Chapter Text
The world looked bruised and Daryl was still storming through the woods, following the half visible path that connected the farm to smaller properties along the area, veiled by trees and thick brush.
Each home looked broken, like it had lost the war in carving out a bit of wilderness for domesticity, lawns bleeding into overgrowth and veins.
Daryl ignored the evidence of plastic play-structures and the bright coloured balls left behind. Back at that traffic snarl it had been a choice; he could shift through the cars but couldn't allow himself to acknowledge the carseats in the back or the bag left half opened on the side of the road. Pieces of life were scattered everywhere and he felt guilty as he skirted along the edges.
Carl had been shot in the woods and maybe that could have been a kindness if it had gone the other way. The world was a new hell and it wasn't easy shuffling along the road next to walkers. They had nothing to offer anyone and a child had its future pried from their hands.
The trees thinned out slightly and Daryl found one of the more rundown houses looming in the woods, tin roof like teeth. He eyed the door swinging open in the breeze, the long stretch of space between the fence and the porch. Sophia had gotten so close to finding the highway before she veered off, prints vanishing into thin air. If T-Dog hasn't been bleeding out on the asphalt he might have noticed her breaking off from the road with walkers on her heels, might have been able to prevent any of this from happening.
He drew up close, hunting knife in hand as he checked the hallway for movement. It felt uneasy, stepping into the shadow of what was once a life. Someone had left shoes at the door and plates on the table. Wherever they had gone, they had left thumbprints of an existence behind.
Lori had called the traffic snarl a graveyard but it wasn't the same as this. This was plain abandonment, the death of a home.
Floorboards groaned as he checked the rooms cautiously. Daryl could see where photos had hung on the wall, little squares visible after years of sunlight pouring through the windows. Someone must have taken them with them when they left.
He spotted the closet last as an afterthought. In a perfect world, Sophia would be curled up tight, holding that little doll to her chest. The door would swing open and she'd be there, blinking up at him. Relieved that the nightmare was over and that she could go home. That the world would still be standing for another minute.
But it would never truly be okay.
They were losing people at a steady rhythm ever since they banded together in that quarry. And even before that, Daryl had seen people claw at each other in order to escape new waves of dead walking.
He held his knife and remembered when Merle first gave it to him. Daryl had turned ten years old with torn up knees and a black eye that throbbed like a relentless devil. If he held a knife, he could be the one to do the hurting. Merle hadn't said those exact words but Daryl understood what the gift had meant.
He swung the door open and barely had a chance to twist back when a girl lunged at him with a knife, and he shoved her hard against the wall behind him. It sounded painful when her head knocked back but it didn't phase her in her fight, trying to slash that little knife twice more before he grabbed her by the wrist and squeezed tight, feeling the bones shift beneath his hand, dropping it to the floor by force.
The house was worn out and hollowed, and she matched the look of it. He wasn't sure how she managed to fit inside that cupboard with the door shut but it reminded him dimly of the closet he'd hide in when Merle was the one taking the hits from their father.
"Get away from me," she snarled, eyes bright with rage. "I'll kill you."
Coming from her, it sounded like a promise. Daryl had said those same words with the exact same conviction in a thousand different places. He had been willing to cut the feet off of a scrawny kid back in Atlanta for Glenn's sake, and he'd been willing to beat his fists bloody his entire life. "Who the hell are you?" He demanded, trying to take in the sight of blonde hair and a bruised cheekbone.
Daryl had to grab her other hand to prevent her from punching him, kicking at her knife to drive it further away. He couldn't be sure that she wouldn't try biting him so he leaned back slightly, giving her some room against the wall. "Let go!"
He grunted, trying to separate dirt from bruises. "What's your name kid?"
She swore at him and he squeezed harder, silently demanding an answer from her. He didn't like using force on a kid and she only looked a few years older than Carl and Sophia. Judging her, he thought maybe twelve. "Ivy," she spat. Her anger was razor sharp but he saw the way it shifted into fear, eyes dancing toward the door.
Daryl wished she was Sophia. Sophia was manageable. She had grown up timid, clinging to her mother's shadow, quietly ambling along the road the way a child shouldn't.
Ed was a cold reflection of the father Daryl had known, and he could match the bruises on Carol to the ones his mother would wear. Those dislocated shoulders and awkward instructions on how to set printed off of Google, dark marks on wrists. He knew the way an apology could turn to begging so quick, that pain was a match that burned quick.
Sophia had been quiet for a reason.
But this girl was reluctant to settle, reluctant to stop fighting.
"Where the hell did you come from?" Daryl demanded, irritation bright.
"None of your business," she said, trying to kick him. "Get off me and leave me alone."
"This your home?"
Ivy looked like she was considering lying before honesty won out, shaking her head. "No, I found it. It was empty when I got here. If you want it that bad, take it."
