VII. FEELING USLESS
Season Two, Episode Five
It was early in the morning when Rick had started to organize the search. Everyone gathered around the car once again with the map splayed out on the hood.
Dani's side was hurting still from the well incident but she tried not to think too much about it in hopes of being able to help out. She held the wound discreetly and put pressure on it to make the pain lessen as Rick spoke.
"Alright, everyone's getting new search grid's today. If she made it as far as the farmhouse Daryl found, she might've gone further East than we've been so far-"
"I'd like to help."
Jimmy walked up to the group with his hands in his pockets. All eyes were immediately on him and Rick to make the decision. "I know the area pretty well and stuff."
"Hershel's okay with this?" Rick questioned.
"Yeah, yeah. He said I should ask you." Dani raised her brows in surprise. She didn't know much about Hershel yet but she did know that he didn't warm up to things like that very easily. He's a very cautious man, so this was a shock.
"Alright then, thanks."
Shane started speaking from his place behind the car door, "Nothing about what Daryl found screams 'Sophia' to me. Anybody could've been holed up in that farmhouse."
"'Anybody' also includes her, does it not?" Dani argues back.
"Whoever slept in that cupboard was no bigger than yay-high," Daryl reminds, using his hands to show the size.
Andrea nodded, "It's a good lead."
"Maybe we'll pick up her trail again." Rick says in hope.
"No maybe about it, I'm gonna borrow a horse, head up this ridge right here, take a bird's-eye view of the whole grid. If she's up there, I'll spot her." Dani liked Daryl's plan. She wanted to go; she wanted to be useful somehow. Especially after messing up as bad as she did before.
"Good idea," T-Dog praises, "Maybe you'll see your Chupacabra up there, too."
Rick furrows his brows in confusion, "Chupacabra?"
"You don't know the story?" As Dale places the gun bag on the hood of the car, Dani knows he's about to tell the story. "Our first night in camp, Daryl tells us the whole thing reminds him of a time when he went squirrel hunting and he saw a Chupacabra."
Rick and Jimmy laugh.
"What're you braying at, jackass?" Daryl looks at them with the most serious expression.
"So you believe in a blood-sucking dog?" Rick sasses with a large smirk.
Daryl stands his ground on the story of the Chupacabra, "Do you believe dead people walking around?" He then grabs his crossbow and walks away in the direction of the stables.
Dani quickly follows after him after making up her mind. Maybe it wasn't a good idea but it was all she had. "Daryl!"
The man stopped and turned, hands still holding onto the strap of his crossbow. He didn't say anything. Instead he just waited for her to say what she had to say.
"I wanna go with you."
He laughed.
"Look, I just wanna help." She pleaded, "Sitting around washing clothes isn't helping to find Sophia."
Daryl shook his head, "Nah. You're hurt. Don't need to be going out there right now."
Dani knew he was right. Everyone knew he was right. She just didn't want to accept it. It made her feel like trash. But sooner or later she had to accept it, whether she wanted to or not. So she just nodded, told him to be safe, and walked back to the camp with her arms crossed over her chest.
─── ✶ ───
It wasn't that later in the day when Dani walked into the RV to see Glenn and Dale in there. In complete silence. By the look on Glenn's face, she could tell he had something on his mind. She sat down across from him at the table and stared at him with a straight face and narrow eyes.
When Glenn noticed, he shifted in his seat, visibly uncomfortable and not knowing what to say. This definitely served as evidence to his theory about the women in the group right now. But he didn't want to voice it.
"What?" He asked, laughing awkwardly. He picked up his hat and started fiddling with it.
"Something's wrong. I can tell."
Glenn tried to force a look of confusion on his face, but it didn't get past Dani or Dale, who had now tuned into the conversation and silently joined. "Nothing's wrong. I'm fine."
"Glenn, you're embarrassingly easy to read," Dani sighed, taking his hat and handing it to Dale, who kept it placed in his lap so Glenn would be forced to speak instead of distract. "What's wrong."
Glenn sighed and rubbed his face with his palms before talking. "Fine... Are you on your period?"
Dani was shocked, to say the least. That was the last thing she was expecting him to say, in fact it wasn't even on her list of things she was expecting him to say at all.
Dale was trying so hard to hold in his laughter that his face was tinted red. He had to hold up Glenn's hat to cover his face, but he brought it down to below his eyes so he could watch Dani's reaction.
