Chapter Text
Daryl runs up to a spot where he can see the far end of the bridge clearly and Rick is there. Rick is there with a tangle of walkers on his heel, one dangerously close to his shoulder. Daryl doesn’t think about it, just shoots, and the walker falls.
Rick looks over at him, their eyes meeting over this impossible distance and Daryl’s heart thumps in his chest. He’s never known fear this potent. Fear so strong it steadies his arm instead of making him tremble, makes him more sure-footed in the knowledge that this thing cannot happen. Daryl won’t let it.
He shoots another bolt, and another, ignores the movement around him, ignores anything other than the heads of walkers getting too close to Rick.
There’s too many of them and Daryl is running out of bolts.
Then Rick looks over again, looks on purpose, finds Daryl like someone might find a lifeline. He tilts his head. Like a nod but not. Like a goodbye but–
Rick raises his gun but he isn’t aiming at the nearest walker and Daryl reaches for a bolt that isn’t there. Reaches for hope that has just abruptly run out.
He is suddenly aware that it doesn’t matter how sure he is that this thing can’t happen.
He can’t do anything to prevent it.
He is powerless and hopeless.
He can only watch.
He doesn’t hear the explosion, doesn’t feel it rock the ground beneath him, all he sees is the fire blurred by his own tears.
Rick is gone.
It's an unbearable gaping wound that opens up in his chest at that knowledge, excruciating and devastating and nothing Daryl has ever felt has been like this. Losing Merle hadn’t felt like this. None of the people they’ve lost have ever felt like this–like the world under Daryl’s feet has just tilted, something foundational crumbling away.
It can’t have happened, but it happened and Daryl stared right at it. Helpless. His crossbow hangs loose from his fingers, an old friend that has finally betrayed him.
Rick is gone.
Everything inside of Daryl rails violently against that thought. His stomach turns.
He can’t–
He can’t.
He won’t.
He didn’t see it from here, couldn’t have, where his body went.
They’ll need it, for–
He could be alive. He was covered in blood before the bomb went off, Daryl could see it from here, but he could have survived.
He must have. Daryl needs him to have survived.
That sick fear settles inside him into something more calm and more sure.
Daryl needs to find Rick. He will find him.
Daryl turns away from the explosion and back towards the trees, heading downstream.
A clock starts ticking down in Daryl’s head, a timer he does not want to run out.
If Rick’s alive, then he’s very hurt and he needs to be found. If there’s a chance of helping him, he needs to be found now.
So Daryl does what he does best.
He searches.
He combs the riverbanks and trains his eyes over the river full of bodies, searching for anything that doesn’t fit in with the pattern of everything else. A body moving too much or not enough.
Daryl searches the mud for the impression of a familiar boot, the angle of it subtly wrong because of the way Rick walks. He searches the woods near the river for drops of blood against leaves, for water where it shouldn’t be, he searches for anything, something that shouldn’t be there but is.
He searches until the ringing in his ears tells him that the timer is up and the chances of finding Rick alive have dwindled to nothing.
The sun sets, then it rises and Daryl keeps searching. Hours turn into a day which turns into two days which turns into three days.
Then Michonne finds his gun.
She presents it to him, caked in mud and cradled in her palms. Daryl puts a hand over the gun and an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in tight so they can cry like babies together.
Rick wouldn’t have left his gun behind if he could help it.
You gotta learn when to cut your losses, his Daddy used to say, you gotta know when it’s stupid to keep lookin’ for something that just ain’t there.
Yeah, well, his Daddy was an asshole and a moron who didn’t know shit.
Rick isn’t gone until Daryl knows for sure.
He just needs a lead, is all. A foothold. A whiff of a scent to follow. He just needs somewhere to start.
There’s no tracks in front of him to follow so he looks back, thinks back over the last days and weeks and months, looking for something that could have caused this, something that connects everything.
It doesn’t take him long to decide where to look next.
He goes back to Alexandria.
