Login with:

Facebook

Twitter

Tumblr

Google

Yahoo

Aol.

Mibba

Your info will not be visible on the site. After logging in for the first time you'll be able to choose your display name.

Breaking Free

Chapter 41

"I can't escape this hell
So many times I've tried
But I'm still caged inside
Somebody get me through this nightmare
I can't control myself."

Three Days Grace "Animal I Have Become"




While he was curious as to what Mia and Gage were discussing heatedly, Daryl knew better than to go over and poke his head into their business. Instead, he leaned against the paint peeled picket fence that lined the yard across from them and waited for Mia to finish their conversation and head back over to him. Judging by the expressions and emphatic gestures between Gage and Mia, Daryl could tell that the situation was as dire as his gut feeling told him it was. A missing teenager was never a good thing, much less a missing pregnant teenager this day in age. Add in the fact that said teenager refused to give up the name of the man who had knocked her up and her missing status was just that more suspicious.

When Mia turned away from Gage abruptly and headed across the street in his direction, Daryl eased off the fencing and straightened while adjusting the crossbow that was slung over his back. Nodding once in the direction of Gage, he asked, “What's the situation?”

“Situation is well, dire to say the least,” Mia replied with a scowl on her face, her mood and the sun gleaming into her hazel eyes combining to create a foul expression on her otherwise attractive features. “No one's seen Em since last night at bed check and, of course, no one heard or saw anything.”

“Find that hard to believe,” Daryl muttered as he glanced up towards the house where the girl's lived and spied the handful of curious eyes peering out of the windows towards him and Mia. “That many kids in one place? Someone had to have heard something.”

“I'm sure they did, but it was Gage asking the questions and they're all scared of him. He's posting guards on the house, one inside and two outside, for the time being, so I'm not going to get anything out of them any time soon.” Mia cursed under her breathe and scowled deeper over her shoulder to where Gage was ordering his men about like good little toy soldiers. She huffed once in obvious frustration at the situation and turned her attention back to Daryl, asking in a low voice, “You track, right? That's what you do? That's how you ended up here.”

“Yeah,” he replied cautiously, not liking where the conversation was clearly going. Reading Mia's expression and already knowing what the next words out of her mouth were going to be, he pointed out the painfully obvious truth, “It ain't gonna be easy though. Don't got a clue which way she headed out, how long she's been gone, or-”

“Or, if she even made it out of here,” Mia finished his sentence with a weary sigh, but the determined look on her face never wavered, despite knowing the odds of finding Emily alive. “I have to try though. I've failed her enough already, I can't give up now. Not yet.”

“Then we do what we can with what we've got. Best place to start is last place she was seen,” Daryl replied, stepping around Mia while motioning towards the house where Emily was reported to have been the night before at bedtime. He paused just outside of the home, where Gage stood off to the opposite side of the yard with his cronies, and turned to Mia. “I ain't promising nothing.”

“I know, I just have to try.”

With Gage's dark eyes following their every move, Daryl started doing what he was trained to do, a skill he had developed as a child and honed it to near perfection over the years. Starting at the outer edge of the house, he followed the minuscule signs of disturbed blades of grass, broken twigs, and disturbed patches in the dirt that may or may not have belonged to the quarry he was currently hunting. Unfortunately, the day passed quickly without producing hide nor hair of the missing girl and left them miles away from the compound, in the midst of the woods, without a clear direction to follow.

“Trails gone cold,” Daryl pointed out reluctantly, not happy about the failed mission or for causing the look of despair on Mia's face. Glancing around the open area that once had likely been a green field for deer hunting, based on the lack of trees and lush grass, he growled in frustration and cursed. He hated failing, but unfortunately his hatred for doing so didn't keep it from happening far too often in his life. Turning back to Mia, he said, “I can try again tomorrow.”

Mia swiped her hands over her face, pushing the sweat dampened tendrils floating around her hairline back in the process, but they refused to be contained and simply sprung back to life in a halo of distress once she removed her hands. Beads of perspiration clung to the bow of her upper lip and damn it to hell, the sight of her licking her tongue across it caused his stomach to clench tightly with desire.

“Maybe. I dunno,” she said suddenly after a moment of silence, in which Daryl had allowed himself to become fascinated with the curve of her lips. Focused on what she was saying now, Daryl's expression was obviously as confused as he felt inside, because Mia added, “I'll talk to the girl's tonight. If I don't get something out of them, when she left, what'd she take with her, then there's no point. We'd just be wandering around in the damned heat with nothing to show for it.”

“Just let me know what you want to do,” Daryl said without argument. She was right, unless they got something more concrete out of the girl's, they'd just be chasing a ghost. Sweat trickled down his spine and his mouth felt like it had been crammed full of cotton balls, reminding him that they had not only headed out on the mission without proper supplies, but that they still had to hike back to the compound without a drop of water between them. Amateur mistake, leaving home without adequate water and food, one that he normally wouldn't have made, but when it came to dealing with Mia, his mind didn't seem to be in working order on most days. “We should head back.”

Mia stopped staring at the copse of trees in front of them and glanced up at him with gold speckled hazel eyes, staring at him silently to the point of it being on the edge of unnerving, before she randomly asked, “Do you have someone at home? Someone waiting for you? A wife?”

“I...what?” Daryl stuttered in response, beyond unprepared for the questions she was suddenly asking.

