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Insufferable little brat!
Carl smirked back at him as the truck carried on trundling away towards the inner-gates of the place the Saviours called home. He raised his hands in what Jesus could only assume was a ‘what are you gonna do’ gesture and ducked back down behind the boxes shielding him from view.
“Fuck”
‘Insufferable little brat’ was definitely too kind a description of Rick’s kid, Jesus decided, as he hurried towards the shadows of a tree just outside the walker-lined fences of The Sanctuary.
Tricked by a child!
Not his finest moment, but then it’s not as if anyone else was around to see it, so plausible deniability and all that.
When Jesus had leapt into the back of the Saviours truck, emptying Gregory’s beloved whiskey onto the dusty road behind him, the last person he expected to encounter lounging casually behind a couple of boxes was Carl Grimes. He hadn’t even tried to hide the surprise on his face when he saw the kid, but if he was honest with himself, Jesus was a little bit impressed. It was obvious what the boy was there to do and perhaps if he was a better man Jesus would have tried to persuade him to go back to Alexandria, back to his family; hell, even to jump out and go take his frustration out on a few walkers. But instead he just smirked at him and slid down the wall opposite Carl, nudging the boys feet with his own in greeting.
They didn’t speak after that. Jesus was too busy keeping track of any landmarks they drove past and Carl was apparently preoccupied with flipping his knife over and over in his hand, trying to catch it as gravity pulled it perilously close to his thighs.
After a few hours, the sky had darkened significantly and the trucks pulled off the road onto a dirt track, the gravel beneath the tyres crunching as they went, getting slower and slower by the second.
“I think we’re nearly there” Jesus whispered, either to himself or to Carl, he wasn’t quite sure.
The boy nodded, tipping his hat further forward over his face.
“We should get out now. They’ll find us back here if we stay.” Carl murmured in reply.
Jesus got to his feet and held a hand out to Carl but the kid heaved himself to his feet by himself, brushing past Jesus to the back of the truck, peeking out to ensure no-one could see them. The truck was moving fairly slowly now, slowly enough that Jesus wasn’t worried about Carl breaking an ankle if they jumped out. There was a sudden shout from the front of the vehicle and both him and Carl immediately ducked their heads back behind the truck’s awning.
“OPEN THE GATES, IT’S US!” the driver’s voice rang out over the silent night air, without a care for all the walkers he would be summoning their way.
The Saviours really were at the top of the food chain, it seemed.
Jesus heard, over the crunching of gravel, a gate being drawn open a few hundred yards ahead of them and he gestured hurriedly to Carl.
“Come on, let’s move. On three, right?”
Carl just nodded his head again, the brim of his hat still covering the top half of his face.
“Alright, one.” Jesus drew the awning back as Carl did the same on the other side, “Two.” He crouched slightly in the truck, preparing to take some impact to his knees. “THREE.”
Jesus jumped, Carl didn’t.
Brat.
Hiding behind the tree, with the rest of the forest behind him, Jesus watched as the convoy of trucks ambled through the main gate and out of view, some Saviours drawing the gate closed behind them as soon as they could. Then there was complete silence. With the exception of a single dead one stumbling slowly towards him from somewhere in the depths of the forest.
Jesus sighed wearily to himself, pulling his knife from his belt and turning to look over his shoulder into the darkness of the trees. He couldn’t see a thing. And he had great eyesight; “eyes like a bushbaby’ an ex had said to him once. He was never quite sure if that was meant to be a compliment or not, but considering the guy’s previous track record with slightly disparaging remarks aimed his way, Jesus was guessing probably not. Whatever, his loss; bushbabies are adorable.
Something snapped on the forest floor, a lot nearer than the last noise he had heard and Jesus crept forward, knife held out in front of him. His eyes were starting to adjust to the lack of light, but the fog in the air and density of the trees was not making it easy for him to see at all.
Another crack, just to his right, behind a large pine.
Jesus took a deep breath and swung himself round the tree, colliding heavily with the body in front of him and sending them both flying to the ground. He raised his knife, ready to stab down into the dead one’s skull, but stopped himself when the knife was less than inch away from its eye.
