━━━━━━ CHAPTER SIX ━━━━━━
However We Survive
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          FOR A WHILE, HE'D BEEN PAINFULLY QUIET. It was the only silence Mallory did not want nor find herself capable of accepting, so of course, she begged him without a strain of shame to say something, anything, thinking she'd be ready to hear whatever it was that crossed his mind in the moment, be it as heavy as promised by the movement of his head bowing or by the statuesque station which followed in forevermore contemplative silence.

Really, the last thing she would have expected was to hear him inquire whether she'd die again from the same wound or not. If it didn't get a proper treatment, she was going to bleed out faster than she could heal, of course. It was a question otherwise addressed quietly, barely above the status of coherent mumble.

Confirming it for him, Mallory could at least appreciate that he finally understood why she couldn't have had him take her back to the prison — had she died there, she'd sooner get a blade through the brains than have someone wait for her to wake up in hopes of a miracle. People have grown out of hoping for miracles these days. Instead, Daryl offered to find a way to the nearest infirmary.

It was hurting her, to know he didn't want to talk about it, nor call her condition for what it was, but Mallory decided not to push him on it, first because her throat could use a little break and second because she feared the probability of the worst case scenario. Had he lashed out, she would most likely find herself unable to retaliate.

Daryl was aware of the tension his silence was creating, but he didn't want to risk speaking of something he was having trouble understanding in the first place, not just yet. There was too much he had to think about, and they had too great of a need for him to remain in top shape in order to get them both to an infirmary for him to take away from his attention and give to this matter exclusively. He hoped that by the time they reached that place, he'd have a better understanding of his own thoughts, but then again, anything would be better than the buzz he had within his mind back in that diner.

Immune, he thought in that moment, inevitably thinking of how lucky she really was before anything else. And she dared tell me she's bad luck. It was a quick thought to brush off with images rather fresh on his mind of her deaths — the plural on that laid heavily on his mind. Daryl had seen plenty of Walkers die and he had seen plenty of humans kick the bucket too. Between the two, Mallory's deaths were closer to a humane passing than a lifeless, monstrous one. To die in pain and come back to pain, he realized then, overwhelmed beneath a wave of pity. A rough deal.

In fact, given the progression his mind was making to dissecting the uncharted territory presented to him and all it entailed, more than halfway through the town, he conceded he had his thoughts sorted out.

It had been a long and sleepless night, but just a little after sunrise, they made their way into a corner shop easier to clear than the last they came across. Daryl was running low on arrows, with only three left and though he had no hope of finding any just laying around, nor material to makeshift some there, the stop was more for Mallory's sake than it was for his. He could make due with what he had, but she was starting to grow pale again, try as she might to deny that she felt herself getting weaker too — the signs were written plainly to his eyes.

Given his mind had cleared out at last, Daryl could finally take a deep breath and start using conversation as a means of making sure Mallory doesn't lose consciousness while they look in different parts of the shop for medical supplies or anything that can count as that. It was better than standing right by her side and covering less ground.

"So how does this immunity thing work, hmm?"

Hearing his voice from across the aisle of the small shop startled Mallory. It's been a silent night, and not the sort a good citizen would sing about during the holidays. She drew her hand away from one of the whiskey bottles and moved on to look at different shelves ahead, her steps slow, almost dragged; since he wasn't looking, she cut herself some slack and stopped conditioning herself to walk as if her knees weren't hurting and her muscles weren't fatigued.

She cleared her throat briefly and sighed out, hoping her tone didn't reveal just how relieved she was that he was talking and acknowledging what had happened. "The doctors who've been trying to figure me out have concluded that I am an anomaly, apparently."

The reveal didn't shock Daryl in the slightest. When were doctors good for anything? Sounded in his mind the doctrine by which he was raised and grew to believe most of the time.

"The virus reacts faster in my brain than it does in other infected people's brains before they turn. When I die, that fast reaction is what gets me back to normal, not as a Walker."

