Ivy had promised Daryl so easily, bolstered by the confidence that came with the ruins of society and the world ending, never thinking that fate would warp itself one more time. She realized the trap the minute she caught sight of Daryl radiating smugness from the truck, practically smirking at his easy luck.
"Fuck," she whispered, glancing at her odds. If she bolted for her tower, Daryl would know she was intentionally rescinding on her promise and that she was a liar. The prison only offered so many hiding places accessible and she didn't doubt his ability to track her down if she vanished for the afternoon.
"Glenn said Bob's an army medic," Maggie said, shoving a few candle sticks in one of the plastic bins. Ivy recognized them as part of a haul from an artisan shop featuring a number of locally produced beeswax candles. A few tins of salve for skin had also been recovered and Ivy had one in her pocket for safekeeping. "A year ago we didn't have a single doctor, now we have two."
"We had Hershel," she said, refusing to look at Bob. A few people were greeting him and the man seemed nearly overwhelmed by the size of the sanctuary. "Felt like enough."
Ivy knew she was being petulant. Daryl had her in his sights and she knew it. She remained fixed to the bench, pretending like he didn't exist. Soon enough he would be making his way over to fetch her.
Maggie's brow quirked up some but she didn't pick at the subject. Ivy liked that about Maggie, the way she just instinctively knew certain conversations were limited for access and others could be poked at some. "I think Glenn might have a lead on a library. I know the selection here is a bit limited."
"That's cool," Ivy admitted. "It's all boring stuff here."
"State funded selection, I'm afraid. Beth's been complaining about it."
She missed doing the supply runs with Glenn. The first couple times had been intimidating, eyeing up blown out buildings and trying to break locks without drawing attention, but she had grown to like the mix of adrenaline and focus. Ivy had gotten good at tight squeezes and mapping out spaces.
The prison was nothing but a cage that she sat inside, watching days drift past. Ivy wanted the old days back, the parts of herself that had seen challenge and squared herself up to it. She would have settled for a chance to even wander the woods outside the fences, mapping out the unseen spaces.
Once, Ivy had been brave. She had slept under trees and made a home for herself in the wild. Now she was always half twisted, searching over her shoulder for a lingering threat.
Maggie nudged her hand and Ivy tore herself free from her musings. Daryl waved a hand and she frowned, shoving herself up off the bench. "See you later," she mumbled, leaving the older girl and making her way over.
"Found someone," he said with a touch of satisfaction in his voice. "Thought you'd wanna meet Bob."
"I'm supposed to help clear walkers on the fence. Told Sasha I'd be down there."
He hummed, tugging her loosely on the wrist. "Think they'll live for a bit."
Ivy knew she had two choices. She could either dig in her heels and go fighting or resign herself to fate. She huffed, resenting the corner she had backed herself into. "Fine, whatever. This is stupid, though."
"Sure," he agreed, still radiating that awful smugness. "Let's see what that medic I found has to say."
She resisted the urge to snap her teeth at him as she followed him, Daryl neatly collecting Bob and leading him into an empty cellblock for a quick discussion. The man looked tired and worn out but fell in line without disagreement, casting a look over the pair of them. Ivy wondered how they looked to the stranger. "We have a favour to ask you. I'm thinkin' my kid needs a hearing test."
Daryl placed a hand on her shoulder, drawing her into his side with a slight air of possessiveness. Twice he had played the same motion whenever Tyrese was around, as if he was reinforcing his role of parent. Secretly, Ivy liked it. She liked the little tug, the way he drew a line between them and the world.
"Bit hard to do at the end of the world. I'm guessing this place isn't equipped for an audiometry exam?"
"No, which is why this is stupid," Ivy frowned, peering up at Daryl. "He can't do it."
"Have you been noticing problems with your hearing?" Bob asked, dropping his bag to the ground. "Could go through some basics."
Ivy was pushed to take a seat, scanning an eye around the empty cellblock. Enough newcomers filtered in through the gate and they had filled two of the cellblocks already between them and Woodbury. This room was empty and set aside in hopes of more. Every day Rick laboured over the yard to make a field flourish in place of grass, breaking soil to replenish their stocks. For the first time, they were in a position to open the door and let strangers in again.
