Self doubt seemed to burn straight through him. His heart couldn't seem to beat without tallying up his losses, and to his own miserable mind, his losses always equaled his own failures. Guilt was the one constant thing he had left.
Glenn dogged his shadow like an anchor to his warpath, singlehandedly preventing him from losing himself to the mission. The further they traveled, the less human he felt. Glenn knew this. Glenn, with his wry grin, refused to let him sink any deeper than he ultimately had to. The circles beneath their eyes were as dark as violets, a perfect match for brothers forged from bruises and scabs, the angry scar tissue that ultimately proved their survival.
The Saviours kept breaking into smaller groups before reuniting in larger ones, making it difficult to stay on their heels. They kept getting pushed further back as the units peeled off, unwilling to get caught with another group coming up from behind, treacherous journey wrought with the danger of a loaded weapon in the dark, the teeth of the many against the pair of them.
And, Daryl knew, if anything happened to them? Ivy would be left alone and it wouldn't take much to settle that score. Her facade was getting worn around the edges, every single person exhausted from the death march that collected more of the undead, starved and tired.
He had been watching from the higher ridges through the scope of a rifle at the walkers milling down below trying to trace his daughter amongst the herds. It was difficult telling where the living were steering the numbers but movement caught him, a swirling violence amongst so many, swarming where one person must have tripped or stumbled.
His heart had frozen solid as he watched heads bob down below, crimson spraying dusty clothing. Two hours later it reluctantly began to beat again when he saw familiar white-blonde hair coming up over the rocks, Dwight keeping her from falling.
Daryl forced himself to remain silent like a fire. Forced himself to plant himself deep into the ground, roots unfurling from rage, tasting old blood in his mouth.
The pine trees got patchier where the soil turned to thin. Daryl traced his fingers over the rough bark and breathed in; focusing on the life growing where the land was turning cold. Glenn watched and waited; the man willing to move forward with a plan, someone redirecting Daryl's anger. "They're getting excited," he said simply, looking at the tracks in the ground. A couple trucks had come through and torn ruts through like a path. "More of 'em are collecting by the night."
"We're a long way from home," said Glenn tersely, fingers folding back the cuff of his sleeve to prevent it from dangling where the absence of a hand was. "Dunno what Simon's wanting out here."
Most buildings were gutted for anything of value. Daryl had scoped through a couple and found the homes a barren wasteland; the Saviours took family photos for dart boards, drank straight through the alcohol, burned rag dolls in their fire pits, and made everything into nothing. "He's got the numbers. They're gonna turn back around—"
He saw movement and raised the gun quick like lightning, barely freezing on the trigger before he drove his finger hard against it. Beth raised her hands plainly, Rick pushing her back. "Hi," she called, tentative. "Fancy seeing everybody here."
Glenn's neck turned blotchy red with unfamiliar anger. "What the hell?"
Rick looked tired. He looked so distant from the man who wandered around the campsite back in Alexandria with his optimism and plans. Their mission was sickeningly legions from the simplicity of scooping up a bag of guns left on a street. Every life was teetering on the balance. "She gave me the slip," Rick said. "I've been trying to catch up to her."
"And you did," Beth snarked back, shoving her hands back in her pockets. "I just caught up to them first."
He lowered the gun. "That sister of yours is gonna skin you alive and turn you into a nice looking jacket when she gets hold of you," Daryl warned her. "Don't come crying to me about that."
"Better to ask for forgiveness," she quoted primly. "Where's Ivy?"
"You need to get back."
They were a solid two week stretch at least if one opted to not break for ridiculous things like eating or sleeping. Simon's people got slowed down with the walkers. They couldn't afford risks like collapsing from dehydration or hunger, couldn't chance getting shredded like the poor fool from the other day.
And Daryl couldn't have Beth standing in the crossfire. She looked young; young like Ivy. His heartstrings were knotted up around her by default and he couldn't take that bit of loss. There were only so many pieces left that he could give before his chest hollowed out and ran dry.
He was never like Merle before the world ended. His brother had a reputation for fighting anything with a pulse. Daryl had been quieter, a finishing blow to whatever his brother provoked and battered. Rage was something he knew as a silent companion, the temper he had as an echo to the men in his family. Now? He just wanted to break bones and spill blood, take back a bit of justice for his losses and failures. Bloodlust was a natural element that was part of him, just as much as Ivy was part his, Glenn was part his.
"Maggie's got a guard on at the roads. We' ve been coming through and taking up spots around where you've been going. If they've come this way, they'll have to come back. People are working on it," Rick said, uneasy. "Every bit of scrap material has gone into it."
