Tomorrow Will Be Kinder {IHOFIL Sequel}

Chapter 4: "Lonely Words and Empty Threats

Kinda heavy themes later in on this chapter. You've been warned, you beautiful things.

He strokes her face delicately, inviting in the beauty that was Beth Greene. "I-I found you," he breathes, the voice he says it in is not his. This is soft and broken, like his voice in a dream. "I found you and I missed you so bad, Beth."

She stares, her eyes soft until she screws up her face. "Get off me!"

He tries to reach for her but she pushes him off. "Don't touch me, Daryl. Just because you're living on my farm doesn't mean I want you like that. You're good for food, that's all you're good for. If we didn't need you to survive, we would've ditched you just like your brother months ago."

{________________}

Daryl woke with a start, a sweat, despite the chilled air that sweeps through Georgia in winter, breaking on his forehead. The nightmares were getting worse, usually someone woke him, telling him gently that he was screaming out in his sleep and then he has to hide his face because he knows he has been crying and Dixon's don't cry.

That night, no one must've heard him. Maybe it meant he's getting better at coping with the nightmares.

When Michonne wakes him, she calls his name out for a bit and she looks tired and sad, the weight of the loses reflecting heavily in her eyes. When Carl wakes him, the young  boy stares, having nudged him to wake him up, then offers to stay, which Daryl accepts, and they sit with the two babies in their laps and play with a pack of cards he found; if Daryl isn't crying. When Rick wakes him, it's usually with a gentle rub on the back and a repeated string of words that sound soothing then they stay like that until Daryl drifts off to sleep and then Rick must leave because when he wakes, his best friend isn't there.

"He's having his dreams again," he heard Carl whisper from around the warm campfire. "We should wake him up, I hate nightmares."

"He's not crying out anymore," Michonne pointed out, the sound of an excited toddler reaching Daryl's ears .

Rick finally weighed in, his voice stubborn. "He needs to deal with them, he's strong. He just misses Beth, we all do. It's hard thinking that she didn't love him; that all they went through didn't matter."

"This is Daryl, dad."

"I know who it is, Carl. I'm well aware, okay? We need to let him heal. He continues to pick at his hurt like a scab and it scars; he'll heal eventually. We need to help him, though. We need to be strong and hold him up. We can't lose him too, not like Hershel, Glenn, Maggie, Tyreese, Sasha, Merle, Carol, Chloe, Aislynn, Lori..."

"Daryl said Beth write them all notes, I mean, us too but also everyone we've lost," Carl said quietly, fiddling with the band of his father's Sheriff hat on his head. "I wanna read mine."

Rick nodded solemnly, handing his son his note. "I... I read it, I hope you don't mind. It was-It was nice that she thought of it, right? Or is it sick."

"Everyone says goodbye in their own way," Michonne replied, her voice sharp in the quiet air.

The sheriff just nodded, handing Michonne the note Beth wrote for her. "She wrote one for all of us, if you want to read them alone then I'll understand."

No one moved, instead choosing to read their notes together. When they finished- Daryl knew because he couldn't hear the crunch of paper- it was dangerously quiet.

"That was..." the teenager started but there was nothing to add.

{________________}

He was hungry. The word seemed to lose meaning the more he said it; he was so used to it by now. The word didn't seem as heavy now, it wasn't a lonely word anymore. He knew the rest of his family was feeling it too, the hunger that is. He promised a good hunt and the winter meant scarce prey, meaning they might all starve before he finally caught anything; even a barn mouse.