𝙘𝙧𝙮 𝙗𝙖𝙗𝙮¹ ━ 𝙩𝙬𝙙

xii.

╔═══*.·:·.★ ✦ ★･:･:*═══╗

Paola sat in her cell, back to the wall with her legs kicked up on the bed. The group were in the midst of an argument following the ambush of the Governor and the return of Daryl and Merle Dixon.

She watched Daryl with blank eyes as he paced past her doorway on the top floor. Since his arrival, the man had yet to greet the girl he left behind by the car, maybe he was using the Governor incident to hide from a confrontation, or he maybe he simply didn't know how to apologise.

"Hey, kid." He was met with silence, "can we talk?"

She nods, her hands motioning out to the chair next to the bunk, "talk."

Daryl grunts as he sits down on the cool metal. His crossbow clatters on the floor and he rests forward on his knees, not knowing how to begin. Paola was as quiet as he was, she was watching to see his next move.

"It weren't right." He says, running a hand over his mouth scratching the stubble on his chin, "the way I left. Should've never of said what I did." Though he never uttered the word sorry, it was probably the most you would get out a Dixon and the fact that he was even though proved to the group he was more than Merle could ever be.

"You said Merle was your blood, your family. But my blood's here, Daryl." Paola pauses, her voice monotone and her breathing shaky as her words stumble out of her mouth, "I miss my mom and dad, but I would leave Glenn, or Maggie... and I would never leave you." Wiping her eyes quickly, she hops up from the bunk, walking towards the door without glancing at him on the chair.

Daryl squeezes his eyes shut for a second. The mention of her parents sent a bitterness through him, because while Sui would always hold a place in his heart, a man that helped him come to terms with who he was, it didn't take a blind man to realise that Sui and Alina Lakatos were terrible parents who didn't deserve their little girl. Because despite everything they did to her and everything they didn't do, she was too young to understand they didn't love her the way she wanted them to.

The hand that grabbed her arm was gentle, his grip on her was weak so that if she wanted to she could break free and stamp on his heart on the way out, but instead she freezes. Daryl was never one for hugs and he wasn't much with words so the silence drowned them, Paola frowned staring straight throw Daryl's eyes that held so much remorse.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" She asks in a whisper. A quiet pleading whisper to shatter any walls that Daryl Dixon had built up strong.

Releasing her arm, Daryl looks over her head, taking a deep breath as he imagined Merle's voice in his head, calling him names for bothering about what a little girl thought of him. Only she wasn't a little girl, she was his family. "I shouldn't have left." He puts it simply, "and I never will again." Paola turns to the door with a small hum. "We okay, little Rhee?"

"We're okay." She says softly, her smile was only small, so much so that Daryl couldn't see it, as he was still avoiding looking directly at her. Leaving Daryl in the Greene-Rhee bunk, Paola's fingers run down the railing as she steps down the stairs.

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Taking watch had been rather uneventful, that was until Andrea came stumbling through the crowd of walkers, holding her decoy on some sort of leash and begging for Rick Grimes to let her through the gate.