#from lovesdaryl

Rick, holding Judith, his eyes swimming with tears.

Tyreese, hugging his sister, both of them laughing with joy.

Abraham and his group of newcomers looking on, taking in these unfamiliar relationships, slowly becoming part of the group.

And Daryl, walking next to her, silent as always, apparently hoping that she wouldn’t notice the glances that he was stealing, every few steps, his eyes full of wonder.

Since she had become an expert at observing people, and Daryl in particular, she noticed at once when he started to slow down, falling back, back, back, toward the end of the group, alsways making sure that she kept matching his footfalls so she wouldn’t pull ahead of him.

So he’d stay next to her, silent, stealing glances every few steps, eyes shining.

When only Glenn and Maggie, their rear guard, were still walking behind them and everyone else was in front, she looked up and directly met his eyes as they attempted to steal another glance.

„What?“ she asked, not unkindly, just in a „I am done with you taking hours to work up to saying what is burning a hole into your tongue, so just come out and say it“ way.

The skin around his eyes tightened for a moment as he inhaled sharply before looking ahead again.

„How did you -?“ 

He faltered.

There were too many questions he wanted to ask, all at the same time, that started like this.

Survive?

Find us?

Plan that?

Do it?

And knowing him as well as she did, better at times than her own heart, she understood all of them in the silence between them.

Taking a slow, deep breath, she briefly raised her head as if in defiance, and he heard Rick back at the prison, telling him that she would survive on her own, and felt his rage bubbling up again for an instant until it was overwhelmed once more by the miracle of her walking next to him, unharmed.

She had survived, but at what cost?

„I … went back to the prison, and I saw …“

It was her turn to falter as the disastrous attack unfolded again in their minds, and she had to brace herself before continuing.

„Ty, he had … Judith. He was the only one I saw when I arrived, just in time to see the end. I didn’t know if anyone else …“

Her voice broke and he considered reaching out his hand to touch her, but the thought alone made his heart race and he couldn’t even look at her, which he thought was really wild, in view of the fact that he had lifted her right off her feet earlier.

When she spoke again, her voice was raw with pain and grief.

„I thought they were the only ones left - a man who cannot kill, and a newborn. I couldn’t just -“

„Naw, course not,“ he agreed.

„When we came across the signs they had put up, we followed them, but stayed out of view. We wanted to see first, before they saw us. For all we knew, this was the Governor all over again.“

He nodded. They had certainly tried this approach as well, but since Gareth had told them that his scouts had watched them bury their weapons bag they had clearly failed - unlike Carol.

„We saw what they … what they did to the people they had lured in. How they locked them into those freight cars like cattle, how they brought them out one by one to …“

Again he nodded to spare her having to find words for the unspeakable things they had both seen at Terminus - human bodies butchered and hacked up and smoked like so many heads of cattle and stored as food, with no shred of compassion, no heartbeat of kindness for their victims, their last moments an assault on their senses, a glimpse of what was in store for them, unmitigated terror and pain until the very last moment.

She drew a shuddering breath and he looked up to find her looking at him as they both continued walking, the steps of their family ahead and behind them. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

„At first I didn’t know any of you were in there, I just knew I had to stop those … monsters, but then …“ She blinked and a single tear ran down her right cheek. „While I was setting up my attack I heard them yelling their orders as they were bringing another group out of one of those train cars, and I saw …“

He expected her to mention a child, maybe a girl that reminded her of Sophia, or a woman and her child, or - Hell, he didn’t know what he expected, but he was not prepared for what she said next.

„Rick.“

Her voice was full of tears now and he felt as if his heart would shatter. Rick, who had exiled her during a run without talking about it to anybody. Rick, who had made this decision alone without input from anyone, without listening to any opinion but his own, when Carol’s actions that had prompted her exile had had nothing at all to do with him.

He could have understood this act of cruelty from Tyreese who had lost his girlfriend to Carol’s decision, but he would never accept it from Rick, a former law enforcement officer who, more than any of them, should have known to stick to some sort of process before essentially sentencing someone to death because it was next to impossible to survive out there alone.

The courage and compassion it would have taken for her to do all this, put herself in danger like this, in order to save Rick of all people, was beyond comprehension.

„And you did it anyway, wow.“ He sounded awed, but continued in a very matter-of-fact tone. „Just goes to show you’re not what he wanted us to think you are. You’re not this cold blooded monster he painted you to be when he got back. You survived out there and remained decent and human and compassionate.“

She shook her head very slightly. „I had no time to think,“ she whispered. „If there had been time, maybe I would not … I don’t know. I can’t say. But there wasn’t, and so … Once the fence was down I went into the compound with the herd, and I came to a room that held all the things they had taken from people.“ She took another shuddering breath and he believed that he knew what was coming. His right hand briefly reached back to brush against his crossbow as he waited for her to continue.