"I'm looking for a little girl. You see her anywhere?"
Ivy's face twisted and he couldn't help but stare at the bruise on her cheek. It was fading but someone had given her the mark. "I haven't seen anyone living in days. Except for the creep in the woods, couple miles away. But he shot himself dead."
Daryl remembered the man back in the tent, still holding the gun in a stiff grip. Ivy was pretty small for staying out in the woods for however long she'd managed, with nothing but a switchblade to defend herself with. "Shit." He breathed, letting go of her wrists but stepping back to block the door. "How long have you been alone for?"
He felt reasonably sure that he could grab her if she took a run for it. Ivy refused to answer, pressing her mouth into a flat line.
"We've got food, back with my group. You gonna come?" Daryl was pretty sure that he could drag her back if he had to. He had gone looking for a girl and he wasn't going to leave a stray child out to defend herself. The woods were teaming with enough walkers it was a wonder she hadn't gotten ripped apart yet.
The world had enough blood in it without taking more.
Food was enough to perk her up some. Daryl had seen the empty tins of sardines by the table. Wariness was visible on her face but the anger was gone. "Where?"
"Greene family farm. You familiar with the area any?"
Ivy shook her head, confirming to Daryl that had drifted in from some other place. "I just want food. And then I'm leaving. You can't make me stay."
He snorted, grabbing her knife. "Sure, kid."
Daryl led her out of the house, abandoning his hope of finding Sophia tucked under some porch for the day. With any luck she would find her way to the post by the highway the group was setting up and could sit tight overnight. Ivy stumbled as she walked, legs stiff from being curled up tight in that closet. She wouldn't let him help her so he settled for staying close, watching carefully as she nearly took a header coming down the steps.
"Here," he said, offering her back the switchblade. He noticed it was pink, the blade itself stained with dried blood. "You'll need to clean that up when we get back."
Ivy shoved it in her pocket, glaring at him. "I thought you were one of the dead ones when you opened up that door."
"I get it."
"And then I saw your face and just really wanted to stab you." She said, mouth twisting into a ghost of a smile.
Daryl refused to reward her by laughing and instead settled for a sidelong glare. A bit of grudging humour softened it, despite himself. "You're lucky I didn't stab you."
Ivy didn't have a bag or much of anything, trudging along in battered hiking boots a few sizes to big for her. Daryl has questions burning in him, wanting to know how she ended up alone and were she came from. Who the boots belonged to. If she was with a group in the beginning of all this and who gave her the bruise.
He wanted to know more about the man in the woods.
The first time he had gotten lost in the woods had been a miserable experience full of regrets. The third time he ran away it hadn't been nearly as bad, foraging for wild leeks and the berries that wouldn't leave him vomiting. The trees seemed to do something to a person when they lingered long enough, making the rest of the world vanish completely.
Ivy didn't complain about the long march and refused to speak, keeping a couple feet away from him. It was relief to make it to the edge of the property without coming across any walkers. Daryl wasn't sure Ivy wouldn't bolt at the sight of one and try to give him a slip.
The sun was just beginning to set and he pointed to the great white house looming across the field.
Ivy stumbled to a stop, gaping at the sight of it. "You live here?" She asked, a bit of wonder clinging to her words.
"No," he admitted, feeling a bit hollow. "We lost somebody and until we find them, we're staying on the property. Looks big, though."
Daryl tried to shrug at the view, like it wasn't a visual of the pipe dream he had cradled all the way through childhood. He could still remember sitting on the school bus and seeing the houses turn to homes the further they got away from the trailer park. Daryl had always liked looking at the big country houses the most, the ones that looked like they might have belonged on the magazine covers like Country Living, the kind his mother had read religiously.
She had been crafty for a while, before life burned her out. Daryl had seen her try dozens of things to trick their little trailer into being something different. She had hacked apart an old gingham dress pulled from the bargain bin to make stringy looking curtains, planted weedy looking flowers out by the door. Merle was the one to steal porcelain tea cups for her from the local Baptist church kitchen, rimmed with blue roses and green ivy liked lace.
After life went kept going down, though, she'd curl up in front of the soap operas on television and chain smoke. She didn't bother looking at the curtains, tea cups, or either of her sons.
The flowers died from neglect in the end.
That trailer was a long cry from a home like this, sun drenched and clean. That wraparound porch would have haunted him to his bones if he had seen that growing up. Hershel's kids had a privilege that they would never truly understand, growing up in the shadow of such a legacy, knowing to their core that it was all for them.
That they would never have to dream bigger than that house itself.
Ivy stood amongst the trees with the same hungry eyes that betrayed herself. She had crawled into a cupboard thinking it was safe when this haven stood untouched by the world mere miles away.
The sun burned in her gaze and Daryl looked at her, that younger reflection of himself, and saw pieces of his world laid out.