She stared at Glenn's unmoving expression, utterly perplexed.
"I'm- You- What?!"
Glenn then continued, "I'm only asking 'cause it's like all the women are acting really weird," Dani couldn't mutter a word. "And I read somewhere that when women spend a lot of time together, their cycles line up and they all get super crazy hormonal at the same time."
Dale thankfully spoke for Dani once his face was back to his normal colour, "I'm gonna advise you to keep that theory to yourself," Glenn and Dani laughed and looked to Dale, "Who else is acting weird?"
"Maggie."
"Oh." Dani whispered.
"She started off being mean to me. Then she wanted to have sex with me. And now, she's being mean to me again. And I don't even wanna know what's going on with Lori..." Glenn trailed off, probably not realizing what he was saying.
"What's going on with Lori?" Dale questioned.
Glenn quickly dismissed the question by saying he didn't know, and thus Dani brushed it off. But she couldn't get past his situation with Maggie.
"Look, Glenn, this isn't pre-school. You're both adults with communication skills-you, less so, but they're still there," Glenn wanted to be offended but he just nodded. "Just talk to her about it. That's the only way you can solve this, instead of asking people if they're on their periods!"
Dale put his hand out in front of him before speaking, "Okay, can we take this back a step? How do you know that Maggie wanted to have sex with you?"
When Glenn stayed quiet, Dani immediately knew.
She broke out into laughter. Not in a taunting way, but just in a way that she couldn't believe it. Whereas Dale just seemed disappointed for some reason.
"Did it ever occur to you how her father might feel about this?" He scolded.
"She's twenty-two."
"And he is our host! Jesus, Glenn, what were you thinking?"
Glenn shrugged, "I was thinking that I might be dead tomorrow," He sat and looked at Dale and Dani for a moment and then he got up, "Thanks for the book. You're right, it sucks."
Dani sat in silence now, not knowing what to say.
Not even a minute later, Andrea yelled, "Walker! Walker!"
Dani and Dale hurried out of the RV as Rick, Shane, T-Dog, and Glenn all ran forward. "Just the one?" Rick asked.
Andrea looked through her binoculars and rushed to grab the rifle. "I bet I could nail it from here."
"No, Andrea. There's no point in wasting ammo." Dani tried to convince her not to, but she just kept the gun aimed. Though she didn't pull the trigger.
Shane came limping from the camp with an axe in hand and his button-up shirt down. It was quite a funny sight to Dani, the limping and all. "You best let us handle this."
"Shane, hold up. Hershel wants to deal with walkers." Rick argued.
"What for, man? We got it covered."
T-Dog ran with a metal bat and Rick went to grab his gun from the RV. Dale was on the ladder of the vehicle to get a better view but Dani was just standing on the ground attempting to shield the sun from her view.
Then the rifle clicks, and Andrea brings it up again. She lied down to get a better view out of the sun-rays.
"Andrea, don't!"
"Back off, Dale."
Dani shakes her head. Andrea wasn't a great shot yet, so it's a clear possibility that she could miss the walker and hit one of the guys. But there was no getting through to her, so when she shoots, Dani prays to God that nothing bad happened.
Then Rick screams.
And Dani starts running to see what happened.
As she got closer to the guys she could clearly see that the 'walker' was Daryl. He was covered in mud and blood and cuts, now with a fresh new mark on his head where the bullet hit him.
"Is he dead?" She yells in worry. "Rick, is he dead?!"
"Unconscious. You just grazed him." He says to Andrea as she and Dale come running up as well.
Glenn moved to see Daryl from the front as he pointed with his machete at his chest, "But look at him, what the hell happened? He's wearing ears!"
Dani's eyes landed on the ear necklace... thing... that Daryl had made. It was definitely the weirdest thing the man had done so far.
Rick looks up to see Hershel and his family staring at them from the distance. He rips the ear necklace from Daryl's neck and shoves it in his pocket. "Let's keep that to ourselves."
"Guys," T-Dog calls out, "Isn't this Sophia's?" When Dani looked back, she saw T-Dog holding up a dirty doll.
Sure enough, it was Sophia's.
○°☆ ━━━━━━ ☆°○
Author's Note ; i'm not too sure how much i like this chapter but at least we got funny/cute moments with glenn and dani again <3 i love their friendship sm man.