Chapter Text
Shane had always been the hotheaded one, the man of the pair that would go completely beserk if something went wrong. The one that would pull all the reckless, impulsive moves in order to protect those in danger, or to get the job done. Rick… Rick was the one that thought things through, the one that slowed Shane down and calmly hit his partner with common sense, with thought out plans, with negotiations and a silver tongue and his well-thought out aim with his silver pistol to aid them both.
But Shane was dead now, and Rick found no one by his side to fill in that one side of the partnership he'd never dared enter. So he dove into the new territory reluctantly, leaping into action without thinking, without looking, without considering the consequences. Because right now all he could see was his friend lying on the ground, five walkers descending upon him, and Rick would be damned if he'd lose another member of this group. Especially Daryl Dixon. Apparently, that threat was enough to spur on the burst of impulsiveness Rick found as he charged right into the wave of walkers with his damn knife, face contorting into a furious snarl as he jammed the blade into the skulls of the two nearest zombies as he pulled them off Daryl. He could barely see the archer in all the chaos, but he could definitely hear the younger man's confused and angry voice. "The hell you doin', Grimes?! Get the hell outta here!"
Part of him was concerned at the fact that Daryl actually expected him to just leave him here, but the even larger part was too busy throwing and kicking and stabbing walkers to really pay much attention to the fact. He finally got the five monsters off of Daryl, and since the larger wave was a few feet away – still too close, but hell with that for now – Rick dropped to his knees and quickly checked the hunter over for bites. None. God, how many times did this man think he could cheat death?
Daryl was already fighting to sit up straight, hissing all the while as one of his hands grabbed at his leg. Rick looked towards the blonde's feet and immediately saw why. The nasty looking animal trap had clamped down hard into the hunter's flesh, right above the ankle. It had to be made for bears or something, because Rick had never seen a snare that large or that lethal looking, with the spikes and metal teeth now all covered in Dixon's blood. "Shit."
"Yeah, shit, now get on outta here 'n I'll catch up with ya later! Go!"
Unbelievable. Rick would've taken the time to give the younger man an 'I-can't-believe-you-just-suggested-that' look if his mind weren't screaming at him to MOVE! "We gotta get out of here, now. If you lean on my shoulder, do you think you can walk?"
"What? Nah! Git movin' 'n I'll meet up with ya in…"
Ever since the whole "no more democracy" crap had started Rick had found patience and serenity short in the stocks; now was no exception. "Damn you, Daryl, get on my shoulder!"
Then they were moving, how he wasn't sure, when he'd actually managed to balance Daryl against him and started dragging the younger man forward unknown. He could feel the storm clouds fogging up his mind once more, buzzing in his ears, a drone that blurred out the walkers' groans and Daryl's grunts of pain, along with his own labored, panicked breathing. You think you have what it takes to lead this group on yer own? Shane's voice reminded him, tauntingly, no longer filled with the companionship Rick had fed off of before the apocalypse. Look at this – yer about to lose another one, all because you weren't quick enough, because you were perceptive enough, because you aren't enough.
No… no, he'd find a way out of this. He always did. He was the leader, the protector, the man who had to keep them all together even at his own expense – even at the expense of his own mind. Shane couldn't have done that, could he? No, Shane couldn't even go without Lori, another man's wife, and Carl, another man's son. No, he wasn't Shane, he wouldn't be Shane, he'd be better than Shane. He get him and Daryl out of this fiasco alive, and then they'd go back and he'd go on protecting the others, keeping them together, keeping them alive. I can do this, I'm not Shane, I can do this.
"To yer left." Daryl's slurred but equally alert/anxious voice broke his thoughts, breaking the dam of notion and letting all the grueling noises and sights of reality slip back in. Rick turned to wear the archer had gestured, and noticed a tiny shack, with a little barbed wire fence, not too far away. Better than nothing. He made a run for it, trying not to jostle his companion to much as Daryl leant on him, suddenly all too aware of the walkers all around, closing in on them.
The shack wasn't large, wasn't well-built, and seemed ready to topple the slightest gust of a breeze; surely an ocean of walkers charging ravenously into it would bring the four crude walls crumbling down. Despair gripped him once more, almost causing him to stumble, when he noticed the white paneled structure beyond the shack. A building. A house. Hopeful, he put on a new burst of speed, dragging Daryl along with him as he ran past the shack/shed and towards the house's back porch. Be open, be open, be open…
Someone was listening above, because the handle turned without protest as he slammed into the door, and without bothering to clear the house completely and safely as the group had been doing recently, he just jumped inside and pushed Daryl in ahead of him, ignoring the other man's protests, trying to ignore the chorus of groans and gurgles coming from the walkers as he bolted the door firmly shut.
