Rewatching DD cos I have tasked myself with retelling the whole mess in snarky textpost form (which is, imo, the best way to experience this story). And I noticed another parallel with the main show that I think is pretty telling. Again, it's probably completely accidental since Daryl's spinoff bares v little resemblance to the flagship show and his character/arc in particular. But the scene in the jail, when he and Isabelle are captured and conversing, sitting on the floor with a partition between them closely resembles a scene during the Reaper arc with Leah. In that scene, there is chain link between Daryl and his previous love interest/woodland hook-up/loner gf/canine co-parent. Daryl is the only one jailed, altho he believes at least, that Leah is equally trapped by Pope's regime and seeks to save her from it. The vibe of the two scenes is similarly despondent. The major difference is that the OG show seems to understand that, while joining a paramilitary cult may be somewhat understandable given the desperate state of the world, it does very much put you on the wrong side. Despite her initial relationship with Daryl, Leah is reconfigured in s11 as a baddie, someone who, for whatever reason, chose the wrong side, chose a destructive path. Isabelle is NOT, however, perceived as a baddie or even someone who was cruelly manipulated into choosing the wrong side/path. Isabelle is a true believer. An angelic figure. A religious warrior who challenges our hero to believe. But believe in what?
"The Walking Dead" takes a balanced, complex, human approach to religion, touching on, if not fully exploring why, when the world crumbles, some people find comfort in it and some use it as a tool of power and control. Why some cling to it desperately and some abandon all faith and belief. The OG show doesn't take a stance either way on whether God exists or religion is a force for good or evil. It merely depicts how human beings respond, how their beliefs can fail or warp under the pressure of global change and disaster. (Pertinent theme, no?) Such themes are mostly explored through Father Gabriel, but also via other groups (the Termites and Wolves etc) and characters (e.g. Carol). On the other hand, "Daryl Dixon" starts from a less balanced, more conventional place. We are supposed to simply accept that yes, God does exist, religion is good and believing in a child Messiah is a romantic cause....uuuuntil it's not. At which point, we start to differentiate between the good believers and the murderous nutjobs. Unfortunately, there were a whole lot of good believers -- Isabelle included -- who enabled the murderous nutjobs for upwards of a decade. But we don't have time to deal with that reality...during two ponderously slow seasons....
Neither the Reaper arc nor the first two seasons of "Daryl Dixon" manage to accurately, intricately or intelligently depict actual cult dynamics, which are far more sinister and screwy. The Reaper arc is too rushed and everything in DD is over-romanticised. (It's i-fucking-ronic how adverse they are to a Caryl romance because literally everything else is romanticised: the clothes, the city, the countryside, food, music, religion, cars, bikes, the past. The whole endeavour is sickly sweet but heaven forbid Daryl and Carol share a romantic moment after 85 years of yearning). "Daryl Dixon" had the time and space to properly depict a religious cult and how it functions, how it twists people and ideas, how it might flourish in an apocalypse, but it understood such beliefs as legitimate, rather than problematic. The show gave them credence, even as they abused a child. Isabelle was martyred rather than in any way held to account for her role in abusing her nephew. (Yes, it's true, a pretty, blonde, soft-spoken woman can get caught up in an ideological system that leads her to participate in heinous abuse! Other shows have understood and even depicted as much right here in the C21st!).
Anyway, I've already written about how Daryl's spinoff romanticises religious abuse rather than critiquing it. The point of this post is to say that Leah and Isabelle were both active members of a violent, insular high-control religious group. But one is seen as a baddie and therefore no longer a viable love interest for our fave hero and the franchise's best boy. The other is seen as a glorious goodie and completely deserving of Daryl's love, loyalty and admiration. Not only that, she's seen as someone he should listen to, someone to challenge his lack of faith, to expand his worldview. When Daryl meets the Pope he is very clear that he is a non-believer. And this is a v Daryl moment, similar to, tho not on par with, him telling Negan he is Daryl. When Daryl tells people who he is, we as an audience generally respond: yeah that's our boy. He is who he is and we like him that way. The only way Daryl is able to survive the Reapers is to pretend to be someone else. Much like Carol does. Or Eugene with the Saviours (?). Pretense is not Daryl's strong suit. It could be argued that his pretense in this arc is OOC...or maybe it's just under-explored. What we see him do tho, in order to fit in with that cult, in order to survive, is take off his angel-wing vest (important visual cue!) and reluctantly assume the role of an abuser, a physical and psychological torturer. We see elements of Merle, elements of his father come out in him, as well as other arseholes we have known (Negan). This tells us that Daryl knows exactly who these guys are. They are NOT the good guys. And they are NOT the guys HE wants to be. They are the type of men he has been actively avoiding turning into since season 2.
The difference in how Leah and Isabelle are viewed by the two shows is just another inconsistency between the two worlds. As is the difference in how Daryl responds to these highly controlled, highly explosive cultic environments. The Daryl we know on the OG show recognises bad guys instinctively, he knows abusers and knows how to survive them. He does what needs to be done, he tries to save who he can, but he does not buy into their bs. That's what makes him our Daryl. The Daryl of the spinoff doesn't exactly like Losang, but nor do we get him eyeing him like the manipulative bully he is. The Daryl of the spinoff questions Isabelle's deifying of her nephew but he doesn't recognise it as child abuse and nor does the show. The Daryl of the spinoff wavers in who he is and what he believes and where he belongs. And while that may be understandable in a foreign context, there needs to be enough Daryl left that we can recognise him thru his wishy-washy mid-life crisis of faith/identity. For that to happen tho, they need to look back at who Daryl has been, who he has become, and how he responds to different people/dynamics that are so clearly dangerous. The shows also need to share some kind of similar ethical stance. At its core, TWD is about power and control, who rises up in a power vacuum and what they do with that power. How they treat people. How they view the world. TWD makes noises about everybody being the good guys but, in fact, it's very clear in the OG show what is and isn't an acceptable use of power. "Daryl Dixon" doesn't seem to have the same ethical conviction. It bathes psychological manipulation and spiritual exploitation in soft light, in romantic language. It's critique of religious doctrine used for power and control is weak and watered down, if it can be said to exist at all. And right now, is NOT a great time to be underplaying how religion can be weaponised during a worldwide crisis.