The people there stare at him with grief and pity in their eyes and Daryl ignores them. Nothing else matters in the face of finding a foothold, or at the very least making someone pay.
He grabs the keys from where he knows Michonne stashes them and heads down to the cell.
Negan’s head snaps up when the door opens but he doesn’t laugh or smile or crack a joke when he sees it’s Daryl coming through the door. He just frowns like he’s worried, and that’s worse than any words that could have come out of his mouth.
Daryl goes right up to the bars, gets as close as he can without opening the cell, and stares. He searches Negan’s face for victory or righteous delight or whatever the fuck would mark that he made this happen, somehow, or is at least going to take credit for it.
Negan’s eyebrows are knotting together, his mouth a flat line and his eyes a little squinty.
Daryl doesn’t know what that means.
“It’s too quiet out there,” Negan says eventually, jerking his chin towards his bare window, “Something happened, didn’t it? The bridge?”
Daryl doesn’t want to show anything, doesn’t want to give Negan anything at all, but he cannot hope to control the way he twitches at that word. Bridge.
Rick standing there, arm outstretched, aiming at something–
Daryl can see it all so clearly, so perfectly, and he can’t–
Daryl fumbles the keys into the lock, jerks open the cell and stalks inside. He grabs Negan by the collar and slams him into the wall. The fear in Negan’s eyes is deeply satisfying. There’s fear in his eyes just like there had been fear in Glenn’s eyes that night.
Good.
“Did you do this?” Daryl snarls into his face and Negan just looks at him dumbly like he doesn’t understand the question. Daryl wants so badly to beat the shit out of him, but he can wait for information first.
“Do what, man? How am I supposed to do anything from this tiny ass cell with you assholes hovering over me all damn day–” Negan interrupts himself with a grunt because Daryl shakes him and slams him back into the wall so hard that his skull bounces off the cinder blocks.
“Shut the fuck up,” Daryl snarls again, wanting to tear Negan to pieces for everything Daryl knows he’s done, what he took from Maggie, what he took from all of them, what he’s taken from Daryl now.
But he’s not doing this the way he’s supposed to.
He’s supposed to laugh like he’s growing evil little devil horns out of his head, he’s supposed to gloat and never fucking shut up about how he’s finally won.
He’s not laughing.
He’s not laughing and Daryl’s hope of beating a clue out of Negan is dwindling with every second that ticks by.
Negan has to have done it.
Daryl needs him to be useful for once and help him find Rick.
Daryl’s eyes fill with tears.
Negan’s looking way too closely at Daryl’s face for him to have any hope that the tears go unnoticed. After a beat comprehension comes over Negan’s face with horror quick on its heels.
“Oh, shit,” Negan says, his eyes wide, “It’s Rick?”
Daryl punches him. It’s a mean sucker punch and Negan isn’t expecting it. He goes down like a sack of potatoes but when he looks up from the ground with blood trickling out of his nose he still isn’t angry or gloating.
He looks more worried than ever.
“No fuckin’ way, man, there’s no way that stupid little cockroach is just dead, just like that–”
“He’s not dead,” Daryl grinds out and Negan falls silent, searching Daryl’s face.
“What happened?”
Daryl shouldn’t answer that question.
It’s playing into the joke that Negan doesn’t already know what happened because he planned it all, because he told the Sanctuary assholes what to do, told them to lead that herd up onto the bridge–
But Daryl wants to believe that’s what happened more than he actually believes that’s what happened.
And there’s some echo of the same desperation Daryl feels in Negan’s eyes, a desperation for this thing that’s happening to not be happening. A desperation for a way out.
“A herd got drawn in. He led it onto the bridge. He blew the bridge,” Daryl pauses, the image flashing before his eyes again, Rick with his arm outstretched, Rick staring at Daryl like he knows it’s the last thing he’ll ever see, “He was on it when it blew.”
Negan gets up off the floor just to sit down heavily on his cot.
