The Fear (The Walking Dead / Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 11 - You're Afraid

"What are you doing?" He groaned.

"During Maggie's rebellious stage I picked up a few tricks, so basically... you can put up with my presence until you change your mind or you can personally get rid of me, but to be able to do that you're going to have to carry me back to the house and then I'll never let you leave."

"And how would you do that?"

"Rugby tackle." I shrugged. "Or I'll tell Jimmy to tackle while I get the rope."

"You're wasting your time. I'm better on my own, I'm not going to get devoured." He mocked.

"No." I shook my head. "You were better on your own. Not anymore, not in this world and if you really believed it you would have packed up that bike and driven off, but instead you didn't even make it a mile."

"I thought you wanted us gone." He shot back as a reply.

"I want Shane gone, but I know that can't happen without him taking the rest of you with him... and we need your group. You can't do anything without people anymore, you can't survive." (This is an important line because it's what Daryl says to Merle in season 3, but I'm telling you now because it's a fair way off and I don't know if I'm going to write Kat in that scene yet. But it's her influence).

"Did you know?" He suddenly asked me.

"Know what?"

"That she was in the barn."

"If I did do you think I would go out of my way to search for her?"

"You went out once, twice if you count the run to the interstate and that was more for supplies. After that you never left the house under Daddy's orders." He said, seething with mockery. "He could have told you not to say anything."

"I never went near the barn."

Daryl leapt up from the ground; keeping his eyes trained on me as he took a step to the side and hovered for a while, resisting the urge to pace back and forth clearly agitated.

"You're lying." I was technically lying, I had been near the barn in the past, but I didn't know Sophia was in there, but I had no idea how Daryl could tell. As far as I was aware I was a fantastic liar. The amount of times I had to cover for my siblings was proof of that.

I felt the need to get to my feet as well before replying. "You have no reason to believe me, but I didn't know she was in that barn and if I did I sure as hell wouldn't have kept my mouth shut about it. Now, you can either continue sulking up here on your own, distancing yourself from everyone else because you're too afraid to care or you can man up and follow me back down."

Daryl's rage clearly only got worse as he stormed over so he was now standing in front of me, barely 15 centimeters away.

"You know jack." He spat. "Just go, I don't want you here!" He yelled as he turned his back and took a few steps away from me.

Most people would probably just leave him be and I had tried so Carol would have at least been pleased with that, but I was now determined. A combination of competitiveness, stubbornness and determination were three traits that could be somewhat infuriating to other people... and I had all three.

I stepped over to the half collapsed stone building and leant my back up against it, folding my arms and keeping my eyes on Daryl who was getting madder and madder which could go one of two ways. The first would be him shooting me with an arrow, but the second was that he just needed to yell to get all that built up anger out of his system.

"You're a real piece of work, lady." He grumbled.

"You wouldn't be the first to say it." I mused.