The soft sound of crickets filled your ears as you and Daryl sat out on the wooden porch. Staring up at the dark star filled night sky.
Daryl flips a knife back and forth in his hands, as your own hands stayed still in your lap.
You saw for the first time today, Daryl break. Crying and showing every real emotion he kept pushing down inside himself. It finally came out, and you were there to both witness and to help him through it.
He blamed himself, the way the Governor rolled right up to the prison. The way everything fell apart, and that it was now just you and Daryl. On your own, together.
"You ever think about it? What you'd be doin if the world hadn't gone to shit?" You ask, leaning you head back against the wood.
He look up from the shine of the metal knife in his lap, shifting his body so that his legs are bent in front of him. And he scrapes the wood pole in front of him with the knife.
"Nah," He shakes his head, his voice low yet calm. "wouldn't be doin nothin important. Just followin Merle 'round, doin whatever he said we were gonna do."
You let out a soft laugh, "What were you like before all this?"
If you and Daryl hadn't reached a certain point in your relationship with each other like you had today, you never would have felt comfortable enough to ask that question.
"Jus a nobody." He says it while not meeting your eyes.
Your smile fades for a moment, "I don't believe that. Not for a second."
Daryl grunts, "Ain't lyin to ya, wasn't nobody. Just some drunk redneck with my brother."
Silence floats over the both of you after that, the sound of nature returning. The rustle of the wind through the trees and the sound of critters out at night.
"You miss 'em?" You ask Daryl, looking up at him the same moment he looks at you.
Daryl does a mix between a nod and a shrug. "Miss him every day, even if he wasn't nothin special."
"He was your brother," You tell him. "that makes him special to you."
When you'd gotten to this place, this shack in the woods, Daryl shared that it was like the place he grew up. A place that help too many painful memories, that was the piece you put together.
As you looked at him now, even in the darkness you could see his pain. The emotion he let out earlier only proving the point more, that somewhere inside the damaged and hurting person... Was someone stronger than it all.
"Places like these," You say, your voice feeling as though it echoes in the air around you. "you gotta put 'em away."
Daryl looks at you before answering, as if to find something deeper behind your eyes.
"What if ya can't?" He asks, his voice a low grumble. Yet you hear the honest wonder in his voice.
"You have to, or it'll kill you."
Daryl looks at you then, something in his own eyes you want to be able to read.
He looks at you, with the thought of how someone like you could show him strength he'd never had in his life. Someone not as physically strong as himself, but stronger emotionally.
He found for the first time in his life that he thought something like that was beautiful in a way.
"We should burn it down." You say with a grin, one that makes you laugh a little and makes his eyebrows raise.
Watching you say this, the small bit of happiness it brings to you and shows on your face, he feels something. Something beating within his heart, something causing an uneasy feeling in his stomach. Something he'd never once felt.
He wasn't sure what exactly the feeling was, but he liked it.
"Alright," Pushing himself up from his sitting position, he turns back to see you still sitting. "we're gonna need more booze."
Smiling again, you get up following him back into the house. Grabbing jar after jar of the clear, alcoholic beverage and pouring it everywhere.
He shakes the hard full of booze hard, and everywhere he can.
Walking back out, after grabbing your things and his crossbow hung on his shoulder he pulls out his lighter and a stack of cash he took from a building back a ways.
"Ready?" He asks and you nod, watching the bills go up in flames.
Tossing them into the wood built shack, that too is soon engulfed in bright orange flames.
Standing back, watching it go up, there's something relieving about it. Something cathartic, a release of sorts.
You turn your gaze away from the growing fire for a moment, to look at Daryl who stands closely beside you.
His fists although clentched, show that he feels it to. The letting go of it all, moving on from that part and heading forward.
"Gotta put it away huh?" He asks meeting your gaze now, his blue eyes locked on your own.
You nod, a soft smile turning the corners of your lips upward. Then you do something you never saw yourself doing.
You find his hand and grasp it with your own. But what suprises you more is that his fingers bend to get a better hold on you. Standing there with the glow of the blowing fire, your hands stay clasped.
A feeling; one you'd never felt till now grows. One you feel in the quickening pace of your beating heart and one that grows to a uneasy yet warm sensation in your stomach.
Whatever it is that you feel as you hold Daryl Dixon's hand, is one you enjoy. And one you hope never fades away.
A/N: I love writing for this book, probably more than any other story of mine! ❤