What - Yearning. Daryl misses you and your family so badly that it seems his imagination is dreaming you up to keep him from going crazy
When - big time jump to when Daryl finds himself in France (spinoff season 1, episode 2)
Where - the school in France
Pronouns - she/her (howdy, wife reader!)
TWs - language, reference to child loss, self-loathing, sappiness (it's fanfiction, y'all XD ) and Daryl gets a little...'excited' (mild instance of sexual arousal between a married couple)
Perspective - Daryl 3rd person POV
References - some are yet unpublished because this is a significant time skip, which means a few little surprises. Others can be found throughout the series!
Series? - the Slowpoke Series! It's a fun, slow time that sticks to canon to help maintain immersion (as much as you can with adding an oc lol) ;)
Can I read this chapter if I haven't started any part of the Slowpoke Series yet? - definitely
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“It's so good to hold you again, sugar.”
Those words, that voice, made him relax into the bed. She was there again! He’d last imagined her when he was being tended to by those nuns, so it was only, what, a handful of days ago?
Wasn’t enough for him, he missed her so much.
“Dare, I want them all. Full stop, every last one.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I knew you’d say that.”
“As if you aren’t wantin’ to take at least a handful. All those kids with just an old woman to care for them…well, now she’s dead, but…” She sighed and held him tighter. “Lou reminds me of Enid. Don’t you think they look similar? M’sorry her name had to be Lou. A lot of things over here are making you homesick, ain’t they? And that poor boy in Maine, named TJ, too.”
He pulled her closer, doing his best to not wake himself up so Y/N would stay with him. He wished that kid, with same name as his oldest, has just gone back to his girlfriend like he'd told him to.
“Our own Louise lights a candle with me for you every day. Those nuns would be proud.”
He swore to himself that whenever these dreams happen, there’s got to be some way it isn’t just all in his head. It was way too real.
It felt so, so real.
But that Louise was lighting candles for him, he knew because Carol told him when she spoke to him briefly over the radio in Maine...
“Did Carol also mention that Lydia’s been drawing you? Or did I write part that in the letter?”
“The letter. Carol and I didn't have much time to say anything.” Y/N wrote him a long, long letter. One part mentioned how both Lydia and Glenn took to getting nightmares again after he left. At Maggie’s suggestion, Lydia had been drawing his picture. Apparently it helps her feel safer.
RJ had been 'retreating more than usual,' also. Adam was acting out, too, so she wrote. If Daryl was figuring it right, the boys losing another father figure probably hadn’t helped.
“Dare, he’s three. Three-year-olds don’t only act out with foster parents, Adam would be doin’ the same with Alden. And RJ is without Michonne right now. That's the greater culprit.”
His wife also wrote how Coco just started calling her ‘mama,’ and correcting her to say ‘auntie’ wasn’t working yet. She chalked it up to her being a motherly figure and the baby assuming all caring ladies were ‘mama.’ He wondered if Gabe knew yet. Ain’t like Y/N hasn’t been a mama to that little girl since Rosita died. Actually, nah, Gabe obviously knew; Y/N would’ve (legit) run to him immediately and told him what was up.
The faces of all their kids ran through his mind over and over, Lydia and Judith and RJ included. Then his wife’s face. Carl. Adam. Hershel. Gracie. Coco. Carol. Ezekiel. Maggie. Rosita. Aaron. Jesus. Jerry. Rick. Merle. T-Dog.
“Oo, I want to be here when T-Dog visits. Has he ever visited?” Y/N chirped.
He wished. “Once. I just think about him a lot.”
“Bummer. He must have been so thrilled when we actually did name our first after him, without you even tellin’ me nothing about how he’d teased you on it! Say, what about Uncle Jesse? Does he visit? He must’ve been happy TJ’s middle name is for him!”
He shook his head. You even visited me before I was smart enough to fall for you. When I fell down the ridge. It was you and Merle.
A sneezing from one of the kids in another part of the building resounded four times. It woke him briefly.
He closed his eyes, focused…
It was okay, Y/N was there. Daryl breathed a sigh of relief.
“I am a mite surprised you didn’t take the floor anyway,” Y/N admitted, peeking over his side to look at where the nun Isabelle was laying down next to him. “Or share with Laurent so the two sisters could share.”
“Neither of them trust me enough for me to share a room with the boy. And she sounded like she didn’t want me on the floor. Must be that I’m gettin’ too old." All I feel these days is tired and sore. "Hell, I don’t think I could get up if I slept on the floor.”
Angel, I ain’t the same without you, I’m a fucking mess. Look at the shit show that I’ve made of things.
His wife whispered, “Hey. You know I can hear that, I’m from your imagination.”
“Y/N, I miss you so fucking much.” Baby, I’m so goddamned far from you all and I don’t know how I’m gonna get out this time.
“No cusses in front of the kids, Daryl,” She cupped her belly, the one he was imagining she might have again. Carol, when she spoke to him, used what little time there was to mention how Y/N was avoiding taking a test because she missed him too much. Y/N didn’t say nothing about it in her letter she'd packed in there during one of his home visits.
How’s that for a reason to hate yourself?
“You should,” shot back another familiar voice. “Leaving your own kin, leaving your woman. Ain’t you learned nothing, boy? Didn’t think you was that much of a deadbeat but here’s proof the apple didn’t fall far from the tree."
Merle.
Damn, it’d been ages!
"Yup. Nanu nanu," his brother mocked, waving his metal stump and glaring. "Here you are, in the white flag capital of the world, surrounded by Euro kooks instead of your own blood.”
