Angel

Chapter Three: Jessie and Daryl

Jessie

Crossbow. His damn stupid crossbow.

Here I am wandering by myself through the eerily quiet woods looking for Daryl's crossbow. He had no recollection of when he might have dropped it, but he knew he had it when he abandoned his camp after those men attacked it. This was like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack. But I had promised him I would look, so here I was searching the ground for it, and so far I had found nothing.

The good thing was we had figured out what direction he had wandered in from when he found the shack. Daryl could barely walk without groaning in pain, but he wanted to come search with me. That was not going to be an option. No damn way. He yelled...I yelled, but I won. Don't think he liked that much, but I proved I could be just as stubborn as he was. Daryl was in no condition to be out here. He couldn't defend himself, and it was going to be better if I just had to worry about myself. I was used to it being just me anyway.

As I walked down this overgrown narrow path, I was thinking about him. How could I not? Daryl was an interesting guy that I was still trying to figure out. Neither one of us is too talkative when it comes down to what happened and where we came from. I can tell he's been on his own for a while, just like me. He prefers to camp in the woods, and I was definitely more of a breaking-into-a-house-and-spending-the-night type of girl. He could sleep anywhere, while the comfort of a bed, sofa or even the carpet was better than the hard ground. Except that's where I slept last night.

The shack had only one tiny bed and Daryl had passed out on that. I curled up on a blanket on the hard floor and caught a few minutes here and there. The floor sucked. I was going to have to figure out something else for tonight.

Even though the bed was small, I was hoping that maybe Daryl would let me share with him. We'd be crowded, but that would be a helluva lot better than the floor. The odd thing was, I trusted Daryl. For a guy, that I had only met the day before and he had been unconscious for a lot of the time, this was odd for me to trust someone this easily. It wasn't like he was one of those types of people that put you instantly at ease because he never smiled. He growled a lot and sneered at me, but weirdly enough that made me smile at him. He was unique, and I liked that. Plus, he was easy on the eyes.

Just before I left, I was letting him know my plans. I was only going to search for a couple of hours before heading back. There was no way I was going to get caught out in the woods alone after dark. I'd rather play it safe. Daryl might be comfortable with that, but I sure wasn't. I turned to leave, and he grabbed my arm. "Be careful," he said in that deep raspy voice he had. "And thanks."

Instinctively, I reached up and moved his long bangs out of his eyes. It was an intimate thing do, and I definitely didn't think about it before doing it. I just did it. His blue eyes locked on mine and I saw him visually relax when I smiled at him. "I will. I'll be back in a couple of hours, but hopefully sooner with the crossbow."

So here I was following what were his tracks, or at least what I hoped was his. The narrow path that I was following was largely undisturbed and fairly overgrown, but I could just make out the signs that someone had stumbled through here recently. Daryl had helped show me what to look for, and that was a helpful skill to have. I was definitely a novice at this, but I knew more than I did an hour ago.

As I scanned the ground, I was also looking at any area that it could have fallen to. I was guessing, make that hoping that as he got weaker it simply slipped out of his hand and he didn't realize it. That he made it this far as beat up and cut as much as he was surprised me. Daryl was tough, there's no doubt about that.