#yes that is a Learnerer body pillow it's a joke I swear

[elzore-da-great]

"You're not Amazing Rope Guy he's a fictional character" my honest reaction:

[soniaxdixon]

My Girl

Word count: 1847

Set end of season 3 start of season 4ish

Summary: You and Daryl have an unspoken relationship and when a new girl comes to the prison, you let her know very clearly who Daryl is with.

Warnings: Swearing, TWD gore, reader is a bit hot headed.

Rick bringing the people of Woodbury to the prison was definitely a surprise to you all but in this day and age, strength came in numbers so you were lucky to have this many people now. The governor was still at large and no one had any idea where he could have possibly gone which meant that you all needed to be prepared. Most of the people from Woodbury where either older or didn’t know how to fight which was an issue. You were one of the best fighters among your group along with Daryl, Maggie, Glenn and of course Rick but Rick had other commitments which left the four of you to run lessons. Maggie and Glenn taught the newcomers how to use guns and knives while you and Daryl taught hand to hand classes. Most of your classes involved sparring and it always helped when there were even numbers of people but today Rick had brought in a new person who he had found on the road a few days ago. She was quite small and didn’t know how to fight at all, you wondered how she had survived this far.

Rick brought her over to you and Daryl once she had rested for a few days, she was now ready to learn to defend herself.

“You’re not gonna find better teachers than these two.” Rick led the girl over to you and Daryl, gesturing towards you as he spoke. You both walked up to meet the two of them in the middle of the field. “Mia, this is y/n and Daryl.” Her eyes flicked between the two of you, looking Daryl up and down far too many times for your liking.

You and Daryl had been in love with each other since the day you met, you shared a cell and everything but you still hadn’t technically made things ‘official.’ Your group liked to make jokes about how obvious your feelings were except you seemed to be oblivious to each other for so long.

You noticed Daryl’s breath hitch as her eyes slowly roamed his body, your stomach twisting in knots as you watched her practically undress him with her stare. You broke the silence, drawing her eyes back to you.

“How long you been out there”

“It’s been a while, since I lost my boyfriend I’ve been all alone.”

Her eyes flicked back to Daryl earning an eye roll from you. “Shame.”

Daryl cleared his throat, “Right, we better get started with the rest of em over there. Come on.”

You followed Daryl back over to the group, Mia standing close behind him like a lost puppy.

“Right, today we are working on getting out of someone’s grip. There may be times where someone grabs you, pins you, whatever, you need to be able to get out of it. Watch Daryl and I first, then buddy up and start practicing.”

You walked over to Daryl turning to face the group as he stood behind you, wrapping his arms tightly around your frame, trapping your arms.

“This is where you would kick their shins or slam your head into their face. The shock should be enough to throw them off their game to which you should be able to rip your way out of their hold then turn and kick them until they’re down and keep them down. Your turn, find a partner and get started.”

Everyone had a partner except for Mia, she was walking over towards Daryl before you stepped in.

“Excuse me” She looked passed you her sites still set on Daryl.

“Just practice with me, let’s see what you got.”

“Don’t you think it would be better if I had someone bigger holding me to see if I can really get out of this situation?” She batted her eyelashes towards Daryl as she spoke. Was this girl for real? Couldn’t she take a hint?

“You know what, you’re so right.” Sarcasm dripped from your words.

Her smile grew as she started walking towards Daryl again.

“Hey Tyrese, can you give me a hand here for a second?” Your words stopped her in her tracks, anger taking over her face.

You stood back with Daryl and watched as everyone practiced what you had taught them, all except Mia who just wasn’t getting out of Tyrese’s grip.

Then sun began to set as you wrapped up the classes. “We’ll see you all tomorrow, same time, same place as always.”

You and Daryl began to walk back to the prison as your stomach’s growled.

“Any idea what we’re havin’ for dinner?” Daryl asked you but your mind remained focused on the girl staring at him.

“Hm? Oh um, I think Carol made a stew.”

You ate with the rest of your family before making your way over to the showers, Daryl heading up towards your shared cell. While you were in the shower, Mia took the opportunity to head over to your cell and chat with Daryl.

