A simple supply hunt for a source of water in the middle of Atlanta turns sour quickly for Erin as she come fist to face with a fuming, handless Merle Dixon.
Alone in the middle of the apocalypse with only a racist guy who doesn't know the differen...
"There is very little left of me, and its never coming back." - Be Nice to Me, The Front Bottoms
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"Ya talk to me. About... everythin' that's on ya mind."
Silence lingered between them, thick in the humid air around them as Erin blinked hard, hoping Daryl couldn't see the tears in her eyes. It came as no surprise that he wanted her to talk, especially as she had seen a uniquely more caring side to the gruff man in recent days. He'd let her avoid the topic initially and she'd half-hoped that his reluctance towards confrontation would stop him asking again, but here they were.
"Okay," she nodded, trying to keep her voice steady, "but I have questions for you, too. You don't have to answer them, but I'm... sick of having them in my head."
She turned away from him, crawling to the tent entrance and pulling the fabric aside to look out. Barely cooler air pushed its way into the tent, making the atmosphere slightly less unbearable as she heard Daryl speak up from over her shoulder, "Seems fair... Ya gotta do what ya gotta do..."
Erin looked over, seeing he'd propped himself up on his right elbow, angling his body slightly but avoiding strain on his left side. A sliver of dusk light came through the entrance she was holding open, the details of his face illuminated by it and the softer look in his eyes too unbearable for her.
She broke her gaze away from him, sliding her legs out of the tent and resting her elbows on her raised knees, her body holding the entrance open wide enough that she could comfortably keep watch from there. The area outside the house was still - eerily quiet after the yelling and chaos of the day.
There were no signs of life, living or dead, and Erin couldn't tell if that relieved her or not. She couldn't tell much about her own feelings anymore, too numb to figure them out.
"It still feels so raw..." she began, staring straight ahead at the RV although she was addressing the man behind her. She struggled to continue, the words failing her as she bit her lip, her teeth running over the same ripped skin she'd been gnawing at all day.
"Raw...?" Daryl's voice was gentler than she'd heard it yet.
"I... can't explain it any other way..." she mustered, her left hand subconsciously running along the seam of her jeans, "I feel like I've... lost something. Something that was inside me, pushing me forward. It's... snapped. And now it's gone..."
Daryl didn't respond, likely not knowing how to. She knew how pathetic it sounded, but she hoped he could decipher what she meant. There were no words she knew that could properly explain the black hole she felt in her chest.
It had formed the day she'd found Todd and Rachael, consuming her heart and her mind. While on the road, after quiet nights of solitude, she'd eventually managed to contain it, forcing it down to the size of a quarter and allowing it to live just next to her heart as it refused to fully disappear. There it had stayed, kept in its place, often threatening to expand but never quite managing to as she sternly kept it locked in.
