my tears ricochet

Chapter Eleven

Being soft didn't come easy to Daryl, but he managed little by little. When Ivy woke up he made her sit by the fire and down a bowl of canned soup, and afterwards they split a stack of soda crackers with strawberry jam to dip in. 

He tries not to think about Merle and what he would say if he were here. Merle hadn't loved children much, but he'd always managed Daryl with a softer touch. Even when he was the one pushing him to donate blood for some easy cash and a box of donuts to split, or doing stupid things for stupid money. 

Merle would probably be rambling on, half inappropriate and half barely appropriate to be heard, and he had a feeling Ivy would be uncomfortable between the presence and the language. But, his brother might take note of evidence of abuse, the way Ivy skirted around the other men. He had never been stupid and Daryl liked to think that there would have been a place for his brother in this strange little family. 

"I want to stash some emergency supplies by the highway, if we gotta take off in a hurry." He said, folding the empty plastic sleeve from the crackers and stashing it away. "Things look tense back at the house."

"You gonna be the one to kill him?" Ivy asked, looking up. She had seen him at his worst, Randal's face gummy and swollen from his punches. Daryl hadn't been kind in his rage and he didn't like that she had that image in her head. The girl had enough issues separating him from anyone else in his past without knowing what he looked like taking a swing. 

But, Daryl wasn't wrong to do that. Randal had been the one stringing some story about coming up on a father and his two daughters at night, and what he had watched his group take part in. The boy was young enough that maybe he couldn't prevent the sin from happening, but he chose to follow. He had that little story rolling around his skull and he decided that those men were better to stick close with. 

He wouldn't want Ivy sitting next to Randal at a campfire and he wouldn't want to discover what other peculiar natures the boy had hidden beneath his skin. 

"That kid is sick," he told her briskly. "Got hung up with the wrong people and you're not going to be around that."

She didn't seem to like the commanding tone but Ivy didn't bristle this time. Daryl considered that progress on the parenting front. She could spit and curse to her heart's content as long as she didn't direct that at him and stayed put when he told her. Basic little steps. Maybe he could write the parenting guide for little girls found in the woods at the end of the world. "He was already hurt before you started in on him."

Daryl shook his head. "If he really knows nothing, he can walk away from this. I never touched his legs and Hershel fixed up what he could. There's a chance for him, if Randal's clean. But those people he was with? You don't want to get caught up beside them on a dark night."

If he closed his eyes, he could picture it. A fire burning, the two of them leaning close to the warmth and light. In another world, they'd be camping on his trapping trips in the woods. He would have shown her the basics, let her play with the craft, and he would have done the dirty work while she kept busy with a book or something. In this world, riddled with pockets of hell, someone would have a gun levelled at his head while someone else took Ivy and left her broken. Daryl forced his eyes open and looked at her clean face, the wild curls she had gathered back with an elastic. 

She seemed to understand what he was saying. Her eyes went dark and she looked away, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. Ivy had pulled on half her clothes after she'd woken up, but she hadn't offered back the shirt. Merle always had girls stealing his clothes and he never minded, and Daryl wondered if it was a bit of security for her. He didn't mind her keeping it for longer as long as she threw on a sweater at some point. 

"Your dad," he started, faltering. He hadn't earned the key to this particular lock yet, but he couldn't bite back the question. "What all did he do?"

He had a fist, Daryl knew. Ivy had confirmed it down at the barn, and he could see a nasty scar on her arm just above her elbow. Normally she wore long sleeves and had it hidden, but the dark pink glared out at him. 

Ivy refused to look at him at first but Daryl was persistent, tapping her chin up with his finger to bring her gaze back to him. "Just stuff," she said weakly, the lie brittle between them. When he didn't move his hand she relented, frowning. "He'd hit my mom first until she ran away, and then it was just me. My dad liked using a belt, but really anything he could grab in the moment was fine."

Her hands kept worrying at the hem of the shirt and he noted for the first time how tactile she was, grabbing onto things and playing with them, especially when she was stressed. Daryl reached down and took her hands in his, squeezing lightly. Ivy's face turned red and she looked at their hands together and the words began spilling out like a confession. "Sometimes we had food and sometimes I could have some if I was good. If he was drunk he'd put his cigarettes to my shoulder like it was a game to make me cry. At night, if he was still drunk he'd try and come in when I was sleeping," Ivy broke off, the words drying up at once. Daryl didn't make her speak anymore because he knew what she couldn't say. 

"So, your mom gave you her name. To make sure you weren't all his."

Ivy nodded, forcing her hands to keep still. Daryl squeezed once again, tugging her close. It was instinctive, when someone was hurting to pull them near, and when she allowed the movement he slid his arm around her to keep the wind off her some. 

If Lori could see them both she would be ripe with smugness. 

"New world, new order. You don't need that name of his." Daryl told her, trying to keep that anger from sparking. Yelling wouldn't do much good in this moment and he'd save the rage for when he needed to call on it. 

"I've always been an Ivy Lane," she said quietly, her voice a little wet sounding. "Don't think I'd be much good as any other."

Poem of a girl, band of ivy around his wrist. It was a shame he had known her now and not before when he could have done something for her, to give her some kind of justice. She had confessed to killing to get here and he had assumed walkers only. But maybe her dad had gotten in the way of her and the door and she'd been forced to make that call. 

"I think you're better without the Lane." 

"What, and go by something else? Dixon, maybe?" She joked but it didn't sound like much a joke. Her voice was still soft like it was hoping for something. 

"No one else is getting much use out of it," he told her, trying not to think about Merle somewhere in the world. Was he looking for him? Or was he just gone? "You can have that name if you want it."

"Do you want me to?" 

His heart jumped at the way she said it, like it was an offering. 'Do you want me', she was really saying. Daryl nodded some and held her hands a bit tighter. "I'm not going to hurt you the way he did. I get ugly when I'm mad but I don't beat children. And I'd never," he said trying to make sense of the words. "Do what he did."

Ivy had grown up with food insecurities and known violence firsthand, but it was the truth of the other end of what her father was doing to her that made him chewing on anger. "Things are getting bad at the house," she told him. "Shane's going to keep going until someone pays for it."

"You don't go anywhere near him. I mean it," he warned her. "I know you got in his face after the barn but no more."

Ivy shrugged but he gave her warning look. "Fine. He's a fucking asshole, though."

Should Daryl bother about the language? It wasn't like he could take away her cellphone or ground her to her bedroom for punishment. The rules of parenting had shifted plenty and he'd never had the reason to be clear on them in the first place. If Ivy could carry a gun or knife she might as well curse when the situation called for it. 

He decided that was a moment of picking your battles and let it drop, choosing to hum in agreement. He kicked the fire out while she went for her sweater and together they packed up, separating things to be dropped off in one of the cars by the highway snarl.