“Hey Daryl.”

“Hey, Mia right?”

“Yeah, I was wondering if you run one on one classes? I feel like I’ve missed a lot of training here and I thought it might be good to catch up.”

“We usually just run the group classes.”

“Oh. Would you be willing to maybe just help me out a bit then, I promise I’m a fast learner and I’ll do anything you tell me.” She had a devilish look to her when she spoke. Daryl chewed his thumb as he thought about her question. She seemed like she really just wanted to learn and it wouldn’t hurt to have her learn a few extra things.

“M’kay, meet me where we had class today, after breakfast.”

“Thank you!” She squealed as she made her way to her cell.

You got out of the shower, drying off and dressing into your pyjamas before you climbed the stairs up to your cell. By the time you got in there Daryl had changed and climbed under the covers, his arm covering his eyes. You couldn’t help but let your eyes roam over his toned arms.

“I know ya starin’ at me.” You giggled at his comment before climbing over him onto the other side of the bed, rolling over and facing the wall. He rolled onto his side and wrapped his arm around your waist pulling your body flush against his. You traced circles around his arm that was draped over you.

“What do you think about that new girl, Mia?” You asked him, your eyes remaining focused on the wall in front of you.

“She seems harmless.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Goodnight Daryl.”

“Mhm, night.”

You squeezed his arm before letting your arm slide back down onto the pillow under you, drifting to sleep with your archer behind you.

You woke up before Daryl, his arm was still wrapped around you, loose enough that you could slide out of his grip and shuffle off the bed. He stirred slightly as you climbed off the bunk.

“Where ya goin’?”

“I have fence duty, go back to sleep. I’ll see you for lunch.” You bent down and kissed him on the forehead before exiting your cell and making your way down to the fences.

After about an hour of stabbing walkers through the fence you saw Daryl walk out of the prison, you waved at him and he sent a smile your way. You turned back around and continued to take care of the walker issue.

“Hey y/n” The southern drawl you knew so well caught your attention.

“Hey Ricky.” You smiled cheekily, he hated when you called him that but part of him loved it, it showed how close the two of you were.

“How’d that new girl, Mia go at classes yesterday?”

“Not great, she needs a lot of work. Plus, I think she has a thing for Daryl and that’s not on.”

“Well you’re not gonna like this.” Your stomach dropped at his words.

“What?” He gestured over towards the middle of the field where Daryl and Mia were sparring. One on One.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me.” You glared at the two of them, your stomach twisting repeatedly when you could hear her giggles whenever Daryl would go to grab her.

“Go handle it, I got you covered for a bit.”

You stabbed one more walker through the head violently yanking your knife back out sending blood everywhere as you shook it and shoved it back in its sheath. You could feel your anger rise every time Daryl put his hands on her, you could see her leaning into his touch.

————

“Alright let’s try again.” Mia said, looking at Daryl with a spark in her eyes.

“M’kay one more time.” Daryl went to wrap his arms around her from behind but at the last second she turned and was facing him, her hands pressed up against his chest which caught him off guard as he stepped back.  “What the hell?”

“Come on Daryl, we should have a bit of fun while we’re here.” She started leaning up towards him before he took another step back. “Don’t tell me you’re not attracted to me, I know you want me and I’ll give you everything and more. More than y/n can give you.”

“You’re fucking crazy, ya know that?”

She took a step towards him, placing her hands on his shoulder before his eyes met yours, you were now almost standing directly behind Mia and she was oblivious.

“My girl ain’t gonna like this.”

“She doesn’t have to know, I don’t see her anywhere.”

With that, you grabbed her hair and yanked her so hard she hit the floor. “Now you do.”

“y-y/n I-” She struggled to find words before you stood next to Daryl, looking down at her.

“You ever try anything again, you even think about trying anything again, I will personally tie you to a tree and let the walkers finish you off. Do you understand me?”

She gulped, “Yes”

“Good, now go and find someone else to teach you how to fight. I’m sick of seeing your face.”

She pushed herself off the floor and scurried towards the prison building.