“Never mind, I'm sorry.” Mia shook her head and turned away from him, changing gears faster than his heat exhausted mind could keep up with. “You're right, we should get back. I need to talk to the girl's tonight. If Gage's men will scatter long enough for me to do so, that is. Lord knows I won't get shit out of the kids with the guards breathing down their necks.”

While the sudden change in topic was confusing, Daryl was beyond relieved when Mia switched back to the mission at hand and opted to not veer of course towards the murky waters that was his personal life back home and, most likely, what had happened between them the night before. Stepping ahead of her, he started to backtrack towards the compound and said, “We should make it back before dark if we keep up a decent pace.”

“You know, this is going to make it harder to get them out of there,” Mia pointed out, falling in just behind him as they headed back towards the beaten path that had led them to the field. “Gage is going to beef up security. Not sure how just yet, where he will take the men from, but he's going to make it infinitely more difficult to get the girl's out of that house without him knowing, much less out of the compound.”

“We'll figure it out. There's always a weak link in the system, just gonna have to figure it out and go from there,” Daryl replied, sounding far more optimistic than he actually felt. “We got how many weeks 'til he heads out for that trip?”

“Too many, easily a month or more at this point.” Mia picked up her pace, stepping up to his left side, instead of following behind him like she had while he was tracking. “After this? I'd like to get them out sooner, like within the week. I'm just not sure how that's going to work out.”

There was no point reiterating his previous statement, so Daryl simply agreed with her statement by grunting his response. His mind was too busy at the moment to plan an escape route for a group of juveniles, an elderly woman and a fairly useless man, when all he was currently worried about was getting Mia to accompany him on the trip. Leaving her behind was not an option, not one he was willing to accept and there was only one person in her life that had a chance in coercing her to leave with him and that was her brother.

So, as they wandered back in to town, exhausted, filthy and thirsty, Daryl left Mia on the doorstep to the house where the girls were getting ready for bed and headed down the street, only after making her swear that she wouldn't leave until he came back to get her. Jogging down the empty road, night settled around him and the trek towards his temporary home was lit by the final night of the full moon. Darting up the pathway to the house, he was pleased to find Micah resting on the front porch, perched in one of the wicker chairs with his boots propped up on the railing.

“We need to talk,” he muttered as he headed inside, wanting to ensure just a little more privacy inside the residence, plus chug down a glass or three of water in the process. Inside the kitchen, he filled a glass with water with shaky hands and chugged it in the time it took Micah to make his way to the kitchen.

“I heard about Emily. How's Mia taking it?” Micah asked, leaning a hip against the Formica kitchen counter. Even in the low light of the kitchen, Daryl could see the hollowed out cheeks and dark smudges beneath the man's eyes, the limpness to his hair and shake to his hands that he tried his best to control by crossing his arms over his narrow chest. The end was creeping up on Micah Carter, there was no doubt about it.

“Bout as well as you can think she'd handle it. Blames herself.” Daryl stuck the glass under the tap once more and filled the glass to the brim, chugging the contents quickly and to the point that his stomach sloshed with the sudden excessive amount of liquid.
“She wants to get the kids out within the week. Ain't sure how we're gonna go about it, but if it can be done, we're out of here.”

“And you're worried she's not going to go with you? Not willingly anyway?” Micah asked, knowing exactly what was bothering Daryl.

“She ain't gonna go without you,” Daryl sat the now empty glass on the counter and slid his crossbow off his shoulder to rest against the cabinets. “And I ain't got a damned clue how to get her to go, unless I knock her over the head and drag her out.”

“I can't go with you, Daryl. Shit, we both know I'm not making it out of here alive.” Micah's eyes reflected the sadness in his words, dark and weary, yet accepting of the fate that he had been handed. “I'll talk to her. I'll make her understand. But, if the day comes and she refuses, then do what you have to in order to make sure she's safe. Promise me that.”

“You got my word,” Daryl promised, knowing full well that there was no way he would be able to leave this place without Mia, whether she wanted to go or not. Because, at the end of the day, he cared deeply for Mia Carter, whether he wanted to admit those feelings or not, and leaving her behind was not an option.

Notes

Thank you so much for your patience while I was gone. I ended up taking an extra day of vacation, hence why I am posting on Monday. There will be two chapters tonight, I just have to finish editing the next one. Hope everyone enjoys the updates!

Comments

@Serenity
I look forward to it....always was one of my favourite stories on Fan fiction.

Lewis Lewis
6/5/18

@lewis7


Glad to see you under any name! Thanks so much for all the comments! I am hoping that my muse shows back up, so I can write some more. I have had some ideas about writing short, one shot stories with Sam and Daryl from Need You Now. There were several scenes I had sketched out that didn't make it into the actual story, so I would like to write them out and post them if muse cooperates.

Serenity Serenity
4/25/18

Back to signing in as Lewis 7 as mel2a has stopped working!!
Love this story and really going to miss it and your brilliant Daryl story telling.
Will keep an eye out for you for future stories.
Thank you for your stories and writing talent.
xx

lewis7 lewis7
4/22/18

@Arubaredx


I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for commenting and good luck with the move!

Serenity Serenity
4/19/18

In the middle of packing to move so everything is crazy, but managed to finally catch up on your final chapter:) A very joyful ending, and very deserved for them too. Very much enjoyed this journey.

Arubaredx Arubaredx
4/18/18