Chapter Text
All he knows for sure is that he isn't in Georgia. Daryl knows the Georgia woods back to front, from the worms in the ground to the bats in the sky at night and this isn't it. Terrain's all wrong with its huge fucking mountains everywhere.
He might not know where he is, but there's plenty of game and he hasn't seen a walker since he woke up beneath a big old tree two days ago with nothing but the clothes on his back and his hunting knife (but not his fucking crossbow, fuck it all to hell). So anyway, that's something at least. He isn't going to starve. He guesses he's been in worse situations all in all.
He's skinning a squirrel on his second day lost when he hears it-- first sign that he's not the only human in the whole damn world and of course it's some girl sniffling and whimpering. He's more than half tempted to head in the other fucking direction, because lord knows he doesn't need some kid to look out for.
But then he guesses he’s sort of gotten used to looking out for folks. Jesus.
"You bit?" First things first. The girl startles right out of her skin and turns a pair of big blue eyes on him. She's got a big ol' knife gripped in both hands, but they're shaking and she obviously doesn't know much of anything about using it. No wonder she looks half starved. "You stupid or something? I asked you a question, girl."
"Please-- Stay back. I don't-- I don't wish to harm you." She's definitely not American, if the accent's anything to go by, so there's no help figuring out where he is. No way he hopped over to fucking Europe somehow. No fucking way.
It isn't likely she has any chance at hurting him, but he guesses he understands trying to pretend like you're dangerous even when it's obvious you're not. Still, he keeps his distance and decides to see what happened if he calls her bluff. "I could kill you five times over before you nicked me with that fancy toadsticker. Answer my question 'fore I decide to gut you and be done with it."
"Please, I don't understand." Her guard lowers as she tries to suss out what he was saying and he takes advantage.
She flinches in a real familiar way when he advances on her, plucking her dagger out of her hand easily and grabbing her by the shoulders. He uses his hold on her to turn her this way and that, looking her over before releasing her with a grunt. He'd seen that kind of flinch on plenty of women. On Carol, on Sophia. And before the walkers too. He was too damn soft on this sort of shit and he knew it.
"What the fuck are you wearing anyway? Look like a fucking princess." He didn't make it to school much as a kid, but he could remember a girl he was sweet on in 3rd grade dressing up like a fairy princess or some shit for Halloween and it looked real similar, he reckons-- except without all the dirt and rips. But dirt and torn clothes is typical enough these days. Her dagger's real fancy too, good and sharp with inlay work in the hilt. Maybe she'd been at some sort of costume party or something when things went to shit and she hadn't had sense to find herself some fucking pants. Beth would have liked her look though. Fucking Beth.
She’s so pale that the dirt on her stands out like war paint against her skin. "No. No, I'm no princess. Just a bastard girl from-- Ironoaks. Recently, at least." Never heard of that place, so that's no help. Probably overrun if she's out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe talking about clothes soothes girls, because she seems to relax a bit, just a little. She's got sense enough to still be wary, but she's stopped panicking at least. "And you?"
"I ain't no princess either," he replies, a little joke to help prove he isn't going to hurt her if she doesn't hurt him. It falls flat like most his jokes do. "You got people gonna be looking for you?" Daryl doubts it, but maybe she's escaping something or maybe her group's just no good at taking care of their own and lost her.
"No." Her eyes slide sideways and he figures that's a lie, but doesn't call her on it just yet. "I-- I'm heading North."
"What's north?" She'd looked East when she said it, but he's already figured she had no sense of direction. He might not know the country around here, but he can still see the sun.
"I have a cousin working in White Harbor and he says there is work there for me as well."
What kind of place has work for people these days. It’s good a goal as any, though. "You ain't gonna get anywhere on your own, seems to me. Come on."
It's a stupid thing to do, coming back to his camp and sharing his squirrel and his fire, but it seems like it's a miracle she isn't dead yet and she probably knows it. Even though she's lost, she obviously has some clue where they were in general and that will help them both in the long run. This one'll be the one I keep safe. Stupid fucking bastard that he is, he can't just accept all the death on his head.
"You dye your hair for camoflage?" It'd be a smart move, he figures. Her roots are a bright copper-y red and that'd stand out a mile in this country compared to the dark brown she's dyed the rest of her hair.
Her hands fly to her head and she looks up at him with wide, scared eyes. Shit. Talking with folks is such a minefield. "I. I. Yes?"
"If you just wanted brown hair, say so. I ain't gonna judge," he shrugs. "Name's Daryl, by the way. Who're you?" By the look of her and the way her mouth opens and closes like a gasping catfish, looks like that's not a safe question either. "Fucking hell. I can just keep calling you girl, if you like."