“Oh, Daryl, don’t imagine him as cruel again!" Y/N cooed. "Let us both love you if you’re gonna go about having us here.”
Daryl breathed slowly so he wouldn’t wake up. When he felt level enough, he answered, “I don’t have much control over what y’all say.”
“I thought you had some control over it.” Y/N gently pushed his hair off his face. He loved it when she did that. Delicately, she examined the new scar gracing his forehead.
“I blame that old coot what you let whup you on the head as to why you’re seeing things,” his brother crooned.
His wife nodded. “Another concussion, you poor man. But this isn’t a hallucination, it’s just a dream. It’s that good kind of dream where you’re not fully awake but not fully asleep.” She trailed her hand along his forearm.
“Y/N, you’re too good for this sad sack.”
She fired back faster than Daryl knew his imagination could go. “Merle. You love your brother to death and you’re happy he got hisself a wife and family.” Y/N had pushed herself up to sitting in order to scold him. “Tell me you don’t swell with pride seein’ him be a good father and good husband. The cycle stopped with him, and you’re proud of it.”
Daryl, a hand protectively around his wife’s side, was busy trying to figure out what Merle was even doing, whittling?
Ah, he was eating an peach with the knife attached to his metal stump.
Weird, he thought ghosts didn’t eat.
“Maybe I ain’t a real ghost, retard,” was a blunt comeback. “Maybe I’m just a poor copy you conjured up in that concussed little head of yours.” Merle then turned to Y/N. “As for you, kitten, he left you and your brats! Left you when you was up the duff, left you when you don’t even got all your legs no more! How’s he supposed to protect you when he’s out here?”
“Merle William Dixon! I ain’t ‘kitten’ and those ‘brats’ are your nieces and nephews, dick. Noah’s middle name is even for you, so you best watch your mouth, hear?”
Merle smirked and sliced off another wedge from the peach. “There’s my sister-in-law. I had to make sure your square self at least still had that fire in ya.” He offered her a slice, but she crossed her arms.
The expression on her face was so disappointed it made Daryl’s chest tug.
His brother duly inclined his head in apology and raised his hands in surrender. “You’re right, ma’am. Y’all are doing a good job on them brats. And this sumbitch ain’t nothing like our old man, so there’s something.” Merle chopped another piece of fruit. “And it’s always a pleasure to roll with a fellow amputee, Y/N. Not many can relate to how trippy the phantom limb bullshit can get.”
She tilted her head in agreement, rubbed the spot above her prosthetic calf, and settled back down next to her husband with a big sigh. “I do wish Daryl imagined you in a kinder light, Merle, but, either way, I’m happy he watched Mork & Mindy because it got him thinkin’ about you — and now you’re here for him!” Her hand grazed along her bump. “And, you meant to say to him that I was possibly pregnant.”
“Dunno about that, sister, you’ve always seem to know when you been knocked up.”
“That ain’t incorrect,” she confessed, curling in on herself. “Even if I was, it’s possible we had a loss again, Merle. Whether early or late this time.”
“Another reason he shouldn’t be screwin’ around out here.” Merle next words sliced him as if his heart were the peach in his hands. “I'm angry for your own good, lady. What if you had to handle another kid's death, this time on your own?”
The bad memories crashed down like waves threatening to drown him in grief and guilt. He wanted to pummel his brother in the hopes Merle would best him and make him pay for leaving her.
But Merle wasn't actually there. Neither was Y/N. It was pretend. Daryl was just beating himself up in his head, and failing even at that.
Y/N said the words as Daryl thought them: “Why are you twisting the knife?” She swallowed and covered her face with her hands. “Maybe, this mission is w-worth the sacrifice of, of us not havin’ him here right now.”
No. It’s not.
I know you said that before I left to make it hurt less, but it’s not. Listen to your stutter, you know it ain’t.
I should be back there with you, not constantly leaving for weeks at a time. I'm supposed to be home now. I'd told Carol when I reached her on the radio back in Maine that I'd be there in a about a week, which is what she would've told you. This whole thing is horseshit!
“Darlin’, think on happier things or you’ll upset yourself awake or into another nightmare,” Y/N soothed. "You almost woke from anger at Merle just there, which is really just anger at yourself." Her fingers laced into his where his hand rested on her belly. His wish was that his dream would include feeling the baby move. He loved that feeling. Except, he must’ve been waking up because his dream wasn’t letting him feel her hand or her belly very much when he tried. Still, it felt real enough. He’d take what he could get.
“Might could be fun to think back on how beautiful it was making them, if indeed we made another one.” She walked two fingers along his bicep. “Would’ve happened on or around the last night before you left. Or,” she mused, then started to giggle. At that moment, he could even imagine the vibrations of her laughter as if she were really, actually laying beside him. It felt so real! “I wouldn’t be surprised if made them on the day itself, that was soo — oh man, hold up!” She pulled away from him and eyed his crotch in suspicion. “No sex dreams allowed, there’s a bride of Christ in the room! Keep that thing down, deal?”
He almost laughed out loud, and possibly in real life. So long as he didn’t wake up, he didn’t care if he laughed in his sleep. The reactions, the tone, it was all just like his Y/N. And he could hope they had another kid. He’d take as many as came along.
Aw, shit, how far would she even be along, if this one made it? How long had he been away?
“Goddamn, y’all, is this some kinda kink you got?” Merle cut in. “Me and the penguin are still here, you perverts.”
“Oh hush, neither of us are actually here. Him and me aren’t doing nothin’, he just got a little aroused,” Y/N countered. “And to answer your question about another baby, Daryl, I reckon you’ll find out when you come back.” She shrugged. “Unless you reach us on a radio? Eugene is diligent about it, especially now.”
That was another thing she wrote in her letter. Eugene and his radio.
The helplessness crashed back down on him. “I’m tryin’ babe.” He didn’t want to start crying. The nun was next to him and he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop crying once he started.
Merle jeered, “Try harder, Darylina.”
