━━━━━━ CHAPTER SEVEN ━━━━━━
An Autopsy On The Living
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          SOME HUMANS SURVIVED AND ENDURED one year into the end of times, but humanity... humanity ended mere weeks after this virus started spreading.

Mallory witnessed that deplorable end to a glorious existence that had lasted thousands of years, that democratic farce that tied the noose and pushed humanity off its pedestal, and though her best attempts were focused on staying present in the moment, in that long infirmary room where the dead roamed aimlessly like headless chicken trapped in a film placed on slow motion, the blood loss was starting to take away from her precious consciousness, string her closer to yet another death she'd have to add to her long-abandoned count.

How many times? Daryl had asked her and she almost wished she had corrected his question into a better one. How many times have they killed me?

With such matters on her mind, of course she was bound to recall the day she knew it was truly the end of everything: the makeshift trial day.

It would have been a month since she escaped the county hospital, a month since the outbreak tore into the world like the teeth of a rabid dog into unfortunate flesh and it hasn't exactly been a quiet month, though she was supposed to feel thankful to have a bed in a fortified outpost like TRIUM, a military project that if she ever heard about, she probably dismissed completely. 'Temporary Refuge Institution for Urban Maintaining', a bunker-type construction available in the first days, the days that truly mattered, only to those rich enough to have known the right names and phone numbers.

Dr. Densmore, the woman who led Mallory's aortic surgery after her car accident, helped her get there. She even walked her through the dubious results of her surgery too, not long after they arrived and settled in. She explaining why helping had less to do with her and more to do with the fate of the world. Back then, Mallory had consented to giving her and the rest of the prominent doctors and scientists who have been granted access to TRIUM samples every once in a while.

Who would have done differently when told something inside of them might save people from a carnage she too had witnessed and was fresh on the attempt to forget?

But blood samples, scans, they didn't do the trick. The once kind Dr. Densmore was visibly discouraged by the amount of failures piling up against her lead on a cure for Wildfire, the virus that only kept on spreading while they hid.

Around that time, she stopped updating Mallory on it. On any of it.

Then, out of the blue, she made a call. Coming out with a plan that put on hold every single ethical rule to her occupation, Densmore announced in the cafeteria, for all the people the TRIUM outpost had taken in over the past month that there was a scientific discovery living amongst them — it was the first time Mallory was seen as less than human and to this day, the scar left on her mind by that hollowed sensation haunted her decisions, shadowing them behind a veil of worthlessness —, someone immune to the virus whose probing might return humanity to its glory days.

"However," Densmore voice came through the speakers over the cafeteria. Mallory recalled the pain in her right palm as she tightened her fist on her spoon hearing the message, looking into her deformed and stained reflection on the surface of the cutlery. She was aware everyone around her was looking in the crowd, searching for who might be the immune. "The testing that is required to understand how immunity can be replicated for everyone may turn out to be fatal to..."

Her hearing ability took a break. Ringing took free reign over her ears and before Mallory could stop herself she regurgitated her last good meal, the last one she'd be graced with for a while. Dazed, she woke up on the ground, fallen off the bench, people staring at her.

"... so we will be civilized. We'll have a vote..."

Densmore's loud voice had Mallory flinch, lifting from her mind the haze and returning her to a clarity as to why exactly she ended up on the floor with her throat burning up to begin with: they were going to take a vote on whether or not they should kill her.

Within the second Mallory got herself standing, took the nearest exit in sight and made a run for it. While her vomit fit took some off guard, it was only when she started running that they started piecing together that she was the immune and as soon as that information was out, it wasn't long before someone got in her way, before another one pinned her to the ground. The elected guards of the outpost didn't even have to step in to stop her from leaving, the people running away from the outbreak outside the walls of this sanctuary did it out of their own initiative, pressing her to the ground, leaving her to remember a thousand degrading words defining a single trait plastered over her unanimously: selfish.

How could she be so selfish?

Once dropped in the darkness of a cell, Mallory couldn't stop hearing their voices.

Selfish. That being the only thing she could possibly think about anymore, dissecting her own situation, the moment the doors opened and light flooded in to blind her, Mallory hurried through an aching throat to speak, "I agreed to samples, but I don't want to die. I got family, people I still gotta make sure are fine. There must be another way."

"There is no other way I can see. That any of us can see, Miss Cohen," Dr. Densmore sighed, looking down at her with what she could now only describe as a fragrant lack of humanity. "The people have voted. You must understand, one life to save billions is a good deal."

Only she didn't die, as they were going to find out soon enough, when they cut her open on that table. She just wouldn't die and despite the screams and the begging, they kept going; they tied her up and kept going. The pain. Mallory was so tired of pain, yet it followed her wherever she went.

