Should I make this a full fic? Daryl Dixon FanFic
Yes
No
Prologue
The Unlikely Pair
When I was 15, my parents moved us from Calistoga, California to Ellijay, Georgia. Ellijay was a nice little town, “the apple capital of Georgia”, it was called. This was the perfect place for my parents, as they owned one of the finest wineries in the USA: Park-Moretti Vineyards. They were considered moguls in the Wine Industry, and our family’s products were sold at grocery stores, liquor shops, and vineyards all over the country. Because of our parent’s success, Oppa and I had no trouble fitting in with the kids at our new school, Gilmer High School.
Gilmer was a predominately white school, with only a small hispanic population. Oppa and I made up the school’s only Asian population, and we were only half Korean, half Italian. Despite being minorities in school, Oppa and I were considered part of the “in” crowd because of our parent’s money. I hung out with the popular kids in my grade, even though they treated other kids poorly. I always kept quiet when my “friends” would put others down, as I was afraid one wrong move could make me a target as well. However, all that changed the day I met him.
It was a quiet day, about two months into my new school experience. We were in the middle of a US Government lecture when he walked into class, causing our teacher to stop the lecture as one of my “friends” made the comment “look who decided to show up”. The whole class burst into giggles and laughter as the teacher told the boy to take a seat and lectured the class to quiet down. The boy walked to his seat in the back of the room, head down, while blocking out comments people made about the way he talks, dresses, and the amount of trouble he and his family is in the town.
“Who is that?” I asked one of the girls from tennis.
“No one. Just trailer park trash”. She answered with a mocking smirk.
I found out his name later, Daryl Dixon. After poking around, I found out he is from the outskirts of Ellijay, more towards the mountains and woods. I also found out he lost his mother about two years ago after she fell asleep drunk, with a cigarette in her hand. A house fire took her. After his mother’s death, Daryl was held back a year, as he struggled to stay caught up with school, acted out, and would skip days due to his home life. All of this information I found out through rumors and newspaper articles. However, while my classmates looked at Daryl’s family and called him trash, I learned his experiences and thought him strong.
One day after tennis practice, I went for a jog in the mountains. I always tried to jog at least once a week, always taking a new path when possible. I was running through a mountain path that I haven’t taken before when it happened. My music was blaring, so I couldn’t hear a thing, however I saw the brush next to me move, and I thought an animal was about to jump out at me. Before I could react, two hands pulled me into the brush, one covering my mouth while the other kept me from fighting. I clawed, kicked, bit, but nothing broke me free.
“Ya shouldn’t be here.” Were the first words I heard after my headphones fell off. The voice was low, gruff, almost afraid as it whispered into my ear. As my eyes drifted upwards towards the person holding me still, I could see he was even more afraid in that moment than I was. My breathing slowed as I looked up at him. He didn’t look down at me. He stayed crouched, holding me still, and scanning the woods with a calm body but frantic eyes.
“DARYL!” The sharp voice cut through the trees like a siren. Birds took off at the sound of the voice, and the world seemed to stop. “Git yer ass back ‘ere boy!” I could smell it then, the stench of alcohol. The man after Daryl, who I assumed was his father, was highly intoxicated, and by the way Daryl was acting, extremely dangerous. Leaves cracked somewhere in the distance, footsteps echoed through the trees, hard to pinpoint because of the vastness of the woods.
Daryl let go of me then, told me to run off as fast as I could and he’d distract his father. I refused. At that moment I looked at the boy from my class, the one that no one cared about, and grabbed his hand. Before he could protest, I took off running towards my car at the beginning of the mountain trail. We reached my car together, I made him get in, and I drove off to my family’s home.
At first, Daryl refused to go inside. He said he’d just go back home after he was sure his dad had passed out. I didn’t force him to go inside, said I’d sit outside with him until he was ready to go home. He was wary, of course he was. Everyone at school hated him, so why would I treat him any differently? To this day, I still don’t know what I did to get him to trust my intentions were true and come inside, but he did, and everything changed.
To my “friends”, and family’s horror, Daryl and I became inseparable. Of course, I was the one who always initiated the contact, but he eventually stopped trying to push me away. I would invite him over for dinner, take him to the movies, and even taught him how to play tennis (which he absolutely hated). He taught me how to hunt, and when we went camping on the weekends, Daryl would teach me how he survived alone in the woods when he got lost at 9 years old.
I remember asking him one time if he believed in fate. He asked, “the hell you talkin’ ‘bout?” I remember laughing and then telling him to hear me out before judging. I explained to him about the Korean belief my Appa taught me: the red string of fate. I told him how we believed that there was an invisible red string that connected two fated people, often lovers, to each other. This belief emphasizes that even brief encounters, like brushing sleeves, are significant steps on the path to finding your soulmate. I explained that when two people are destined to be together, the red string will attach to either their necks or fingers, keeping them together no matter how far apart they become or the circumstances that they are in. He didn’t make fun of the belief. He didn’t even say anything about the “lovers” part. All he said was, “does it ‘ave to be red?”
For the remainder of sophomore year, Daryl and I were always around each other. I made him a bracelet out of red string, and he made me one too. He was always worried about the stares we got when together, saying I was better off without him. I told him that was nonsense, and the people who judge only do so because they think they’re better than others. I even helped tutor Daryl, and his grades were the best they had ever been. Everything seemed perfect, until the beginning of junior year.
Daryl came to me one day, saying his brother, Merle, was out of jail. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous, scared, or excited… Maybe he was all three. We were sitting in study hall, before the pep rally for our school’s homecoming game, when three city police came looking for Daryl. I heard from rumors around school that Merle went straight from being released that day to murdering his own father, shooting him in the head. The police weren’t worried for Daryl’s safety, but they took him to the station because they knew Merle would go looking for him. I never saw Daryl again.
Over the next two years of my high school life, I secretly held onto hope that Daryl would come back. Oppa said that even if he was still around the area, he’d probably be too embarrassed or ashamed to show his face again. When I finally graduated high school, I had been accepted to a program in Missouri for special education. I packed up my room and said my farewells to my family, who all stayed at the vineyard because my parents were constantly working and my Oppa was learning what to do to start taking over the business. I left on my own, and took a small plane to the city of Columbia, Missouri. I remember thinking, “this is my chance for a fresh start… my real life starts now”, as I stared at the clouds outside of my window, absentmindedly rubbing a faded red bracelet between my fingers.
