dadyl | 𝙿𝙴𝙽𝙰𝙽𝙲𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝙱𝙾𝚇 ;

Daryl -

[ Shit. Gabe works his jaw, then reminds himself to breathe. To center himself, and consider his situation with cold logic. Rage can be useful. So can fear, to a certain extent. But he's better served by detachment in the scrum and he has a feeling this will become one sooner than later. These rooms really only swing a few ways.

Breathe. Remember yourself. He steps closer, reaching a hand out to touch Daryl's arm. ]

Hey. There's always a way out. We're probably gonna bleed for it first but there's always a way out.

[ Gabe feels almost calm beside him but that isn't keeping Daryl's breathing from almost doubling in speed. He can't seem to get a proper handle on his fear and even as he rubs his shoulder to get the feeling back into it, he's looking for something to pry open the door with.

But that means he has to look back at the tools in the room. He can only look for a second and then he stares at the floor. Shakes his head in disbelief. ]

I can't bleed like that.

[ He's gone cold at the thought. He's trying to force the fear away but he can't. ]

Not that way.

[ Something's shifted. Gabe stills, already imagining unsteady ground. He thinks of the carnival, the animatronic memories played out before both of them, and all that shit they know about each other now. And the sound a much younger Daryl made when he screamed.

Shit.

Gabe tips his head back. Stills himself. ]

Hey. Focus on me. It's -

[ He doesn't say it's all right because it's not and they're far from children. But there's a shift in the room. The air pressure drops. Only for a moment, but enough for his tech to clock. And then a voice.

Explain yourselves, sinners. And be freed.

The screen clicks on. Gabe has no way of telling what the image is; this time, there's no sound. He stills, scanning the room again. Something painful, no doubt. Because that's the trick, isn't it? ]

Hey. Talk to me.

[ Daryl starts at the voice, immediately looking around for company as if he'd somehow missed the fact that they weren't alone. But there's nothing. Not even an audio system that he can find. This isn't the first time he's felt trapped in Hell, by Hell, but he doesn't know if he's actually been this scared before. Worried for others, of course.

But not this.

Great. Just fucking great. He should have seen something like this coming. They were practically being baited into snooping around. Someone wanted this to happen. Someone was ready. ]

What?

[ Fear makes him sharp and at first Daryl doesn't look at the screen. It's almost instinctive. It's the fact that the flickering picture has no sound that eventually makes him turn to face it. Flickering, because it's boy running through undergrowth in low light. It's after sunset. He's lost.

It takes Daryl almost a minute to realize what he's seeing and when he does, the chill in his extremities turns to numbness. There hadn't been a lot of photos taken of Daryl when he was young. There hadn't been a lot of mirrors around, either. Not after his mother burned up in her bed. Daryl barely remembers what he looked like at seven.

That. He looked like that. Grubby and rashy and starving. Berry juice smeared on his face and ticks in his hair. Poison oak on almost every inch of bare skin. Alive for no reason other than because he was determined to be.

He can't speak. He just stares. ]

...Oh.

Edited 2021-11-16 06:52 (UTC)

[ Things build in that silence. Gabe slows his breathing down, focusing. Trying to think, to calculate his angles. They walked into a baited trap. And there's always a way out but not before they bleed for it one way or another. ]

Daryl. Talk to me. Focus on me, not on that shit.

[ Whatever's on the screen can't be good. ]

It's just a moment, okay?

[ He hears him and doesn't hear him, has to run what Gabe has said through his head again to grasp its meaning. Focus on him. Talk to him. Talk to him about what? Even though the screen isn't playing any audio, Daryl can hear a hissing in his ears.

And then the voice sounds again. Explain yourself.

Explain himself? Explain what? What he was doing out there, how he had survived? Why in the hell would that matter?

But nothing ever matters here. They're played with because it hurts. That's the only goal, it seems. ]

It's me.

[ He sounds small when he says it. He finally looks at Gabe but only briefly. He's worried that what's on the screen could change into something worse at any moment. ]

They're showin' me... me. I'm a kid.

[ A bad memory. Something that got caught on the edges. Something that echoed.

Gabe slows his breathing down. Centers himself. He needs to be steady now. Give Daryl something to mirror. This his job now.

Focus. The body is nothing. ]

Okay.

[ His voice is soft. ]

It's just me. You're just talking to me. No one else.

[ That assurance reaches him, at least a little. Gabe knows some of it. More than he'd ever wanted anyone to but it hadn't been Daryl's call. Hell has decided what Gabe would know about him that night. And it seems like it's deciding again.