A ghost pain of the autopsy's harsh scars brazing across her chest in a Y-shape made Mallory yelp out of her hallucinating dip into memory, bumping into the side of a Walker. The dead groaned instantly and if she heard the click of Daryl's gear outside, she knew for a fact all the other Walkers in the room heard it too. So without much thought behind it, Mallory dug her palms into the chest of rotten flesh of the Walker that had just realized she did not smell like its next meal, and pushed it back into the others, to cover the sound and distract them inside the room, away from the hallway.

From back there, trigger finger ready to fire an arrow from his crossbow at any point, Daryl witnessed how every single Walker attracted to the new noise got right past Mallory without even noticing she was there. He witnessed a miracle, so to say, because he's been fighting these things without a stop for the past year and he's never seen a living stand amidst them without some trickery at hand. Even so, it felt wrong to lower his weapon just yet, so he didn't; but at the very least, he felt more confident now to check the perimeter up and down the hallway with a more focused look over his shoulder rather than the past quick glances he took.

Mallory tried to ignore the cold sweat peppering across her skin, even the way her breath heaved. She lifted her right hand that had been drawn in instinct over her chest, scars palpable even through the fabric of her borrowed shirt from Carol, and secured it on the side of her neck instead. A damp sensation underneath her touch confirmed that the wound bled through the bandage and it wouldn't be long now before her knees would not just wobble lightly, but fully give in. She knew Daryl too well not to be almost certain he'd drag her out of there even at the cost of his own safety, a much more fragile state than her own, and though she wanted to relish in the comfort of feeling more than worthless again to someone, that luxury escaped her grasp and was replaced with a fact: she couldn't allow anything bad to happen to him.

Fixing that goal in her mind helped blink away the exhaustion and remain quiet on her way to the drawers and the glass showcases. The moment she started rummaging through supplies, Walkers started taking notice of her. Led by noise alone, they moved towards her, one by one. Daryl got ready to fire and he would have gotten the Walker closest to her if it wasn't for seeing Mallory's left hand in the air first.

Don't waste arrows, she let that thought radiate in her gaze, cast back over her shoulder at the exit, then forced by a putrid odor back to the dead biting the air around her, all coming to the same conclusion that she was not the sort they liked to eat.

Staring death in the eyes should have been horrifying, but Mallory had seen scarier.

You don't expect to see life in the gaze of someone who's gone, but you do expect to see humanity in the eyes of a live human; when there's none where there should be some, that's when her heart clenched in fear. These creatures were disgusting and they were a threat, but she didn't fear them.

She found all that she thought they'd be needing, apart from painkillers. There was nothing of sorts that she could recognize or make out on the labels of bottles on the shelves behind glass. Then again, her sight was starting to blur, so Mallory decided rather quickly even if painkillers were there, they wouldn't be worth the risk of taking too long getting them. Holding her shirt up as a basket for the supplies she gathered and still pressing her right hand on the side of her neck, Mallory made her way back to the exit, to Daryl.

Even while her steps were threading towards a tangled and limping walk forward, she had done well with keeping the symptoms of another approaching death at bay. Up until that damned little doorstep. There, her half-limped walk had the side of her foot hit right into that short portion standing out of the ground.

Daryl let go of the crossbow to catch Mallory from her fall, something executed with little thought to interfere as hesitation.

The noise of his weapon hitting the floor along with the scattering of the few sharp utensils she had gathered from that room alerted the dead inside, so before checking in on her, Daryl lunged forward, pulling Mallory to his chest and reaching for the door handle at the same time. He slammed the door closed then pushed both of them away from it, dragging the crossbow by its strap along.

The Walkers started coming against the door, pounding on it and Daryl started fretting to get a better grip on his crossbow.

"The door will hold," Mallory whispered, struggling to open her eyes right away. Leaning her head on his chest, she may have just realized that this was a comfortable position that she had indeed missed, one that just then, she was reluctant to leave altogether, with or without fatigue making it near impossible for her to move.

"Just hang in there, Mals," Daryl took this situation as the perfect reason to refuse letting her walk on her own until the next clear room. He chose the one closest to the exit of the building, so they could, in case of an emergency, make a quick escape.

She didn't truly realize until too late that she was incredibly tired, and thus, feeling safe around him could only ever lure her to sleep within a troubling instant whilst being held in such a position.

Carrying her wasn't nearly close to being a hard thing for him to do. In fact, it reminded Daryl of better times, of their youthful fooling around and the late nights of work from which he'd pick her up on his bike, only to then carry her inside her house at her so intentional complains that long shifts make for hurting feet. He didn't mind it, none of it. But now, he couldn't afford clinging to such happy, hopeful memories for too long, because he feared any second now the sleep she had fall into would turn into another death he'd be forced to stand over and watch helplessly.