He was right, Daryl needed to. He needed to try harder! What kind of washed out fuck-up was he?
“Sweetheart,” his wife called softly. Her hand caressed his cheek. It felt so, so real. “Margaret — a woman who knows the pain of losing a husband — trusted this to you because you survive. And I trusted you to go, because you’ve got the brains, the balls, and the grit. You don’t die or get bit, Daryl, no. You always come home.”
Bullshit. Not this time.
“Not bullshit. Yes, this time.” She looked to the window. “Merle, back me up.”
“Based on your track record, she’s right, little brother.”
“You may not believe you can or will,” she lifted herself up on her hands and leaned forward to kiss him. It had to have been real. It felt so, so real. But he was not about to open his eyes to see if by some miracle it was. “Despite how you feel right now, my bet is you will get that happy ending. It ain’t coincidence that Laurent said so just like our Judith did! How’s that for a reason to hope?”
Shit, he was about to break down. “Y/N, maybe I don’t deserve that. You saw the shit-show what got me here.” And there came the tears. “I left you, that’s all there is to this. I don’t deserve you.”
“Oh, that word.” Y/N wasn’t a fan of the word ‘deserve.’ “On that topic, what an honest prayer you said to bless the food! So many times you used ‘deserve,’ ugh, but,” she paused, “God loves honesty like that. Very, very much.”
She kissed his eyelids where the tears were starting to slip out, kissed the scar that never seemed to fade, then settled back against the side of his chest and curled one leg around him. With her hand, she rubbed comforting circles along his torso. “And He don’t punish or withhold, that’s just our fallen world. His hand is always out for you,” she murmured. “Say, how long do you think you can keep up with imaginin’ my theology?”
“Angel, I’m already at my limit. That’s why part of me thinks you’ve gotta be here somehow, some parts of this feel so real. Smart stuff like this ain’t in my head.”
“TJ and Georgia would call out your self-hate if they could hear you. You’d owe them a lot of quarters. Hm, and euros, seeing as you're here.”
His chest tugged at their names. “How are they?”
TJ, their oldest besides Lydia, had long hair like the little French kid here. Just one other thing that ripped at Daryl’s heartstrings to make him ache so bad for home it shocked him that he wasn’t bleeding out.
“They’re as good as gold and better. Just like their father.” That phrase he knew was from his memory because she’d said it before. “All of us miss you like crazy. Postal level.”
You shouldn’t.
“Daryl.” Her hand gripped his. There’s no way it wasn’t real. It felt so real. “When I was broken after Carl's death, and I claimed the same stuff — that you should leave me and TJ, that you needed someone better, that your life would be better if we weren’t a part of it — how much did it rip you up? ’Cause even if I hadn’t told you this before, you would have to understand how it’s tearing my insides to shreds hearin’ you think the same.”
Calm. He had to stay calm or he’d be alone again.
“I’m right,” he whispered.
“I have to disagree.”
“I —” his voice went up. He switched tactics and spoke to his brother. “Merle, talk some sense into her. I failed. This is it, this is—”
“—You did screw shit up like a royal turd, but your lady would rip my danglers off if I went along with your pretty little pity party.”
Believe it or not, the tough love helped. Felt genuine, as if Merle really was shouting some sense into him. It felt so real.
He caught his wife giving Merle an air high-five. “Thank you, Merle.”
In hindsight, Daryl figured it must’ve be because Merle, in Daryl’s imagination, had to raise his metal arm to return the five. He taunted Y/N, “You’re welcome, peg-leg.”
Dream or not, Daryl was fixing to bark, but his wife playfully kicked her own prosthetic and taunted back, “Love you, gimpy.”
His brother was smug. “Square.”
As if Y/N hadn’t heard that before.“Trailer trash.”
As if Merle hadn’t heard that before. “Goody-two shoes.”
“Two shoes? Ahem,” Y/N drawled as prim and proper as a southern belle. “Did we not just establish how I only require but one shoe these days?”
Merle slapped his thigh and cackled like a hyena and Daryl couldn’t help but do the same. Y/N joked about her missing calf like she got paid for it, pirate jokes to no end.
Daryl hadn’t felt this light in months, not even close to it since leaving home.
…And to think, it was all a lie.
All fake.
They weren’t really there. Not his wife, not his dead brother. It was all in his head.
“Oh, my sweet mangy hick. Enough moping and angst, enjoy the moment! Merle and I really did a fair job on our banter just there. And you never know, Merle could really be here, seein’ as he’s dead.”
“Y/N, I even miss bickering with ya, goddamn,” he breathed.
“It is one of our love languages. That reminds me — you’re doing great with the French, Dare!”
She can’t be serious. Or, rather, he himself can’t be serious. “Babe, I ain’t spoken a word of it. The letters don’t matter half the time. I swear, these people sound drunk.”
Merle snickered, “Hell, even I speak better French than him. Voulez vous coucher av—”
“—Well, I meant like when you used the dictionary to translate that conjugated verb.” Her voice had gone down when she said this and it sounded, well…how it usually sounded when she was turned on. “If I were there, the part where I’d push your suspenders off your shoulders would drive me wild…”
Stay calm or you’ll wake up, Daryl.
And you realllly don’t want to start a sex dream with some other chick in the room. A nun!
“Get a room, horndogs. The word was ‘conjugated,’ not ‘conjugal,’” Merle spat. “This is why you got all them kids.”
His wife made one of her signature huffs, but didn’t say nothing back to Merle. Into Daryl’s ear, she sympathized, “Being horny is so annoyin’.”
Ha. Blushing even in his dreams. Part of him wondered if he was cracking up in his sleep, too, but either way, it felt good. Felt real. It felt so, so real. “I don’t even know what ‘conjugated’ means, Y/N.”
“Yes you do, otherwise I wouldn’t say it. I’m a figment of your imagination, remember?” Aw man, why’d she have to nuzzle him in the crook of his neck? He loved it when she did that. Mmm, hot damn it felt so real… “And you know that you doin’ something like conjugating a verb in another language would be sexy to me.”
