First and Last

10/27

"Would you like some tea?" Y/N asked him as Daryl followed her awkwardly into her house and to the living room, ashamed and still silent, he couldn't find the words to explain why was he there.

"You got tea here?" He found himself asking instead of saying that he didn't want it, or instead of telling Y/N what he had come to say.

"Herbal, one of the neighbors grows mint in her garden. It's good." Y/N was still eyeing him with worry, but she wasn't pushing him to speak for now, and Daryl was grateful for it, it made it easier to fight the urge to run away. "I'll fix you a cup, sit down, okay?" Daryl just nodded, wondering if he was making her awkward, or if she was actually giving him space and time to organize his thoughts.

Y/N left him alone, going towards the kitchen, and instead of sitting down or reorganizing his thoughts, Daryl began to nervously pace around the room. The first time he'd been there, he had gone right to the kitchen without seeing the living room, and now some framed pictures on the wall caught his attention.

One was Y/N with baby Jane, looking tired but smiling. Another one was Y/N with a little more grown-up Jane and a woman who Daryl guessed was Nora, because Dawn and Elisa were also in the pic. They were in a café, and Daryl wondered if it was the one Y/N and Nora had worked on. The third one... It was little girl Y/N with her mother, the picture Daryl had given her all those years ago, after he sneaked into her stepfather's house and took it.

Memories and ghost feelings came to him as he looked at it, threatening to flood him until he drowned, and Daryl tried to stop it, but the shelve that hung next to the pictures had more things that he recognized and his eyes found his way to them.

It didn't take him a second to recognize it, the book that he had gotten her. It still looked old and about to turn into dust, but at the same time it looked well-kept, and Daryl was marveled the old thing had survived the apocalypse and Y/N's travel to Alexandria...he wondered too why she'd bothered taking it with her. There was another book, he wasn't sure but he thought she'd lent him that one at some point, it was one of her mother's...she had carried not one but two books with her, and even more than seventeen years later, he found himself thinking that it was such a Y/N thing to do... But among all the books, she had carried the one that he had given her, which wasn't her mother's, and he didn't know what to think of it. Must be a real good book.

The next thing he recognized was his knife, the one he had given her all those years ago, scared at someone hurting her at the outside of the club. He hadn't thought she'd have kept it, he had guessed she has probably forgotten it. But there it was... She had taken it with her...At least it made more sense than the book, she could use the knife to protect herself. Yet she kept it on the shelve. He really had to get himself to tell her she needed to learn how to use it and protect herself. He took the knife, twirling it in his hand, losing the battle against memories and feelings that overcome him.

"Do you want it back?" Y/N's voice startled him, almost making him drop the knife, and he turned to look at her like a deer caught in headlights. She was smiling softly, worried still, placing their cups on the table.

"No...I..uh...you should keep it..." Daryl mumbled. "You should...keep it and..." and train, learn to fight, keep the knife always with her...that was what he wanted to say, what he knew he had to, but instead he found himself saying something else. "I...didn't know you kept it..." he murmured.

"Of course I kept it...that and the book you gave me were the only two things I had from you..." Y/N said quietly, biting his lip, and Daryl didn't know what he was feeling but it made him feel all weird. "When I was at the city...I had nothing else from you..." Y/N took her cup but she didn't drink, just fidgeted with it. "And then when I had to run away...some people think it's stupid, to take things like pictures and that...but it's not just pictures, you know...it's more than that...so I took the pictures than meant most to me, one of my mom's books, Jane's favorite book...guess it's not the most useful...but I think it's important too..." She shrugged, pacing around a bit. "And so I took your knife and that book too..."