Listening to her explanation, Daryl had his mind play out the recordings Dr. Jenner showed him and the group in the CDC building.

"Or so they theorized," Mallory shrugged. "If they got new theories, they sure as hell didn't update me on it. I guess...," she trailed into a pause, looking at the mess that the shelves really were, emptied for the most part where it mattered most, leaving behind scraps no one needed like putrified remnants of fruits. After a sigh of disappointment and half realization that she will never again see a bountiful market, smelling of fresh vegetables and fruit, nor will she ever hear that noise behind which hides the secret of humanity — the buzz of people gathering, trading, buying. Alas, she continued, "I guess you're wondering if there's a cure in the works?"

"Not really," Daryl was quick to voice his honesty. After all, what would a cure even do? The dead were dead, there was no undoing that carnage, and if the cure was to make humans stop turning when they die or when they get bitten, then that would still leave them living a world ruled by monsters. Who would even mass produce that cure? Who would get it? Certainly not him. But after a silent pause, he poked on the get her to keep talking, not linger in silence. "Is there one?"

"They tried a lot of methods to quicken the triggering rate of the virus. They thought that's what made me different from the rest of the test subjects," Mallory explained slowly. "If you ask me, given how damaging their attempts at replication were, I'd say it's a safe bet that all I am is just an anomaly. You know, one of those exceptions that prove the rule. There's no cure for this. But there's hope for it, and that," she turned around the corner of the aisle, "that is enough for people to do unspeakable things for the illusion of getting closer to how things once were." Things will never be how they used to be, because we are not the humans that we once used to be either, she continued her words in thought. All of us are dead and we can't accept it.

However, once on the new aisle, she didn't quite expect to find it deserted. So, startled in place she furrowed down her eyebrows, calling out just a little louder than their decided quiet tone for conversation, "Daryl?"

"At the till, Mals," he answered without much of a delay. Though he couldn't have heard it, Mallory sighed relieved in the pause before he continued. "And this immunity... you're like what? Immune to death?"

"Sounds good doesn't it?" Mallory chuckled, sarcastically.

"It kinda does...," Daryl mumbled to himself, thinking only that the list of things that could take away his second chance at the peace Mallory meant to him had been significantly shortened. If death was off the table, maybe he actually had a shot at protecting this one person he cares about. "Say," he raised his voice to talk to her, hearing her dragged steps approach through the shop to make her way to him, "would a bullet to the head still be permanent ending?"

"Why? Thinking of killing me yet?" Though she thought she had made it sound like she was just joking around, Mallory knew too well that was a question which troubled her deeply.

"I could never kill you, Mallory Cohen." He heard her steps come to a stop in the vicinity of the till, but instead of going through with his attempt to greet her with a small smile, the sight of her paler than a moment ago made his heart clench and his good mood dissipate back into focus, a rather bitter delve into concern. Maybe she couldn't stay dead, but having that wipe clean his heartache of seeing her die was an inhumane thing to host in his soul.

Daryl looked away and down, at something beneath the till. "But I still gotta know," after a short pause, he started pulling out the shotgun rounds he could find, letting fall to the ground everything else in his way as he rummaged there. "Don't get me the wrong way, Mals, but when I saw you in that basement, chained as you were, the part of me that wasn't angry was...," he hesitated. "Well, let's just say it felt like a second chance. I regretted what happened the night we parted ways almost as soon as you were gone and I never stopped—" He stopped his words abruptly. What the Hell are you saying there, man? He scolded himself.

"Me neither," Mallory admitted, resting her elbows on the till surface and sighing into that lean. She needn't hear him finish that sentence to know. "Yeah," she nodded, along moving to answering his question. To back up visually her explanation, she raised her right hand to her head, let it take the shape of a pistol and pointed to her temple, "The virus is still centered in my brain so any damage to the brain," her big finger bent to gesture the trigger being pulled, "will be fatal. Definitely."

Daryl hummed in understanding, moving to a side he had already searched underneath the till before she even realized he was there. He revealed a pink helmet. "Thought so much," he pushed the helmet towards her. "Well, put it on then. We can't be taking any chances."

