ENDURE.
❝I know how to fight,
and I know how to win. ❞
THE WALKING DEAD.
DARYL DIXON.
BOOK THREE of the LANCASTER SAGA.
[ SEASONS 7 - 9 ]
*****
*I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I simply write to write. Astrid, any additional...
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[ v. push them away ]
october 31st, 2012
➸➸➸
"WE'RE ON EASY STREET. . . And it feels so sweet . . . 'Cause the world is but a treat . . . When you're on easy street!"
Clamping his dirt-caked hands tightly against his throbbing ears, Daryl Dixon shut his eyes against the unbearable song that had been pounding into his skull for what felt like days on end. The shrilly, high-pitched, kidlike tune seemed to seep into his very bones, vibrating through his shivering, weakening body. All the while, starvation clawed hungrily at his hollow insides. Blood crusted his chest and shoulders.
The hunter was dying. That much he knew.
In the dark of his drifting mind, he thought only of one face. His wife's.His beautiful wife's.
He did not know where she was. Or if she were still alive. Without answers, even her memory was fading fast, taunting him more than comforting him. Astrid's touch, the warmth and sensation of her skin against his, was far away now in the void of his numbness. He was unable to feel anything.
Achingly, Daryl dropped a hand from the side of his head. His thumb brushed against his split bottom lip, and he cursed quietly to himself. So many beatings he had already endured since landing in this hellhole of a cell. He knew he would suffer through many more still.
Daryl knew he deserved it. Would keep deserving them. When one of the Saviors had forgotten to lock his cell only days earlier, he had sprung for the chance to break free. He knew, even then, the odds were stacked against him, but the image of Astrid's face fueled his desperate escape. He had to try to see her, had to try to ensure her safety.
His heart had raced as he attempted to navigate the dark corridors of the Savior's compound, adrenaline coursing through his veins. But instead of freedom waiting for him, he stumbled right into Negan and his followers. The details beyond that encounter blurred in his memory now, lost in the haze of constant exhaustion.
All Daryl remembered was the beating from the Saviors that had followed. Punches and kicks had rained down on him, leaving him half-conscious, barely alive. Afterward, when he knew he looked no more than a bloody pulp, he was thrown back into his cell. He had been there ever since.
Daryl was unsure now of how much time had passed from that moment. Minutes had long since turned into hours. Hours into days. A week might have passed already. Maybe even an entire month. The hunter no longer knew in his isolated prison.
Yet, even with no true meaning to time, it still passed slowly somehow. Daryl did not sleep. Ghosts tormented him. Screams rattled in his ears. Begs became trapped in his own throat. Always, he thought of Astrid. Yet sometimes, her memory held echoes of whimpers, of her screaming his name as he was torn away from her. The worst sound though was her own cry of pain. Over and over again, Daryl flinched as memory ripped him back to the moment before the van doors had closed in his face that morning of the lineup, his last true glance at Astrid being one of her clutching her swelling stomach as she was hit back down into the gravel.
