way to help hold the doors closed. Kat still had her back pushed against the doors when I moved to stand over her, my arms above her head as I pushed against the door as I looked down at her. It'd been a long time since I'd seen her look this scared about something, and I couldn't really do much to put her at ease. All I could do was hold on and hope for the best, just like her.

KATHRYN'S POV

I don't remember much of what happened after everyone joined us by the back doors to the barn. But I do remember locking eyes with Daryl as the wind howled, hesitating for only a second, before quickly pushing forwards and kissing him out of fear that I wouldn't be able to by morning. When the wind stopped howling and we couldn't hear anymore of the groaning from the walkers, we slowly began falling asleep. Daryl and I were the first to awake when the sun slowly made its way through the cracks in the barn, Dad woke shortly after.

Out of so many times of going hunting with Daryl, it became a habit to be up before everyone else. As we stood to our feet and moved away from everyone else, I couldn't help but walk over to Dad as he stood away from us, and wrapped my arms around his waste and placed my head on his shoulders. We didn't say anything, he just wrapped his arms around me and hugged me back just as tightly as I was hugging him. "It's okay," I heard Dad whisper as he placed a small kiss at the top of my head like he used to do when I was younger, "we're okay now."

"Kat," Daryl said to get my attention, "let's go out and check out the damage." "Okay," I said with a nod before pulling away from Dad. I looked over to Daryl and watched as he bent down to pick up his crossbow before looking back to me to make sure I was following behind. We slowly made our way outside, on alert for any noise that we might hear that we shouldn't. When it was pretty clear that we weren't going to be ambushed, we walked on out and looked around before spying the path of what obviously belonged to a tornado.

I watched as Daryl glanced at the path for a moment before turning and walking on, his crossbow resting on his shoulder. I followed behind as we scoped out the area, following the path of the damage. We didn't stay out long, at least I didn't think we did. When we got back, the barn was quiet. More than it should be with people hiding out in it. I looked to Daryl before we both made our way towards the doors with our weapons in hand. When we walked inside, no one was there except Dad, Judith, and someone who had their back to us.

We lowered our weapons as Dad looked over at our entrance. "What's going on," I asked as we stepped a little closer before the person who was sitting on the ground finally looked over at us. I stopped, dead in my tracks, when the familiar face came into my eye sight. "Kat," I heard Daryl whisper after he ran into me, obviously not expecting me to stop like that so suddenly. "What the hell Dad," I called out before running to where my last living relative was sitting on the ground with his hands tied behind his back.