„I … When I saw it, with the watch, and I hadn’t seen you among that group, you were probably hidden behind one of his henchmen because there was this whole group to get you, you were all half stunned by whatever they had done to you inside that box car, so I had no idea …“

She was crying now, tears running down both her cheeks, her shoulders heaving.

„Tyreese and I had seen before how they got people out of those box cars to … but we had never before been close enough to even see if they were getting men or women, so I couldn’t be certain if … and I though that I was just a day or two late to save you, I believed you were dead when I saw …“

He did reach out for her now, his heart seemingly pounding through his whole body, and lightly brushed her hand with his. „‘m here,“ he mumbled. „Can’t imagine what it took ya to do that. Don’t know if anyone else woulda been up to it.“ And now he looked at her, not glancing, and his eyes were full of admiration. „And you’re still so kind, despite all that.“

„Can I come back from this?“ she whispered. „Can I come back from setting this compound on fire and delivering the people in it to the walkers?“

„Ain’t got nothin’ to come back from,“ Daryl replied firmly. „God knows how many people they murdered, and how many lives you saved by sending ‘em to hell where they belong. They woulda kept killin’. Ya did nothing wrong.“

Her face was still full of doubt, doubtless the seeds that Rick had planted, sprouting in her mind, but he was having none of it. „And if it won’t let you sleep despite that, you’re not alone.“ He moved his hand, and suddenly he was no longer just lightly brushing the back of her hand with his.

He was holding her hand, firmly, tightly, clearly not planning on ever letting go again.

It had been a week since she’d left that morning to check the traps they’d set.

A week.

For something that would have taken her one and a half days, at most, even if she had reset them immediately instead of bringing them in.

Even with the storm.

.-.

The storm had set in mere hours after she’d left the compound that they had fortified for the winter after realizing that they would not reach their destination before the end of fall. Since they’d understood that, this far up north, winter might last until March or even well into April, they had not just seen to the windows and doors of each house and provided for lots of firewood but also built a solid wooden wall around those houses they were going to live in.

It hadn’t looked so bad at first. A light drizzle of fluffy white flakes, wondrous to look at as they slowly started to cover the ground instead of melting into slush. As the light started to seep out of that first day of her absence, he’d noticed that the thin snow cover briefly kept the darkness at bay by reflecting what little light there was.

He’d kept looking out the window, watching the flurry of frozen water out there in childlike wonder, until the day’s work finally overwhelmed him and he fell asleep on the chair, leaning against the curtain.

Waking up wasn’t quite as peaceful, unfortunately.

He was ripped from a dreamless, exhausted sleep by a shriek just beyond the window that had his heart hammering and sent him surging to his feet the very second he was waking up. Expecting either a walker or a raving lunatic to be coming at him, he stared about himself wildly, his knife in his hand, and it took him nearly a minute to understand that what was coming for them wasn’t human, nor had it ever been.

The languid dance of the flakes outside had turned into something quite different, he saw as he turned toward the window to check if he could find the source of the shriek out there, in the cold darkness.

The wind, soft and slow when he had tentatively rested his hand on her shoulder in a wordless gesture of good bye, had turned into a furious monster, whipping the snow around the house and toward the window in gray sheets that looked unending.

And the snow …

The snow wasn’t just a light cover on the ground any longer, either.

The snow had to be at least a foot high, rounding the shapes of the abandoned tools and toys that had welcomed them when they had first entered the village. The snow had rounded the sharpened ends of the logs they had used for their fence, hiding the deadly tips.

The snow had completely hidden the street leading toward the gate, obscuring the edges of the sidewalks and intersections.

The snow had changed what the darkness disclosed of the landscape into something new and unrecognizable.

A shiver ran down his spine.

.-.

Daylight - or what they got of it - revealed just how complete that change was in the morning, after a sleepless night haunted by the shrieking of the wind and the rattling of the house in which they gathered over the course of the night, one by one, in pairs, in groups of three, four, five. Nobody wanted to remain alone in these conditions, isolated in their chosen „home.“

The village, or what was visible within the perimeter of their wall, had turned into what, before the apocalypse, would have been considered a „winter wonderland“, the snow piling in drifts everywhere, with ice flowers on the windows.

Now, with no emergency services, no power, no central heating, these conditions were deadly. The storm’s fury hadn’t abated. The wind was still howling and shrieking around the corners of every house, through the naked trees, through the lamp and power poles barely visible through the white veils it was whipping through the air.