It was a long stretch to get back. Simon would have the get his people moving fast to journey back through the hills and along the creeks. Daryl could picture every part of that distance in his own mind. "Best get that one back," Daryl said, unpleasant. "They're grouping up over that ridge."
Lights dotted the hills at night. Campfires, movement. Life. He watched it all through the scope of his gun.
"Oh, I'm not going."
"Like hell you ain't," he sneered, ruthless. "Get your feet moving the way you came."
The tone of his voice made her tilt her head slightly, giving him a knowing glance. "I'm not asking for permission."
"Yeah, only forgiveness, right? Fuck that."
Guilt twisted up inside him but it was dwarfed by his irritation that she seemed almost bemused by his temper. Beth barely blinked at it. He could snap and rage all he wanted but the girl seemed to tolerate it passively, waiting him out from her side of the line between them.
Damn it, Daryl thought.
"I haven't seen you two in days," Rick said. "We can't be spreading ourselves out anymore. Better to face it together as a group."
A group down on their knees. The worst night of Daryl's life was the last night they were all together. They each came out of that clearing different, marked by Negan. The man was dead and nothing but a name but he still haunted them; the wind a whistle as it cut through the trees. "I'm killing Simon," Daryl informed Rick sharp, just to see if his face would flinch. "I'm gonna cut his tongue out and finish the deal."
Ivy wasn't coming back until it was all done. Daryl was going to finish it, kill whatever had to be killed to make sure there wasn't a second reason to go running off.
"Then we'll do that together," Rick said blithely, like they were going to pick flowers or something ridiculous.
.
There was a sweep of Saviours coming down the asphalt. At first Glenn and Daryl had tampered where they could; killing loners and meddling with the engines of their cars but ultimately withdrew to act as ghosts. But seeing them moving around made his skin itched to do something active beyond shrinking down into a ditch of soft mud and brush, one hand tight on Beth like she might bolt at first chance.
Which, he thought, was a wise choice. Ivy came through the trees when the two cars stopped. She was wearing an adult man's jacket and it hung off her shoulders like a heavy thing, face pale and mottled with bruises as she walked alongside a few Saviours. Beth stiffened up and Daryl saw the glitter of metal after, a chain connecting his daughter's wrist to Dwight.
Fury settled right down into his bones. He remembered Dwight's cruelty. He remembered Ivy's face as she told him the story of being handcuffed to a walker and sent to walk for two days and nights straight amongst the herd.
"—nothing up ahead, we checked."
"Already found that bullet supply. Simon had good intel on that."
Ivy's eyes looked knifelike as she glared at the feet of the people around her. Whatever she said was soft enough his own ears failed to pick up on it. But Dwight's crooked mouth turned sideways and he jerked lightly on the chain connecting them. "—to hell."
"Sorry, sweetheart. Think we've already gotten to that particular location."
"Fucked up idea, but honestly? Could be a quick way to settle."
"Why bring the dead freaks, though?"
"Negan should've killed everyone of them when he had the chance. We could've had them hanging from the fence back home without any of this."
Dwight rolled his eyes. "Would've, could've, should've. Please. We're doing what we can now to fix the future. Can't drive our thumbs up our asses thinking about old history."
One of the Saviours bent forward. "What about you, sweetheart? You still upset about that night? Did you shed a few tears?"
Ivy said nothing but Dwight pulled back, yanking on their shared chain to force her to follow. "Get fucked, dick head. Just bring the bullets to Simon and one of the ladies can doctor them up."
Ivy twisted around and gazed at the man with a blank expression. Her pale face revealed nothing but he knew her hand was curling into a fist; fire finding a home inside her chest.
Slowly the people leave the road. They take off into groups, vanishing on their individual missions. Rick peeled himself up and cautiously scampered up to the road, swivelling around to take the sight in. The sun was yellow above; a stain in the blue. The light cut through the branches, dappling the ground. "Who do we follow?"
Daryl can't get to Ivy. Not yet. Not when she's anchored to someone else. "Them," he said, pointing in the opposite direction. "Figure out where they're looking for those bullets."
But Beth is sitting back, gazing up at Rick from where he stood. "What are they doing to the bullets?"
"What?"
"They're doing something, right? He just said that they're bringing them in for people to 'doctor up'."
Daryl frowned. "A bullet's a bullet. Tampering only really works if we're the ones shooting with 'em." But home was so well stocked with bullets. Rosita had transformed their stocks into oversupply, leaving tiny supplies everywhere in case they ever had to run. "Just more of their shit."
.
Darkness was settling over the hills. They had a temporary camp in the yard of an old house where the overgrowth was dense enough to camouflage their movements but Daryl had been forced to guide them around a different path to avoid detection when he saw a piece of paper fluttering from a tree.
Glenn caught him before he could bolt for it. "Hey, wait."
