The Walking Dead Imagines

If I Had Known

The sight of Daryl and his brother brought a foul taste to your mouth. It'd barely been twenty-four hours since he left, but you knew things would never be the same. His choice had been made, regardless of his reappearance now. When he'd left you knew whatever the two of you shared was gone, shattered, like your heart.

You'd begged him to stay, but he ignored your pleas.

"Daryl, don't go." You mumbled, grabbing onto his arm. It was coated in dirt and blood. You looked up to his face with teary eyes. He refused to make eye contact with you.

"I have to, (Y/N)." He grunted, shaking your hand off his arm. It dropped down to your side as you breathed shaky breaths.

"What about all of us? What about the others?" Or me, you thought, but a lack of courage stopped you from saying so.

Daryl continued to pack up his stuff from the back of the car, weakly responding to you, "He's my brother."

You looked into his distracted eyes as you croaked out, "You know the Governor's gonna attack hard. You're leaving us, we won't survive without you there to help."

His eyes turned hard again. He swung the backpack around his body, settling it on his shoulder. He turned to you slightly, looking down at your boots.

"You're tough. You'll be okay."

"No, Daryl." You whimpered, exposing your feelings for a moment. It was a last resort. "Daryl, I can't— I can't lose you."

He hated the way your voice cracked when you spoke to him. He hated that he was the reason it was doing so.

There was no denying the butterflies that erupted in his stomach for what you said. Not once did he consider he might mean so much to you. He thought you simply thought of him as a companion, nothing more. His heart fluttered as he thought perhaps you felt the same way he did about you.

But then the thoughts of self-doubt sunk into him again. There was no way you could. Why would you even want to? You were amazing, he was, well, he was just Daryl.

He breathed deeply, gripping the strap on his shoulder tightly before speaking again, "'N I can't leave 'm. I can't."

You wanted to say something to make him stay but you didn't know what. Hell, you'd already opened up yourself to him, basically confessing what he meant to you and even that hadn't done the trick.

It was useless. This was useless.

You bit your lip, looking at his face one more time as a single tear rolled down your cheek. He finally looked at you, staring at the droplet making its way down your skin. His heart ached inside his chest, a look of weakness overcoming his face for a moment. When your eyes met you stared at each other, pain evident in both of you, before you turned on your heel and walked away.

All you wished was for him to pull you back. To embrace you in his arms and tell you he wouldn't leave. But he didn't.

This couldn't be happening. It couldn't.

But it did. Overnight your hopes of his return dissipated into anger. You were furious. The man had left, abandoned your family, to go be with his jerk of a brother. Only to turn back up in from too the prison after the Governor had attacked— killing Axel in the process.

Axel was a good guy from what you could tell. Admittedly creepy, but a good guy all around. You found yourself blaming his death on Daryl, as well as the loss of the prison's field.