❝last man standing doesn't matter when it's a pile of bodies you're standing on. so you fight but you be good.❞
[twd seasons 1-?]
Ⓒ 2019║asgxrdians i own nothing except lindsey and her plot
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chapter thirty three: yellow jacket creek 5814 words
The last time Daryl Dixon had slept under the stars, he'd held Lin in his arms as he drifted off, combed his fingers through her tangled red hair and marveled at how soft it still was, how long it had grown. Now, as the moon crept along the sky, cast beams of milky light onto the forest floor, Daryl slept alone. He wasn't truly alone in the sense that it was just him there in the leaves, Merle was sleeping just nearby, but he was alone in the fact that his arms were empty, his fingers lie still in his own lap.
He couldn't help but think of Lin. Even when he didn't, when he forced himself to listen to his idiot brother as he babbled mindlessly to no one but the trees, he saw a flash of her hair on the horizon, heard her whisper his name in the rustling of the leaves. She was haunting him and he supposed he deserved it. She deserved a better man than he could be and he deserved every bit of her ghost that followed him.
He was stubborn, had a hell of a temper, and she'd never take him when Merle was a part of the deal. None of the group liked Merle, not one of them, and he knew Lin wasn't going to pretend just for him. He'd see through it. He'd also been to see through bullshit like that, even when he was younger.
The sun peaked above the horizon, mocked him with the warmth of the morning turned mid-afternoon light. Merle woke far too late for Daryl's liking, left him alone to his own thoughts for far too long. The two of them set off again into the woods, an environment they knew best. Daryl Dixon was made of the forest, had tree roots for bones and sap for blood. He was born to be in the forests, moving and striding alongside the nature as it bloomed for him. Lin had seen that, had seen the man that lied under such a rough surface, under the dry toughened riverbed skin he'd grown. But he'd given that all up when a shadow of his past fell over him.
"There ain't nothing out here but mosquitoes and ants." The constant movement of the group, the continuous worry that something was right around the corner, morphed Daryl into someone who could not stand still. Merle, on the other hand, seemed to be taking his sweet time in emptying his bladder against the trunk of a tree.
"Patience, little brother. Sooner or later, a squirrel is bound to scurry across your path."
He wasn't wrong but the prospect of waiting that long for something so little didn't seem too appealing. "Even so, that ain't much food."
"More than nothing."
Hunting hadn't been great as of late and Daryl knew that. Without any of the food they had stocked in the prison, the Dixon brothers were on their own. "I'd have better luck going through one of them houses we passed back on the turnoff."
"Is that what your new friends taught you? Hmm?" Merle, finished with his business, strode over to his little brother's side. "How to loot for booty?"
Daryl bit his tongue. Merle didn't know about Lin, he couldn't. "We've been at it for hours. Why don't we find a stream, try to look for some fish?" Aching to just do something, Daryl lifted his crossbow, peered down through the scope.