“I told y’all jackrabbits to keep your britches on. Now, Daryl: ‘conjugate’ is when you make the verb agree grammatically with the subject. You’ve heard that word before,” Merle explained. Seemed out of character. And the room looked strange, there was—it was another room now?
Daryl’s thoughts turned to when Y/N and Rosita would speak Spanish. Listening as Judith helped TJ and RJ with phonics. Watching Georgia sing to baby Louise that song Siddiq had taught her in, what language was it?
“Hey. Dummy,” Merle scoffed. “You’re driftin’ off, sweet boy. Gotta stay a teensy bit lucid if you want us here.”
So that’s why the room had just looked different. He’d been slipping.
“I still don’t get how this happens, which is why I think you’re actually here,” Daryl said to both of them. “Merle, you’re probably in…somewhere in-between.”
“What, I don’t get to be in heaven yet? Y/N, you hearin’ this uppity sumbitch?”
“He still has trouble believing in such things, Merle, especially lately. I prayed for your soul, so I got hope.”
“Thank you, sister.”
“Anytime.” Y/N looked up at Daryl and smiled. “Then what about me, dude? I ain’t dead, pinky promise. So, how is it that I come to be here?”
Yeah, he’ll be as sappy as he wants with his wife of ten years. “Maybe you’re dreamin’ about me, too.”
Merle’s kissy noises were interrupted by Daryl firmly telling him to get out after which Y/N smooched him harder than she’d had in his imagination since he’d left America. The smell of her, the sounds she made, the way she would lift her head so he could bury his face in her neck, it all felt so real.
It was when she ran her hand lower down his abdomen and almost reached his you-know-what that it all stopped cold. “Sorry! Aw, shoot — Merle! Get back in here, quick, we got carried away! Well, t-technically it was all you, Dare, but — just, please don’t get a stiffy with a nun in the room!”
“Someone should put that on a shirt,” his brother called.
“Ew, no, Merle! Good Moses, maybe I really should ought to be there if you’re startin’ to imagine messed up t-shirt slogans.” She was only teasing. “Ooh, but if I were really there I could meet little Sister Sylvie! So far, I like her.”
“I knew you would.” Daryl grinned. “The way she is with the boy, she reminds me of you.”
If only you were really here, angel.
Wait, no, I don’t want you here because you wouldn’t be safe. I need you safe.
She brought his hand to her lips. “I know what you meant, sugar.”
Unexpectedly, the nun shifted on the bed, nearly jolting him fully awake.
Slow breaths. Keep your eyes shut, do not open them!
He kept them shut tight and pictured where Y/N had been to try and keep her there.
“What am I, chopped pig’s feet?” Merle grunted.
Daryl relaxed. Merle was still there, and he got back the feeling of Y/N beside him.
“You know,” his wife considered. While she was still there, he was having trouble visualizing her. Was he still close to waking up? “That Sister Isabelle is willin’ to risk sharing a room with a strange American says a lot about how much she’ll give to protect the boy and the others here.”
“Still damn weird she didn’t just share a room, the three of ’em.”
“It is. It’s really weird.” Y/N rested her forehead on his chest. He felt the warmth of her breathing against him. If he focused really hard, he could just about imagine the feel her heartbeat, too. “Maybe she’s fixing to be the first line of defense, with all them other kids livin’ here.”
“Still weird,” he grunted. “Hey, where’d my—” He looked around in his imagination at the room. “Where’d my brother go?”
“Maybe he wanted another peach. Or, maybe you're too close to wakin’ up. Be careful, darling.”
He breathed slowly and kept his eyes locked shut. His frustration was growing. It had felt so real, why was it going away?
Calm. Stay calm so she’ll stay.
“It was also unusual,” Y/N thought, “how Sister Izzy—”
“—Sister Izzy?”
He imagined that her mouth would have twisted in embarrassment. “Yes, I’d probably definitely give her that nickname. You sure know how to portray me realistically.” She started again, “It’s unusual how she didn’t accommodate for your maybe-not-wantin’-to-be-seen-in-the-tub-by-a-nun. By anyone, for that matter. Although,” she reconsidered, “they were nurses who had to change your undies and cauterize your wound, weren’t they?” When he pictured her bottom lip beginning to tremble, he held her closer. “Oh, I hate that they all died but for two! What has this world come to? Why would those men kill them?”
That was something.
The dream got easier to maintain. He felt the curve of her waist. The rise and fall of her chest. It felt real again. It felt so, so real.
Relieved, he didn’t know what to say at first other than, “The water was cloudy enough.” When he was getting treated, bathed, doctored, how hard he wished it was Y/N doing it. Another thing that made him ache, watching them nuns give him medical attention when for the past 12 years it’d almost always been his wife.
He breathed out heavily. “Dunno, when she was in there, it wasn’t too uncomfortable.”
“The habit can have that effect on some. The crucifixes and religious artworks hopefully brought some peace, too.”
“Habit?”
“Nun outfit.”
He tried to hold her even tighter. The way it felt more real than before encouraged him, got him nearly falling off his seat with excitement that he got her back!
Except, the excitement turned into panic that he might lose this moment because he was so happy, as fake as it was.
And it sent him over the edge. Just like that, he was awake. Very awake. And alone. No Y/N, no Merle.
He blinked as the room came into focus.
None of it was real. He’d, he'd known that.
And now he was awake. Lying on some flat, shitty, tiny bed, an ocean away, in a country full of people he didn’t understand, that had walkers who burned you when they touched you, and soldiers who shot up a convent full of nuns who patched up strangers and were only trying to keep a little boy safe.
He didn’t even have his ring anymore. All he had was a snippet on a voice recorder that told the world his name and how badly he'd fucked up.
Daryl turned onto his side, the pain from his burned arm screaming at him, but he didn’t give one flying fuck. Y/N wasn’t there anymore because his stupid ass had woken up! He’d earned the pain, he needed it, he deserved it.
