𝐇𝐀𝐙𝐀𝐑𝐃 │ 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐘𝐋 𝐃𝐈𝐗𝐎𝐍 ¹ [✔]

[60]: days gone bye

The crunch of leaves beneath his feet was all he could sense. The sharp hollow sound, echoing up his body. Playing on the strings of his brain, plucking effortlessly and annoyingly.

With that, he could hear his own breaths rushing past his lips in a panicked rhythm. He couldn't focus on making them steady, he couldn't really focus on anything at all.

He came past trees, broken branches, sounds of the outside. Everything that used to seem more like home than anything else, suddenly felt like an intimate stranger.

He rose his hands to brush past fallen twigs, high grass, horizontal obstacles.

He choked out, lifting his wrists up, seeing red paint his arms. The red that came from her he almost fell to his knees at the sight of it.

He felt weak, and stupid, and goddamn helpless. And somehow, he didn't find that wrong in any way.

If course he felt this way. Of course he felt weak, stupid, and goddamn helpless. It was a given.

You couldn't just get to know her and get on with your life.

He tried desperately to move faster, rushing faster and faster, letting his blind blurring eyes guide him away from all that she left him with.

And his feet eventually led him out of the maze, and into an opening. One he nearly tumbled into what he found.

No longer the sound of his rushing lungs, or the ground beneath his feet. But now the sound of water filled his ears, the steady flow like the beat he felt against his skin in those last moments.

His hands pressed against her skin, so calm, so worryingly slow, so painfully steady. The flow of blood was cold, it was there, it turned electric under his touch.

He remembered the way she felt, pressed up against him, and that's what he held onto.

Collapsing to the ground, at the brink of the river, he dove his hands into the icy water. In a rushing stance, he painstakingly scratched his skin, tore at the colour. He ripped it away like the pages of a book.

And he still looked at it, eyes wide and teary, trying to rush all sense of her being gone, away.

His infatuation was pure, untainted, clear as day. Clear as how much storm you could see in her eyes. The brown specks, hidden behind clouds of green.

But it's long lived, it's driven, it's more than one second of "oh... it's her". It's a constant battle of knowing if your truly know everything about her, and if you know enough to even enter beneath her chains.

Like she has hooks, dug into his skin, a blessing, and a curse. Full of painful beauty, he had never seen before.

How unconventional. This broken girl, so many cracks, missing pieces, bound by darkness and cynical threats. But also so loving, so loyal, so determined.

There was something alluring about her, he couldn't touch upon it. And he remembered how Laura had put it; "Marley, you make people get real close to you."

Nothing of her own intention, just something that happened. A hanging light that hovered over her, you stepped too close, you would most likely be engulfed in flames. Ones that hurt so good, you couldn't help but come back for more.

All in all; Marley was addictive. Maybe not the true meaning of the word, but whenever falling was an option around her, gravity didn't seem to exist.

He had fallen many times.

Daryl kept at the water, splashing around and taking it up to his chest, letting out a low noise as he struggled to keep the red from touching him once more.