Daryl Dixon (S4)

Daryl hadn’t sat down properly in almost two days.

The second they got back through the gates with the medicine, he’d shoved the bags at Hershel and gone straight for the quarantine block. His clothes were still stiff with dried blood and road dirt. There was a cut on his forearm he hadn’t bothered wrapping. None of it mattered.

You were still burning up.

He stopped just inside the cell doorway, chest rising and falling hard, and watched Hershel and Caleb work. IV, cool cloths, the new meds they’d nearly died for. Bob’s voice was somewhere behind him, shaky, still talking about what happened on the road. Daryl didn’t turn around.

He only had eyes for you.

You looked smaller than you should. Sweat-dark hair stuck to your forehead and neck. Cheeks too flushed. Breathing too fast. The same look Karen and David had worn right before they-

Daryl’s jaw flexed so hard it clicked.

He stepped closer, boots quiet on the concrete, and lowered himself onto the chair someone had dragged next to the bed. Close enough that his knee bumped the frame. He pulled off the dirty fingerless gloves one after the other, dropped them on the floor, then dragged a hand down his face. The smell of gunpowder and sweat clung to him.

Hershel murmured something about the meds needing time. Daryl gave a single tight nod but didn’t look away from you.

His voice, when it finally came, was rough from disuse and road dust.

"I’m here."

Two words. Like he needed to say them out loud to make them true.

He reached out, hesitated an inch from your wrist, then let his fingers rest lightly against your pulse point. Counting. Making sure. His thumb moved once in a tiny, unconscious stroke across your skin.

"You ain’t doin’ that to me ever again," he muttered, so low it was almost just for himself. "Scarin’ the shit outta me like that."

Outside the cell the prison felt too quiet. Too many people sick. Too many graves already dug. Daryl kept his eyes on your face, memorizing the rise and fall of your chest like it was the only thing keeping him tethered.

He didn’t let go of your wrist.

Sunlight cut across the cell in a warm gold stripe, catching the dust motes that floated lazy in the air.

Daryl sat on the edge of the mattress you’ve been sharing for months, back against the wall, one leg bent. You were propped against his side, still too thin, still moving like everything hurt, but the fever was gone. Your head rested against his shoulder. His arm was around you without either of you really thinking about it anymore.

He’d barely left the cell since the worst of it passed. People brought food. He made you eat it. He helped you to the bathroom when your legs wouldn’t hold. At night he slept sitting up more often than not, like he was still on watch.

Right now the prison was quiet in that heavy afternoon way. Somewhere far off a walker groaned against the outer fence. Neither of you flinched.

Daryl’s fingers moved slowly through your hair, rough and careful at the same time. He smelled like soap for once. Someone had forced him to wash the blood and road off yesterday. His undershirt was soft from too many washes and tou could feel the steady thump of his heart under your cheek.

He was still carrying it.

The fear hadn’t left his body yet. It lived in the way he kept checking your temperature with the back of his hand when he thought you weren’t paying attention. In the way his arm tightened if you shifted too far away. In the silence that settled over him whenever someone mentioned the dead.

Carol’s name had been moving through the cell block in careful, angry whispers for days.

Daryl had gone quiet every time.

You felt it in the way his chest stopped rising for a second whenever someone said it in the hallway. You felt it in the tension that never quite left his shoulders.

After a long while, when the sunlight had moved further across the floor, you tilted your head a little so you could see part of his face. He already knew what was coming. His throat worked.

You ended up asking him about Carol.

Daryl’s hand stilled in your hair.

For a few seconds the only sound was the distant fence and your shared breathing. His jaw flexed. He stared at the opposite wall like it had answers.

"…She did what she thought she had to," he said finally, voice low and rough. "Karen. David. Burned ‘em before it could take more of us."

A long pause.

"Rick sent her away for it."

His fingers started moving again, slower now, like the motion was the only thing keeping him steady. When he spoke next the words came quieter, almost reluctant, the way they always did when he was cutting himself open.

"I ain’t sayin’ it was right. But I keep thinkin’…"

He swallowed.

"Coulda been you in that cell. And I don’t know what the hell I woulda done if she’d… if it’d been you."

His arm tightened around you, pulling you a fraction closer against his side. He dropped his head, forehead resting lightly against your hair, and let out a breath that shook more than he wanted it to.

"I can’t lose you," he muttered. Barely audible. "I don’t know how to do this without you no more."

Sunlight kept pouring through the bars. Daryl kept holding on.