Daryl went to grab your hand but you pulled away.

“Nuh uh. Not letting you off that easy asshole. What the hell were you thinking?”

“She asked for a one on one session to help her improve, I thought she was bein’ serious but obviously not.”

“Mhm.” You started to walk away from him before turning back “My girl, huh?” Daryl rubbed the back of his neck. “I like it.” You started to walk back down towards the fence to return to Rick as Daryl’s eyes focused on the swing in your hips.

He smiled sheepishly at the ground before following you like a lovesick teen. He was completely under your spell and would never have done anything with Mia. You knew that but you needed Mia to know who he was with and that he was not fair game. 

She understood that now.

[charlesoberonn]

Desert Ship (Part 1 of 2)

For generations, my family line has been bless with the ability to control sand. “It’s our gift.” my father told me over and over again whenever he was around.

My ability first appeared when I was thirteen years old, when I managed to lift a single grain of sand in the air. I quickly tossed it around between me and my half-siblings. For the next few days I just ran between the communal tents, throwing sand around and making shapes in the sand with my siblings and friends much to the enjoyment of my mother and the annoyance of everybody else in the tribe.

That saturday, when my dad arrived to pick me up for his week of custody, I showed him my abilities. I was already able to move a mound of sand the size of a small vase. He was impressed, but he had a devious smile on his face. He asked me if I wanted to come on a trip with him in order to test my powers for real. I obviously accepted.

He took me to the middle of a dried up lake, quite a bit away from home. I held onto his shoulders as he swiftly carved our way through the sandy ground. His torso was poking out of a mound of sand, which was travelling across the ground at high speed. The wind was in my hair, but the sand blew out the sides of the mound and didn’t reach my eyes. I never noticed that in all the other times my dad took me out for a ride on his back. But now that I could control the sands as well, I learned to appreciate such details.

Finally, after nearly four hours of riding, with no more than a single stop for water and food, we reached our destination. At first it looked like a black dot in the bottom of the large empty basin. As we got closer and closer, I saw the dot take shape until I realized it was a vessel. But it wasn’t the kind of I expected to find there.

It was a ship. Only a small boat, about the length of five camels, and nearly three times as tall, not including its impressive poll, which lacked any sort of mast.

My dad nudged me to get off his back. I slid down the sand mound onto the ground which was surprisingly cool. The entire region was fairly chill compared to the desert I was used to, but it was still dry and sandy. I looked up at the ship. It was light brown and made of clay, nothing like the ships I’ve seen in picture books. It seemed to have burn marks, or something similar, around the top. Its bottom was buried under the sad I was currently standing on.

My father jumped out of his sand mound, landing on both his feet and shaking the last few grains off of his robe. He put a hand on my shoulder and looked up at the ship with me. “Do you recognize it, child?” he asked me.

I nodded. “It’s a boat.”

“Yes, indeed it is. But this boat hasn’t much longer on this earth.” he said.

I looked at him with childlike worry in my big eyes. “Why? What’s gonna happen to it?”

“You see, my child. In about one week, the rain season will come.” he pointed to the clouds in the far east, so distant and faint I could barely see them. “The rain will overflow the dried creaks and fill up the dams and rivers beyond this lake. This desert ground is not gonna be able to handle so much water.”

“It’s gonna be flooded.” I said.

“Exactly. And when it does, the water will rush in and crash into this boat, destroying it.”

“That fucking sucks.” I said and blushed, knowing I could only swear when my mom wasn’t around. My dad laughed.

“It sure does. But it doesn’t have to. You can save this boat.” he pointed at where we came from. “Use the sand, and carry this boat out of the lake before the rainy season washes it to oblivion.”

I opened my eyes wide, fixated on the boat. The small vessel now seemed massive. “But, but, it’s huge!” I pointed at the trail of sand through which we arrived. “And that’s 100 km away!”

“It’s only 73. Don’t worry, you’ll do fine.” he said, and he already took off. “I’m gonna set up a tent over here where we’ll sleep. Get started on the ship!”

“You’re a real asshole, dad!” I shouted at him.

