Survivalist [Daryl x Reader] Ch. 5

The thick sheen of sweat that you had accumulated over the course of the day had retained its purpose of cooling your body down, even after you needed the opposite reaction. Miniscule shivers vibrated across your stiff body. Even your involuntary responses to the frigid temperature hardly had enough energy to perform. Your eyes were closed limply, as though not being able to see the air that chilled your skin somehow made it go away - like a child pretending to be invisible. The hard, unforgiving wood beneath you may have held onto a sliver of the day's heat, but you couldn't feel it even if it were there. Your body was numb, and the blackness that had swallowed your limbs had begun hazily gnawing at the edges of your dying mind. 

You remembered the man telling you that today was supposed to be the day he and his people decided your fate. You remembered him saying that dying was the most probable course of action; you remembered telling him that it was also the most favorable. With the rapidly-cooling air burrowing into your rapidly-freezing skin, you didn't regret what you'd said. The purpose of your continued life had long since dwindled like a flame until it had been extinguished with your pain. It iced over with every biting night, and melted with every blazing day. You couldn't even pinpoint the time when you'd cared how this would end. From the time you'd fallen over that fence to now, you just wanted the pain to stop - be it through a new start or a body bag. 

The night drawled on wearily as you fluctuated consciousness to the void and back. Your mind had a stronger tooth-hold in reality when the air kept stabbing into your core temperature. You had realized that, and as unwilling as you were to stay awake, you had no choice but to simply accept it. You alternated between staring deadly at nothing, and closing your eyes at nothing. 

With your frozen mind channeling into the dullness of your eyes, you barely even looked up when the door of the shed swung open. You registered a sudden increase of the moon's light as it streamed freely into the large opening, and the just-as-sudden appearance of black shadows on the ground. Footsteps resonated through the wooden planks, your numb nerves sluggishly acknowledging it faster than your ears acknowledged their sound. Vaguely, you knew people were here - more than one. 

A strong hand wrapped around your arm. You didn't know how, but you recognized the hand to be the familiar man's even before you caught a glimpse of his face. A rough pull brought you upwards into a would-be standing position, but your stiff, weak legs couldn't keep you that way. You crumpled helplessly to the ground again, half of your body still suspended by his grip. He jerked you up again, and again your legs refused to cooperate. Before you fell, however, you felt another hand grip your opposite arm. A half-hearted glance to the side poured another dosage of dread into your heart. With the man who'd tortured you at one arm and the man who'd pulled a gun on you at the other, their combined strength was enough to keep you in a standing position, more or less. Your frame was worn down to a pitiful, hunger-driven thinness, so they were able to keep you in an elevated position even though your legs did nothing to support you. The metal cuffs behind your back shifted positions with all of the sudden movement, the pain from such shifting awakening your nerves. Your eyes, gaining some life behind them with the new pain, peeled away from the two men and looked ahead. You saw the man that you'd first seen when you'd fallen over the fence. He was the one that had asked you if you'd been bitten...

It felt like recalling memories from some long-forgotten past. However, it didn't hurt to remember it as much as it had before. The void was slowly draining from your body as the two men began walking, the motions and movements stimulating your nerves from their inactivity. You began to register pain again, but something deep inside of you was just sitting back, amazed that you were registering anything at all. The grips of the two were rough. You could tell that they were focusing more of their effort on holding up your deadweight than they were on being gentle. But the fact remained that you could feel it! You had almost forgotten that you could ever feel your limbs with as stationary as they'd been.

The dread and misery within you lifted a bit with the renewal of electrical impulses that flooded through your body. Most of those impulses spoke of the agony of stiff and cracking muscles, and of hunger, and of remaining bruises and injuries - but they were impulses all the same. The man - you vaguely remembered his name to be Rick, as the cogs of your mind began to push the blackness away - turned wordlessly and walked out the door. You were soon dragged out behind him, and the four of you began on some set path that was entirely unfamiliar to you. But then again, what wasn't?

Your eyes took in the foreign surroundings as the men continued moving. It was a farm in all respects, with the familiar fences sectioning off certain areas and what you guessed to be a decent-sized farmhouse at the crest of a hill. The darkness didn't lend you much ability to see, but the lantern that Rick held and the half-moon hanging in the sky gave you something to work off of. As your mind began to process what you saw and your body began to come back under your control, a new thought struck you.

It almost shocked you that you hadn't considered this earlier. You supposed you simply hadn't cared, or perhaps the sound of that question was drowned out by the revival of your senses. Either way it had been prolonged, the force of the question struck you with the power of a blow to the chest. A cold, icy feeling that wasn't brought on by the freezing temperature crystallized in your heart.

"Wh-Where are you taking...me...?" you asked, your voice cracked and raspy.

None of the three men answered. Their silence made the ice in your heart slowly twist into a knot of anxiety. You weren't entirely sure why, but you had a bad feeling about where this was going.

As they continued walking, you slowly began working feeling back into your legs, flexing the stiff muscles in an attempt to regain control. The freshness and aching of reawakened nerves did little to take your mind off of your building trepidation, but being able to limp along rather than being dragged gave you a small sense of naive security. Your deadweight being slightly lifted by your attempts at walking reduced the strain of the two men's efforts. Their grips didn't loosen, but they were able to move more quickly and the newfound ease made their motions hurt much less. The lessened pain in your arms gave your mind greater capacity to think. That capability gave way to what you realized was the beginning of fear.

