Double Crossbow (Daryl Dixon) [The Walking Dead]

↣ Prologue

"This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people."

- John Connolly, The Unquiet

↣ ↢

Restless nights come easy to me. The nights in which your thoughts howl and echo inside your skull, scratching at the bone, willing you to come and play. The nights in which your sanity is a thin thread, and you feel the burn across your palms as you lose your grip. On these not so rare nights, one tends to ask themselves a lot of questions. Primarily to feed the hounds running around in your head, to distract them from the thoughts that are buried deep within the dark crevices. Because, you know, you know those thoughts will kill you.

My thoughts tended to circulate around my future, or lack thereof. I was born destined on the cliché path of another child from a broken home. I realized this at a very young age, so I did everything in my power to combat it. As the years drew on, my noble cause became more intangible. I found myself slipping, slipping deeper into the shattered pieces of myself.

I would always try and pick up the pieces, put the puzzle back together. It never was the same, though. I could always feel the piece that wasn't quite right. I came to the conclusion that things were never the same once they were broken. You could see the little glue line on the plate; you could see the chip on the coffee mug's rim.

Every night my mind would circulate around one question. It somehow always came back to it, no matter what I had originally started off thinking about. The question would haunt me day in and day out. It was a question I feared I'd never find an answer to, or perhaps I feared more that I already had.

Can the broken be fixed?

a/n

I am a part of a book club hosted by @The_Dead_Room, so if you see #TWDbc in the comments, do not fret! It's just how we recognize each other. If this sounds interesting, I encourage you to check out their profile :)