"Rick!"
He turned at the sound of the warning just in time to avoid a once-a-woman that came diving towards him from the nearby staircase, nightdress torn, flesh half rotted and hanging off the splintering skeleton in rags. He stabbed the thing in the nape of its neck with his knife, and looked around to find Daryl beating another male walker into the floorboards with a fire poker, bear trap still hanging from the man's leg. He had a pain tolerance, that was for sure. Rick allowed him to finish that task while he jogged up the stairs and swept the bedrooms for any straggling monsters. Nothing. All empty. They were lucky this time.
He returned to the first floor to find Daryl collapsed on one of the sofas, already fiddling with the steel menace on his ankle as he hissed in barely concealed pain. Rick strode across the room easily and quickly, and dropped to his knees near the couch, hands already ripping the old white handkerchief he carried around out of his back pocket. He reached out to examine the wound, only to be growled at and jerked away from. He hadn't expected anything less.
"Back off, Grimes," Dixon warned him, in that tone he took when he was on the full defensive, whether because of stress or raw emotion or pain. Rick had experienced before, the last time being on the farm after the younger man had fallen off a horse and gotten stabbed with one of his own arrows. He knew how to handle this, from what Hershel had showed him. He calmed himself as best he could and tried to put on the 'look of reason'. "Daryl, just lemme take a look at it, see if we can risk waitin' out the herd or if we gotta find a way ta get ya to Hershel."
" 's said it was fine, now fuck off!"
He'd never been very good at the look of reason – that had been Dale's expertise. And now Dale was dead, just like Shane. And he was trapped in this house, in the middle of the woods, with a pained and pissed Daryl Dixon. Not to mention he was getting pretty agitated himself. Shit.
"Daryl, let me at least help get the thing off of ya…"
He was rewarded with a death glare and a snarl from the hunter. "Don't need yer coddlin'. Go find us a way outta here back ta the camp, I'll take care o' this myself."
He wasn't going to argue, not anymore. He got up and once again roamed the large house, not daring to open any of the boarded windows to find a way out just yet – the noises outside had not died down. The kitchen was barren and only produced two candles, which he took with a silent glare at all the cupboards for being empty. He went into the bedrooms and found nothing as well, and he tried not to think about what could be happening back at the gas station, tried not to think about walkers devouring Lori and Carl and all the others, everyone else that he was trying to so damn hard to protect. Couldn't they see that that was what he was doing? Protecting them? From walkers and thieves and bandits and the other filth of the world? Children had curfews and rules to keep the safe; and while they weren't children – not most of them anyway – they were his responsibility? Why couldn't they see that?
Why couldn't Shane have seen that?
He slowly descended downstairs once more, heart and gut thrumming unpleasantly as he tried to sooth his wild nerves. They were safe in here, at least from the walkers. And the others were safe back at the camp. They had to be. He entered the living room and frowned deeply at where Daryl had managed to pull off the bear trap, with a motherload of cursing, and was now mopping up the constant flow of red that was coming from the several lacerations and stab wounds marring the flesh. He hadn't expected so much blood, and obviously, neither had Daryl. "Hell." He moved forward without asking permission, and this time clamped his handkerchief over the wound before Dixon had a chance to protest. He did grit his teeth and mutter a few profanities, but didn't object to the helping hand this time. Good. An improvement. He applied more pressure, keeping silent, unwilling to start another argument with the other male at this exact moment. Ever, actually. Daryl was a part of the group, and the group had elected him leader. They had to listen to him, so that he could keep them safe. Shane had been his partner, his equal before. And now Shane was dead. This was on him. This, helping fix Daryl's injuries, was on him. And so was finding a way back to the station, finding more food, finding a safe haven for them all that would be just as good as the farm had been…
He'd fix this. He had to.
Daryl knew what a human being cracking down looked like. He'd seen it in his father when he'd get shitfaced drunk, he'd seen it in Merle when he went off to get himself high, and he could see it now in Rick Grimes, who was putting the whole world on his too-thin shoulders. Idiot. He'd gone and declared a freakin' dictatorship in front of an entire group of hungry, terrified people, and then he ran around acting like a martyr for all of them. Won't let anyone go off alone, not even to get more food or find it faster. Wouldn't let any of them help him up there on the leadership high horse, even though he clearly needed it. Needed another partner, to replace the loss of Shane, the loss of his wingman and companion. He'd sent Glenn and T-Dog over to the man over a dozen times, urging them to knock some sense into them; of course, they hadn't the balls to stand up to Rick when he was in his Nazi-mode, so he had to go and do it. And now he had a ring of holes all around the flesh of his ankle, with Grimes hovering in the that guilt-ridden mode of his, and they were surrounded by walkers.
