Future Ghosts • TWD

120. Daryl Always Does What He Has to Do.

Rosie lay in her sleeping bag in the early morning, waiting for Daryl to wake up. It had been one of those nights where she almost couldn't sleep at all, having been woken up by her dreams every time she managed to drift off. Halfway through the night, she had even dragged her sleeping bag over right next to Daryl's to see if being closer to him- safer- would help. It did for a little while, but she woke up again after about an hour and a half. The sleep had been on and off all night, and now Rosie would guess that it was maybe five in the morning, considering the fact that the sun was just barely starting to rise.

She was tracing the tattoo on the back of his hand with her pointer finger, breathing in and out as she recovered from another nightmare. It was a stick-and-poke tattoo that one of the women from Oceanside had given him. A skull on the back of his right hand. Rosie wanted a tattoo, too, but Daryl said not until she was older. When she asked why, he said that it was because it would be there forever and ever. So it's real important, then? Rosie had asked. Daryl said that, yes, it was important for some people, but for other people, when they got old enough, they could decide that they didn't really care what tattoos they got and they put tattoos that didn't really mean much, just for fun. But she wasn't allowed to decide whether she wanted real important tattoos or just for fun tattoos until she was older.

When Rosie asked if Daryl got real important tattoos or just for fun tattoos, he said that he got both, so apparently that was an option, too. He said that the skull was a just for fun tattoo, but the rose, which he had the lady put on his chest, was a real important tattoo. Rosie got to draw that one- the rose- with a marker before the lady put it on with real tattoo ink. That was why she was there to ask all these questions in the first place. Rosie told the lady and Daryl that someday she was going to get a dinosaur tattoo.

As Rosie was tracing the skull tattoo, she was thinking about the lady, and she was thinking about which dinosaur she was going to get tattooed on her. It was a hard decision. She wasn't sure if she could choose, so she thought she might just get every dinosaur she could think of, but really small. But that would probably hurt and take up a lot of time and ink that they didn't have. So she would have to choose. Now she understood why she had to wait until she was older for these decisions. They were hard ones.

Daryl's hand twitched and Rosie retracted hers, hoping she hadn't woken him up. Part of her wished he would wake up, but she knew that was selfish. She was just getting very bored, but she was too cold to get out of her sleeping bag and get her book from her backpack. Everyone was still asleep- or at least everyone that Rosie had any interest in talking to.

After a moment, Daryl's hand moved to his eyes and he pressed down onto them with his pointer finger and thumb. Rosie had woken him up. She watched him, waiting to see if he'd just fall back asleep or if he'd be awake for the day. He squeezed his eyes for just one more second before dropping his hand back to the ground and glancing over at Rosie.

"What're you doin' up?" he murmured upon seeing her blue eyes open wide.

Rosie shrugged. "Can't sleep," she said. Daryl hummed with a I'm sorry type of tone to it. He inspected her face for just a moment, then his eyebrows furrowed. He reached forward and ran his thumb in a line over the bridge of Rosie's nose to the middle of the space below Rosie's left eye. "Hm?" she asked.

"Gotta bruise," he said, clearly a bit less at ease than he was before. He was probably thinking about Justin again. That always made him mad.

"It bad?" Rosie asked, frowning slightly.

"Nah. It's light," Daryl responded. Rosie gave a slight nod, then sighed, and Daryl brought his hand back down to the floor. He frowned, too. "Havin' nightmares again?" he asked. Rosie nodded, even though she didn't really want to talk about having nightmares. Everyone had nightmares sometimes; she just had them a bit more often than most people. "Too early to be up. C'mere," Daryl said, stretching his right arm out to Rosie. Rosie scooted herself closer to him, tucking herself between his arm and his abdomen. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and Rosie laid her head against his chest. She felt a lot safer there. Even more safe than she did just being by his side. She listened to the sound of his heartbeat, focusing on the bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum and letting it lull her back to sleep, even if it was just for a little while.