As the hours dragged on, the sky got minimally brighter before turning dark again long before what should have been sunset, with no sign of the blizzard calming down - and, after two days, no sign of Carol.

.-.

„No, you’re not going.“

Rick was adamant, and everyone he turned to for help supported their leader’s decision.

The storm was still howling, the snow was three feet high by now, temperatures were still well below freezing, and Carol had taken their best equipment for the night she’d been expected to camp in the open. 

Second best was second best, but, after all, only second best, Rick argued. Additionally, Daryl had no way of knowing where Carol would have started checking their traps, and no way of deducting where he might find her now. In the snow, he’d be unable to find either his traps or her trail.

If worst came to worst, the group would lose not just Carol, but both of them, and there was no way Rick could allow that. Even years into the apocalypse, Daryl was still the group’s most proficient hunter - he’d had plenty of practise when the world had still been civilized, after all. Those were years that were serving them well, but also years that were hard to catch up on for the people he was training.

„You’re not the boss o’ me!“ Daryl snarled in response to Rick’s verdict, taking a menacing step toward the former sheriff, until Sasha and Michonne, within moments of each other, each placed a hand carefully on either of his shoulders to stop him. They all knew, of course, that neither of the women had any chance of actually stopping him if he didn’t choose to let them, short of them resorting to physical violence - but Daryl knew that they would never do that.

They were at an impasse.

„I can’t risk losing both of you. Losing Carol would be hard enough on its own - and I don’t think we will lose her. She’s a survivor. She’ll be back.“

For a moment, Daryl’s burning eyes met Rick’s, and each man knew what specifically made Daryl so angry about this statement. Rick knew, deep inside, that Daryl would never truly forgive him for exiling Carol from the prison before the Governor’s attack, that Rick endangering Carol in this way was always going to stand between them despite Daryl’s unfailing loyalty.

Carol was a survivor not just in her own right, but because Rick had forced her to be one, in a way Daryl would never forget.

„I can find her. I will find her. You know I can.“ There was no plea in Daryl’s voice, only rage at being denied a chance to save the woman he -

„I don’t doubt that, but I can’t let you go out in these conditions. You’d freeze to death with what we could give you for your search. What do I tell Carol when she comes back and you’re gone?“

„It’s been almost three days!“ Daryl’s burning eyes searched for support among the circle of survivors gathered around himself and Rick. „What if she’s hurt?“

„And how would you be able to help her if she is?“ Rick’s eyes remained hard, hiding his compassion behind a steel façade. „I’m sorry, I really am. But you can’t go.“

.-.

The snow was piling up against their wall, the wind whipping it into abstract shapes that froze into sharp edges. Daryl set up camp in the gatehouse and didn’t budge when the others tried to persuade him to at least come in for the night, arguing that it was especially vital for someone to be waiting for her if she returned at night.

Temperatures continued dropping, the wind kept howling, the snow kept falling. At this point, even if Rick had allowed Daryl to leave and search for Carol, conditions would no longer have allowed it. The snow was over four feet high and it would have obliterated any signs of her ever having been in the area by now.

And was it possible to survive in this cold with the provisions she’d taken, with the haphazard camping gear she’d selected?

He tried to bring himself to think, „She must have frozen to death by now,“ but found he couldn’t do it.

So many times he’d thought he’d lost her. So many times he’d grappled with the idea of her no longer being in his life, and the very idea still had his chest constrict as if by steel bands tightening around it.

She couldn’t be gone, it wasn’t possible. He couldn’t conceive of the idea, so it couldn’t be.

.-.

They brought hot food out to him twice a day as he continued his vigil by the gate. They brought him blankets, and wood for the small stove.

They watched his eyes turn into empty hollows as the wind kept whittling away at his hope that she would return any moment, that he’d see her emerging from the swirling white hell out there, alive and well, bundled up in every shred of fabric she’d taken with her.

.-.

Day six, and the storm was finally relenting. For the first time since it had started, Daryl saw a milky disk in the sky where the sun was hidden behind the clouds.

A freezing fog was hiding everything further from him than ten feet. He couldn’t take his wool mittens off even in the gate house with the fire on.

How could she have survived in this?

.-.

Her eyes were burning with tears and frost. She almost didn’t feel her feet any longer as she stumbled toward the dark shape outlined in the fog in front of her. Since today was the first time in days that she could even guess the sun’s position, there was no way to be sure she was even in the same general area as their winter hideout, nor could she be sure that whoever might live here would not be hostile, the way so many groups had been hostile toward them - trying to kill or eat them, to enslave them, to take what they owned and leave them to die.