Because it turned out that the ‘dead one’ wasn’t so dead after all. Although, to be honest, he didn’t look that alive either.
“Daryl?!”
Jesus would have been less surprised to bump into an actual Sasquatch than he was to bump into Daryl. He was straddling the other man's waist and Daryl hadn’t made so much as an annoyed grunt the whole time. And that, more than anything else was what alarmed Jesus. Daryl would never pass up an opportunity to growl threateningly at him for some reason or other.
“Daryl?” Jesus clambered off him and knelt beside him, one hand tucking the knife back into his belt and the other going to hover gently over Daryl’s arm.
At least the hand coming towards him made Daryl move, as he flinched slightly from Jesus’s touch. Jesus withdrew his hand and placed it in his lap, still looking down at the other man with concern.
There was dried blood staining the side of his face down from his hairline, curling underneath his jaw like errant strands of hair and his eyes were blackened and staring emptily at the canopy of trees above them. Both of his hands lay at his side, the knuckles of one hand dark with bruising, whilst the fingers of the other tapped away to themselves, seemingly in random patterns. It was definitely Daryl, but… it wasn’t.
Physically preparing himself for a Daryl-branded punch to the face, Jesus hesitantly placed his hand back on Daryl’s arm, ignoring the other man’s flinch as he did so.
“We have to go, Daryl, do you understand? We can’t stay here.” Jesus worked to keep his voice even and calm, “We have to leave or they’re going to find us.”
Jesus wasn’t 100% sure if that was true or not, but it seemed likely to him that the Saviours patrolled these woods and he really didn’t want to get captured. It was certainly not in his near-future plans anyway. Besides, he would make a lousy prisoner and if this was what they could do to Daryl, well…
Jesus grabbed Daryl solidly by the arms and pulled him into a sitting position, although the other man just kind of slumped against him rather than holding his own weight. Jesus felt a shudder run through Daryl’s body and his own responded in kind, although he tried his best to ignore it as he ducked his face to hold Daryl’s gaze. The man’s eyes flickered to meet his, but they were going in and out of focus, barely holding his gaze for a few seconds at a time.
“Ok, it’s ok. We’re going to be alright. Up we get.” Jesus got to his feet, pulling Daryl up with him.
The man swayed dangerously and Jesus grabbed him round the waist, hoisting Daryl’s arm over his shoulder, effectively propping him upright.
“We passed a pile-up on the way here, maybe 15 minutes away. We’re just going to go there and try and get one of the vehicles to work ok? Come on.”
Jesus led the way forward, still supporting a good portion of Daryl’s weight, staying a few meters behind the tree-line so they wouldn’t be visible from the road. How Daryl had ever managed to escape in this state, Jesus couldn’t even begin to guess. The bruising and blood was clearly days old so it didn’t happen when he was leaving; perhaps someone helped him? Regardless, people would come looking for him soon, and it was up to Jesus to make sure they never found him. Which he soon realised was easier said than done as Daryl listed dangerously to one side, almost bringing them both to the ground. Jesus hefted the other man even closer to him, wrapping Daryl’s arm tightly round his shoulder.
“I got you.” Jesus whispered.
Daryl didn’t respond, but then, Jesus wasn’t expecting him to.
They continued at their slightly stumbling, slow pace for another 20 minutes. Jesus’s 15 minute estimation had been perhaps slightly optimistic considering he was no longer travelling in a truck and had a semi-conscious, very heavy human almost surgically attached to his right side.
He could have fainted with happiness when he saw the wreckage. He probably would have done if he had been by himself, would have at least fallen to the floor with gratitude but… he was trying his best to channel ‘manly toughness’. Not because he wanted to show off in front of a certain someone or anything like that. Because that certain someone was barely conscious, that would be ridiculous. And anyway, that certain someone probably wouldn’t even care about what he was doing right now considering that certain someone’s state (not that he would even in normal circumstances). No, he was being tough and leading because the situation called for it. That’s all.
Jesus groaned as he lowered Daryl to the floor, propping him against a tree near the mouth of the forest.
“Stay” Jesus murmured quietly, holding his palm up in front of Daryl.