She folded her arms and tried to keep her face neutral. "Not really."
"Is there a family history of hearing loss?" Bob asked Daryl. Both men were positioned in front of her.
Daryl paused, sorting out a lie. She watched to see if he would confess or push the illusion of blood. "Dunno."
Bob's face twitched slightly but he masked the irritation better than Ivy could. "You get anything like a ringing or buzzing in your ears?"
Yes. "No."
"Find it hard following conversation?"
"No." Ivy betrayed herself by looking at Daryl and seeing the frustration outlining his face. His concern broke her determination to blow her way through the discussion. "Yeah. Sometimes there's a ringing. It comes and goes."
She wanted to clamp down on the truth and keep it private but Daryl cared. If Beth were sitting beside her, she would be informing her that he was showing love by action. Ivy tried to extend a fraction of love back and force her instinct to fight down.
"Could be exposure to noise," Bob suggested. "Back in the day, teenagers were ruining their eardrums by playing music at full volume. Now everyone has a gun. You ever take any hits to the head?"
Ivy said nothing. She was trying but some truths weren't on the table. A stranger didn't need open access to the concussion she had back when she was eleven and thirteen, the way Merle hit her over the head to knock her out. When her silence didn't crack, Bob bent and dug out an old music player and tangled headphones from his pack. "Now, this isn't much of an actual test but humour me for a minute."
She shoved the headphones over her ears and scowled at Daryl. "What?"
"I'm going to play some music and just let me know when you hear it, okay?"
He tapped the screen and told her it was playing. Ivy nodded after a second. "Yeah, I can hear it. You've got garbage taste in music," she shoved the headphones off. "Great. You happy now?"
Bob turned the music player around and showed her the dead screen. "Sorry, kid. Haven't had a charge on this thing since last winter."
Daryl's gaze was fixed to her and she squirmed, caught in her lie. "It's not a big deal. Sometimes it just gets loud."
"On the good news, your kid won't die from this. Can't say the hearing loss won't progress further, but she's fine."
"How long?"
"What?" Ivy blinked, surprised by the question.
"How long has this been happening?"
She could feel her face turn red. "Dunno, does it really matter?"
Bob bent down and snagged his bag, shoving the dead music player back into a pocket. "You guys good if I take off?"
Daryl's silence waited for the man to leave the cellblock before breaking. His tension had a deep vein of anger and Ivy could feel it, judging the space between him and her. It was easy to try and remind herself of all the times the man had protected her and refrained from hurting but shadows of her own father's rage flashed across Daryl's expression. "When did I miss the signs?"
"Around the time we got here," Ivy hedged. "Wasn't bad for a while. The ringing was annoying but I got through it. It part of the reason I left for the tower, so it wouldn't be so loud." The cellblock disoriented voices when people spoke loud and it cost effort keeping up with it all. Quiet meant she had space to sort herself out without playing catch up on the conversation around her.
She had also left for the tower in favour of establishing space between her and everyone, but she didn't imagine Daryl wanted to hear that specific detail. Running away had helped sooth the jagged, broken pieces inside her chest and she had craved the isolation, sinking back into her roots. If she was gone, no one could hurt her. If she avoided Daryl, she wouldn't feel the pain of losing him. Space had the benefit letting her survive more losses.
"Do you think it's that big of a deal?" Ivy pushed gently, wondering if this truth was a crack between her and Daryl. Was this finally enough, she wondered, to drive him away and make him give up? How much damage would be enough to finish whatever connected them together? Her hearing was important, she knew that, but if he saw it as another sign that something was infinitely wrong with her, he could hate her for it. Irrational thoughts swirled inside her mind, catching at her with quick lashes of terror.
He gave a sharp inhale, narrowing his eyes. "Hard to look after you when you hide."
"This wasn't any of your business," she pushed back, folding her hands into tight fists to keep from fidgeting. "It hasn't stopped me any!"
Ivy had taken her shots from the cat walk when the Governor stormed the prison and she had managed that night Rick dragged her out of Woodbury. If she wasn't able to follow a joke around the table at dinner, so be it. She could live.
"Maybe you shouldn't be heading outside the fence. Can I even trust you to be safe?"
