•A DARYL DIXON STORY•
"I need you to listen to me. When we're out there together, if I say run, run. If I tell you to leave me, then damn it, you leave and you don't look back."
"Daryl," she sighed softly, shaking her head.
"No, I mean it," he argue...
'If you came to me with a face I have not seen, with a voice I have never heard, I would still know you. If centuries separated us, I would still feel you. Somewhere between the sand and the stardust, through every collapse and creation, there is a pulse that echoes of you and I." -Lang Leav
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Daryl's anger lived in his heart like a caged animal, striking out in unbridled rage at any opportunity and forced to seal everything else away. His dad and Merle were the same, though their animals fought to break free, more often than not releasing their rage on him. The anger subsided for a brief moment in time, in the weeks spent with Zepp after the fall of the Greene family farm.
Then she left, and the animal was feral again.
As more time passed without her, everything became worse and worse; the happiness he felt in short bursts were crushed by tidal waves of anger. His reunion with Merle was tainted by the Governor's capture, then he lost his brother to the same man who destroyed his family's home in the prison. Saving Beth was his life support in the woods after, forcing his brain and body into pure, instinctual protection mode. Forcing him to not give into his darkest thoughts in order to ensure her safety.
Didn't matter anyway, because when he thought they were safe, she was ripped from him too. He felt himself slip during those days with the Claimers, then slowly regained his sense of code when he reunited with Rick. He thought all was lost when he stepped foot in that Terminus train car, and then everything shattered when he recognized her face in the dark.
Zepp, the face that had appeared in his dreams countless nights on the road, the whisper of laughter in the wind flowing around him as he walked with his group, the tingle in his knuckles since that first night her hand laid against his. She calmed the storm of rage inside him, shone a light on the demons swirling in his mind. She made him softer, lighter, but was also the tether keeping his feet on the ground so he wouldn't float away. She had given him her heart, though he had done nothing good in his life to deserve it.
And for that, he was punished.
He should've listened to the instinct to not take the tracks, but he wanted to make the journey easier on her tired bones. He should've noticed the signs of the Saviors sneaking through the tree line, but his gaze was engulfed in the way the rays of sun cast a glow on her skin.
Denise's death was sudden, but preventable.
It was his fault.
The way Dwight's gaze traveled over Zepp's body, the way the word sweetheart dripped from his thin lips, the way he made sure Daryl caught his eye fall to her when he said they'd take whoever they want.
