━━━━━━ CHAPTER FIVE ━━━━━━
Playing Hard to Kill
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          RED. OH, HE SAW RED.

A bullet shattered a hole through one of the windows of the diner, cutting short his sound-triggered instinct of ducking his head with the sudden weight he caught in his arms.

Red.

Mallory's blood poured through her hand's fingers as she brought it up in the very last second to clasp over the side of her neck, where the bullet grazed on its way past, all but a second before her knees lost strength and she dropped forward in his arms. There was too much blood and he had nothing he could do about it but collapse back down on the ground with her, call her name in a broken chant and blink the blur out of his eyes only to realize she's grown pale, cold and stiff.

"Is she dead?" A shout coming from outside gave voice to the disbelief-riddled question Daryl too found blooming within her mind between the unbearable noise. There was a blabber out there, in the parking lot of the diner, from whoever fired the gun about hoping of not having aimed her head.

That's when it clicked. Like an army underneath the hand of a leader, all his thoughts thrown into havoc fell silent before his rage. Red went hand in hand with fury after all, so it was easy to restrict every single sorrow, pain, terror and tear into one single chant of thought: The person who shot her is out there.

He hadn't the strength yet to correct himself that Mallory hadn't just been shot, but she had been killed that night, right before his eyes. Good Lord, he didn't have the strength yet to realize that she would turn any moment now and he'd have to kill her himself again.

No, Daryl didn't consider himself capable of doing something like that, not now, nor ever. The mere passing though was making him sick.

So he set her head down as if she was sleeping, let her rest on the floor.

With an unblinking gaze, lost in that same denial that flipped the switches on reason and control, the animal life had forged within him mercilessly long before the dead walked the earth took over and he picked up his crossbow.

Holroyd fired two more rounds into Walkers approaching due to the initial gunshot fired, which is why, when Daryl kicked the diner door open, the wannabe doctor wasn't prepared to be shot with an arrow, one that went right through his firing arm.

There was no reason to talk. He didn't allow Mallory that grace, so why should Daryl give him any?

His scream of pain was immediate but insufficient to cure the lack of humanity suddenly at home in Daryl's gaze. Those blue eyes of his had frozen over, a mourning blanket cast over them darkened their intention.

While the doctor bowed over his knees holding his wounded hand, the gun had slipped his grip. He looked up, shocked to see Daryl still march towards him, but too dazed by pain to form the smart thought of taking a step back, "The woman was a fucking Undead. I know she didn't look the part, but-"

Holroyd's explanation was cut short by a swift hit of the crossbow's handle right in his face, knocking him back.

The roars of the Walkers approaching the scene obviously escaped Daryl, because the second he saw the guy on his back, whining for the realization that he sported new bruises and the taste of his own blood on his tongue, he dropped his crossbow and got right down with him, hammering the first hit such that the taste of blood would grow to choke the man. His knuckles knocked out a tooth, then a bunch more as the hits kept going and he held not even a ounce of his strength back.

A survivalist's life made him a brute for most things in life, but just then it was the first time Daryl's band of mercy snapped. His hair, heavy with sweat, hung on both sides of his face, bouncing with each hit he landed and surely, he knew he must have received some punches as well, once the inevitability of the end struck Holroyd, but he felt none of them. The second someone realizes they are fighting for their life, most people tend to grow feral and he was no exception to that, but even as he landed hits at Daryl's ribs, even as his legs kicked trying to get the man off, all his struggles didn't nudge the fury that kept on striking.

Daryl pressed his right knee on the man's chest, propping himself up to wrap both his hands around his neck. The life he watched leave Mallory's eyes, he wanted to see leave her killer's too. It was then that his sight caught a moment of clarity and, glancing below his tightening grip, the quick look turned into a stare: a greyed finger hung around the man's neck.

Until that very moment, Daryl didn't know nor care enough to want to understand who this man he was beating to death really was. It didn't matter who he was, he would die by his hand for what he did, but just then, a veil lifted over his mind, piecing together a recognition. He had pinned below him the very asshole who chained Mallory up in the first place.

Suddenly, choking the life out of him seemed like too much of a mercy and since words were insufficient to express his anger, Daryl released his grip. Before his fist descended on Holroyd's face one more time, sharp pain stuck into his leg. The bastard had just recalled he had a hunting knife on him.

It made very little difference whether or not he got hurt to the violent strain growing within him like poison. Given how fast he decided bashing Holroyd's brains over the gravel in the parking lot of the diner with his bare hands was the way to go, one could say pain was a fuel, a poke at the wounded animal within, a push to grab him on both sides of his head, push his thumbs into his eye sockets, lift the head from the ground and crash it back down.