She flinched, feeling cold shock run down her spine. "You weren't letting me out in the first place. I told you in the beginning that I didn't want to stay here and yet here I am. This prison is a literal prison that I'm not allowed to leave," Ivy forced the words out. "I'm tired of being here."
"You think the road is any better? Have you forgotten what winter was like?"
An old memory of being hunched over in the car nagged at her, that feverish desperation to be warm again. "Somewhere could be better. You're just not looking."
He kept his hands to himself but she could feel the effort that it cost. "We've got a damned psycho out there. Do you wanna run into him the dark? Would that feel safer? He shot a bunch of his own people and wanted to take you like a trophy. By all means, take a stroll and see what you find."
That hit her like a slap. "This wasn't your fault. You're angry over something that has just happened. I've been dealing with it just fine."
"What happens when you slip up?" Daryl demanded, heat burning his words. "What happens when you turn around and something's come up and there's nothing you can do about it?"
Ivy looked at Daryl seriously. It took effort, stamping down on the reflex to shout back. She could dump fuel on a raging fire and they would spend weeks fighting over it until someone gave in. He was angry and it made her feel angry in response, but the last time he had gotten twisted up in rage had been when Rick confessed the Governor's ultimatum.
If Lori were sitting beside her, she'd be coaxing the pair of them through their emotions. But she wasn't, because like everyone, she was dead.
Ivy forced herself to detach from her reflexive fight or flight response. "What exactly are you so pissed off about? That I was hiding this or the fact that I've lost a little bit of my hearing?"
He surged forward and slammed his hand down on the table. She jumped and felt her control waver, frozen under his stare. "If I turn around and you're gone, what do you think that's gonna do to me?"
There, she realized. The key to his temper. "Maybe I should have told you," she amended, refusing to falter when his gaze got sharper. "But stuff was happening. I didn't have time then. When it first started happening, I was confused. And maybe that isn't fair, but I had to get my head around it."
If she was being honest, she could admit that it was dumb luck that she had seen Merle in the woods on her solo trip to Woodbury. Her gun had been in her hands and pointed right at his skull the way she practised time and time again with the walking dead. It had been reflex, that casual violence, visually spotting him right before he could spin the tables like he had in the parking lot.
But Ivy had managed him. Her hearing loss hadn't prevented her from seeing danger and responding accordingly. She wasn't afraid of the world beyond the fence.
"My ears are fine," she stressed. "I don't hear everything, but it doesn't matter to me."
He retreated five steps away and she breathed a little easier, his anger visually banking some. Daryl had once gone looking for a girl lost in the woods and came out with her-he had never expected to end up on this road with someone else but Ivy was still standing despite everything. He said he wanted her and she hoped it was true, that one more problem wouldn't be the thing to topple everything sideways. 'Love me, hate me. Don't let me ruin it.'
"Can't trust you out there."
There was a thread of exhaustion laced through his words. Ivy felt it, the smallness of it. She had been the one dragged into a room and stretched out for other people to hurt. She had been a target. But, Daryl had been the one to feel her disappearance, to carry her back bleeding and torn open. He had picked her over a brother. Maybe he was tired and this was something new that he couldn't actively fight against. A person couldn't fight shadows without bruising their own fists.
If Ivy was tired of hurting, maybe he was tired of watching her hurt.
"You can trust me. You're the one who taught me how to shoot, to use a knife properly." One foot to the knee, hands driving the blade down hard once the body was at an easy height. He had shown her the motions until they were a memory of movement, force mixed with precision. "This doesn't change me."
It was the one thing she knew. Everything else had left a mark on her. Ivy could adapt to this particular loss, regardless of what she missed. But the lack of trust stung, of all things.
"You've got a new blind spot. Those walkers get drawn around and they start herding. If you're out there and they're coming up around you, what do you do?"
"First, I'm not blind," Ivy nitpicked, narrowing her eyes some. "This place won't last forever. Those fences keep folding in a little more every day and eventually they're gonna fall. Maybe I need to start working on adjusting to the risk out where it matters."
"Can't-"
"Oh, stop it with the 'can't'," she cut in, losing her grasp on calmness. Lori wasn't here to talk her down and she was tired, frustrated by this entire conversation. "This won't be the thing that kills me. It's survivable."