She had survived this long, and she had to take this risk or the next night might kill her - or a turned ankle, a snapped wrist.

It was this or nothing.

She limped toward the dark shapes in the frozen fog and hoped for the best.

.-.

It all ended in a very unspectacular way.

He had climed the ladder to the crown of the wall and carefully raised his head above it, hoping to see more than ten feet through the fog. A lone figure was weaving toward the wall, reminding him of that space movie that Merle had gone to see with him a lifetime ago in which some space jockey had lost his mount on some ice planet and had woven through the snow just like that before collapsing.

The figure collapsed.

Hardly feeling his freezing feet, Daryl half climbed, half fell back down the ladder, wrestled the beam out of the way that barred the gate, and flung the gate open to get to the figure lying there in the snow. Scrambling toward it through drifts of snow reaching up to his thighs, he fought for every foot of ground until he reached the bundle that was lying there so still, as if there was no life left in it.

The clothes of the figure were so covered in frozen snow that he couldn’t make out any other colors but white. Half submerged in the snow, he couldn’t guess at the person’s size or sex. He just knew he needed to get there, and look at their face.

Falling to his knees, he reached out with stiff hands to turn the figure on its back.

Patches of gray skin. Sunken eyes with dark circles under them.

The tips of graying hair peering out from under a woolen cap and a fur lined hood.

He didn’t see a pulse at the neck, and his hands were too stiff and frozen to feel for her heartbeat. He couldn’t tell if the person was alive or not.

Her gray-blue eyes opened.

.-.

She felt the whisper of a touch on her shoulder, her cheek, her arm.

She felt a breath on her face where the cold hadn’t damaged her skin.

She heard a whisper, just one word, and her heart sang, even though she couldn’t yet speak, or open her eyes, or return the touch.

This, she thought, must surely be the greatest miracle she would receive in this life.

Against the forces of nature, against all odds, he had found her way home.

The darkness clung to him, oppressive, heavy with the knowledge of what they had discovered a few doors down the hallway. It made breathing difficult, with his chest and throat constricting with the awareness of what anguish it had to be causing her. If he was freaking out over it, just barely holding it in, what was it doing to her?

Yet he reined himself in, forcing himself to lie still except for little movements and grunts and sighs that would make her believe, after some time, that he had fallen asleep the way she wanted him to. I’ll take first watch. After that, he’d have to wait for her to fall asleep once the tension wore off after he took over from her.

And then …

Of course he found sleep impossible, but when he finally sat up in his bed to tell her that he’d take over from here, he had been silent long enough for her to believe that he had rested, and she climbed up the ladder, movements sluggish with exhaustion, and lay down on the upper bed. From the corner of his eye he watched her, weary, not just from the day’s events but from all that had happened over these past … had it really been a good two years already?

Considering what he knew he was about to see and do in that room, it probably shouldn’t have surprised him that his mind went back, giving him a quick rerun of all that had happened since he and Merle had come across their first walker, and then upon this group by the quarry … and her.

Of course, they had both noticed at once. To them, it was impossible not to see it, and they had both been surprised at the indifference of everyone else in that camp until they had realized that, to everyone else, it was just invisible - when he and Merle didn’t even need any bruises as evidence. Her body language alone, and his, gave it away, the way she ducked her head away in deference when anyone addressed her, the way she moved so silently in a constant effort to not draw attention to herself, the way she kept her voice down and all but devoid of inflection, the way she tried to anticipate her husband’s every wish so he wouldn’t need to ask for anything and wouldn’t find a reason to “punish” her for imagined and perceived wrongs.

Since they had witnessed all of this as children, all of her methods of dealing with him and with what he was doing to her had stood out to them, glaringly obvious, and it had made Daryl’s blood boil to see that nobody else noticed or seemed to care. He felt all of this pent-up rage inside him over nobody interfering on their behalf when they had been kids. If someone, anyone, had cared enough, maybe their mother would have lived, maybe they wouldn’t be as fucked up as they were.

Maybe he would have been able to have a life.

Merle, however, had reminded him that the lives that all those people around them at the quarry had built for themselves had been lost anyway, that fate had laughed in their faces and pressed a reset button whose effects had hit everyone, and that they stood as much of a chance now at succeeding as everyone else - maybe a better one, because they had been survivors even before, and everyone else would have to start learning the hard way now, and be forced to catch up to them.

In the darkness, staring out into the dark, empty street, listening to her breathing slowing down and getting softer and more regular as she fell asleep, he saw their faces, all those faces, and they all caused an echo inside him - but two of them caused not an echo but pain, and he leaned his forehead against the cold window pane, watching as his breath condensed against it before closing his eyes against the burning tears of loss.