“I know!” he shouted back.

The first day was the hardest. I tried several approaches but none of them yielded any results. At first I circled the ship looking for the best way to tackle it, but it seemed immovably huge and heavy no matter where I looked.

I tried going at it directly with force, just pushing as much sand as I could at it. But my paltry sand blasts did nothing to move it. I anything, it only added to the pile of sand that encircled the boat.

I tried lifting part of the boat from underneath, but it didn’t budge. On the other hand, I nearly collapsed as my hands and my mind strained in moving the sand stuck beneath the clay.

Clay! I finally realized. The ship was made of clay, that was a type of earth. I didn’t need to push the ship. I could move it directly. But I couldn’t make it respond. Not even a single budge. The ship wasn’t even resisting my sand power, it was simply unresponsive.

As the sun went down and the desert started getting much colder, I was already exhausted. I tried one last thing. I cleared as much sand away from around the ship as I could, trying to see what was underneath it. All I could see is more sand. It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t even see the bottom of the boat.

After an hour of digging, I was completely spent. I dragged myself into the nice and well lit tent my dad set up. Inside, the floor was already insulated and carpeted and a nice meal was cooking over the fire pit he set up. My dad might not be the most considerate of fathers, but he is an excellent vagabond.

As we were eating around the fire, I told my dad about everything I did. And how I went about doing so, and to his credit, he didn’t crack too many jokes about my failure, mostly just a tease here or there. I wasn’t too keen on them at the time, though. My arms were too tired to flip him the bird.

“Do you want me to help train you tomorrow?” he asked as we finished the meal and he started using the sand to scrub our plates clean.

“That was an option?” I asked with a groan, overreacting a bit. “Isn’t this supposed to be a test?”

“Of your abilities, yes. Not my patience. I want to see you succeed. Come on, tomorrow I’ll teach you some stuff.”

“Can’t we just skip the boat part then and just have you teach me?”

“Nope.”

The next day was a lot more pleasant. Dad told me the broth he gave me last night was a special superfood meant to restore my strength and my sand powers. He was right, after a comfortable sleep in the warm tent, I was as good as new. Or at least as good as somebody who had to wake up before dawn could be.

“Okay, the first thing I’m gonna teach you is the physics of sand.” he told me.

I groaned in response. “Physics?! I can do that back home. Teach me how to make a mound and travel real fast like you do.”

“Now, my child. I know this is boring, but I’ll try to simplify it for you.” he reached down and put his hand into the sand. “Sand is like a pillow, it’s full of tiny air pockets hiding between the grains. The deeper you go into the sand, the more it gets squished by the sand above it, and the denser it is. The closer the sand is to the surface, the less dense it is.”

He moved his hand, and a thin circle of sand cleared on the ground between us, no more than a centimeter deep. “Try to think of the desert not as a sandbox, but as layers. Each layer has to carry the weight of the layers above it. When you clear the top layer, the layers below it become more accessible.”

“Now.” he pointed at me. “Try to remove only the top layer of sand from over there. Try making a circle of 20cm in diameter.”

I walked over to the spot and moved the sand. It wasn’t at all a single layer, nor was it a circle. It was more like a tiny groove in the ground which quickly filled in as the sand around it rushed into it.

“Keep doing that until you succeed.” dad said as he stood up behind me.

I kept trying, and each time I simply created slightly flatter pits and holes in the sand. In a few minutes, the area around us looked like a gang of moles dug through it looking for treasure.

“Layers, child. Layers.” my dad said, a familiar sense of discomfort in his voice, very much mirroring my own. Though he seemed to have a lot more patience than me.

“What layers? I don’t see them. I just feel sand.” I sat down on the ground, pouting. “My legs are tired.”

“My child.” he grabbed me by the armpit and gently but firmly lift me back up onto my feet. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Do you feel the weight of your head on your shoulders?”

“Yeah?”

“And do you feel the weight of your shoulders and your head on your upper back?”

“I guess so?”

“And the weight of your torso on your pelvis?”

“I think I do.”

“And the weight of your entire body on your feet?”