That fear morphed into rising panic as the shape of a barn appeared in your line of sight. It didn't take long for the four of you to reach the large doors. Rick pushed one open, the barn door creaking lightly as the old hinges allowed it to move. 

"Let's get this over with," he said quietly, walking in. 

The two men led you inside, the grass beneath your feet turning into wooden planks.

You couldn't quite keep your eyes from drifting to Rick's side as he walked ahead. The metal of his handgun caught the same moonlight that had penetrated the rafters of the shed, giving it a deadly shine. You couldn't believe how the cold streaks of pale light were just as willing to freeze you to the bone as they were to perching like an approval from the celestial body itself on what could very well - and very easily - end your life. Or maybe he wouldn't do it. Maybe it'd be the one - Shane, you remembered Rick yelling in anger - that had wanted you dead in the first place. Maybe it'd be the one that'd tortured you, just finishing his job. Maybe maybe maybe - the uncertainty of the situation layered on top of your growing panic, twisted a hard knot into your chest that made it difficult to breathe. You felt like you had to run. You felt like you had to escape. You did! You needed to run so badly; your survivalist instinct told you to get the hell out of this place. 

You struggled a bit against the two men out of blind terror, but there wasn't even a glimmer of hope that you and your scrawny self could escape the men's grip. You writhed around and tried to pull your arms away, but they roughly straightened you back out and tightened their hold. 

"Please don't do this." Your voice was still cracking, but it was given strength by your panic. You squirmed even though it got you nothing but swelling bruises. "Please...Please don't kill me..."

"This is what you wanted, Sunshine," the familiar man said, his voice unreadable as he tightened his grip on you.

He was right. He was completely right. You had wanted this, and some small piece of your practical mind was still coughing up the reasons that you didn't want or need to live anymore. You still had no future. You still had no goal that you were striving for. There was nothing out there that you could see but starvation, fear, and eventually death - most likely by the dead hands and teeth of a Walker. Why couldn't you just stop moving and eat a bullet? It'd be over so fast...It'd all be over so quickly...

But whether it was your survivalist nature that had gotten you this far or basic human nature that would always fear death, that small part of your practical mind was virtually silenced over the frenzied hysteria that completely engulfed your mind, body, and soul. 

No matter how worthless it may be, you didn't want to die.

Shane's hand left your arm, and you instantly took advantage of the sudden leverage. The other man - your mind flickered and flashed to the first day you'd gotten here and pinpointed his name to be Daryl - quickly used his other hand to grab your free arm, but you struggled as much as you could to get him off. Your eyes were wide with alarm and far more alive than they'd been in however long you'd been stuck in that shed. You couldn't die! This...This wasn't how it was going to end! It couldn't be! All the sacrifices and the losses and the agony of survival - it couldn't be lost to someone's bullet. Not that fast. Not like that. 

However, anatomy was against you. Shane soon had a blindfold tied around your eyes, turning everything black as Daryl continued to hold you in place. Your panicked breaths came in short gasps; your pounding heart slammed in rapid drumrolls. Cold sweat created itself on your skin, which was no longer shivering from the cold but shaking all the same. The void had dripped out of your body just in time for the black fabric to throw you back in blindness. The life had come crawling into your injured body just in time for someone to end it. 

"Please please please please please," you continuously repeated, your cracked voice turning into as much a sob as a plea. You didn't want this. The knot in your chest had become so tight that it ached and screamed. Daryl suddenly released your arms, and you stumbled blindly forward. You turned your head rapidly from side to side, but you couldn't see anything. The darkness of the night combined with the thick black blindfold left no light for your eyes to absorb and interpret. You couldn't hear anything over the roar of blood rushing in your ears. You stumbled around a bit, barely suppressed whimpers and half-sobs mixing with your pitiful begging. Your dignity hardly mattered with your life so ready to flee from your body on the cue of gunfire. 

"Do you want to stand...or kneel?" you heard Rick's voice ask, your entire body tensing up as you heard him. A hard sob wracked your body as your mind pieced together what he'd said.

"Please...please it can't...it can't end like thi-" 

Your words were cut off as a hand shoved you to your knees. Crazed frenzy shot through you like an electrical shock; you jerked yourself upwards, only to get shoved back to the ground. You felt tears beginning to soak into the blinding fabric as another sob crippled your body. You retched dryly as the knot in your chest shoved fear-driven nausea into your stomach. 

"T-t-too much...I went thr-through too much...can't...ca-an't end like th-this," you sobbed, your body shaking miserably and breaking up your words. You remembered everything that you'd survive through. You remembered everything that you'd lost...everyone that you'd lost. In a flash, your memory broke open and released a surge of images, words, thoughts, emotions - and let it churn into the core of your being. 

You heard the safety of the gun click.

"Can't b-be o-o-over...," you muttered, not seeming to be speaking to anyone. 

"Not...can't....e-end...."

The iciness of cold, moon-lit metal brushed across the skin of your forehead, forcing another sob out of your throat. 

"Please...don't..."

All you heard was a sudden gunshot, and the guttural shriek of a Walker.