CHAPTER TEN | g o
22/10/17

Adira stood up, wiping her hands on her pants as they were rather sweaty from the past few nerve-wracking hours. Daryl looked at her for a second before standing up, too. They were both still shaken up from the enormous herd of walkers surrounding their former safe-haven. The house was rather small and weak, but it had kept them safe for a couple of weeks.

She pressed her ear against the door and listened as hard as she could, praying that the hall was clear. Her knife kept slipping through her fingers due to how stressed she was at the moment and she couldn't get a firm grip on it. Her eyes watered from all of the pressure she felt, being so close to death. From the horrible feeling churning in her stomach, she couldn't believe she had chosen to opt out just a few weeks earlier, much less almost succeeded.

Daryl could see how scared the poor girl was. Her small shoulders shaking, her breaths short and irregular, the frantic look in her eyes; she was utterly and completely terrified. He couldn't watch it. Try hard as he might, he couldn't shake off the feeling of wanting Adira to feel safe and secure. He wanted to protect her. Somehow his failure to protect Sophia pushed him to want to do better this time, even though he knew it wasn't his responsibility. He still felt that guilt and wanted to appease it.

He wasn't exactly experienced in comforting crying women. His brother had always made it seem like females were there simply for his needs and that their feelings didn't matter. Daryl didn't know any better, at least not until the world crashed and burned with the rise of the dead.

He'd learned over the past months that every human deserves a chance. Race, religion, gender, and sexuality didn't matter. Through a group of diverse survivors in which Daryl was the odd man out, he'd observed a lot. Most important was how no matter how different people were, the good ones would lend their hand to whoever needed help standing up.

Though he always felt isolated, he still felt like he was apart of something, apart of a true family. Not a broken one like it had been with Merle and his father, but one where the people cared about each other and thought of everyone else first. This feeling ignited something within him; a sense of belonging, and a sense of humanity. He'd always had to be the tough one to impress his brother and feel like he was doing alright. He'd never been anyone, but he at least wanted his brother to be proud of him.

Now he didn't have to act. The group accepted him for who he was. Though he still retained his stony exterior, it had cracked, at least just a little bit. Up until losing Sophia, he was more open than he'd been his entire life. But when he saw that little girl stumble out of the barn, skin decaying and mouth hungry for flesh, he felt all of that slap him in the face. That was why he never opened up; Merle was right. Caring about people only led to getting hurt. He didn't want to get attached again.

Yet there he was, protecting a crying girl. What good was it? She'd said on multiple occasions that she didn't even want to live anymore. If he got any closer, he would surely be disappointed. When he saw she wasn't with the leaving group, he couldn't turn his back on the house. It felt like turning his back on Sophia. But now that they were out of immediate danger, it was clear as day to him that she wasn't Sophia, and nothing he did could fix what happened with her.

So after only few moments of uncertain attempts to reassure the brunette, he took a step back and looked away. Her head lifted up at the sudden disappearance of the hunter's presence, her hair falling out of her face. And Daryl almost wished he hadn't done that.

The movement revealed her eyes, which were full of pain and anguish and fear. She was so frightened. He awkwardly took yet another step back, allowing the young girl to collect herself. She didn't let it show on her face, but she was sad that their little moment had ended. She took a few deep breaths, trying to tell herself it would be alright. Adira was still sniffling when she spoke.

"I...I think it's safe. I don't hear anything," she whispered, her voice wavering. The weight on her shoulders lifted a tiny bit as she said those words, happy that at least she got a moment to breathe.

Daryl simply nodded and picked his crossbow up from where he'd carelessly flung it to the floor in his haste to shut the door and keep it closed. Adira gripped her knife tightly in her hand, still sweating profusely as she turned the door knob. She poked her head out into the hall and was relieved to see no sign of any walkers other than the scratches on the door. They'd wandered off. She looked back at Daryl and gave him a little thumbs-up. Their moment had come, and if they wasted it, they may not get another one.

The pair slowly crept down the dark hallway, Adira wincing with each creak her worn boots made. Daryl's footsteps were silent, as though he wasn't even there. She envied that; not being able to stay hidden was something possibly fatal in the new world.

As she walked, she noticed how he wouldn't even look at her. What was that moment they had shared before? He'd been yelling at her the night before, saved her just then, and went back to his neutral stony demeanor almost immediately.

She'd never really had anyone. Well, that wasn't exactly true. She wasn't alone her entire life, but that changed long before the world did. She felt a lump grow in her throat as she remembered the happy days before everything happened. It wasn't fair. Just thinking about before triggered the memory in her head, one she just wanted to finally forget. She'd started to move on since her incident with the monsters in the woods, but something had caused her flashbacks to come back three times in the same day.

A door slamming shut.

Screaming. Footsteps pounding up the stairs. Ruffling through a drawer, something being taken out. A gun being loaded. More footsteps, and a gun being shot.

Adira suddenly stopped tip-toeing, something which Daryl noticed almost immediately due to the abrupt lack of creaking floorboards. When he looked back, her eyes weren't focused and she wasn't moving except for the slight tremor in her body.

She shut her eyes tightly as it all came rushing back to her. She didn't want to remember. She couldn't. Once more, a desire lit in her heart to escape it all. It would be so easy, just pulling the trigger. It would all be over.

But then she thought of how happy she had been to meet people. Maybe Daryl wasn't too keen on her, but something about having someone else in her presence brought her back just a little bit to happier times. So she lowered the gun she hadn't even realized she'd raised, let out a breath, opened her eyes, and took a step forward.

Daryl had no clue what had just happened, but he knew that she was back with him. "You good?" he asked, a sense of urgency in his tone due to the fact that they still needed to escape.

She just nodded and kept going, a few steps ahead of him now. They continued on in silence, eventually reaching and descending the stairs. Thankfully, the majority of the herd seemed to have cleared out, and only about twenty or so remained, scattered around the property. Daryl easily shoved his knife into the head of the sole walker still inside the house, and the two survivors ducked below the window, peeking out at Daryl's motorcycle.

Daryl's eyes flicked from side to side before he turned and spoke to Adira. "Alright, we got 'bout four of 'em. Two each?"

"Okay," whispered Adira, rather nervous as her knife yet again slipped through her fingers. She took a deep breath and on the count of three from Daryl, leapt up from behind the window and out the door.

She easily crept up on the first walker and killed it with a quick stab to the brain, as did Daryl. However, when the body fell, it hit her and she stumbled, the body bringing her down to the ground. It was a rather large one and she couldn't lift it off of herself. The noise had attracted her second target as well as two other walkers nearby.

Daryl hadn't noticed yet as he was still sneaking up on his walker. As he shot a bolt into it and went to go retrieve it, he heard a voice scream his name. "Daryl!"

Forgetting the bolt, he whipped around and saw Adira pinned underneath a dead walker, with three more closing in on her. They were just seconds away from her and he wasn't close enough, so he knew he didn't have much time. He took out his gun and shot all three immediately, and ran over to Adira, pushing the corpse off of her and helping her up.

By then, the other walkers in the area had noticed what was going on. They enclosed the two in a circle as Daryl and Adira ran to the bike. He started it up as soon as he could, Adira wrapped her arms around his waist, and he was driving away from the house through the last gap a second before it closed.