Mallory raised her eyebrows, looking between the vibrant but dusty pink helmet and Daryl, whose ambiguous expression gave her no hints whatsoever, other than that he perhaps was looking for more than shotgun shells they couldn't use for nothing cause they got no shutgun with them to begin with. "Are you kidding me right now?" She asked, straightening up. He must have been joking, making a silly comeback to a thing from the past: her father didn't like the idea of her new boyfriend driving her around on his motorcycle at such speed without either of them wearing helmets, so with what little he had, he got her one. It wasn't pink, but yellow and Daryl and Merle both still laughed so hard at her, perhaps the latter not as discreetly either, that she had to frame losing it.

Daryl took his time with the silence, much to her despair, looking up from beneath his low hanging front strand of hair. "Nah," he shook his head after a while and ducked in the shadow of his hair again just in time to hide his smile.

"Daryl," Mallory almost tampered with a chuckle, one contagious enough to pass over to him, as a much quieter echo. "I am not wearing a pink helmet around. If I am stupid enough to let anyone shoot me in the head, that's on me, honey."

"See, I can't have that though," Daryl sighed, turning around and picking up the helmet. "That risk, I mean. I won't lose you to it." The gesture, the words, Mallory knew what he meant by all of it and she was far too relieved to know he didn't hate her for her condition to not give him the satisfaction of going through with this joke; she stayed put and allowed him to place the bicycle helmet on her head. "There. You...," he hesitated, leaning back. "It's definitely your color."

"How about a mirror to prove your statement, you little liar?"

"Sorry, love, I don't carry those," he innocently shrugged, but finally, a smile properly crept to his lips. "Safety over beauty in these times, am I right?"

"How about not wearing a vibrant color around for safety? That thing will make me look like a walking target," Mallory rolled her eyes, chuckles still brightening her features, though she ultimately removed the helmet abandoning it on the counter.

"Maybe this would be more helpful," with no hard feelings regarding his attempt at a joke that the helmet was, an attempt he clearly saw Mallory appreciate, Daryl moved on and placed on the counter between them the thing he's been looking for there and was lucky enough to find: a map of the town area.

Mallory gasped, "God, how I missed your genius."

"You're the one with the special brain, not me," Daryl shyed away from taking the compliment head on. Instead, he studied his own unfolded map and eventually placed his finger down on it, "Here. We're not so far from it. I think I passed that place on a supply run. Building with two floors."

"Good, then let's get going," with pathos and excitement, two radiant characteristics to illuminate her features, Mallory turned around. As soon as her contact with her point of support that the tall till had become to her ceased, dark spots clouded her sight.

All Daryl heard was a thud. Mallory had submerged underneath the counter's view. He jumped over it within the second, only to find Mallory picking herself up from an all-fours position. He hooked his arms under her armpits and helped her stand, "It's not too late to get that helmet on."

"I just got dizzy for a second, I'm fine," she hoped to reassure him, but an instinct of bringing her hand back to her bandage dismantled her attempt instantly because her thumbs drew away painted with her own blood. "Shit... you didn't find any cloths here, did ya?"

"No amount of bandages will help until we get that wound properly stitched up," Daryl got her left arm across his shoulders. "Do you need me to carry you or can you walk like this?"

"I'm fine, really," Mallory insisted, quieter than before. "The infirmary didn't look far from here. I'll manage, honey."

She'll manage. Somehow she always did.

It was a gritty, painful lifestyle, but it's what kept her from finding the nearest sharp thing to drive through either of her eyes and into her skull at the first chance. Her father's teachings echoed in the back of her mind, even when she wanted to ignore they were seeded there in the first place — throw yourself into the waves and your body will prove to you that you want to live; we all do, we all want to live — just as she ignored the fact that Daryl too was turning into a fuel to keep her away from the quickest solution away from all the pain. She wanted to live, alright, and with a single glance at him, she wanted him to live too.