“Shit. Oh, shit,” he says, sounding genuinely rattled, “Of course that idiot had to go out like a big damn hero. Shit.” Negan seems to hear himself and then cuts a shrewd look over at Daryl, “Why’d you say he’s not dead if he got blown up?”
Daryl shouldn’t be answering these questions. He should be beating Negan into a bloody pulp. But there’s something here, drawing him in. Negan understands, somehow, knows what this means and feels it, like Daryl does.
And maybe that means there’s another way to squeeze hope out of this waste of a man. Maybe Negan understands it the same way Daryl and Michonne do, that this can’t be happening until they’re sure what’s happening.
“I haven’t found his body yet,” Daryl says to the floor.
“Ah,” Negan says with comprehension, “Shit, man, I’m so sorry. That fucking sucks.”
It does fucking suck. Daryl feels grief crawl up the back of his throat until it drowns under another wave of fury. He makes a jerky motion towards Negan, who flinches back.
“Shit, man, lay off! I get it but I didn’t fucking do this!” Negan says, scrambling back on the cot, away from Daryl’s fists.
“Why the fuck you actin’ like you care? You’re just some asshole,” he spits at Negan, who has the nerve to look hurt by that.
“Yeah,” he agrees, shrugging with his hands up in the air in supplication, “I am. But I wanted Rick on my side from the start. The world is most definitely a darker place without him in it.”
Daryl feels sick.
This is pointless.
He turns on his heel to leave, wiping his bloody knuckles on his pants.
“Wait,” Negan says and Daryl hates the way his body immediately obeys, hates the way hope flares that Negan might have some insight here that finds Rick when Daryl hasn’t been able to, “Why’d you think I did it if it was just idiotic heroics? You don’t think it was a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing?”
Daryl turns back to look at Negan, who’s frowning again, like he’s working out a puzzle.
“‘Cause it was the Saviors that did it. Your loyal followers. They attacked the bridge camp. Fired guns. Drew the herd,” Daryl lays out, matter of fact.
If they’d killed the Saviors, this wouldn’t have happened. If they’d gotten rid of Negan, hadn’t tried to make shit work when it was never gonna work, none of this would have happened.
Rick would be here.
Negan nods slowly, his eyes too sharp and too assessing and Daryl doesn’t like being looked at like that. It makes him feel pinned, makes him want to squirm away and tilt his head so his hair covers his eyes, an old habit he knows he picked up from a lifetime of avoiding his dad’s attention.
“Uh-huh,” Negan says, noncommittal, “The herd must’ve been pretty close already, though, if gunshots could draw it. And unless you guys all left your brains at home you should’ve been tracking any herds nearby anyways. Somebody fucked up way before some angry idiot shot a gun.” Daryl frowns sharply at Negan and he holds his hands up again, feigning innocence, “I’m not saying it was me. Just saying, as a former leader myself, that’s something a leader or whoever the hell is in charge should be taking care of.”
Eugene was the one keeping track of the herds, taking in reports and putting them to maps and droning on to anyone within earshot about how Henrietta was two hundred head strong and five miles east heading due north. Rick would listen and pass down instructions of which herd should be led in which direction.
Rick had taken people off the herds to find Arat, when she’d gone missing. And then–
“You know, sneaking around a herd, tracking them, leading them off… That kinda sounds like something you’d be good at, Daryl,” Negan says, something dark and amused coming into his eyes, and Daryl can practically feel his blood pressure rising in response, “Where were you while this herd was so imminent? ‘Cause somehow I get the sense that you had something to do with how Maggie turned up in this cell that same day.”
Daryl’s blood runs cold.
The herd had been close. And Daryl had told Rick he’d bring him to Alexandria–where he’d be safe–and instead dumped him into a pit right along the path of the herd.
And–
Daryl had told him to lead the herd to the bridge and blow it. That had been his idea.
Negan chuckles in a way that lights Daryl’s blood on fire.