The other man didn’t even spare him glance. Glancing nervously around as he hurried forward, feet flittering lightly across the dusty ground, Jesus approached the mess of vehicles. Some of them were beyond repair, stripped of all useful parts by the Saviours and other scavengers. Others were too bashed up to be able to make even half the journey back to the Hilltop; they made the old banger he had at uni look indulgent. But there were a few ‘possibles’; a couple of cars that didn’t look like they’d been picked over yet, sitting in the ditches at the side of the road, rather than in the middle, hidden slightly by fallen branches from the trees on the other side of the road.
Jesus pulled his knife out again and crept to the side of the first car. A single hand reached for him from the murky darkness of the vehicle, slapping uselessly against the window, it’s palm smearing what could only be described as ‘goo’ across the glass. He tapped lightly against the back windows but there was no more movement inside the car, so he pulled the front door open and moved back. The driver of the car was still strapped into place behind the steering wheel, their neck bent at an obscene angle, dead eyes staring at him as it tried to lurch forward. Jesus dispatched them with one swift stab to the temple and undid the belt, pulling the body from the drivers seat and laying it gently on the ground away from the vehicle.
The front of the car was disgusting and Jesus gagged more times than he would care to admit as he sat gingerly where the body had been just moments before.
Ok.
So he just had to hot-wire a car that’s probably been sitting still for a while. At least a few months by the looks of the body and probably a lot longer since it was unlikely that a large number of cars had been driving in convoy AFTER the apocalypse.
Jesus sighed and rubbed a sweaty hand across his jumper, putting his knife on the dashboard within reach. He couldn’t do this. He knew how to do it, theoretically. He’d watched people do it before and even helped on occasion but not whilst a bunch of murderous psychopaths were hunting him down in the dead of night. Daryl would know how to do it. But he was still slumped against the tree a few yards away, in Jesus’s direct eye line. The man probably wouldn’t have the strength to even try and fight against a mostly decomposed walker at this point, let alone explain to him the intricacies of hot-wiring a car.
Jesus thunked his head against the steering wheel in frustration and tried turning the key in the ignition. The car stuttered and groaned, but didn’t start. He tried again. And again. Nothing. He’d have to get down into the footwell and try tinkering around with some actual wires without electrocuting himself in the pitch black.
Great.
But to do that, he needed Daryl closer to the car where he could keep an eye on him.
Jesus clambered out of the car and hurried over to Daryl.
“Up we get. Just a few steps ok?” He dragged Daryl to his feet for the second time that day and they moved back over to the car, where he lowered the hunter back to the ground. All this hefting a rather bulky human being around with him was probably not great for his back, Jesus reflected as he grabbed his knife from the car and handed it to Daryl. “Keep an eye out alright?” Jesus said, ducking back into the front seat and leaning down to fiddle with the wires under the console.
5 minutes, and no luck, later Jesus was about a second away from walking back to The Sanctuary and handing himself in if it meant never having to try and hotwire another car ever again, when he turned the key in the ignition slot above his head and the beautiful noise of an engine roaring to life hit his ears.
“YES!” Jesus whisper-shouted, pumping his free hand in the air, relishing in his victory for a split second before pulling himself backwards out the car. “Daryl, I did— Daryl?”
Daryl was definitely not where Jesus had left him.
In fact, he was sitting in the drivers seat of the other car in the ditch, door flung open and headlights flickering somewhere between on and off as the engine rumbled quietly away. Jesus looked back down at his car that was evidently still not working. He KNEW he couldn’t hotwire a car in 5 minutes.
He stepped over to the other vehicle and reached inside to flick the headlights off. Whatever energy Daryl had managed to conjure up to hotwire the car was clearly dying out fast and Jesus offered him a hand to help him out of the drivers seat. Daryl ignored it and pulled himself over the centre console to the passenger side, just a small grunt of pain betraying the poor state his body was in.