He swallows. His voice comes out unsteady. Unsure. ]

I'm... seven? Maybe?

[ Is this what he's supposed to do? Just explain what he's seeing to Gabe and they'll be allowed to leave? His gaze flickers to the wall of implements again and his breathing catches in his lungs.

Okay. He'll try. ]

Gotta be at least seven 'cause my mom was already dead. Burned up in our house.

[ He realizes belatedly that something is forcing him to be more detailed than he wants - forcing him to tell Gabe everything he'd told Carl, the only person other than his family who'd ever known. But once he starts talking it's hard to stop. ]

Got drunk, as usual, an' fell asleep smokin'.

That left me with my dad.

[ A bad turn. Gabe keeps his breathing slow and steady, because someone needs to be calm here. That’s been his job more than once in the field, remaining steady when one of his team was hurting. Standing guard and then sometimes, later, dolling out brutal vengeance. But most of the time they just endured, and survived, and got up to do it all over again.

Breathe. The body is nothing. ]

Where are you?

[ Gabe's determined calm really does help. It reminds Daryl that even though he can see it somehow, it's still just a memory. It can't hurt him any more than he lets it.

He'd told Andrea about it once. He can talk about it again. ]

The woods. Lost.

[ But not just lost - forgotten. Not one person was around to care. ]

I was lost for... nine days, give or take. Somethin' like that. No one looked for me.

Edited 2021-11-18 02:12 (UTC)

[ Nine days. Gabe tips his head back, imagining it. Knowing, now, what it would take to survive that. He could do it as an adult. Has done it as an adult. But as a child? ]

No one?

[ Even when things were bad, Gabe always had somebody to look for him when he was a kid. He had Gilly, even if he never had his brothers. ]

[ Daryl just shakes his head, trying not to get caught up in the past. Trying to just keep to the facts, just like he had when he'd told Andrea to keep her spirits up about Sophia. ]

Weren't anyone around to know I was missin'. My dad was on one of his benders, I knew better'n to be around for those by then. So I ran off before he caught me.

[ He hadn't even known how to hunt yet. It was that very experience that had made him determined to learn. ]

Merle was in juvie. He mighta noticed, if he'd been around. Maybe.

[ But he wasn't, and he wasn't more often than he was until he'd gotten the hell out at eighteen a year or two later. And left Daryl there. ]

[ Part of that's familiar. Knowing not to go home when shit's going down. Gabe doesn't say anything for a moment. Mateo got drunk sometimes - never enough to get caught - but mostly he was just there, and something about Gabe's existence seemed to piss him off on a fundamental level whenever he was around. So Gabe generally wasn't. Isaac and Julio were useless when they weren't getting in on it, so.

That made it simple, back then. ]

But you made it out.

[ His voice is soft. ]

You survived. Not everyone can.

[ Made it out. Barely survived, then spent all his life doing the same thing. Isolating, protecting himself. Surviving. Counting on no one else until he'd forgotten what the use of company was. ]

I made it home. Sure.

[ Home, but not out. He would be trapped for many more years before he could disappear from that life altogether. The only thing that had remained the same was Merle, crashing in and out of his life between stints in prison. It had taken Daryl a lifetime and an apocalypse to put that life behind him. That person he'd been. ]

If the walkers had never ended shit... I'd still be out there.

[ One way or another, he'd have died out in those woods. Probably drinking himself to death in a trailer just a hair better than his dad's. ]

It was my people who found me. Saw me. It just took 'em forty years.

[ His voice is strained and monotonous all at once and it just comes out. Like he's always known it. ]

[ Gabe tips his head back. Exhales. For a moment, he doesn't know what to say. What do you say to that? What can you do, except stand and acknowledge the pain, the weight of it?

It's a memory. But it echoes, doesn't it?

Silently, he bumps his arm against Daryl's. Contact, if he wants it. ]

And you made it here.

[ His voice is soft. ]

I don't see shit these days. But I know you.

[ He feels that bump, that little offer, but he can't take it. He can't reach for comfort right now. It feels, somehow, like he's revisiting something he deserves. Remembering, with surreal vividness, who he used to be. What he comes from. Who he comes from. ]

Yeah. All the way to Hell.

[ He can't even scoff. It's just true.

But he glances at Gabe, hesitance and disbelief making him defensive. Almost suspicious. ]

You think you know me?

[ He'd dispute the notion with almost anyone else. You don't know shit about me. But for some reason, right now, he can't. Because he knows it isn't really true, even though he's never thought about it this way before. ]

Yeah.

