Mercy's Price

Part 2

"Daryl, are you sleeping?"

His eyes snapped open and he searched the darkened cell for the source of the voice that had just rung, crystal clear, in his ears. Miranda usually stood at the door when she awakened him, a habit both had developed when they realized they were both likely to stab someone in that shadowy transition from sleep to wakefulness. But the door was silent and empty in the dim light filtering in through the high windows along the outer wall of the cell block.

He cursed and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk. The voice had been so loud, so clear, his mind had convinced him it was real. Real enough to jerk him out of the nightmare of finding Miranda changed and lunging for his throat in a dim corridor. Daryl shook his head. She was gone, why couldn't he just deal with it? He pulled on some clothes, jammed his feet into his boots and grabbed his crossbow from where it leaned against the bunk. He was halfway to his own bunk when he realized he'd fallen into Miranda's bed wearing nothing more than the towel Michonne had given him and carrying nothing, not even the clothes he'd stripped off in the shower. Someone, likely Carol, had picked up after him, brought him what he would need, and left him to his nightmares. He realized he should thank her, and so he picked his way through the cell block beneath his bunk until he came to Carol's cell.

"I wondered how long you'd sleep," she said when he paused in front of her door. "I figured it wouldn't be much longer, so I waited up."

"I just wanted to thank you... for, you know, the clothes and my weapons."

"How did you know it was me?" She asked, sitting up and patting the end of her bunk.

Daryl sank heavily onto the offered seat. "Who else would mother me like that?"

Carol smiled. "Mothering, loving, they're a little different, but I'll take it. Did you actually sleep or did you just pass out?"

"A little of both, I think," he said with a shrug. He stood up to leave, but Carol's hand on his wrist stopped him.

"You can't keep it all bottled up inside, you know. It'll eat you up. Kill whatever good she left in your heart. You're going to have to mourn for real, Daryl."

"Why should this time be any different?" He asked. "I loved the other people I did this for, or watched others do it to. Why should this time be special?"

"Because no matter what you felt for anyone else, Miranda was different for you. She was the one who chased away your monsters, kept your personal demons at bay. And she was the one for whom you had to slay the monster she'd become."

Daryl twisted his wrist out of Carol's grasp. "It's no different this time than it was for Lillith or Merle. I didn't have time to mourn either of them. I don't have time to mourn.... I'll be fine. Thanks for thinking of me and bringing that stuff upstairs. You should go and see if any of the clothes up there will fit anyone. No sense letting it all go to waste."

Daryl backed out of the cell, silently cursing himself for leaving that horrified, pain-filled look on Carol's face. He knew she was right. Miranda had been different, but that difference had been hers, not his. Why should he change how he reacted just because she was so much more than either Lillith or Merle had been to him?

He headed for the door leading to the yard, hoping to make it out to the woods before anyone else could stop him and have a heart-to-heart about his mourning, or lack thereof.

The wind in the trees was a soothing balm to his heated skin and over stimulated senses. Daryl crouched in the brush, watching the buck pick its way through the forest. The animal moved with the slow grace common when the big predators had been thinned out as much as humans and wolves had these past years. It had no concern for the predator who watched it because it did not smell death beyond what surrounded it every day. Daryl's knees screamed that he'd stayed in one position too long, but he was not going back to the prison without something to show for the hours he'd been out here.

In the woods, he could forget everything but what it took to survive. He heard every animal creeping through the underbrush, smelled each walker who wandered too close to his hiding places. The focus on the moment kept his mind from wandering. It kept Miranda's ghost away.

The buck lifted his head and turned away from Daryl. It flicked its ears several times before the muscles in its chest tensed. Daryl shot to his feet, sighted on the spot where the buck's heart beat beneath its pelt, and loosed the arrow from the crossbow before the animal was able to bolt. As the beast fell to the forest floor, a young voice screamed in the woods beyond Daryl's kill.