Jesus sighed to himself and lowered himself into the vacated drivers seat. Daryl shifted gingerly, clearly uncomfortable in the stiff, unyielding position so Jesus leaned over slowly, transparently telegraphing every movement as Daryl watched him out of the corner of his eye, seemingly frozen in place as he waited to see what the other man was doing. Jesus flicked the recline button at the side of Daryl’s seat, letting it move Daryl into a less vertical (hopefully more comfortable) position. Daryl didn’t seem to breathe until he had leaned back over to his side of the car and pulled the door shut.
There was silence for a few moments until Daryl grunted a quiet “thanks” and shifted himself deeper into the seat, still looking sideways at Jesus through his messy bangs.
“No problem” Jesus replied, pressing his foot to the accelerator gently, trying to ease the car out of the ditch without making too much sound.
“Gotta rock it.” Daryl grunted a few minutes later, when they were still sitting in the ditch, Jesus’s brow sweating as he revved the car for what felt like the hundredth time.
“Yes, I know, thank you.” Jesus snapped back, showing a lot more tension than he would normally like.
But he supposed attempting to escape from a gang of murderous, bat-wielding freaks was a pretty tense situation so he’d forgive himself his little slip this time.
Daryl hmm’d back, tapping his fingers nervously against his thigh as Jesus revved the engine again, trying to propel the car out onto the road. Eventually the wheels got a grip on the tarmac and the car lurched forward onto the road. Jesus reacted just quickly enough to ensure that the car didn’t stall and shifted gears, accelerating the vehicle forward as quietly as possible. The engine still rumbled though, particularly obvious over the hushed night air and Jesus couldn’t help but glance repeatedly into the rear mirror to make sure they weren’t being followed.
The fact that the Saviours hadn’t seemed to notice that Daryl had gone, even after what must be an hour, was puzzling to Jesus. But then he wasn’t exactly sure where Daryl had been kept; perhaps they didn’t check on him that often. For some reason that saddened him; that Daryl would be left alone in the dark for long periods of time, without anyone to talk to. Although, this WAS Daryl he was thinking about, the guy wasn't chatty, so maybe it was a nice holiday for him, not being bothered by anyone else.
Yeah, apart from the occasional break for a bit of torture. Jesus winced internally as this thought struck him and he risked a glance sideways at Daryl, whose eyes were shut, his eyelashes resting against his bruised cheekbones.
“Eyes on the road, Paul.” Daryl murmured in his unique southern drawl, drawing his name out on his tongue, clearly using it, instead of Jesus’s chosen moniker, to annoy him.
Jesus let out an amused snort and turned his eyes back to the dark road, focusing on steering them clear of the odd bits of debris that littered the road-surface. And if Daryl noticed Jesus's gaze flickering back to the man resting next to him after that, he didn’t say anything.
They made it a good portion of the way back to the Hilltop before bad luck struck them again.
The only sign anything was even remotely wrong was a small scraping noise echoing around the vehicle every few minutes. Jesus had just put it down to the fact that the car hadn’t been driven in God knew how long and was probably just having a grumble about being made to do something for a change.
He was wrong. Of course.
If Daryl had been awake he probably would have noticed something was wrong, but the hunter had passed out a while ago, slumped down in his seat with one foot on the dashboard, curling to protect the gunshot wound in his shoulder. He looked so exhausted that Jesus didn’t have the heart to wake him to ask about the noise, however annoying it was. So he settled for humming over it instead, some random country song he remembered hearing in his childhood on his dad’s car radio and, as it turned out, that was definitely a mistake.
They were maybe an hour or so away from Hilltop, if Jesus had to guess, when the scraping noise suddenly got louder. Loud enough that Daryl’s eyes fluttered open, a confused, sleepy frown appearing on his face.
“Hey, wha’s—“ Daryl was rudely cut off as the car swerved in the middle of the road, throwing them both to the right hand side as the car careened off the road, down an embankment and drove them straight into a very poorly-placed tree.
The airbag on the passenger’s side inflated immediately, forcing Daryl back into his seat. The airbag on the driver’s side did not.
Jesus felt the side of his head smack into the steering wheel and a gasp escape his lips as all the breathe was forced from his lungs before darkness enveloped his vision.
“Paul? Hey. Don' make me smack you again”.