[ It's said simply. ]

Not all the way. But enough. Like you know me.

[ What's enough? Daryl never counts on knowing anyone, not for sure. Even his own people have surprised him. Carol most of all. For a little while, he wasn't even sure if he knew her at all anymore.

And this place... ]

How d'you know it's enough? How do any of us know?

[ The screen is now showing Daryl staggering in his kitchen door, nine days of the woods on him. He opens the fridge, takes out the peanut butter, and eats it with a grubby hand. He remembers it being the best meal of his life. ]

We take it all with us. All of it. Don't we?

Yeah. We do.

[ The scars, the weight of all that history. They keep it, carry it, embrace it or try to box it away. But it's always there. Shaping them.

Gabe hesitates a moment, then takes a risk and puts his hand on Daryl's arm. A loose touch. Easily broken. ]

All that bad shit, that's not the end.

[ Just like when Gabe brushed him, Daryl doesn't respond at all to the hand on his arm. Neither does he pull away. He simply accepts that it's happening.

It's not the end. No, it isn't, but what's here for them? What can be built in this place when it can all be snatched away so easily? Not that it hadn't been the same back home, but the stakes were clearer, there. Then. ]

No. We just get more bad shit to handle. Nothin' ever changes. Not really.

[ A cycle it seems impossible to stop, but normally Daryl can keep all this buried. Unacknowledged. Dealt with.

But for some reason it's all just falling out. ]

[ For a moment, that just hangs in the air between them. Some quiet, unhappy truth that Gabe can't find it in himself to deny because there's a part of him - badly hidden, most of the time - that believes it too. That's accepted the world is suffering and hurt and most people are either going to cause more of it or suffer themselves, and he'd rather be the bastard with the gun than the one down on his knees if that means protecting his people. Because one day they might get out, even if he never will. Daryl's one of those people, he thinks. One of those decent fucking human beings. There aren't many in this or any world. And that's enough to build on, isn't it? If they try, if they just keep on fighting -

Then the screen clicks. And the images change. Gabe can't see them, can't tell what's playing out, and for a moment he thinks it's another one of Daryl's. The sound of crunching stone and ragged breathing, dust falling down from a great height. And then he hears a child crying and it comes back.

Oh, he thinks. Of course they went there. He can't see the images play out but he remembers them just the same. An elevator shaft turned into a cave after the explosives tore it open and sent everyone inside plummeting down. The faint steams of dust motes and weak light streaming down from above. The blood soaked in black. His father, face down and utterly silent. His mother on her side, wheezing. Blood bubbling in her mouth as Gabe held her hand. The way the coins on her bracelet clicked as she shivered. She didn't see him, not really. She was well on her way to gone by that point. Head trauma, probably. But she held his hand for a long time, down there in the dark. And next to him, Mateo holding their younger brothers. Utterly still, and utterly silent as he wept.

He looked it up later, as an adult. When he had context for things he'd only remembered in fragments. First device took out a server farm on the thirtieth floor. Took out a good chunk of the surrounding building too, including the floor where Gabe's mother worked as a translator. And where they'd gone to surprise her when her shift ended.

Maybe it would've been okay, if the secondary device hadn't torn the medical team to shreds. Maybe then his youngest brother might not have gotten so fucked up. Gabe's fairly certain his father died on impact but maybe they could have saved his mother. Maybe it would've been enough to change what came after, once Mateo stopped being so still and silent and started getting angry. Maybe it would've been enough, if they had one parent left. If they had anybody left.

Her name was Marta. She was -

Well. He doesn't really remember, does he? ]

Oh.

[ Gabe just shakes his head. He doesn't need to see. He knows what's coming next. And he pulls his hand away just before his mother's ragged breathing just -

Stops. ]

Maybe this is karma. For all the bad things we did.

[ The click from the changing screen makes Daryl look, already panicked that it could be some other shitty memory of his laid out to be dealt with, but he doesn't recognize what he sees. At least not immediately. He doesn't even realize the significance of his confusion quickly enough and it takes until he finally recognizes the expressive brow on the child in the center of the frame to know.

Just like the last time, once he realizes what - who - he's seeing, Daryl doesn't want to look. He turns away fast and then remembers the command. The deal for getting out of here. Maybe if he doesn't look, if he doesn't know, whatever this is won't count it for Gabe. Then the pain would be for nothing. He has to do his part.

So he looks. And what he couldn't feel for himself rushes in for Gabe. ]

Ain't any such thing. Else the world wouldn't be what it is.

