Work Text:
Daryl didn't remember the first time he saw you but you would never forget. Not that it was particularly different from other nights, oddly enough it was an ordinary day by new world standards. Or night, technically. It was dark for a majority of the meeting and he was on his knees with the rest of his group, listening to your leader's long winded and over dramatic speech. The parts of that night that Daryl remembered were different from your memories. You remembered every moment chronologically. Standing by Simon's jeep, an AR-15 you'd stolen way back when from your crazy neighbor gripped in your hands as you listened to Negan introduce himself to the group that had been wreaking havoc on your community. You barely listened to his speeches anymore. Young when the world ended, you had joined Negan's saviors at a formative moment in the group. Room for growth allowed you a high ranking amongst them which had benefits, though standing around while he terrorized people for fun wasn't particularly one of them.
For most of the evening your eyes wandered, trying to keep yourself interested in the same speech you'd been hearing for the last few years and eventually you landed on Daryl. Though you didn't know his name at the time, you'd heard about him from Dwight and Sherry separately. When you were at the Sanctuary you usually took watch detail on the wives, mostly because Negan was sexiest but also because he didn't trust any of his men guarding his wives (just in case they figured out that not every one who lived in that abandoned warehouse was a total asshole). The gossip reminded you of binging shitty MTV reality shows. Sherry was keen on not fitting in with the other wives and she mistook your interest in their drama as camaraderie so she told you about the guy she and Dwight had met when they tried to run.
Her description was spot on, from what Dwight relayed that was the guy. Your eyes focused on him over Negan's constant pacing and you watched the way he watched your leader. Despite the beating he'd obviously already taken from some of the saviors, he looked unaffected by Negan's bravado, as if the bully speech meant nothing to him. You suspected he would have gladly taken Lucille to the skull though bizarrely you felt relieved when Negan overlooked him for another.
Once Negan loaded Rick into the RV and drove off you relaxed. This group would make no moves without their leader and not when they were so clearly outnumbered. And with Negan gone you didn't feel so bad outright staring. It was pretty sick when you really stopped to think about it; you were seriously checking out this guy in the line-up who looked only slightly more physically stable than the pregnant girl who was turning blue.
"Told you we'd beat those motherfuckers," Simon said, leaning so close you could feel the hairs of his moustache on your cheek, "you owe me."
You pushed him away from you with your elbow, there was a lot Negan didn't stand for but even more that he let slide. "I didn't bet you anything asshole. Just said they were smart, knew what they were doing." You replied, eyes still on Daryl. You were silently willing him to look up, Sherry had told you that he had the prettiest eyes and you knew it was too dark to see but you were dying to.
"Who knows what they're doing now?" When he tried to slide his hand into your back pocket for a squeeze of your ass you pulled away, glaring at him. If this wasn't the middle of a lineup you'd shove your gun down his throat but you had to show some sort of loyalty to the second in command.
"Fuck off Simon."
When you looked back he was looking but it was too dark to tell if Sherry was right, even with all the headlights.
Daryl remembered the second time he saw you.
The music had stopped rather suddenly sometime during what he suspected was night. It was too dark in his cell to be sure. All he was sure of was that the music stopped and still he could hear it, somewhere distant in the back of his head. Just above the whisper of the song he heard footsteps, not as heavy as Dwight's. Daryl shifted away from the door, drawing his legs up to his chest as the door opened and light flooded into the tiny room.
The cell had been a closet originally. You could still remember pulling cleaning supplies out of it. Once upon a time it smelled like bleach. Now it just smelled like excrement. How Dwight did this job you couldn't be sure, you wanted to throw up the minute you opened the door. It weighed against your shoulder as you stood in the doorway, holding out a plate with a sandwich on it. Dwight had been specific in his instructions, dog food sandwiches, and that fucking song on a loop. Despite his orders coming directly from Negan, with both of them gone for the day you were giving Daryl a break. You knew his name now though you hadn't seen him since they'd hauled him back in the transit van after the line-up.
"Take it," you urged. He was just staring at the plate. Eggs and bacon on toast with a cashew butter you'd made. "Seriously, take it."
There was something almost feral in his eyes as he looked up at you. You could see them better in the light of the hallway and yeah, Sherry was right. You only gave the color of his eyes a split second of attention though, too distracted by the look in them, halfway between giving up and getting ready to attack you. When he reached for the plate, you almost pulled your hand away.
The sandwich you had made him wasn't what he was expecting. He hadn't eaten anything substantial since the morning he headed out with Rosita and Denise and he hadn't had eggs since Hershel's farm.
You pulled a water bottle off the carabiner clipped to your belt loop, handing that over too. "I'll be back in a couple of hours." And with that he was shrouded in darkness again.
Too tired and hungry to question your out of place kindness, he ate and drank what you'd left for him. You didn't turn the song back on either because in all honesty it was torturing you too and you wanted some peace and quiet while you were alone on watch. Fat Joey had your detail shadowing the wives today which left you alone in the hallway, sitting on a chair at the corner near the stairwell and reading some old Stephen King book you'd managed to bum off another savior. There wasn't much you could do, without clothes Daryl couldn't leave the cell and you didn't have access to the oversized gym uniform that Negan was so obsessed with putting his "untouchables" in.
When the couple of hours passed you went back for your water and the plate. He'd left you half the once-full bottle and you took a quick drink from it before clipping it back on your jeans. "Sorry about all this." You apologized and he looked at you like he didn't believe you. You weren't sure you believed yourself either.
Outside of the cell, Daryl saw you plenty of times as Dwight paraded him around the Sanctuary. You were almost always with the wives and once, when Sherry stopped in the hall to talk to him without supervision, you'd caught them. Though you'd turned the other way and walked to the stairs instead of calling for anyone. He saw you outside a few times when he was at the fence. Once, a walker got particularly close to his left shoulder and you'd shot them between the eyes.