Jesus opened his eyes slowly to the vision of a very blurry Daryl hunching over him, clutching his own shoulder with one hand and touching Jesus's neck with the other. He opened his mouth to respond with a typically sassy comeback but could only find it in himself to groan quietly instead.
“There y’go. Yer alrigh’”.
Jesus let that rough drawl lead him forwards as he forced himself to sit up, swaying slightly as he did so. He couldn’t help but notice that Daryl’s hand was still on his neck, carrying out the double-duty of checking his pulse and keeping him upright. It felt nice.
Daryl seemed to notice the position of his hand as well as he withdrew his arm quickly from Jesus and wrapped both arms around his own body, as if trying to physically shield himself from an emotional blow.
There was silence for a few moments as Jesus took a few deep breaths, trying to stave off the dizziness and Daryl’s eyes flickered warily around them, keeping watch for any dead that may be nearby.
When Jesus couldn’t stand the silence any longer he whispered, his voice sounding like a bellow amongst the trees.
“So, it looks like the car’s done for”.
Daryl hummed and tilted slightly back on his heels, still not looking at him, but nodding his head once at Jesus’s words.
“Yeah, I’d say so”.
“What are we going to do?”
Daryl shrugged, raising one hand to his mouth to bite on the side of his thumb and lowered his head so he was looking at Jesus through the hair that fell to cover his eyes.
“I ‘unno. C’n you walk?”
Jesus clambered onto his hand and knees, delicately placing one of his feet underneath him and pushing himself slowly upright. He felt himself sway slightly as he stood vertical, but Daryl rushed up to grab at his arm and keep him standing. Their eyes locked for a brief moment and Jesus had a sudden flash to the time Daryl had been chasing him round that damn field after he had hitched a ride on their truck. Every time he thought about that ‘incident', the theme music from a Benny Hill sketch seemed to play in his head and he found himself snorting with laughter.
Daryl’s eyebrows knitted together and he dropped Jesus’s arm with a scowl engraved on his face.
“Wha’?” Daryl grumbled uncomfortably, clearly unsure what he had done to warrant Jesus laughing at him.
Jesus’s face relaxed into a kind smile as he looked at the other man and he slowly placed his hand on Daryl’s arm.
“Nothing. Just, thank you. For pulling me out of the car, helping me up, all of it. Especially when you, you know, feel like crap”.
This time Daryl was the one who snorted, his eyebrows relaxing as an incredulous look took over his face.
“I ain’t the one who saved you, you got me away from…” he paused, glancing away before looking back to Jesus, who was standing very close to him “from there. Figure I owe ya”.
Jesus felt his forehead furrow against his will before consciously smoothing his brow back out again.
“You don’t ‘owe’ me anything, Daryl. We’re friends, right? It’s what friends do - look out for each other”.
A small flicker of surprise shot across Daryl’s face before he nodded again, bringing his thumb back up to his mouth and looking down at his feet, forcing his hair to fall in front of his eyes again. Jesus had a sudden strong urge to tuck the strands behind the other man’s ears but he ignored it; that would definitely not go down well.
“Yeah, alrigh’” Daryl drawled, his voice still pitched as low and quiet as possible.
There was another silence that Jesus would definitely class as ‘awkward’ before he turned and started walking in the direction they had been driving. He looked over his shoulder to see that Daryl wasn’t moving.
“Come on. It’s only an hour or so to Hilltop by Saviour-truck, can’t be that much longer if we cut through the trees”.
Daryl shuffled closer to Jesus, still not entirely steady on his feet. Jesus hadn’t noticed in the aftermath of the crash, but Daryl, although he looked better than he had when Jesus had found him, still looked dead on his feet. Jesus bumped their shoulders together and grabbed Daryl round the back of his waist. Daryl flinched in surprise but didn’t move away, just gave Jesus a resigned look and returned the gesture. Jesus smirked and began to walk again, keeping the pace slow as Daryl walked alongside him.
They moved for a couple of minutes before Jesus spoke again.
“I take it back. This is going to take us a LOT longer than an hour…”
Daryl didn’t say anything, but Jesus saw the corner of his mouth twist up in a reluctant smile and they hobbled along the side of the road and into the thick trees.