my tears ricochet

Chapter Sixty Eight

"This is the worst part about having kids," Abraham said sagely, lighting one cigarette and passing it over. "My one kid had to have her tonsils taken out when she was seven. For her, that was one big nap and getting to wake up to a week's worth of ice cream."

Despite the lightness to the man's voice, Daryl could hear the old grief packed tight to the details. A daughter, a dead daughter. She might have been seven once but she never got to grow up fully.

Ivy could die, he thought to himself. How much did Pete and Bob really know? What kind of complications came from a surgery in a converted bedroom? When did medicine expire? What if Ivy woke up in the middle of the process and panicked at the sight of two men standing over her, cutting her to save her life?

They're sitting on the steps of a porch across the street together and the cigarette Abraham hands over is the only thing keeping Daryl from storming over. He exhaled sharp and blew smoke away from the other man. "Wasn't thinking this would happen."

An appendicitis at the end of the world. Daryl hadn't had time to figure out the warning signs of a sick kid. Whatever had been happening had just slipped his attention somehow and he couldn't forgive himself for that.

Maggie, Glenn, and Beth came walking down the sidewalk together before they cut across the lawn, joining them on the steps. Glenn had taken the time to scrub some of the blood off of his skin and to change clothes and he looked less like a demon but the agitation was plain across his face. "He gonna be a problem?" Daryl asked, fixing his gaze to the smear of blood on the back of Glenn's neck that he had missed.

"Yeah," Glenn said flatly, kicking his legs out. But Maggie leaned over and ran her fingers through his hair lightly, easing some of the prickled anger burning.

"Well," Abraham sighed. "Just add the names up. Get this part over and we can play Nicky Nine Doors on those freaks."

Pete. Aiden. Nicholas. Ron. The list was growing. And whatever side Rick was on, nothing was going to stop Daryl from taking his fill of justice.

"She'll be fine," Maggie said pointedly, giving Daryl a side look. "Ivy's your kid. Give her five days and she'll be back to running around."

"Remember listening to her strolling through the gates of Terminus? Would've thought it was a grown man giving those shits the ass kicking of their lives. Kept laughing the entire time," Abraham said bluntly. Beth's face was blank but he saw the way her fingers tightened on her knees, an old unseen bruise prodded at. "Just keep on breathing."

Daryl didn't really want the thoughts of Ivy picking death circling through his mind. She had reviewed the odds and chosen self sacrifice so Beth could live just a little longer. But, he remembered those bruised knuckles. Identical to the ones she sported after Woodbury. "She always puts up a good fight," Daryl said so Beth would hear it. "First time I met her she tried to stab me."

Maggie let loose a bit of a laugh, summer bright in the evening. "Never heard that detail before. Way my daddy pictured it, you found her all alone in a Moses basket just waiting to be rescued."

"Rabid little girl," Daryl said mechanically, drawing the string of memories all the way back to the very beginning. "Was looking for Sophia in one of those abandoned houses out back and opened the door. She popped right out with her knife and tried to go for it. Afterwards, when it was settled, Ivy said it was my face that made her want to start stabbing."

They kept forcing Daryl to speak, rattling out old stories with hollowed punchlines just so silence wouldn't consume him. Abraham lit him another cigarette and he cleansed his lungs with the old practise, memory taught from Merle who first swiped a pack from their dad's private stash. Eventually more of their group filtered together; Rosita and Sasha walking up first, followed by Tyreese and Michonne. Carol came by with a basket hanging off of her arm that was full of sandwiches and jars of sweet tea. One of each was forcefully pushed into his hands, temporarily keeping him from chain smoking.