my tears ricochet

Chapter Eight

He had to pretend like he couldn't see Lori's smug expression as she took in the sight of Ivy and Daryl sitting on a fallen tree someone had pulled close to the fire. Ivy wasn't snapping at him or trying to run off somewhere and that was some kind of progress. 

Daryl had been the one to force a can of sliced peaches into her hand and watch her pick her way through half before she tried shoving it at him. He makes her try a couple more before he takes it, bolting down the contents while she stares off into the fire. 

The group had endured the lean days out on the road scavenging for whatever could be found, and now that hunger had faded some from mind. Glenn brings home a whole stock of canned goods, and has even braved a few of the houses to scavenge for homemade jams and jellies, spreading the preserves over soda crackers after dinner. Ivy still has that starved look about her, the way her eyes flick to whatever food gets passed around, and Daryl wouldn't mind keeping an eye on her to make sure she actually gets her fill while they can. 

Someday, something will change. Winter is coming and they'll have to give up more and more. They'll all go hungry then, but for now, Daryl has the ability to bully her over canned peaches. 

He'll take these moments while they still have them. 

Carol and Lori are sitting away from the fire, and he knows that Carol can't stand to look at Ivy for very long. The rest of the group are holed up inside the RV bickering over some map, and the Green's are tucked around that dining table, holding to their lives before everything turned dead and walking. 

"You good?" He asked, tossing the can aside into the little collection of empties stationed by the buckets of water. 

Ivy nodded, her hands fidgeting together. He wasn't quite sure what to do now and it felt a little like drowning. The girl has her own history and she basically confirmed that what he suspected was true. 'You can't do that again. No one can do that to me. I won't be scared of you, so don't try and make me.', she had said, giving a shape to what he knew. 

She had enough of her secrets and kept them under locks. Daryl couldn't ask for the key. Not yet. Not when it was his hand causing the hurt. But, he thought, he could maybe give an exchange. 

"What kind of house did you grow up in?" He asked her, watching the fire crackle. It was almost reassuring, sitting next to a fire. He knew the smoke, the heat of it. Merle might be sitting somewhere next to his own little set up, hopefully warm and safe. 

Ivy snorted. "Why do you care?"

Daryl side eyed her. "You answer a question, you get to ask one."

She mulled over that for a minute before shrugging. "My dad had a little piece of land. It was pretty far away from town, but he got it from his dad apparently." 

So, she grew up isolated. Daryl could picture that easy enough. He wanted to know more about whoever her dad had been but it wouldn't be fair to ask yet. He hadn't earned that key to that lock. 

"What's your last name?" He asked, cutting in before she could figure out what she wanted to ask. When he had been shaking her down like a man possessed he had wanted to know just to spit out her full name like a curse. 

Ivy's lips split into a sharp grin. "Lane. Everyone laughs."

"Ivy Lane?" That was a shockingly flowery name and he wondered for a second if she was fucking with him. 

"My mom got knocked up when she was in high school and got forced into marrying my dad. She said if I had to have his name, I'd have her name as well. Something good to balance the bad, but I think she was just high on pain meds and didn't think how it sounded together."

"Sounds like a damned poem," Daryl mused. "Must have been fun growing up with."

A mom, a dad. A name. Daryl could do this. He could piece together her history and figure out how to fit in it.

"Never liked it." Ivy shrugged. "But the thought was nice, I guess."

"Everyone knew us growing up by our name," he told her. A truth for a truth. "My brother and I got into the same trouble our dad pulled, and that just dug a hole a mile back. Dixons were trouble through and through."

Merle had learned from their dad, and he has passed on the valuable art of hot wiring cars and getting drunk before noon to Daryl. 

"Why do you keep looking for that girl?" Ivy asked, the humour dying down from her face. She had pulled her knife out and was fiddling with it, flipping out the blade and letting the light flash off it. "No one else seems to care."

"That's why." He said, feeling words knot together. "She's a bit like I was." 

Daryl hoped she understood what he couldn't say. Daryl was a bit like Sophia, and maybe that meant Ivy could see a part of herself in him. That she could see something that connected her. Because he was still coming down off the terror of realizing that Ivy had gone off alone in the woods with no one backing her up and he didn't know why it made him contemplate tying her to that chair. 

Ivy nodded, that little knife sharp in her hand, and silence pulled over them both. 

Daryl isn't her father, but he can't help but think about her name. If he had kid named Ivy, he might have gotten a band of ivy around his wrist to tie him to a daughter. It's a pretty name and he can't help but imagine that ink on his skin, a pretend world where maybe someone could have done right by her.