“Now, loyal dog like you? I know you’d have to have a pretty fucking compelling reason to abandon your Master like that. What is it? Trying to get some of Glenn’s sloppy seconds?” Negan guesses with a sly, dirty smile and a dead look in his eye. That’s too stupid of an accusation to react to, so Daryl just stares at him, “No, you’re right, not your style. You’re way too innocent for all that. But it’s something to do with Glenn, right?” Negan asks and Daryl knows he’s being played with but he can’t help the visceral fury and grief and guilt that surges through him at Glenn’s memory. Negan sees his expression and his eyebrows jump with realization, “Ohh, I get it. You feel responsible for Glenn,” he says with a shit-eating grin and an intimidating light in his eyes, “You feel like you killed him, which means you couldn’t say no to the Widow, even if it meant leaving your precious Rick to fend off a hoard all by his lonesome.”
Daryl flashes across the space between them and then Negan’s back is to the wall again, Daryl’s knife pressing against his throat.
“I didn’t kill Glenn, you did!” Daryl snarls, seeing a cold joy in Negan’s eyes that sets alarm bells ringing in Daryl’s head that something isn’t right here. That Daryl’s knife at his throat is exactly what Negan wanted.
“I don’t need convincing of that. Do you?”
“Shut your mouth,” Daryl snarls again, the edge of his knife cutting a thin line of red into Negan’s neck.
He doesn’t shut his mouth.
“Actions have consequences, Daryl. You made choices and people died. And you either live with the consequences or–”
“Or what? Keep pissing people off until somebody kills you?” Daryl snaps at him and Negan has the nerve to look surprised. He quirks a little smile that has no warmth in it whatsoever, lifts one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug.
“Whatever works,” he says with a cold desperation in his eyes that saps away Daryl’s fury.
He’s got nothing to do with what happened to Rick, that’s obvious enough. And Daryl’s wasting his time here, listening to some asshole with a death wish try and provoke him into killing him.
Daryl just shakes his head, giving Negan a final shove as he backs away.
“Rick’s right to let you rot in here. Wish I’d seen it before,” Daryl says, as close to you’re right about me as he can manage to get out.
“There’s room enough on my cot if you ever want to wallow in our mistakes together,” Negan says with a wide smile that makes Daryl feel like he doesn’t understand the joke so it must be on him. A sharp frowning glance at the cot confirms that it’s barely wide enough for one person, let alone two, and Daryl has no idea what wallowing together means.
Whatever.
It don't matter.
Negan laughs at whatever his own joke was and Daryl ignores it, turning and walking out of the cell, resheathing his knife and locking the cell door behind him.
“Daryl,” Negan says with Daryl’s hand on the outer door, and Daryl knows Negan has nothing to say that Daryl wants to hear, but still he pauses and looks back. He’s still desperate to find some reason to keep looking for Rick. “I wanted you on my side, too.” Negan says with that underhanded twist of his lips, “You ever wonder what would’ve happened if I’d found you first?”
It’s a stupid question. It’s impossible.
Daryl wouldn’t be here if anyone other than Rick had found him. He’d still be in those woods in Georgia, living the way his Daddy taught him to.
“No,” he says simply. Negan laughs.
“I bet you don’t. You think if you’d been on my side, I woulda been the kinda guy who blows himself up and then has people like you searching for him after?” Negan asks and something about the tone of his voice makes Daryl turn and look at him. There’s raw, open emotion written over Negan’s face.
“I don’t know,” Daryl says honestly, then, because he can’t help it, “You think he’s dead?”
Negan shrugs.
“I think that sounds like a tough thing to come back from. But Rick’s the toughest motherfucker I ever met, so, my money’s on miraculous survival. And with you out there looking for him? It’s just a matter of time before he’s back home, safe and sound.”
Negan’s belief shouldn’t mean anything to Daryl.
Nothing he says should matter.
But when Negan says it like that, it just sounds like the truth. Like a fact of the world.
Daryl stares at him a moment longer and then leaves, his eyes swimming with tears.