Quietly, he thought to hell with it and let himself weep. He was so fucking done with all this bullshit.
He wanted Y/N back. He wanted his kids back. The fuck kind of brainless jackass was he, leaving them for so long, so much? And for what?
To "see what's out there?"
As if he'd find people who had a cure?
To bring Rick and Mich home? If Rick is even alive, if Michonne is alive.
To transport some creepy French boy to a group of weirdos grasping at the hope of some imaginary friend in the sky who damns them if they don’t do all the rules in the world that He’d let go to shit as a punishment or test?
Really, was Daryl that much of a guilt-ridden jerk-off to still say yes to whatever Maggie asks him to do? It’s a hopeless fu—
“Daryl, I love you so much. Please don’t blaspheme.”
“Y/N?” I thought you was gone. No, you were gone, I woke up! “You’re back?” Holy shit, thank you. Thank you! Thank you, Whoever's up there.
That small, shy smile melted all the ice he’d just had in his heart. “Try not to wake all the way again?”
He didn’t waste any more time blubbering like an idiot, he reached for her and held on. It was still a dream, so he had to be careful to not get too excited or do anything too stimulating. And, don’t worry, he wasn’t about to willingly get a hard-on when there was a nun next to him.
He just needed to have Y/N in his arms again so he could make it through the next 5 minutes without going insane!
For 12 years, she’d been there, loving him in one way or another. For 10 years they’d been husband and wife. Without her, without their kids there, in that strange, foreign place, he was losing himself so quick it brought him to his knees with shame.
Her lips pulled away for a moment. “I wouldn’t agree that you’re losing yourself. I watched Shaney lose himself, it looked different. Daryl, I’m serious,” she insisted. Her fingers tousled about his hair so like how she did in real life that Daryl assumed he was doing so to himself in that half-sleep. “Listen: did you not save that dad and daughter even after they robbed you?”
Big whoop. “You know what those guerrilla shits would’ve done to her." The same thing that got done to you. "And those assholes would prolly have made the old man watch and killed me regardless.”
“Yeah, but you also went back to try and save that gaggle of nuns from those jar-head pieces of shit, that’s got to count for somethin’.” Wait, that was Merle’s voice. He was back, too?
Daryl looked over at the window to see his brother there once more. Merle winked. “My baby brother, the hero. Stay zen if you’re fixing to keep us here, now. Keep hittin’ that sweet spot between dreamland and the real world.”
Y/N beamed at Merle before turning back to Daryl. “And did you not help those children get the medicine, Dare? Heck, now they got access to that whole castle full of supplies and it’s so much more secure. Um, m-minus the moat full of dead ones.”
“I lied to those kids out my ass, Y/N. Lied and didn’t give a damn.”
“And you ensured none of them got hurt, then promptly admitted the lie with what I’d call purity of heart.”
“I cut that boy’s mule loose without a second thought. You see that? He loved that thing.”
“Better than to have failed to back up the cart in time, which would have happened and would have gotten all five of y’all eaten. And it was almost fast enough to escape by the looks of it. One dead mule to the benefit of four living souls is a good outcome.”
“What’d my sister-in-law say earlier?” Merle asked. “Brains, balls, and grit? Not to sound all mushy gushy, but she’s right.”
The memories of falling into that moat of walkers seized him, made him start to panic again. No brains, no balls, he almost died right in there—
“—Baby, shh,” Y/N hushed. Her arms tightly wrapped around him the way she would when his nightmares hit bad. “You survived. No bites. No burns. Not even a broken bone, I don’t know how you managed it again.” Her lips, her chest, her hands pressed against him. It felt so, so real. “But you always seem to.” She kissed him. “You’ve got brains.” Another kiss. “Balls.” A deeper kiss. “And grit. And you’re alive, sweetheart. There’s always hope as long as your heart is still beating.”
“How will I get out of this?”
“You’ll find a way,” she said with confidence. “You simply don’t know what the way is yet.”
“What do I do about the nuns?”
“Help them keep Laurent safe, of course — if you choose to do so.”
I don’t want to.
“You don’t have to,” she assured him.
I want to go home.
“And you will,” she assured him once again.
I don’t want to help them. I don’t want to. I don’t fucking want to!
…God damn it. “But I should.”
“You ain’t obligated,” Y/N responded, but with hesitation that time. “It is up to you.”
Merle was the one to point out, “It’s that conscience of yours, kid. Sometimes you just can’t help but help. I’ve been watchin’ you these past, what is it, 11 years since I got my crusty white ass killed?” He chuckled to himself as he shaved off the final bit of peach before flicking the pit away. “Can’t be too mad at it when it roped you a fine piece of ass to squeeze at night and how many kids because of it?”
“Merle,” Y/N warned.
Daryl could feel his anger rising.
“What, ain’t you relieved I can’t call you ‘sweet little virgin’ no more, son?” Merle kept egging on.
“Daryl, this isn’t really him. Don’t get angry or we’ll both disapp—”
“—So, my thinking is, Daryl, that you just won’t be able to help yourself from bringing that little sissy boy to them nutjobs —”
“Shut up!” Daryl burst out — and opened his eyes in real time. Again? Is he that much of an idiot?
His pulse was pounding. Dread and self-loathing flooded his mind, how stupid could he be?
Immediately, he squeezed his eyes shut in a desperate hope to get his wife and brother back. He focused, focused, focused, prayed, pretended, focused…
“Daryl,” came her voice.
He could hear Y/N, but not see her. It was clear that it was all him forcing the memory of her voice back. It was all in his head.
“Why bother caring that it’s in your head, sugar? Breathe slowly and focus on the feel of my body against yours. I don’t wanna leave you."
“Y/N, I need to get back,” he panted. “I can use their help to do that. Those religious people, the Union of Hope or whoever, Isabelle says they got a good radio. I need that to get back home.”
“Well, there you go! I trust you.”