[ His world, Gabe's. Maybe they're more similar than Daryl is even aware of. Bad shit happens everywhere and he knows what survivors look like. It isn't ever pretty and all of them are dangerous.

But dangerous to whom is all that really matters. ]

Livin' that shit is punishment enough. This?

[ Daryl spits between himself and the screen, all impotent frustration. ]

This is because they get off on it. It ain't about us.

[ The scene keeps playing out. Isaac making small, hurt noises like an animal as Mateo held him. Julio wheezing and numb. Both clinging to Mateo because he'd been a few years older and because what else were they supposed to do, down there in the dark? But that might have been where the lines were drawn, all those years ago. Because they clung to each other and Gabe stayed with their mother. Held her hand until the first responders finally dug deep enough to fish them out.

He drags a hand down his face, shaking his head. He feels suddenly, almost painfully tired. This never ends, does it? ]

Wasn't our fight.

[ He has to explain. Otherwise they'll both bleed and Daryl doesn't deserve that shit. ]

It was some corporate shit. Wasn't about us. Wrong place, wrong time, you know? Only the fuckers took out most of the building when the bomb went off, and then they were smart.

[ He makes a strangled sound. Bitter laughter. ]

They were smart, see, 'cause they had the secondary device on a timer. Tore the first responders to shreds. Took 'em fifteen hours to sweep the area and dig us out, after. Me and Mateo, we were fine. Julio, he was fucked for a while but he shook it eventually. But Isaac never walked right. Couldn't shake it. All because some operator was smart when they did that shit. Targeted the supports, timed it just right. Maximum disruption. Though they didn't coat the shrapnel in rat poison, so, room for fucking improvement.

[ He's talking too fast, the words coming out rapid fire. ]

You wanna know how I know that? Because that was me, later. They trained me up and I did -

[ And the words die. He twitches. ]

I know what I am, okay? I know. You didn't deserve that shit, Daryl.

[ It's a whole different kind of horror than the world Daryl knows. Human evil before the walkers were an excuse. He stands very close to Gabe as he explains and even though he feels sick every time, he keeps glancing back at the screen to make sure he doesn't miss anything. Gabe's carried this since. Daryl can pick up some shadow of the weight from here on, too.

But it's all coming out so fast that Daryl can barely imagine what he's describing and then suddenly Gabe drops off. Daryl knows now. He can see the picture, the trajectory of a life he can't otherwise conceive of in the space Gabe leaves when he lapses into silence.

Was it his fault, who he became? Who fucking knows. But it was the result of something that shouldn't have happened. That no one should live through.

But then Gabe is talking to him again and something in Daryl that's been bending under the weight breaks. He grabs Gabe by either side of the face and pulls him in, possessive, adamant, and presses their foreheads together. He's breathing hard. ]

Stop.

[ His voice sounds very damp. ]

You were a fuckin' kid. You all were.

[ Daryl had watched his house burn down with his mother in it. Gabe had held his mother's hand until she bled out. He realizes he's got hot tears in his eyes and he doesn't know when they got there. ]

[ He flinches. He doesn't mean to but suddenly Daryl's there and it doesn't matter how often they've stood next to each other. Sometimes reflex just takes over, something burned even deeper than the training and all the years Gabe's spent carting a rifle across the universe. Sometimes people get close to him, move too fast, and he just -

Flinches.

But Daryl doesn't hit him. Just puts his hands on Gabe's face and presses their foreheads together. An old, familiar gesture. It has a weight to it. Importance. Gabe shudders, his throat suddenly tight. He can feel tears on his cheek. Not his own, this time.

Silently, he reaches up to hold onto Daryl's wrist. He presses into the contact. Selfishly, maybe. But it's something solid, something that isn't a memory come to trip him and drag him back down.

He thinks of the moment that Daryl described. Nine days out in the woods. No one came looking for him. And then back in the carnival, all those animatronic nightmares dredging the past up yet again. A brother who yelled and taunted him. The sound of a beating doled out to a child. Scars laid out for the first time. And he thinks of how it felt to hold this man, to trace out some of those same scars with his fingers. Learn them like topography. ]

History repeats.

[ His breath hitches. And he realizes, suddenly, that he's crying too. He didn't intend that. He ought to have better control than that. He holds onto Daryl's wrists and he cries as silently as he can. Weak. Least you can do, he thinks furiously, is laugh it off. Be the sniper. The body is nothing. The past is less.

So walk it off. ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject