Walking With the Dead

The next day was laundry day, which was synonymous with Girl’s Day. Even though Emma detested doing laundry, she loved Girl’s Day. For a few hours a week all the girls – Lori, Carol, Andrea and Emma, Maggie, Patricia and Beth – would meet up to clean dirty drawers and bed sheets. They would gossip about ex-boyfriends, they would talk about hairstyles and new recipes they wanted to try out. They would always talk about what they missed most from the old life. It was fun girl talk, and Emma loved every minute of it.

Except today, instead of talking about old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, all anyone would talk about were the Travelers.

“Do you think they’ll really leave tomorrow?” Beth asked.

“I believe so. Rick said their leader, Red, seemed honest when he said they only stay in one place for a few days at a time,” Lori responded.

“Good. I’ll feel much better when they’re gone,” Patricia said. “I don’t like knowing there’s a group of strangers just a few miles away.”

“Same here. Maybe we should go back to the freeway and push cars back onto the freeway, blocking the road to the farm. We’d be safer that way,” Andrea suggested.

This sparked a mini-debate on how best to protect the farm from strangers. Emma couldn’t be less interested. She kept her attention on scrubbing the dirty laundry against the washboard.

“What did you think about them, Emma?”

“Huh?” Emma snapped her head up and looked at Beth, who had asked the question.

“The Travelers. Did they seem like nice people? Did they have anything to sa—Ow!” Beth cried out in pain as Maggie elbowed her in the ribs. “What was that for?”

“I told you not to ask Emma about last night,” Maggie hissed between clenched teeth. Maggie then looked at Emma hesitantly, and Emma understood.

Somehow Glenn found out Emma had an emotional breakdown last night. Glenn either asked Rick, or Rick volunteered the information. Either way, Glenn found out, and he told Maggie. Guess there really isn’t such a thing as privacy these days.

“What are they talking about, Emma?” Andrea asked.

Maggie looked at Emma, clearly giving her a look of apology, and Emma just shrugged to say it was okay. She wasn’t sad anymore. At least, not as unbearably sad as she was last night. Last night she was writhing on the ground in tears. Today, when she thought back on her friends and family that perished in Seattle, she just felt a dull ache in her chest. And that ache, like all pains, would fade with time.

“The Travelers told me that Seattle is gone. Bombed to the ground.” Emma felt the corners of her lips tighten.

It took a moment for the girls to remember Emma was from Seattle, and when they remembered that they realized what it meant about Emma’s family. The girls broke into a chorus of sympathies and condolences, and Emma couldn’t do anything but give a grim, tight-lipped smile, nod her head and mutter, “Thank you,” and “I’m okay.”

After that, the mood suddenly dulled. Emma pulled the shirt she was working on from the sudsy water and into a second bucket to rinse off the soap.

“Isn’t that Daryl’s shirt?” Andrea asked.

Emma knew Andrea was talking to her, but she feigned surprise by dumping the shirt in the water and pulling it back up. “This?” Even soaking wet and dripping with suds, the flannel was still unmistakably Daryl’s.

“Yeah. I recognize it. It’s Daryl’s,” Andrea said.

“That’s weird. Daryl normally keeps his laundry separate from everyone else’s. He does his own,” Carol said.

Emma shrugged, fighting to keep a straight face. “It must have got mixed up in the laundry pile,” she lied. Her explanation must have seemed believable enough, because no one called her out on it. As the seconds ticked by, Emma felt the tension in her body relax.

The truth was, when Emma woke up in her tent this morning, she was wrapped up in Daryl’s shirt, smelling of wood smoke, pine trees and musk. He had placed the shirt around her shoulders last night. In hindsight, Emma recognized the gesture as being one of kindness. When Rick, Daryl and Emma returned to camp late last night, Emma was too exhausted to return the shirt. She fell asleep cocooned in its warmth.

But when she woke up this morning she was embarrassed to see it covered in tears. Her tears. She didn’t feel it was right to return it to Daryl without cleaning it. So she snuck it into the laundry pile, planning on returning it to Daryl later this evening. She wanted a chance to thank Daryl for saving her last night, and she also wanted an excuse to see him again.

“Daryl’s been distancing himself lately. More so than usual,” Andrea commented.

“Ever since Sophia…” Carol started but then she stopped. Emma saw Carol was stroking the small, pink swatch of knitting between her fingers.

“Well it looks like Daryl is going to distance himself for good,” Lori mentioned casually. “Rick said that Daryl came up to him this morning and told him he plans to leave with the Travelers tomorrow.”

“What?” Emma was so shocked by Lori’s statement that she dropped Daryl’s shirt. “Daryl’s leaving?”

“He’d like to.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Maggie said. “He’s been acting like he’s wanted to leave for a long time now.”

“I’m surprised it took him this long to leave. I thought he would’ve left after Merle went missing,” Andrea added.

“He had a reason to stay. Finding Sophia,” Carol said, her voice dipping low. “There’s nothing keeping him here anymore.”

Before Emma was even cognizant of it, Emma was on her feet, rushing to the far side of the farmland. Her hands dripped with sudsy water.

“Emma! What are you doing?” Lori called out abruptly.

Emma was too far away to respond, but even if she were sitting right next to Lori Emma wouldn’t have known what to say. What am I doing? Emma didn’t have a clue. Her feet had a mind of their own, taking her across the farmland until she reached Daryl’s small settlement by the forest. When she reached Daryl’s camp, Emma just stood there, numb and unthinking, not knowing what to do.

Daryl appeared busy packing his scant belongings into a duffle bag. Emma still had no idea what to do or say, so she just stood there and watched. Daryl finally broke the silence.

“What’s the matter, Princess? Glenn stole your tiara?”

Daryl’s taunt knocked the sense back into Emma, and she finally realized why she was here. “You’re leaving?”

Daryl paused his packing for a short moment and looked at Emma. He had an eyebrow raised. “You heard, huh? Damn. Can’t keep nothing secret around here.” And he went back to packing.

“You’re leaving?” Emma repeated credulously.

“Yeah. I am.”

When Emma was eight, she and her brother had been roughhousing in their backyard, arguing over who got to play in the tree house. Angry, her brother pushed Emma, and she tripped and fell out of the tree house. She only fell six feet, but she landed flat on her back. Emma remembered the pain as all the air was pushed from her lungs. She remembered desperately trying to gasp for air, and the panicked fear that she was going to die.

Emma had a very similar feeling right now.

“You can’t!” Emma finally spurted.

“And why not?”

Emma’s mind was like a broken clock, moving at a slow and irregular pace. She thought of the look Daryl gave her after he had been shot. She thought of Daryl teaching her how to shoot a crossbow, how to hunt. She thought of how she felt with Daryl’s hand around her waist, his fingers in her hair. She thought of waking up embraced in Daryl’s scent. She thought of Daryl’s voice as he said her name – not Princess, as he’s always called her, but Emma – for the first time last night. All these memories added up to one conclusion: You can’t leave because I need you.

“We need you here. All of us need you. You’re important here.”

“Oh yeah? What’s so important about what I do?”

“You help protect us. You’ve been out in the forest killin’ walkers. And don’t deny it. I’ve seen how many ears you’ve added to that thing,” Emma said, darting her eyes poisonously to the wretched necklace Daryl had strung up in front of his tent.

“Ya’ll be just fine protectin’ your asses without me. You’ve got plenty of guns on the farm.”

Emma chewed at her lips, trying to think of another reason to keep Daryl around. “Hunting, then. Without all the game you bring we’d starve halfway through winter.”

“Still don’t need me. You’ve turned into a pretty decent hunter, Princess. The hunger of winter will only sharpen your aim.”

Emma felt like she had been hit by a truck. One of the mysteries that had been lingering in the back of her mind was suddenly illuminated. Daryl teaching me how to hunt…How could I have been so foolish? All this time Emma had thought Daryl teaching her how to hunt was his way of apologizing for the black eye. But that hadn’t been the case.

“You’ve been planning on leaving all along, haven’t you? That’s why you taught me how to hunt, so you’d know we would at least have one food source. You could leave without feeling guilty that you’ve damned us all to starvation.”

“Bingo.”

“Damnit, Daryl!” Emma wanted to kick something. Her sudden outburst seemed to have caught Daryl’s attention, because he watched her pacing back and forth with a raised eyebrow. “Why do you have to leave now? Why do you have to leave at all?”

“Timing’s right. I don’t belong here anymore.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You belong here with us.” Emma was so frustrated by Daryl and his reluctance to listen to her that she felt like tearing out her hair and screaming.

“If I really belong here, then give me one good reason why I should stay,” Daryl challenged.

There were plenty of reasons as to why Daryl should stay, but were any of them good enough? What was good enough for Emma might not be good enough for Daryl. What could Emma say to make Daryl stay? What can I do to keep him from leaving?

Emma remembered sitting on the ledge beside Daryl, eating jerky. They had been so close and Emma hadn’t even realized it until she saw how clear and blue his eyes were. What did he think of my eyes? Emma thought suddenly. Was he caught off guard seeing my eyes like I was seeing his? That question sparked another realization.

Everything that happened to Emma happened to Daryl too. Every time Emma looked into Daryl’s eyes, Daryl looked into Emma’s eyes. Every time Emma was speaking to Daryl, Daryl was listening to Emma. For so long Emma lived with the feeling that her relationship with Daryl was so one-sided: like Emma was some sort of burden that Daryl had to bear. But that wasn’t the case.

Emma enjoyed spending time with Daryl. She realized that now. She realized that she looked forward to spending hours with him, wandering through the woods in search of game. She realized that whenever she saw the shadow of a smile flicker across his face, her chest seemed to tighten and swell both at the same time. She realized that she hated to let him down, like she did yesterday when she admitted to losing one of his arrows.

Emma realized that, somewhere down the line, her feelings for Daryl had become more than neutral. And that scared her.

“I have a reason,” Emma finally said.

“Good. Let’s hear it, then.”

Emma looked at Daryl. His blue eyes were scrutinizing her, judging her every movement. Emma watched his eyes flicker in surprise as she stepped closer to him, as she stood on her toes, drawing closer to him. And then, when their lips met, she closed her eyes.

She expected Daryl to push her away, to wipe his lips off with the hem of his shirt and yell at her. And for a second she felt Daryl tense, and Emma was about to pull herself away from him, cheeks flaming in embarrassment. But then the least expected thing happened.

Daryl circled his hands around her waist and pulled her closer to him.

His touch was electric, burning at her skin and then coursing through her entire body, awakening long-forgotten nerves. She could feel everything at once: his hands on her hips, his hair between her fingers, his lips on hers and then leaving to nibble at her earlobe or collarbone.

Emma wasn’t thinking clearly. Whatever thoughts she had were interrupted whenever Daryl moved his hands somewhere else, whenever Daryl’s kisses landed in a new, unclaimed area. Her head was spinning and her blood was running hot.

“Daryl,” she softly said. The name came out as more of a breath than an actual word, but it was enough to catch his attention and he pulled away mid-kiss.

“You wanna stop?” he asked, and Emma felt her heart leap into her throat. He was looking at her so openly. His were pupils big and black, and his soft, short breaths gently brushed against her cheek. There was something about seeing Daryl like this, so vulnerable and attentive to her wishes, that sparked a desire within her.

“No.”