Daryl went quiet. His mouth was pressed in a tight line, face pale. "I'm supposed to keep you safe," he bit out, anger and exhaustion one and the same. "I can't do that if you're not telling me things."
"It's not bad, one on one. Gets harder the more people are talking. The ringing sucks but it isn't constant. I can hear you just fine," Ivy relented. "I didn't want you upset about this. It just happened and nothing was undoing it."
He processed the information warily, searching her for a lie. "I just need time, knowing you're okay. It won't be forever. But if he's out there, I can't let you be wandering."
If the Governor managed to catch her a second time, she wasn't sure anyone could find her again. Woodbury was abandoned and the man would just vanish into the natural landscape. Part of her wanted to push against him and start nagging him about letting her go out with Michonne looking but his expression looked half wild still, fist red from hitting the table. It wouldn't serve either one of them to admit her desires to kill the man personally.
"You've looked after me from the beginning. If I'm okay, it's because of you." She twisted the shoelace around her boot, the memory of her mother bound tight with the man in front of her. "You've always been the thing saving me, especially when I didn't want it."
Ivy had an inkling he would have dragged her back to the farm that day if she hadn't gone willingly. It had been a long hike, marching in boots that rubbed her feet raw, trying to disguise the limp so the man wouldn't pick up on the obvious weakness.
He had taken her in so quickly and hadn't left. She had snapped again and again, feral and uncontrollable, but Daryl had turned scraps of nothing into a home. To be loved was to be changed and she was different despite being stuck in the same skin, always half turned in his direction to make sure that she hadn't missed anything.
"I've failed before," he muttered, loyally refusing to look at her wrist. "If I'd said no that day you and Glenn went out, nothing would have happened."
Ivy managed to brace herself enough not to flinch. "Might've happened a different day. I hate what they did to me, but it's over." That table, that room. Screaming until she had no more screams left inside her. A butterfly wheeling about in the flickering bursts of light, red wings like blood. It was over and it wasn't, still plaguing her mind hourly. "It wasn't on you."
He didn't look like he believed her. "Could've spared you some pain."
"You couldn't. But you saved me from worse."
That truth hollowed out whatever rage was left in the man. She saw him deflate some, shoulders slumping down. "Merle had some old army buddies. Sometimes they came back with a little less hearing from the firing. The protection didn't always work. Wasn't really the thing that changed them," he admitted. "If you've lost some, that's not the problem."
"You just want to know."
"Yeah," he said, a little flat. "I need to start knowing things before it's late in the game."
The bruise on her arm that she had tried hiding, the full extent of the trauma. Daryl was always playing catch up on the damage and trying to prevent it from getting worse. "Fine, I guess. But you're still an asshole for finding the one doctor left in the world in, like, a day. Why couldn't you find Carla? Or any other person of value? You wasted time when you could've been looking for a writer so I had something new to read."
Some of the tightness in Daryl's face dissolved. His mouth quirked up into a ghost of a smirk. "I've got a stack of books pulled fresh from one of those charity bins back in my cell. If you don't want them, I can just find someone else to give 'em to."
"Don't you dare," she warned, jumping up from her seat. Her hands pushed him lightly in the direction of the door and she was at his heels, bullying him to move faster. Distantly, she thought how different it was feeling joy instead of fear.
On certain days, the thing between Daryl and Ivy felt helplessly fragile. And sometimes it was like being locked in a grip of stone. She had picked him and it meant something that he wanted her despite every little challenge between the beginning and now, that he hadn't washed his hands of her blood and walked away.
He swung the door open and they stepped into the light together, conversation abandoned in favour of the fasted route back to cellblock C.
.
Ivy traced a finger over her scar, feeling the edges of that awful W. Woodbury, whore. It was one and the same. But maybe it could mean something different, beyond the flowers traced over damage. The night was veiled by some clouds but she could see a few stars, focusing on one distant bit of light she had given to Merle's memory.
"What's that story, about the girl who gets swallowed up by the wolf but survives?" She asked the darkness as the wind swept over the yard. It carried the scent of damp Earth and tomatoes with it, stirring long grass as it moved. "I took down one of the wolves. But there's a second one, and I'm going to get him."