Daryl looked back and saw caution painted into his face, the nervous flicker of his eyes towards the shattered windows of the nearby houses. "What?"
"That's a bit obvious, isn't it?" Glenn asked him quietly, eyeing where the paper was stuck. Someone had jammed it in place with a knife. It was pink, Daryl realized. Bright pink hilt, clearly painted.
It looked a bit like Ivy's old knife. Long lost and forever gone to Terminus, but that knife was the one thing he knew to his core. She had left that switchblade lodged into a map for him to find both it and her at the end of the journey and she never got a chance to see it again. Ivy cycled her way through different knives but they all ended up victims of loss; taken when she was held hostage, striped away so she had nothing left but her own hands for weaponry.
Beth slipped from his side and started moving, evading the three men as they tried to haul her back. "Jesus," Daryl hissed at her through clenched teeth. They used to put young kids on leashes back before the fall. It had looked stupid but he suddenly grasped the logic behind it.
To her credit she pried the knife and paper free and ducked around the tree, weaving her way back around with the coverage it provided her from anything watching. Glenn got his hand on her and dragged her deeper, trekking their way out of sight. "—something happens to you out here? I'm done. I'm super dead. I need you to stay alive because I'm not telling your sister that I'm the one who let you go off."
"Well, tell your wife that I know what I'm doing," Beth shot back, waving the paper. "You all were doing nothing. I did something. And, you might notice that no one died?"
Daryl yanked the items away. The knife was coated in paint that was tacky to the touch. The paper turned out to be a map with a line drawn around one roadway so sharp it punctured through the paper in several spots. 'Please, dad.'
The words were written in pencil. They were a hasty scrawl. Daryl didn't know if he ever saw Ivy's writing before. Something red was dotted around the paper and he realized it was blood, fresh enough it hadn't turned dark yet. Daryl's fingers flew over the terrain rendered down as mere outlines. Ivy needed him, he knew, and that was enough to have him turning and running, sprinting wild through the streets and woods, barely pausing and barely breathing, feet chewing up distance as the others surged after him.
"Daryl!" Glenn hissed, barely heard as Daryl plunged straight along the path Ivy drew for him.
She needed him. She needed him and he had been late before, late when Phillip had her, late when Terminus got her, late when he should have been where she needed him.
No more.
A dark cave loomed overhead and it was where the journey ended. Daryl ran straight into the welcoming darkness and the world vanished. Rough stone turned into nothing and he was falling; a sharp plummet that his stomach lurching, shouting but it was too late, hitting the ground just in time to take the impact of Glenn on top of him, two men rolling to the side as Rick and Beth tumbled alongside.
"Shit," Glenn cursed, almost drowned out by the sound of the undead rasping from beyond their sight. "This wasn't ideal."
"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" Simon's voice boomed from overhead. It echoed off of the stones and shadows, louder than life itself. "I did not think that shit would work. But hell, what is a father if not half a heart?"
Light burst overhead. Daryl craned his head back and saw the outline of Simon behind the torch.
"I'm gonna give credit where credit is due. Your daughter? A total liar. But she's crafty. And she was great to work with. Just a shame we can't keep liars with us in the new world," Simon's teeth smiled. "Sorry if that was a little unfair. But hey, I've had kids before. I know what it's like. They cry and you just go running, right?"
The pink knife was nothing. Ivy wasn't needing his help but she would, soon.
"Hey, Rick. It's been a while, right?"
Rick said nothing. He had Beth half behind him so she was in between the men for better coverage and kept silent.
Simon whistled, that familiar call of Negan bursting through the cave. "You wouldn't believe how far these mines go. You see this little cave? It's nothing. The whole stretch takes us.... Just fourteen miles away from your precious Alexandria. And I'm betting it'll be a bit like dominos. Knock one of y'all over, the next should fall pretty easy. Hilltop, The Kingdom. Even that shitty little fishing community. You know I'm the one who had those men killed, right? I'd love to finish that particular census."
The rasping sounded louder. Undead hunger so unfinished that it filled the air, the space itself. "I'm gonna let you guys sit tight for a minute. I've got some unfinished work with that Wraith before we start ourselves a little death match. But I'll come back," Simon grinned wider. "I'm making myself a nice little mask from what I'll skin off her when she's still alive. Might even get enough for a jacket, but I'm thinking the odds on that aren't great. She's a little thing, isn't she? Not much skin on her bones."
Daryl tried to shoot but the gun was broken from the fall. He swore and felt his heart pounding in his chest, felt the tallying of his failures. New ones formed on that list.
Simon tossed the bundle of light down to their feet. It burned, shuddering and flickering, shadows scattered around it. The world vanished beyond it, his world vanished beyond what he could get to.