my tears ricochet

Chapter Forty One

Daryl had tried rousing her by lightly tapping her pillow with his hand and being careful not to loom over her while she startled awake, one hand flinging out like a shield to guard her face. It had taken minutes for the fear to melt away and to sort out the reality from the nightmare; his voice barely audible with the darkness of her panic.

Once she had gotten herself upright and untangled from the blankets, he had made her look out at the blue sky from beyond the windows and out at the trees until her breathing lost the ragged, brittle quality. "Okay?" He asked hesitantly, trying to look like he wasn't examining her for cracks and breaks.

The trees trembled from the force of the wind pushing branches. Ivy watched the leaves bristle and shake and wished she was out there again, wandering through natural passages, looking for the gaps where the sky shone through. "Yeah," she said, thinking about the day before. Ivy had been okay then. Ivy might have a chance at being okay again.

Her fingers fidgeted with the shoelace knotted around her wrist. "Are you leaving?" She asked, swallowing her own bitterness that he could just leave out the gate. 'Can't trust you out there,' he had told her plainly.

"Soon. Waitin' on some people getting their stuff together still," Daryl muttered, which she translated for that he had held everyone up coming up here to say goodbye first. "Anything you want me to keep an eye out for?"

Ivy shrugged, looking at their reflections in the window. They were barely visible in the view of barbed wire and forest and sky. But he was right beside her and she focused on that, the height difference between their shoulders, the way he always showed up. "Nothing really," she said, swallowing back a demand to take her with him.

Rejection would just burn her more.

They left the tower together and Ivy had a strange feeling as she looked out at the remains of the bonfire; ashes where a fire once burned, empty seats and benches pushed into the memory of a circle. Rick was hunched over as he checked the trellis Oscar had built, vines climbing steadily every day. He waved as they passed through, content in his work.

The gardens came from Rick's hand, but Ivy could see Hershel's touch everywhere. He had directed Glenn on where to find the seeds and supplies, dictating a growing schedule almost nightly for Rick to memorize. Oscar's garden boxes around the standing structure in the courtyard let the man do some of the planting himself where he wouldn't be limited from his inability to knee properly.

The prosthetic gave Hershel back some freedoms but parts were still lost. Sometimes he would sit white faced with his hands clenched, fending off waves of phantom pain.

Glenn came running up from the little kitchen where he had been talking to Carol. "Hey, Maggie's staying back today."

Daryl grunted, squeezing Ivy's shoulder before turning away and heading the line of cars parked. "Beth wanted me to ask you for some more music if you find any," she told him, frowning when he made a face. Glenn hadn't taken to ABBA the way Maggie had. Ivy had held back from asking Daryl because she knew he would make a point to bring back Motorhead and Slayer. "Get something good and goodbye Dancing Queen."

"Oh, I'll find something if that's the case."

The edges of her nightmare were still lingering in her mind like spiderwebs. Glenn was smiling at her but she remembered his face in the other room, bruised and bloody. "Look after him?"

Glenn laughed and tugged lightly on her hair. "When we get back, I'll show you how to hot wire a car. That's a time honoured art, my friend."

Ivy watched everyone leave before following Carol and Oscar to a table. They kept quiet, content to their own private thoughts. She forced down half a plate of a stir fry made up of tomatoes, carrot, and mushrooms before abandoning it.