"That's fine. That is, if you truly don't mind-- It's just that I-- I don't like my name."
Daryl figures that's fair enough. Little weird, but he's getting the sense that maybe she's a bit touched.
------
He is possibly the strangest man that Sansa has ever met. Certainly, she's never heard anyone who speaks as he does. And the way he dresses-- well, she doesn't even recognize some of the fabrics. She'd thought him perhaps one of the mountain tribes at first, but the more she stays in his company, the more she suspects he must be from very far away indeed. He blasphemes to gods she's never heard of before. Across the Narrow Sea at least and perhaps beyond. She is afraid to ask questions lest he ask them back and she has no answers to give. She already suspects he doesn't believe the scant lies she'd fed him when they met.
She isn't sure why he hadn't harmed her. It had seemed her fate was certain when he'd come upon her half starved and utterly lost after her foolhardy flight down from the Eyrie. It was nearly impossible that a man as rough and wild as he was wouldn't cause her untold harm. But instead, he'd fed her and fallen into her company. Men were never what she expected; it was a lesson she needs to remember. Stupid girl Didn't you learn that well enough from Fath-- Petyr? He was nothing like he seemed. She shudders. Even thinking his name made her feel unclean now. It was a stupid thing that she'd done, running without proper preparation, but Sansa hadn't been thinking of anything but getting out of his reach.
"Hey! Girl!" Daryl's hushed voice jerks her out of her revery and she looks forward to where he's been scouting ahead. "Cabin up ahead," he murmurs as she catches up with him. He hands her the dagger she'd stolen from Petyr's solar and draws his own long, slightly jagged knife. "Stick close, hear me? And be quiet."
Slowly, they creep up on the small building. Perhaps it belonged to a poacher. Daryl eases the door open, knife held at the ready, and ducks inside. "Got a body." He approaches the corpse slowly. Sansa swallows hard against the bile that rose in her throat, covering her mouth. The man had been dead long enough to stink and the smell was threatening to overwhelm her. Then Daryl prods the body with a toe and chuckles and for whatever reason, that's it. She rushes back out the door and retches.
"Outta my way, here we come." She stumbles aside and he drags the corpse past her. Its heels make shallow trails in the dirt.
"What are you doing?" Her breath was still hitching in her throat. It's not as though you haven't seen dead men before, she scolds herself.
"What, you wanna sleep with him? Get inside, take a look around. I'll get a fire going."
It was only when she smelled cooking flesh that she understands what sort of fire he had meant.
------
The cabin is like hitting the jackpot so far as Daryl's concerned. Some sort of hunting shack and nobody's looted it at all. It's no crossbow, but he can make due with the longbow he finds and the trapping supplies are all in pretty good shape. There's even some smoked and cured meat and a small garden-- more than half dead, but he digs out some potatoes.
He's starting to really wonder about this place he woke up in. Like maybe he didn't actually wake up and it's some sort of coma dream. He'd seen that shit happen on his Mama's stories when they'd had a tv for a while growing up. People in comas having whole other lives before waking up to the real one. He wishes he could ask Rick about that. Rick's the only one he knows with coma experience. Everything about the place is just so old fashioned. Even if the walkers drove everyone back a couple centuries in some ways, there'd still been guns. And plastic. There's none of that in the shack.
Worrying about it isn't going to help him any, but he figures he can ask Girl a couple things anyway. Get his bearings more now that they've got a safe place to bunk down. She's been in her head most of the time they've been together and that keeps her quiet. He knows the look in her eye, respects it. But he also knows that sometimes you gotta talk, even if he's no good at it.
"You know the date?" Time to start ruling some theories out.
She'd just taken a nibble off a piece of venison-- she eats kind of cautious and careful even though he knows she's hungry-- so he waits her out while she chews. "I've lost track of the day, but I believe we are still in the fourth moon."
He puts a check down in his mental 'Not In Fucking Kansas Anymore' column and decides not to bother asking about the year. "You any good at drawing maps?"
"I-- I could try?"
She's chewing on her lower lip, all unsure, but he figures it's worth a shot so he takes an unfletched arrow shaft from the pile by the table and hands it to her. "Start with whatever landmark you think we're closest to. Coast, roads, rivers, mountains, towns. That sort of shit. Say the door is north. Just scratch it out in the dirt."
He leaves her to it for a bit, organizing things around the place to his liking while he waits. When she looks up at him, he comes over to see what she's come up with. "All right, tell me what's what."
"This is-- this is the Eyrie here, this circle, and the rest of the Vale's behind it, of course. I think we're somewhere around here," she moves her hand over a pretty big area to the west where she's drawn what's most likely a whole bunch of mountains.
"That a river?"