Only within closer look at his face slowly getting dripped in blood splatters would one recognize the pain did much more than simply push Daryl to carnage. Tears have finally started forming in his eyes, stinging their presence before blurs formed.

She's dead.

No amount of blood will bring her back.

Passing through his mind, the thoughts made Daryl's teeth grit, muffle out the peak of a scream releasing both his anger and his sorrow, all his pain and terror of what he knew he had to do once he was done beating a pool of blood and brains.

Fate.

Fate must've been having a laugh with him these past few days, fooling him with second chances, showing him what hope felt like only to strip it from him, pry it from his needy hands even if he clung with his nails, even if taking it all away made him bleed.

What a fool he's been to think he was really granted a true second chance! As if his fate would ever be other than that of a loner, forgotten by a dying humanity in the dirt with every single other thing they never cared about to begin with.

With a sob finally making it past his lips, Daryl dropped his head, letting it hang low above the corpse, enough for his hair, heavier now that, unwashed at it was, received the blessing of droplets of thick, hot blood, to curtain around him, casting a shadow to the few signs of tears hoping to braze down his cheeks. His ears were ringing in diffused fashion and through hazes and blurs, he saw only flashes of the red stains painting his hands, now shivering over a corpse who deserve what he got, but fixed nothing for Daryl anyway.

Not like this, though he found it pathetic of himself to retort to such prayers, he couldn't deny his desperation leading him there regardless of the fact that Mallory was already gone. Please don't take her away like this. He said that, as if had she gone another way, it would have been better.

"Not just a pathetic loser," Merle's voice taunted him, an echo from the back of his mind. "But a liar too. What was that about providing for her, little brother? Seems you did a damn fine job with it."

His mocking laughter pushed Daryl to lash out and turn around. But instead of his arm hitting the ghost he expected to be facing, it came across the chest of a Walker lunging down for him. And this one, well it reeked too much to be just another hallucination of his, spurring out of a mind taking the full damage of what had happened far too fast to process.

Though he pushed his forearm firmly against the Walker's throat and that thing was rotten enough to already start cracking as a prelude to flesg tearing, it still had the momentum over him, pushing him back over the guy he just killed, biting at the air to try and get to him. Before he even knew it, he had to use both hands to start making some progress in pushing that thing off of him just about enough to make room for his knee to rise between them.

The sole of his foot to plan in the Walker's chest, sinking ever so little. One shove staggered the dead back, but death made them so dreadfully persistent that there was very little time to react and retaliate.

Daryl pointlessly hurried to retrieve his knife from his side, recalling only when he touched his empty sheath that he had given it away, at the river. He looked up. It was too late to stand up now, and his crossbow was too far away for him to avoid yet another close brawl. Was it worth it? That dangerous question popped up in his mind.

He had little less than a breath to think about it before the Walker yelped. A knife was drawn through the back of its head. His knife.

With his breath hitched behind the heartbeat skipping of his heart, Daryl kicked the Walker off before it could fall on top of him and he almost couldn't believe his eyes. Pale as a sheet and breathing heavily, Mallory was standing there, right hand clasped over that side of her neck and left hand holding so tightly to his knife her knuckles grew sickly whiter still.

"Daryl...," she barely articulated his name, but the sound of her voice was all he needed to get up and get to her within the second. It was a miracle, but she looked so frail he didn't even know if he should risk touching her just yet. Seeing his fret to look around, Mallory called his name again, this time stepping forward and fulfilling her need to support her own weight on something else other than her own feet.

Feeling her weakness, Daryl wrapped an arm around her, "It's okay, I'll get you back to Hershel."

"No," she breathed out under exhaustion's heave.

"He'll get you all patched up."

"Daryl," she lifted her pale knuckles to his chest, where supposedly there was an attempt to actually impediment him from moving, but it did nothing in fact apart from confirming to him that she had lost far too much blood. "We can't."

"Drop that shit about bad luck right now, Mals. You're lucky to be alive," I watched you die, his thoughts echoed, I thought I had held your corpse and I don't want to ever come close to the real deal of that terror, not again, "and I'll be damned if I don't make sure you get back to a real doctor before it's too late."

"I'm going to die again!" Mallory forced herself to shout despite the pain on the side of her throat abruptly growing due to it.

Again? Daryl's steps hesitated. With his senses slowly raising to their usual heightened state, he was painfully aware there were a bunch of Walkers still getting closer to them.