“Yes. I do. My feet are killing me.”

“Those are layers. Now...” he pointed at a spot on the ground I haven’t yet ruined. “Take off the top of the head.”

I concentrated on the top of my head, the very top that isn’t supporting any weight. And with a swift movement, I pictured cutting it clean off. I looked down, and saw the flat divot I caused in the sand.

“Again!” he encouraged me, and I did it again, this time bigger.

I continued taking off layers in the sand. Each time I was getting closer to a perfect circle. After that, we moved on to second layers, and third ones. Dad even taught me more advanced techniques where I would swap two different layers to make removing both at once easier. Later he showed me the hand movement required to make waves in the sand with one or two layers, which we would drag away into an ever growing pile behind us as we made wave after wave.

Once again nightfall came. We returned to the tent. As we were eating another rejuvenating broth, my father stopped eating to compliment me. “You’re a very fast learner. It took me days until I was able to make waves.” he told me. “Then again, I was just splashing sand around and building elaborate castles until I was 14.” he joked.

I was excited. “I’m gonna move that ship tomorrow!” I promised him. And he smiled at me.

“I’m sure you will, my child.”

On the third day I felt a mix of excitement and fear. I was ready for the day. I was ready to move that boat, and I was even going to ask my father to teach me more techniques. My path was set, I was going to make it happen. What was once a tedious week became the best week ever, I was sure of it.

But in the early morning sky, much closer than before, I could clearly see storm clouds in the distant. It seemed my father’s forecast was going to come true. I didn’t have much time.

I stepped out onto the ship again, and I noticed something weird. All of the divots of sand and circles and waves my father and I made yesterday were gone. It made sense for the small holes and initial tiny waves to be swept away in the wind, but the enormous pile we both created was gone too. Erased from the sand. I put my hand onto where I remembered it was. The sand was clearly shifted there, different layers were mixed together and stacked on top of each other weirdly. But the pile itself was flat.

I grew concerned, but it wasn’t going to deter me. Today was about my plan, and my progress. I was going to make the ship move. I even had a plan on how to do it. A schedule.

The first hour I would clear the first layer of sand from all around the boat. The second hour I would start making waves around the back, until it was completely clear. Then, I would go ask my dad how to create moving mounds like he does. And tomorrow, I’m gonna start pushing the ship with my new ability.

I was a fast learner, after all.

But my plan wasn’t going as well as I hoped. Removing the layers wasn’t as straight forward as before. The perimeter of sand around the ship was easy enough, but the sand underneath and immediately next to the vessel was more difficult. The sand didn’t behave like I thought it should. It felt less like layers and more like columns. I tried removing the layers of the underground columns one by one like with the ground around it, but they didn’t budge. I decided to forgo phase one and move straight onto clearing the sand behind the ship.

I started making waves, and at first it was great. The sand moved easily underneath the clay body of the ship and I was making progress fast. The ship was even tilting a bit. I audibly cheered for myself when the ship first moved. It was a first step to success. The rest was just hard work.

But hard work became harder work, and later impossible work. Clearing the sand was an uphill battle. I created an ever larger pile of sand behind me, large enough to be called a small dune, but still it seemed like the sand never ran out. It just glided under the ship straight to me, and then more sand replaced it, rocking the ship left and right. It was an uphill battle, and I was losing.

As the sun came down and stars started appearing, I wasn’t nearly as close to completing any of the phases I set out to myself. And I didn’t even ask dad about phase three.

I sat back to lean against the dune I made, but was startled when instead I fell backwards onto the ground. The dune behind me was smaller than before. Much smaller. Barely a molehill in size. I looked around, wondering where it has gone. Then I saw it, a slight shift of sand flowing like a river away from my dune and back onto the underside of the boat. Even the perimeter of sand I cleared earlier was filling up again.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention!” my dad startled me again as shouted from just outside the tent. “The sand in this desert likes to put itself back together!”

My eyes opened wide with horror. I looked at the ship, which barely moved an inch since day one, and then at the approaching rainclouds.

“You’re such an asshole, dad!”