He's stitched and patched enough wounds in his life for both himself and Merle to get himself together for her sake, despite his overall nervousness, and be certain he won't butcher Mals while she was out of it. He may have had the hands of a hunter on that needle, rough thumbs far from the nimble, caring touch of a doctor, but he cared about her safety enough to try his best.

When he was almost done with closing the bullet graze on the side of her neck, Daryl must have gotten that suture needle hooked a little too deep because Mallory jolted awake.

The first sight was an infirmary ceiling. The first sensation of pain was joined by the coldness of a table beneath her. Mallory was sent all the way back to the TRIUM outpost, to an autopsy on the living, almost instantly, so she screamed like there was no tomorrow, closing her eyes and kicking her feet, fretting her hands up to her chest and dragging her nails across the shirt.

Daryl caught a single glimpse at her thick scars before he had to stop her erratic movement from undoing all the progress he's been making with closing her wound. Her screams elicited the attention of perhaps every single Walker in the building so though her disliked what he had to do, he covered her mouth with his free hand.

"Please, stop," Mallory's cry, otherwise a small and fragile voice, was muffled. Tears poured their thin rivers down both sides of her face to her temples, aiming to get lost in her hair, between violent shakes of her head.

"Mallory," Daryl called, realizing at last in no way was this only about the needle or his attempt to stop her from opening the wound back up. "You're alright. You're safe here," he blurted out.

His name made it off her lips in unintelligible fashion, vibrating against his palm, then completely lost behind her relieved cry, one that had her sitting up.

The moment Mallory realized he was there, the nightmare ended and, without her resonable side fully awake just yet, there was no other way for her to make sure she didn't slip back into the arms of the terror but by wrapping her own tightly around Daryl. He wrapped only one arm around her instantly, as he had to make sure he didn't just let the suture needle dangle on the side of her neck. He simply couldn't ignore her need for reassurance, for comfort, for an anchor, even if it had him stuck in this position for a while, until her rapid breath slowed and at least some of her tears dried.

It had to be of her own initiative that the embrace broke apart. He couldn't find it in his heart to be the one that separated the two of them again. And thanks to his previously fast instinct to muffle her screams, the interruption of Walkers didn't happen to force him to step aside from her.

"Can we...?" Mallory finally begun clearing her throat, her eyes open and slowly remembering what it is they were doing. "Can you continue that thing on my neck if we sit on the floor instead? I don't really like hospital tables."

Daryl neither waited nor demanded further explanation. He scooped her off the table and helped her to the wall, setting her down so she could sit with her back propped to something at the very least. There was no complaint from him in regards to what had happened, and definitely not for the fact that he had to kneel next to her to finish his work on the side of her neck.

Once he was done however, the complete silence lingered no more. Hearing him settle back and drop the needle to the space between them finally broke Mallory out of her recovery trance.

"Thank you," she mused, looking at him at last. She prized herself with a good memory when it came to people's faces, but by God, she must have forgotten the smallest details about his features in the years which have passed over them, because her heart was fast to clench — he was a handsome man, even dirty, even clearly with no time to take care of himself.

"Don't mention it," he felt some tiredness finally get to him as well, begging him for a good stretch, for a plentiful groan and maybe devouring that chocolate bar they found in one of the stops before the infirmary. But feeling himself watched, Daryl was far too entrapped into shiness to do anything but stare right ahead.

"And sorry about the thing with...," Mallory trailed off, glancing at the hospital table in the middle of the room.

At first, Daryl wanted to dismiss the conversation by simply repeating himself, however, after a single moment's thought, he reconsidered. "Does it have anything to do with those scars you have on your chest? I don't remember them." And if there is one thing you can be sure I remember in detail amongst our many good memories, Daryl thought to himself, though his heart broke at the prospect of what could have happened to her when he wasn't there; damned be the way they parted ways, he still cared for her enough to feel responsible, then that is definitely them nights we had together.

Mallory nodded, then sighed. She opened her mouth but Daryl interrupted, realization that he might have been pushy about a sensitive subject making him ashamed of himself, "You don't gotta tell me nothing unless you want to here."

"It's not much to say," Mallory hoped to dismiss the gravity of what she was about to admit to having been through. "After I came back and didn't find you home, I got into a car accident. Ya know, drunk driving."

It was pointless to argue that it wasn't like her to be so reckless. The way her own father got stupidly reckless due to his inability to stop drinking while at sea had been a catalyst to her lifelong decision to not take after him. But what was done, was done. "How bad?

"Bad enough that I had my first death on the operation table, right under the gaze of Dr. Densmore, who took me as her patient only for the sake of one of my brother's connections. From the army, ya know. She watched me die and was about to call in my death. Then she also had to watch me come back for the first time." The lack of emotion with which she spoke came as no surprise. The deeper the scar, the less one can afford to scratch at it vigorously. "Because of that, when this whole shitshow with Walkers started, she made sure she got me out of the hospital with her."