The map had successfully led them to the infirmary, through the hallways of which they advanced slowly, not so much for the fundamental need of being quiet now that ammo was a true luxury, but also because Mallory had started growing paler still, perhaps especially because she insisted to walk without Daryl's assistance, in case they needed to be efficient against Walkers.

He was watching her like a soldier watched a ticking bomb he didn't know how to safely defuse. Not knowing how to help her scared him perhaps only as much as it uneased him to see her so determined in her carelessness towards whether or not she pushed herself so hard she died. Just because she would come back, didn't mean it should be her go-to option to just let death take her.

The only solution to this, he figured, once he also realized most of the rooms they looked into had already been emptied, thus the floor was most likely cleared as well, was to keep her talking, so at least he would get a heads-up from her voice should she drive herself too far past mere fatigue.

"How many times did you die?"

Mallory puffed at the out of the blue question, "You know that thing about not asking a lady of her age?"

"I ain't asking your age though, am I? I'm asking you how many times you've died since you found out you're immune to this crap."

"I heard you just fine the first time," she mumbled along. If it hadn't been audible the first time, now Daryl was certain he touched a nerve with this question. There was no backtracking now however. "But I was trying to tell you the nice way that it ain't a question with an answer." With a shrug, she tried to dismiss the topic, "I can't remember."

"Bullshit."

She snapped back, "Too many times, Daryl, okay?" Almost stumbling on nothing but her own feet, Mallory started holding onto the wall whenever she could. Daryl fought the urge to just walk by her side and demand that she hold onto him instead because he sure was cleaner than that wall just then.

"You're telling me you didn't count?" Daryl's disbelief slipped through in his tone clearly, but unlike his words, his eyes were caring, fixed on Mallory. Though he hadn't the right drive to make her lean on him, he was aiming to stay alert in case he fell over again. "I say you should probably stop lying to me. You've never been a good liar."

"I didn't lie," Mallory glanced over her shoulder ever so shortly. "I died too many times. Lost count... No," she smiled ironically, "I didn't lose count, I just stopped counting. After I reached fifty, it seemed ridiculous to keep going with the count."

Fifty times, Daryl's heart sunk. In a year.

"It was inhumane enough that I've died so many times already, and the prospect of the future didn't seem to be any more promising, so I just," she breathed out heavily, "stopped. This whole immunity thing was good for a couple days, but man... the pain. The pain's got me exhausted."

"Are you in any pain now?"

"Do you have any painkillers-?" Mallory stopped both her walking and her ironic question, in line with a door to the left, across the hallway. She shoot a glance towards the shut door and when Daryl advanced forward, crossbow at the ready, she hurried to step in front of him. Her right hand descended down over his knuckles, but her left hand climbed up to his face, motioning him to lean closer so she could whisper. He obliged. "That room hasn't been raided. There's too many Walkers inside. I should probably go in alone."

Something between her sentences didn't add up right to Daryl.

"Woman," he leant back, taking but half a step away from her, "are you insane? I ain't about to watch you die again. Thought we had that settled." He didn't even know how she knew instantly that there were Walkers in there when the whole hallway was dead silent save for their mindfully angry or raspy whispers.

"Good," she kept her hand over his firmly, while the other climbed up to her bandage, mostly stained to red. "Then let me go in there and handle this quickly, see what I can find." Hearing Daryl's sharp inhale and watching his expression harden with listening to something arguably impossible for him to digest or even comprehend, Mallory explained herself, "Walkers don't even sense me unless I get noisy or provoke them."

"What?"

"I'll be careful," Mallory strained herself to squeeze his hand. "Careful and fast. I swear it, Daryl. Can you trust me on this one?"

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
      I love how this chapter felt like a filler initially but then I went back after a couple days and editing and now we have it be like such a significant piece of the story. Sooo much of the way Mallory's immunity works has been revealed here

Can Daryl stay put on the hallway despite his embedded survival instincts telling him Mallory's all shades of crazy? What do you think?