He reached up to tangle his fingers where her hair would be. His imagination wasn’t letting it happen, so he focused with gratefulness that at least he could still hear her.
“Just don’t abuse their trust, and you’ll be alright,” she softly pleaded.
Don’t break their trust? “Angel, you don’t know what I did to end up in this mess.”
Of all the ways he could have daydreamed her reacting, it was that her laughter filled the room. “For the last time, my mangy hick, I am a figment of your imagination and quite literally know everythin’ inside that brain of yours. And I still love you despite that ‘shit-show’ what landed you here.”
He brought to mind the color of her eyes, wanting, wanting, begging for a miracle that would make her truly there with him so he could stare into them all night. “What would you say if I asked ‘that if I don’t find nothing, what good am I?’”
“Y/N, you can blame our raising for that shit right there,” his brother commented.
“You poor boys. Broken people sometimes make for broken kids.”
Gently, he started to perceive the way she would rub her cheek against his chest when she’d lay down with him. “Daryl? If I were here, I’d say things to try and make it stick in your head that your worth ain’t dependent on what you can offer.”
“What does it depend on, then?”
“Careful, you’re treading into religious waters now, and I ain’t sure you’ve got the bandwidth tonight. But God is involved,” she hinted.
This mess was hopeless, wasn’t it? No winning, no out, no happy ending.
“Angel, I can’t come home empty-handed.” He squeezed his eyes tighter and willed himself to not lose his cool yet again. “I can’t come home with no Rick or Michonne, no cure, no nothin’ but a burn, more nightmares, and more lives on my conscience.”
“You can,” she answered simply. “It ain’t all on you. No — please, don’t get any more upset or you’ll wake up again! Daryl, I’ve already slipped so far away!” He heard his wife begin to cry, but the sound went further and further from him. All he could see were the backs of his eyelids.
Still, he held on as best he could. “Please stay here, angel.”
“I-I would, sweetheart.”
“When I’m back, I won’t even want to leave the walls to hunt if it would mean not being next to you, d’you know that?”
“Let someone else hunt. You’ve done enough to last a lifetime.” Her voice was hoarse the way it had been when she’d said those same words to him about a year and a half ago. “More than enough. Oh Daryl, I’m so sorry we’re going.”
“Not yet, angel, please don’t!”
“Use all those things makin’ you homesick as reasons to hope. Do it for me, sugar. Get yourself home again. Don’t die, don’t get bit.”
“I won’t. I’ll get back to you. Tell the kids I love ’em?”
There was silence.
Stillness.
Daryl lay there, accepting that he couldn’t feel Y/N next to him anymore.
His throat tightened. “Angel?”
He doesn’t know why he bothered. She was gone, he knew it. He ran his finger where his ring should’ve been, if he hadn’t lost it.
“Angel,” he tried again.
Silence.
“Babe, please. Please.”
Silence.
“Y/N, please, one more time, angel.”
Silence.
The pain in him was hollow and cold.
Feeling small and helpless, he lifted his arms above his head and held back a wail of despair. He closed his eyes again and, in his head, he cried out in desperation, “Merle?”
At first, there was no answer. He hadn't expected one. Why should he?
But then he heard a quiet, low, “I’m still here.”
Merle spoke slowly and heavily, almost as if it hurt him to admit it. “I don’t think she’s gonna come back tonight, Daryl. You’ve already fallen out a few times. I ain’t gonna be here much longer, neither. You know that.”
Any strength he had left seeped out like a stab wound, leaving him crying like a child. “I can’t see you anymore.”
“I know, little brother.”
“It felt so real.”
“It sure as hell did. I think you needed it, even if it hurts like a bitch now.”
It had felt so, so real!
But it wasn’t. “I’m alone,” he choked out.
“Nothin’ you can’t handle.” For a moment Daryl could make out his brother’s face again. “You’re a tough sumbitch, so I’d advise you act like it. Quit blubberin’ like a baby and wipe the snot out your nose.”
Daryl sniffed and tried to get a grip.
“Good.” Merle’s voice began to echo. He was almost gone, too. “Now listen here: don’t die, don’t get bit. Get your ass back where you belong.”
The room came into view.
The echoing stopped.
The hollow, cold pain he’d felt at knowing they were gone there turned sharp and hot. Turns out, it was actually the throbbing in his arm. Daryl really had turned onto his side, which positioned his burned arm underneath him. He strained to get off it and flip onto his back.
You know what? The pain from his burned arm didn’t hold a candle to the ache in his chest.
Were those tears on his face, too? Guess he must’ve started crying for real in his sleep. Made sense considering how real it all felt. It all felt so real.
If only his pulse would stop racing, he felt sick.
He was getting damned old.
Instinctively, he tried to fiddle with his wedding band, which is when he recalled yet again how he’d lost it. Only a faint tan line remained.
He closed his eyes, exhausted, and chewed at his lip. Another tear or two escaped and ran hot down his cheek.
A strange part of him wished he hadn’t lied to Laurent about having a wife and family back home. At the time he said it so it wouldn't hurt as much, but…
“You deserve a happy ending, too,” the kid had told him. Just like his Judith had, when she saw how low and unworthy he begun to feel. She told her auntie Y/N, too, of course, not that his wife wasn’t unaware of how twisted his head had gotten into thinking he was no good. It didn’t feel twisted to him, it felt honest. He didn’t deserve them. They were too good.
His wife’s words to him played again in his mind. He may have just been making all that shit up in his brain, but he was only remembering a mix of real things that she’d told him before, over and over in the hopes his stupid ass would accept it one day.
“Despite how you feel right now, my vote is you will get that happy ending. It ain’t coincidence that Laurent said so just like our Judith did! How’s that for a reason to hope?”
He did need a reason. It was getting harder and harder to hold onto hope. Any hope.
So, maybe, a weird kid with long hair like TJ’s who drew a picture of some washed-up bum on a beach three weeks before Daryl showed up was reason enough to hope. He could grasp onto that.