Daryl couldn't help but feel himself concealing a shudder at the mere thought of being in a hospital when the shit hit the fan.

"I winded up in this place, TRIUM they called it, and the word spread of what I was."

Her choice of words was starting to disturb him too, but he refrained from interrupting.

"Long story short," Mallory sighed, "they tried to do an autopsy on me to get the gist on how to make a cure. No success, but they had to try."

"Are they dead?" Daryl questioned.

Mallory looked back at him, startled by how serious he was in his inquiry, one she otherwise didn't expect to hear. She would have expected him asking about the cure, their progress, what they found out, but not that.

The sight of his eyes made it clear that anger sparked by unfairness prompted him to be so blunt, and then, as she aimed to look ahead of them as well, she caught one last proof of how he felt riddled in his clenched fists. Daryl hadn't a clue just how happy she was to notice these things, to feel for once that she hadn't been as much of a selfish bitch as those people tried to tell her she was.

"I hope they are," she moved her right hand over his, smiling at the feeling of his fist relaxing and his hand turning its palm upwards so it may properly hold hers. "I made sure to set fire to that place before I left, so my bet's on dead. Wish I knew they spread the word about their research to more people. I would have been more careful, had I known."

Daryl gave her hand a gentle squeeze, "Ain't nobody gon' get to hurt you no more." Not now that I am here.

If only he knew how much it meant for her to hear that too. Those words were to Mallory what air was to a drowning man. Maybe getting her out of that basement could be brushed under the mat as something any decent human being would have done, but coming here after her, believing her, tending to her wound, that was something else entirely.

Before any dark thoughts of being unworthy of his kindness could take over and change her perspective, as well as her mind, she begun a proposition, "You know, I've been thinking." She noticed, from the corner of her eye, that Daryl was watching her carefully, but she avoided meeting that intense gaze just yet. "You and I, I think we could make it."

His heart skipped a beat, but thank God he was fast to clear his throat and put his thoughts into order, away from twisting her words into what he wished he had heard instead of what was truly said. "Make it where?"

"Anywhere really," Mallory shrugged. "After TRIUM, I thought I could look for my brother back in our old town. I know he must have made it out of the hospital and if he did, he would have gone home. But we could make it anywhere." She looked back at him, her gaze dropping lower than his eyes though. "You're strong," she made her assessment, "and I can have your back. Help you keep Walkers at bay."

"You want me to leave with you?" Daryl inquired, for the sake of clarity. He had no use of leaving understanding to his mind alone, not while it was filled with delusional hopes.

Mallory nodded, "I know it's selfish of me to ask, after what we-"

"I will," he interrupted. By the time she sought his gaze, Daryl looked away already, "But we cannot leave now. Not with so little ammo left and not while you are still healing. The prison's safe and we can stay there, until you're feeling better. That way, when we do leave, we'll have better supplies and my bike. Better chances. It's a long road to Maine, after all."

Though her heart initially exalted at the prospect of him agreeing to leave with her, it immediately sunk right back down at having their need to return to the prison be underlined again.

"I won't tell them, Mals," Daryl sighed, her silence and her hand telling him all he needed to know about how she felt about his previous answer. "About your condition, I mean. It ain't my secret to share and I get it," he shrugged, knowing now too that his words had relaxed her at long last, "people cling to any hope, no matter how ridiculous, in these times. The less people know about your thing, the better."

"I wanted to help at first too, you know," Mallory settled back, more comfortably. "That first month at TRIUM, I wanted them to find that cure. So I watched them fail time and time again, praying they keep trying. Any tampering with the virus or the times in which it got triggered in healthy brains, it only made things worse. I made things worse."

"There's no cure," Daryl shook his head. "If there was one, they would have found it by now. It ain't your fault. It ain't nobody's fault. This is just how things are now."

"Right," Mallory sighed, following her instinct on what felt more natural of her to do at that point. She leant her head down on his shoulder. They could catch their breath there, at least for now.

AUTHOR'S NOTE :
Me:   I am making my chapters shorter hehe
Chapter 7:    *exists*

   One could say, they should have left when they had the chance, because one would also know what arc comes next this far into Season 3 👀 ( S3E7 onward btw )

But at the same time, the saddest part about Daryl, I believe, is how he almost never takes decisions into his own hands; he genuinely just prefers orders even when he has something he really wants to do. So even if Mallory asked him to go with her, he identified it most likely as something she wants, thus he had no way of refusing. Daryl, stop making me cry challenge?

On the other hand, Daryl wanting so badly for Mallory to give him a second chance for a relationship but knowing the Apocalypse brought new priorities so he's not making a move towards it 😭😭😭😭 stop—