my tears ricochet

Chapter Twenty Four

Rick was kind, supporting the woman on his shoulder as he dragged her up the hill to the prison. Daryl would have pulled her by her hair, prying answers from her throat himself. There was a mix of her blood and of the dead over her torso and he could see where she had been grazed by a bullet.

"That's Ivy knife," Carl called as he chased after Rick and Daryl, carrying the basket with both hands on the handle. It was heavy from the weight of supplies and he nearly tripped over loose soil as he ran. "The pink one."

Daryl's mind was racing, trying to lace together facts. All he knew was that his daughter was somewhere unarmed and a stranger had an intimate piece of her, something she wouldn't have parted from without force. He wanted to drive an arrow through her throat and peel back her skin himself until he rattled loose whatever he needed to know.

They got her onto the floor outside of the cell block and she lunged for the sword that Rick kicked backwards. "No. We're not going to hurt you unless you try something stupid first, all right?"

Daryl sneered. "Who the hell is she?"

"You wanna tell us your name?" He asked her, trying to force through the haze blinding the woman. Pain had her face set tight and her eyes jumped between him and Rick, trying to assume the larger threat. It was a similar look to how Ivy had been at the farm guessing between the men and settling herself at one end away from them.

She forced herself upwards and slid backwards against the wall, bracing her spine to something solid. "Those supplies," she said, jerking her chin towards Carl and the basket, "were dropped by a young Asian guy. He was with a pretty girl."

Maggie was in the doorway of the room and she made a terrible cry, hand covering her mouth to try and hold back the hurt. Daryl thought of Ivy with her braid he had shaped himself out of her thick hair, blonde from the sun, pieces of gold wound together by his own hands.

"What happened?" Rick asked.

"Were they attacked?" Added Hershel, standing up with his crutches. If Ivy was his, Glenn had become Hershel's. Maggie's love for the boy laced him into their family unit, securing his name until it was undistinguishable from either of his children.

Her face twisted. "They were taken."

"Taken? By who?"

"By the same son of a bitch who shot me."

Daryl was stepping forward without realizing it and was in her face, his hand on the leg and squeezing tight. "Those are our people. You tell us what happened now!"

The pain jumped through her like a lance and she cried out, "Don't you ever touch me again!"

She tried forcing herself backwards and away from Daryl's grip but the wall held her in place, no different from how Randal had sought comfort in the the wooden planks behind his back when Daryl broke pieces of the boy. It was an easy routine to settle back into, the way a hand could be a graceless wreck of a thing, driving agony into the bone.

He didn't need a knife for this kind of art.

"You'd better start talking," he warned, easing up as her breathing came out ragged, voice thready. "You're gonna have a much bigger problem than a gunshot wound."

"Find 'em yourself."

Rick's light touch forced him back, gently pushing between him and the woman. "Hey, stand down. Give her a minute."

Daryl wanted to scream. He had known something was coming around the corner and he had still watched Ivy leave out the prison gate, somewhere he couldn't see. It was his fault for trusting the world and not remembering Randal's voice spilling out like a trance, describing a man and his daughters at night, their backs to the wilds and the kind of men who grew in the dark. He should have refused to let Ivy leave. She would have been angry and upset with him but she was his child, something that he was supposed to guard because he knew better.