Negan had screamed at you from where he was unloading the trucks, "the fuck do you think you're doing up there?"
"Figured you didn't want him dead yet." You knew Negan had taken a liking to that side of Daryl you'd seen in the cell, the feral side that wasn't ready to lie down and let someone walk over him.
"I better not hear another fucking shot outta that gun or I'll put one between your eyes sugar!" He replied, voice catching the attention of some of the dead. Daryl was watching you too.
The most significant of all your meetings with Daryl, the one that you and he remembered with vivid clarity, occurred weeks after that and found you both in Alexandria.
You knew Sherry got him out shortly after your altercation with Negan at the fence and you didn't see him again until the day after the attack on the Sanctuary. When you arrived at the gates of Alexandria with Carol, bloodied but not a prisoner. Both of you had been separated from your groups, caught in the woods with a herd of walkers and you'd shot one just above her as she laid flat on her back, struggling to regain the upper hand. She'd taken your gun, afraid you'd use it on her and you let her, not bothering to reason that would be stupid after you just saved her.
Carol walked behind you back to Alexandria, keeping her gun aimed and silence proceeded your arrival. You'd been at the Sanctuary and enough people knew that you were part of Negan's inner circle that when the gates pulled back there was more than just Carol's gun trained on you. When you turned your head to the left, Daryl was there, crossbow aimed at your head. He didn't lower it but you knew he recognized you because his stance shifted from hostile to non-threatening. No wonder, you thought, that Negan had been so scared of him. Daryl still looked as feral and angry as he had the first time you'd seen him but the part of him that had been dying in that cell was gone. Or at least masked with a new purpose.
Before you could speak for yourself Carol was talking, "she's not a threat," she explained, lowering the gun she'd kept trained on you. "She helped me."
You thought about arguing your case but realized the point was moot when Rick walked through two of the men still holding their rifles on you. You didn't remember him nearly as well as you remembered Daryl but you'd been to Alexandria enough times for pick-ups that you were at least familiar with their leader. Once, before Negan, he was probably the greatest threat he ever faced, but Negan had knocked him down a peg and Rick wasn't exactly ready to offer one of the Saviors solace in his home.
"Search her." Rick instructed and Daryl was swinging his crossbow out of the way and patting you down. He pulled two knives off you and pocketed them.
You were led to a cell in a basement that still had a lot more light and humanity than the cell Daryl had been left in. This room was certainly never a closet. And no one stripped you of your clothing. Aside from your hoodie, which had a zipper, and your boots, you were kept in your t-shirt and jeans. One of them even took the bobby pins out of your hair. There was a cot and a blanket and a pillow and Carol gave you water right away. Feeling guilty, you left the water outside the bars.
There was a window and you could see time pass. No one came for two days until finally the door opened and you heard footsteps on the stairs. Anxiety from a past life found you underneath the cot when Daryl came in with a tray of food. A can of chili, an apple, and some bread. You rolled out and sat cross-legged on the cot. "I'm not trying to double cross you guys."
"Ain't me ya need ta convince."
He opened the door and lid your tray on the ground before shutting it again. There were a pair of handcuffs hanging out of his pocket and you assumed he was supposed to cuff you before walking in, just in case you were crazy enough to think you could take him. It occurred to you after a minute that this was the first time you'd ever heard him speak.
You weren't sure what else to say to him but he wasn't leaving. You would have liked to say that you were happy he made it out of the Sanctuary alive or that you always knew he would. He wasn't the type who caved. You could have told him that. You could have asked him how he managed it because you'd be lying if you said that you'd never thought of leaving Negan's side. But you knew what happened to people who did and you could imagine the satisfaction Simon would've taken in stringing you up piece by piece.
"Sorry, 'bout all this." Daryl spoke up, repeating your own words back to you.
"This is nicer than my room was...it's a hundred fucking times nicer than you got." You admitted.
"Eat." He clearly didn't want to rehash the time spent locked in a tiny room being tortured.
"Sorry," you apologized and reached for the bread only. You sat back down on the cot, pulling apart the crust from the middle.
Daryl was well aware that there shouldn't be anything left to say. Rick still wasn't sure how he wanted to handle a savior in their midst, even Carol was on the fence about your fate. "How'd ya get mixed up with that anyway?"
You still seemed young, somewhere around Maggie's age if he had to guess, and he was sure you'd fooled plenty of people into thinking you were innocent. You didn't fit the bill of the other saviors he'd seen though he'd watched the accuracy with which you'd shot that rifle and the dead look you got the few times Dwight was being a jackass to you. It wasn't something he wanted to admit, especially not to anyone inside Alexandria, but he'd been thinking about you since you'd given him the sandwich.
You shrugged, "first thing I stumbled on after this shit happened...I just didn't want to die."
As awful as it might've sounded, it really was that simple at it's core. You hadn't wanted to be another dead body wandering around the woods until someone shot your brains out. You wanted to survive because, as crazy as it sounded, you had such a fear of death that you couldn't even fathom leaving Negan. "I know it's not an excuse..."
"None of us'd be here if we didn't want the same thing." Daryl replied earnestly.
"You got lucky though, if I could've found hilltop or something...someone like Rick first," you trailed off.
"We've all done shit we ain't proud of."
Daryl grabbed the chair in the corner of the room and dragged it over to the bars, sitting down across from you. He leaned back and stretched out, taking the water bottle off the ground and taking a sip from it as he watched you. Meeting his eyes you finally concluded that Sherry had been right, they were the prettiest eyes you'd ever seen.