[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 411 - Filthy Thoughts — Heartbreak

Carol looked at the extra piece of meat on her plate.

It was roasted perfectly. The edges carried a faint char, the juices sealed inside, glistening under the light.

Her gaze drifted from the meat to Daryl's face.

He still had his head down, jabbing at the bean mush left on his plate with a fork, like it was some puzzle worth solving.

His ears were a little red.

"Eat it," Carol said quietly. She moved to push it back toward him. "You need it more than I do. You're out on patrol and hunting every single day..."

"Eat your food."

He cut her off, voice rough.

But he buried his head even lower.

Carol didn't push it. She picked up her knife and fork, cut a small piece of the venison, and put it in her mouth.

It was good.

"My father..."

Daryl's voice broke the silence out of nowhere.

The subject was so abrupt that Carol thought she'd misheard.

"He was a drunk."

Daryl set his fork down. He picked up the piece of wood he'd been carving and dragged his small knife across it, wood shavings drifting down onto the table.

"Name was Will. He was a hunter too."

"Didn't hunt to eat, though. Hunted to trade for booze."

"Always had a smell on him. Cheap whiskey."

"When I was a kid, the second I caught that smell, I knew Merle and I weren't gonna have a good night."

His voice was flat. No rise, no fall. Like he was telling a story about someone else entirely.

"Merle... he always got in front of me."

"That bastard. His mouth was foul as a sewer drain, but he'd take the hits for me."

Daryl's hand stilled for a moment.

"I was probably ten when my mom died."

He looked at the wood carving in his hand. The rough shape of a flower, the petals whittled to edges that were almost sharp.

"They said she was smoking in bed. Accidentally set the house on fire." A short, airless sound came from his throat. Nothing like a laugh. "Ha."

"But I remember it clear as day. My dad's hands were covered in burn blisters."

"He said he tried to save her."

"But I knew better than anyone. How does a living person burn to death in a fire?"

Carol's heart clenched.

She finally understood why this man always carried that cold, keep-away edge. And she finally understood why, back at the Quarry, he had put himself in front of Ed again and again, like an animal backed into a corner — in front of that man who only ever raised his hands against his wife and kid.

Because when Daryl looked at Ed, he was looking at his father.

"Not long after she died, the old bastard got thrown in jail over some bullshit."

Daryl kept talking, the blade scraping steadily across the wood with a soft, dry hiss.

"Then it was just me and Merle."

"Merle taught me to hunt. How to skin a squirrel. How to wring a rabbit's neck."

He lifted his hands and looked at them. The calluses. The scars.

"He taught me to fight too."

"How to take a beating and not show it. How to drive your knee into someone's crotch. How to threaten someone with a knife and not end up in cuffs."

"He said this fucked-up world is a jungle. You're either the hunter or you're the prey."

"Don't expect anybody to feel sorry for you."

"And he was right. Nobody pities you for nothing."

Carol watched him. This man who had wrapped himself in so many layers of hard shell she wondered if he even remembered what was underneath.

The face that usually broadcast impatience and irritation at the world now held only one thing.

Exhaustion.

She thought back to when she'd first met him.

He'd been just like Merle. Foul-mouthed, picking fights, looking at everyone like they personally owed him money.

But she also remembered the day she was dizzy with hunger. It was this man who, without a single word, tossed her a roasted squirrel.

He wasn't Merle.

He was just a scared kid who had used everything he had to copy the only family he'd ever known, trying to find some way to survive in a world that never gave him a break.

He was just lonely.

Deeply, bone-deep lonely.

Daryl finally looked up.

He saw her eyes.

No pity in them. No sympathy. Just something else, something that made his chest tighten without warning. A gentleness. An understanding that had no business being there.

Just like...

Just like years ago, when his father's belt was hitting him and he was on the floor, the way his mother had looked at him.

The thought came up from the darkest corner of his mind and he couldn't stop it.

He liked watching Carol protect Sophia.

That all-or-nothing, back-against-the-wall ferocity. It got to him. He couldn't explain it.

It reminded him of his mother. The woman who only lived in fragments of memory too blurry to trust.

Fuck.

His stomach turned over hard.

What was he doing?

He was sitting here having this filthy, worthless thought about this woman.

What made him any different from that old bastard who'd drowned himself in violence and cheap whiskey his whole goddamn life?

BANG!

Daryl shoved to his feet. The chair behind him toppled, cracking against the floor loud enough to carry across the whole cafeteria.

Every head turned.

"I — I gotta go."

He grabbed his crossbow from the wall and was moving before the words finished leaving his mouth. He didn't look at Carol. Couldn't look at Carol.

One more second under that gaze and he'd come apart. The ugliest parts of him, the parts he'd spent his whole life burying, would be right there on the surface for her to see.

He bolted like a wounded animal, fleeing the only place that had ever felt like it might be warm.

Carol sat there and didn't move. She watched his back disappear through the cafeteria door and into the dark outside.

After a moment she looked down at the table.

He'd left in such a rush he'd forgotten the wood carving. Just left it sitting there.

She reached out and picked it up.

It was a flower. Clumsy work, honestly. The kind of thing a man carved when his hands needed something to do. But every cut was deliberate. The petals rough at the edges, a few burrs still left where the knife hadn't finished. Unpolished. Unfinished.

Carol didn't know why, but she thought it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

➤ Next: Poor Daryl Confesses Everything