This was why he usually hunted alone.
But Grimes needed someone with a half bit of common sense to snap him back into reality, and the man really couldn't hunt or track shit, so Daryl had gone against his better judgment and invited – or lured – the man onto a little excursion together for some heart-to-heart shit. Which had ended badly. To hell with this 'fix-it-for-the-group' shit. He had no idea what he was going, obviously, and when they get back to the group he was just going to let Lori and the women knock the man back into reality and get him to see that the whole idea of a G-R-O-U-P was the more than one person aspect of it. He didn't have Shane, so hell, just take Glenn or T-Dog and stop running himself into the ground. Simple. Basic. Why couldn't Grimes get it?
The bleeding in his leg slowed a bit, and Grimes removed his hands to check on it; he jerked his leg away before the man had a chance to, and glowered. "I got it now," he stated, lips twitching as he began to use the now-soiled handkerchief as a makeshift bandage. He paused, thought about the few weeks on the farm with Dale and Rick and Hershel all making him a complete part of the group – well, before Rick went all power crazy – and gave a hesitant nod. "Thanks," he added in a mumble, and didn't wait for a reply. He went back to bandaging his ankle. Damn trap. Traps were for cheaters, bows and rifles were for real hunters. He'd skin the man who owned the stupid contraption if he ever met him.
Rick nodded and sat down on the coffee table before the sofa, hands fiddling with anything within reach, mostly the hem of his jacket. Silence reined for several minutes, and silence was good, because at least they weren't in each other's faces any longer. Though Daryl doubted it could stay that way for long. Grimes needed some common sense knocked into him, and no else seemed to want to take that task upon themselves. Shane might've, if he hadn't gone insane with pathetic lust and then died, and seeing how Rick no longer had the impulse to shove that freakin' pistol of his into his face anymore, he supposed that he was the only one who could talk Rick down from where he was up 'there' without getting whipped into the ground with the man's glare and silver tongue of dramatic speeches. Huh. When he'd first met the sheriff, he'd never thought of him as the glaring type. Just showed how much the apocalypse got to people after all.
Before the silence could go from quiet to awkward, Rick spoke up, still staring at his twitching hands. "Do you think I'm gonna get everyone killed, Daryl?" the man asked quietly, unlike the Rick Grimes he'd come to know, sounding unsure, almost haunted. Eerie.
"Nah," he answered honestly. "Think yer doin' yer best… but best ain't always right, y' know?"
A nod. "Shane thought I'd have everyone dead within days."
Tread carefully, that's what he should do. Having another blow out with the man was the last thing he wanted, specially cause he was trying to help the stubborn bastard. But the fact that the guy was still letting Shane Walsh's words bring him down was just stupid and messed up. The hothead was dead. Didn't Rick realize it? Shane was dead. Which meant Shane's way of surviving was wrong. And he said so, along with, "That pussy ain't yer problem anymore. Ya get ta chose another partner to cover yer own stupid ass now."
Rick looked like he wanted to protest, to defend his partner even in death. He rolled his eyes at the blind loyalty the man had; even if he'd probably do the same in Merle's case. All he added to that was, "He's was wrong, Rick," and he turned back to bandaging his wound, ignoring Rick's eyebrow raising in his direction, not noticing the way those same blue eyes suddenly warmed up, lost their chill. Not hearing Rick quietly add, "Yer right, Daryl," beneath his breath.
That was it. No huge climax to open the man's eyes. There were no fireworks going off, no huge epiphany with enough drama to fill a season of soap operas. No audience except the walkers, and voices belonging to Shane and Merle to haunt the background. Just… acceptance on Grimes's part and unwitting volunteering from Dixon's.
When the walkers cleared away enough for them to slowly make their way to the camp, Daryl leaning and limping on Rick's side until they reached the gas station. And there stood them all, Glenn and T-Dog waving them over eagerly but without panic. Safe. Daryl didn't miss the sigh of relief from Rick's lips, nor the way the man smiled for the first time in weeks. Good. And when he saw him go over to Glenn later on and speak with him, he though Grimes was finally taking on a new partner. 'Bout time.
It was only a few days later, while they were clearing out a house, when Daryl began to notice the tiny, unnoticeable signals he and Rick Grimes were suddenly sharing; the way the other man nodded at him to go ahead, or looked at him for direction on what to do next, or automatically the way they would both go back to back whenever they were clearing out a house.
It was only then that Daryl Dixon realized that for a new partner, Rick Grimes had chosen him.