"No, no, that's the High Road. I'm not sure-- I'm not sure where the Bloody Gate would be on it. I can't remember."
Whatever it is, it sounds like something they should be avoiding anyway, so he just nods. "How hard would it be to backtrack back toward this Eyrie place and then head north?"
Her head starts shaking the moment he points at the Eyrie and there's panic in her eyes. "No. No. I can't. I can't go near the Eyrie."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes." She doesn't look inclined to elaborate and he guesses dangerous is dangerous. He won't be able to take her that way no matter what's waiting there, not with the way she reacted.
He squats down to look at the map more closely. "So what was your plan then? 'cause these mountains don't leave a lot of options that ain't east. 'Specially with winter comin'."
Girl sucks in a breath and looks anywhere but at him. "I'm just a stupid girl. I didn't think-- I didn't plan. I don't know."
Hell, she might start crying. "Look," he says quickly. "If we gotta go west, this High Road's our only option that I see from what you drew. It's that or stay here. Could do it, but one thing I've learned is it's better to have people around, even if sometimes they screw ya."
"The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives," she murmurs and sucks in another big breath. "Perhaps-- Perhaps we could go back a bit and go to Gulltown." She took up her stick and scratched in some more coastline to the southeast of the Eyrie and circled a spot. "The road would be better, no matter the weather, and probably safer too. From some things, at least."
"How's that going to get us to your cousin?"
"I have a bit of coin." It's a reluctant admission and also more reason to figure he's not home anymore. Who the fuck cared about money where he came from? "There should be a fair number of ships to seek passage on. I'm not sure if it will be enough, but..."
He shrugs. "We can figure it out once we get there."
------
They run into the men on the fourth day after they leave the hunter's shack. Sansa would have walked right into their midst on her own, but Daryl stops them both with an alert tilt to his head and turns to signal for her silence. He pulls her behind a tree and tells her to stay with a few emphatic hand signs, then draws his knife and slips away. It's all she can do not to grab at him and plead for him not to leave her alone in a silly fit of panic, but she knows better. She knows he must do what he must. And she knows that there's a chance he will betray her.
Sansa draws her dagger and she waits. It feels like an eternity. It feels like no time at all.
"Girl, c'mon!" Her relief is sharp and intense. The sounds of struggle had been so brief that she had been sure she'd have to run and that she was alone again.
Each of the three corpses that Daryl is piling off to the side of the small camp has an eye stabbed out amongst a variety of other wounds. "Why did you do that? To their eye, I mean." The question comes out of her mouth without her permission and she feels a shiver of fear go down her spine at her stupidity. What did it matter why he did what he did? So long as he didn't do it to her. The words are out now though, so she makes her expression of the sort one might have while asking a cook about a recipe. Killers have many different recipes for death. Sansa briefly wonders what the Hound would think of that. He'd probably mock her, but it's true. She's seen many and heard of many more now.
Daryl just looks at her for a moment, then shrugs. "Habit, I guess. Best way to make sure a body's real dead is to get at its brain."
It makes sense in a gruesome sort of way. She nods. "They must be of the mountain tribes. They don't dress like smallfolk or sellswords."
"If you say so." He picks up a discarded sword off the ground and hefts it. For all his skill with killing, it doesn't look natural in his hand. He doesn't hold it with the ease that years of training gave Robb or her father. Perhaps they don't use swords where he's from. She knows he's skilled with his knife-- the evidence is in the blood at her feet-- and the bow he took from the shack, which he practices with nightly. The questions threaten to escape her again, so she bites her lip and busies herself with going through a pack on the ground.
"Lion. There lions here?"
Her heart stops in her chest and then starts battering against her ribs. Daryl has pulled a goblet from the pack he was rooting through. It's eerily familiar. She remembers her husband drinking from ones just like it often during their time together. Tyrion had brought some wild men from the Vale with him when he'd returned to King's Landing to be Hand. She remembered the murmurs in court, the complaints and the jeers. These had been Lannister men, perhaps. In a way, at least. Her husband's men.
"Girl?" Her companion sounds concerned and she jerks her gaze to him.
"Only the Lannisters. It's their sigil. They're worse than any real lion. Worse than any beast at all." It's hard to fathom that someone could be wandering in Westeros for any amount of time and not know of the Lannisters. "These men must have... have come into contact with them. Stolen that goblet."
"Think we could sell it then?"
"No. No, we should leave it. Anyone who saw it would know it belonged to their House and not us. They could take us for the thieves."
He tosses the goblet away without another question and Sansa feels a strange surge of pride. He had listened to her advice without question. She might still just be a stupid girl, but this man trusted her judgement in many things. It was an oddly powerful feeling.