If it would get him home, hell yeah, he could do that.
How the same weird kid told him what his niece had and what his wife had could be reason enough, too. He could grasp onto that as well, if it would get him home. He could do that for them.
Daryl ran his hand in slow, gentle circles along his stomach like Y/N would. Maybe he’d been doing this in his dream, which is why it felt so real.
(inbox is open if you would like on or off the taglist, slowpokes! Please don’t feel bad or nervous if you don’t want to be tagged anymore, just let me know in the inbox. We’re all friends here and your comfort level matters)
This post about Daryl and Connie by @theyreunderadumpster made me think about how disappointed i was in both of Daryl's romantic storylines and how much potential was wasted.
Now i can't stop thinking about it. I actually think they could still do something with this. There is still potential. Maybe Daryl had feelings for Connie? Maybe even some initial attraction to Jesus.
He has grown as a person so much from where he started. He now has a family that loves him and doesn't abuse him, so he knows how to be a part of a family and how to show he cares, he's gained some confidence and knows better how to handle his feelings. These things he has gained by exposure.
But he has never really had much exposure to a healthy, loving relationship. His father was abusive to his mother and she died when he was young. I doupt Merle has had any healthy relationships. Carol and Ed, the whole Rick, Lori and Shane situation, Andrea and The Governor. Negan's wives.
There are some good relationships around him, sure, but most of those have ended in tragic ways. And he doesn't have any personal experience. So he hasn't really grown in that area. Then they meet Jesus and he feels a pang of attraction.
And it terrifies him to the core.
He reverts back to the angry, scared season 1 Daryl, just glaring at Paul because what the hell is happening right now. Why do i wanna smell his hair? He doesn't know how to process these feelings.
In that episode he acts very much like he did in season 1. He glares and pouts and chases jesus around because he's so annoyed that this smug prick made him feel like that. And he's so petty and sassy, just like in the early seasons.
Then the saviors happened and Rick died and he met Leah. He's grown a lot in that time and actually processes his feelings somehow. He's still clueless on how to proceed (put the fish down, babe), but he manages to still form an actual relationship with this woman. But he get's so scared when things start to get serious and she asks him about their future and he runs. Then he manages to process some of this fear and he changes his mind and comes back, but she's gone.
And then that whole reaper shit happens and he is so fucked up and is convinced that there are no happy endings in relationships.
So when he finds himself falling for Connie, he's just like nope, nuh uh, not for me sir, we're friends. It's not like that. Even tough i learned a fucking language for her. Friends because it will end badly otherwise.
He leaves The Commonwealth to find Rick and Michonne and finds himself in France. He meets Isabelle. He feels lost, doesn't know if he'll ever see his family again. He helps Isabelle and Laurent and grows to care about them. He feels like he's a part of something again. Part of a group, a family. He has a purpose. His feelings for Isabelle scare him at first but then he thinks about Jesus. About Leah and Connie.
He still thinks about the way he felt when he met Jesus. He sometimes wonders what could have been if he wasn't so damn scared. He wonders if things would've ended differently if he'd stayed with Leah at the cabin. What if he had asked Connie to that dance? If he'd kissed her on those train tracks.
He goes for it. And then it ends badly. But he realizes he doesn't regret it. They had good memories. It hurt to lose her, but he still has the memories and he doesn't regret any of them. He had a moment of happiness even if it ended badly. He still would've felt the same pain when she died even if he didn't go for it, but then there would be regret too. What if's and almosts.
So after he and Carol are done with their Europe tour and they get back to America and back to The Commonwealth, their family is there waiting for them. Connie too. And he sees her after so long and he feels like a complete fucking moron for not going for it earlier because his legs still feel like noodles when their eyes meet.
Here’s my wholly unasked for take on Isabelle and Daryl:
Whilst we know that in the beginning Isa’s intentions with Daryl were not as clear cut as they so seemed; she lied, twisted her words — can anyone truly say they wouldn’t make up a few white lies to save themselves and their family during an apocalypse to get the help and protection from someone who sure as hell knows what they’re doing? I mean come on, we’ve seen it happen with just about every character on the show.
As for the popular opinion whereas Daryl knows he is being lied to yet he’s accepting such behaviour because he feels needed? Absolutely not, that is the most absurd opinion I have ever heard. Daryl for sure knows, but he also knows that he too is getting something out of it; a way back home. What they had was a give and take system going on — Isabelle needs, Daryl does, Daryl gets closer to finding his way home. It’s a win win situation for both parties involved.
Now what I see is that along this month long journey, they have bonded in one way or another. They are two lost souls who have found one another in a darkened world which actually isn’t that much darker than their own worlds before the break out. I see two halves of a whole where romantic feelings have begun to gradually blossom. I see two people who just want to go home and two people who now care about one another much more than they let on. I believe that Isabelle’s upset reaction towards the end of the series was just that - sadness. It wasn’t disappointment because she was losing the person who looked after herself and Laurent, it wasn’t selfishness because he would no longer be around to help her, it wasn’t a form of manipulation to get him to stay with crocodile tears. No. It was a sadness she hadn’t expected. A sadness that comes with potentially losing someone you have grown a strong connection with and someone who started to feel something akin to home.
That being said, I think these two have a beautiful canvas to begin their love story with. Which I suppose is an unpopular opinion as most people prefer his chemistry with Connie, Carol (She’s basically his mother figure), and Beth (Dead AND was a TEENAGER??) which I respect (not Beth’s) but there’s no need to throw Isabelle under the bus solely because she’s a potential love interest. And let’s be honest, they’d be perfect for one another - he was so nearly ready to settle at the end but me made promises and he doesn’t break his promises.
I step away from the MCU for a little while to focus on my other fandoms and when I come back, I learn that Isabelle from Fear the Walking Dead is playing Ana Helstrom. Honestly, I’m just surprised Helstrom is still moving forward. At least that’s a good surprise.