"You listen to me right now," Mallory lowered her voice again, her eyes begging to rest only for her to struggle to keep them open. "I died... so many times already. And I will die again. But when I come back, I am not one of them," her speech made no sense to him with so many breaks for heaved breaths that she had to take in order to speak at all, "I'm not a Walker." Exhaustion made her drop the grip on his knife, the blade slipping out of her hand and to the ground. She dropped just a little heavier onto Daryl, her head coming to rest on his chest while her breath slowed and she started growing cold again. "You gotta... bandage... before I wake up. Please."

"Mallory?" He questioned, seeing her eyes flutter shut, feeling her fade away again, though much slower than before

"I'll be fine," she barely muttered. "I promise, I'm coming back..."

"I don't understand, Mallory," Daryl shook his head. "This is insane... Mallory?" He couldn't help the crack in his voice watching her grow stiff. With Walkers approaching, he had no way of checking her pulse right there and then, so he picked her up, recovered his crossbow and made a beeline back to the diner. He did what little he could do to barricade the entrance points without letting go of Mallory, then went right into the kitchens whose doors he was confident he could shut and whose single window tall on the wall he knew could be an escape should there be need for one. On the floor of the kitchen, he set her down gently.

It was masochistic, when she was this greyed out and he still reached out to check for pulse, knowing ahead that he'll be met with grave-cold skin. His stomach twisted, eyes trailing down to her neck, where the wound stood out like red dripped on a sheet, a sick reminder of Grimm tales.

"This is insane," he admitted again out loud before pushing himself to stand.

Though he understood very little of what she meant, and he was aware what she was implying was impossible, he still looked for alcohol or water to clean her wound, he still ripped from his shirt a bandage, got towels from where he could find. Walkers were banging on the door, on the windows. That hideout wasn't gonna hold for long and had he been a little saner in the moment, he would have left at the very least, not tend to the wounds of someone already gone.

Denial was a strong tool for sure, because Daryl caught himself hoping, even as he saw death linger on Mallory's still features.

Once he cleaned up the wound and got it bandaged as good as he could manage with shaking hands, he sat back down on the floor, grasping one of the knives from the kitchen and waiting.

He was waiting for her to come back, ironically something he was used to doing. She said she will, and it just then crossed his mind that maybe he got it all wrong, maybe she was warning him that she will turn into a Walker, maybe he just misheard her as the hopeful fool he was.

Though he was planning on watching her carefully in his wait, the longer he stared, the closer Daryl felt himself to letting another raging scream out, something he otherwise knew he shouldn't while Walkers were outside.

So he closed his eyes instead. What the hell am I doing here? Hoping next to a corpse that what? That this is all just a bad dream?

A soundly gasp for air startled him to open his eyes again. Daryl readied the knife, raised it, but his hand froze: color returned, even if just a little, to Mallory's skin and her eyes, unlike that of a Walker, were clear. Those were her eyes, beautiful as ever, not the eyes of any beast out for blood.

Struggling to breathe, Mallory's right hand flew up to the side of her neck, holding over the bandage. Her initially wide eyes were fixed on Daryl, a sight which, though one of them surely wouldn't have guessed, calmed her down faster than the sight of a lonely ceiling ever could.

"I promised," she cracked the tiniest smile over the gasped words.

Daryl lowered his hand down, knife dropping to the floor. "You died..." While he could have ruled out her first death as something he must have misunderstood as her just passing out from the pain, this one he stood watch over. He felt the lack of pulse under his fingertips, seen the kiss of death greying her out.

"Yeah," Mallory confirmed, lifting her left hand and grabbing his upper arm. "I'm sorry you had to see that. Twice. Help me sit up?"

Upon her request, Daryl got closer and, getting his arm around her, his palm flattened on her back, he had her sitting up in no time. "Careful now. Let's not make it thrice." He watched her struggle with the pain of a short chuckle's vibration in her throat. "Mallory, what the hell is going on?"

"You asked me why they're after me," Mallory let her gaze linger on the sight of his bloodstained hands, remembering a time when her own hands carried that same shade and even a time before, when he was just as dirty coming home after a long night at work. These were the hands she trusted. "This is why," she sighed. "I'm immune."

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
         Daryl swung between so many extremes that I believe he gon' need a time out after this one 🤣 but is he gonna get one? Unlikelyyy

Anyway, this is like the middle of Act 1 so I believe this is as good a time as any to ask for feedback ❤️ please and thank you ~