my tears ricochet

Chapter Thirty Four

The entire time Daryl was running he was lost in the thought that he was going to be late.

He was on foot. Merle had the head start and what he assumed was a car to his advantage. His mind played the cruel image on repeat of Ivy on her knees with a bag over her head, Ivy screaming for him to help. In his memory she was holding onto him, fresh from the carnage of the farm. 'You found me. I figured you would', her voice whispered in the haze of it.

It would be a betrayal to fail her now. 'I was always coming for you; then I'll keep coming for you; I'm not losing you again.'

His chest ached from anxiety. Running meant that he had to keep breathing and Daryl was fending off the desire to hyperventilate, feeling hope slide from his fingertips. He couldn't keep his mother or his brother, and now he was going to lose his daughter because he hadn't been watching.

It was a dull echo of what he had felt on the cat walk next to Rick. That terror had consumed his so easily, breaking him down into a desperate shape of a man. He would have shot Rick. He would have shot Ivy as a last resort to save her from worse, and now she was heading there anyways, once again vanishing the minute his back had turned.

They had gone into the yard to lay down traps on Michonne's suggestion and Ivy had been at the fence, banging a spoon against a metal pot to help lure the walkers away. She had been next to Maggie and Carl. He remembered her beside the older girl when they walked by, drifting back towards the cell block. If Daryl knew Ivy, she would have sought out Beth for company somewhere quiet and away from the noise.

Something had just gotten between her and her intentions.

'I already told you, you can't go out there again. Don't make me find you a second time.'

She had promised and Daryl had been temporarily soothed by it. He had dropped his guard and once again his brother had spirited Ivy away. The last time, her knife had been left on the sidewalk for Michonne to find. This time; a token on his mattress to keep in place of a girl.

Run faster, he thought.

The season was shifting quickly, he realized. Life was beginning to take root in shapes of little white flowers in the ditches, blooming amongst old rot and snow melt. The roads were covered in dead leaves but overhead he saw the touches of green. Spring was shifting out of winter and soon it would be summer.

They would need the yard again. They would need to find a way to mend what was broken and take back the land they had fought for. They would need to break the ground and force it to yield crops. They would need to work with the soil and the sky and the sun to grow instead of kill.

They would need to rely on something other than bullets and running.

A lone walker staggered across the pavement and he saw the dry, straw like hair matted to it's skull by old gore, sun bleached fabric turning to ragged ends. A silver flash of a sword swept down and severed the skull from the body, revealing Michonne.

The corpse hit the ground and he saw Michonne shift positions, stabbing the blade down once more to silence relentless hunger. "Hey!" He shouted, seeing Ivy come out from behind.

Michonne's wrist was bloody from where the restraint had dug into the skin. She regarded him warily, pulling the sword out of the silent skull. She didn't sheath it but kept it hand, measuring the space between him and her with coolness.

Ivy came up to him and he grabbed her wrist just to measure her pulse himself, to ground himself in the reassurance that her heart was still beating, she was standing on her own two feet. There was a dark purple bruise at her temple, something that hadn't been there earlier that day.