InsaneJournal

Who: Daryl and Carol
What: After this less than stellar exchange, Daryl has some making up to do.
When: Tuesday, May 28. Evening.
Where: Daryl & Carol's quarters, the gardens, and who knows where else!
Rating/Warnings: Daryl makes everything R with that mouth of his.
Status: COMPLETE/Closed.

Daryl knew that he should have spent his evening working. Anakin or Tifa could have easily used his help despite neither of them actually keeping him on any sort of schedule or payroll. He could have just found one of the menial jobs that he had picked up around this fucked up place and dived into it headfirst, giving him no time to think about all of the shit going on. He'd passed the information onto Rick. He knew what he had to do. Now, Daryl had nothing else left to focus on. He could just go back to the same isolated existence he had come to know. It was the perfect chance to fade back to what he had grown comfortable with over the years, a habit he had started to break out of as he had become close with each of the group as they shared their space, sorrows, and laughter.

But Daryl wasn't the same man that had moved his camp away from the group as far as possible as he tried to find a means of escape from the fucked up farm. He wasn't the same man that was two seconds from putting an arrow through T-Dog's skull for dropping the key to his brother's handcuffs. He was someone else entirely now, a better man most would say, and this new identity made it impossible for him not to find this isolation to be as suffocating as any jail cell.

In his effort to bring the group closer together, he'd managed to tear them further apart. Great fucking job, Dixon.

Usually, he’d not make an effort. He’d stomp up into whatever damn corner he could find and wait it out, wait for all of the shit to blow over, and then he’d finally reenter the little circle when it looked like everybody was less likely to go on an emotional tirade with him arrive. He’d used this tactic on Lori more than once over the winter, and though he did feel an ache of regret for how little they got along during all of that time now that everything was said and done, the tactic had worked well enough then. It was highly tempting to just follow through with it now. But the world wasn’t ending here, and he’d already realized that without walkers around every damn second to take your mind off of all the shit around you, all you really had left to do was dwell.

Back home, he’d had at least have a hunt to follow through with, a run to go on, a few walkers to kill to ignore the tension between him and Glenn, and him and Carol. Here, all he had was time. Time and his thoughts, and it was slowly starting to chip away at his sanity. If Carol kept ignoring him and only barely acknowledging his presence like she was, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. Glenn – there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about him. He deserved all of the backlash that he got from that situation. His brother, his family, his sins. That was how he’d been raised, and it was how every damn person in his county had treated him. But with Carol—

He’d really fucked it up.

Daryl didn’t know what he was going to do, but he just knew that he had to do something. He marched through the hallways of the castle, having just come in from the outdoors, and headed straight to his new set of quarters that he shared with Carol. That had only been making things worse, making it harder for him to ignore her presence. Sure, Carol was the type of person that understood him to the core. She knew that he wouldn’t always be able to provide her with lengthy conversations about all of the things that must have been in her far more educated mind, but she had never seemed to expect that from him. That had always left their silences to be comfortable and warm; he never tense around her, like he was expected to say something to fill in the gaps of quiet. The silence between them spoke volumes.

And now it was speaking about nothing but pain, hurt, anger, and the unsettled awkwardness. It was louder than any words, and Daryl couldn’t take it anymore.

He threw open the door to their quarters and froze in the doorway when he saw Carol and Lil’ D seated at the sofa. His younger self looked up curiously and just barely contained an eye roll when he saw who it was. Daryl tried to push aside his own annoyance, though that didn’t stop his words from coming out clipped. “Get. Go to Rick’s. I need to borrow Carol.”

“He ain’t there,” Lil’ D pointed out.

“You gotta key, now get,” Daryl snapped.

Lil’ D looked like he wanted to argue, but something about the look on his face made him keep his mouth shut. He shoved the homework he had out (and was mostly ignoring) into his bag before moving to storm out of the quarters, not even looking to Carol to see if she agreed. Daryl watched him go, watching as he stormed off down the hall to Rick’s room.

“And ya better stay there!” he added.

“You’re a dick,” Lil’ D snapped as he got the room open and headed in.

Daryl just rolled his eyes as he looked back into the room where Carol was waiting. He shifted his weight uncertainly from one foot to the other, his hand on the doorknob as he kept the door open, and his back against the doorframe. He cleared his throat gruffly. “So, ya comin’ or what?”