These two, just these two, hell, just one of them, if he were forced to choose. She’d had her whole life before her, and losing her had changed Carol so much, had hurt something inside her that he knew would not heal. If only he had found her before the walker that had gotten her in the crook between her neck and shoulder. If only he had managed to save them both from this fate.

Once he was certain that she was fast asleep, he craned his neck to make sure the street was still empty but for two lonely walkers shuffling toward him from the right, three yards between them, mindlessly unaware of each other. Since there was nothing here to draw their attention and the house was locked up tight, they were not a threat and he felt comfortable leaving the room, leaving her asleep in it.

As he didn’t know what else might happen, he took not just his knife on his belt but his crossbow as well, careful not to bump it into anything. Now that it was happening, he didn’t want her to wake - he wanted her nowhere near this.

His heart grew heavy as he saw the silhouettes against the glass insert in the door again. He left his knife in its sheath as he approached - he had felt the key in the lock earlier when he had stopped her from opening the door to do it herself. There would be no need to force the lock, he’d be able to open the door without additional noise.

By the time he turned the key, his other hand was already resting on the hilt of his knife, ready to pull it out. He held his breath as he pushed down the door handle, hoping the door wasn’t going to creak - and it was with a heavy heart that he opened his eyes as he pushed against it, preparing himself for a sight that he knew would tear at him.

They had been locked in here ever since they had turned, he assumed, for they weren’t too decayed. They hadn’t been out in the rain, they hadn’t gotten snagged on rearview mirrors or fences, they hadn’t stepped into broken glass. Their bodies were mostly unharmed, but in a way, that made it harder.

There was no way to determine how old the mother had been, but since the child could have been twelve years old at most, she probably hadn’t been beyond her mid forties. Both she and the child, a girl, snarled at him viciously the moment he stepped into the room and switched on his flashlight. Shuffling toward them, the woman hissed as she raised one hand to snatch his arm, but he was fast, and quick on his feet, his heart beating out a furious pattern and his body flooded with adrenaline.

His hand arced up and down, holding the knife, and he embedded it in the woman’s temple - and at the last moment before that last spark of non-awareness died in her eyes, suddenly it wasn’t the walker’s face he was looking at but …

He held in a strangled cry, eyes wide with frenzy. No, he reminded himself fiercely, don’t fall for the tricks your mind is playing. Yes, she came here with Sophia, but this is not her. She is safe back there in that room. You’re not taking down Carol here. He almost sobbed with relief when the face turned into that of the walker once more - he didn’t think he would have survived watching her crumple to the ground in front of him with congealed blood seeping from the knife wound he had inflicted on her.

Panting with distress rather than exertion, he turned around to face the girl’s walker, and after the cruel hallucination he’d just snapped himself out of, he was prepared for what he saw as he looked at her. He had to force himself to breathe, his blood roaring in his ears now, his heart laboring against the pain of Sophia’s face in front of him now, when he knew that what had become of Sophia was resting in grave on Hershel’s farm.

This is not her, he soundlessly yelled at himself, forcing himself toward the girl, forcing himself to lift his arm and drive the knife into the base of her neck, leaving her face unharmed, as she shuffled toward him, one arm dangling limply, the other raised to claw at him with hooked fingers. As she fell to the ground he stood over the bodies, chest heaving, face wet with tears.

.-.

She joined him as he was burning the wrapped bodies on the roof of the entrance hall. Like any wary creature that has been hurt in the past, he had felt her watching him through the window but hadn’t reacted, feeling that she needed to be unobserved at that moment, that she needed time to compose herself before she was ready to let him see her after watching him do this.

Hearing her approaching, hearing her voice as she thanked him, seeing her face, calm and composed, the storm of emotions contained under the surface again, he felt the flutter of gratitude that she was here, next to him, alive, breathing - Carol. So much more to her than what was there for everyone to see. Beautiful - yes, certainly, but that wasn’t all there was to her. Strong in every possible sense of the word, tempered by her life before, resilient, a relentless fighter - but at the same time she was still able to feel so deeply, to be compassionate, to care for everyone.

Looking at the column of dark smoke swirling up from the small fire as he stood next to her, he allowed a wordless thought to escape, a thought that might have been a prayer if he had believed in a god. A thought that he was sure was going to remain unheard, in the end, for they would all die. But finding her again, no, being found by her again in the aftermath of Terminus had been one of the very best things to happen in his life, and he prayed silently to be granted some more time by her side, some more time to dream of what might have been, of what they might have had if things had gone differently.

She cuddled up against his side as she carefully got her weight off him, her hand sliding across his abdomen, ignoring the thin raised lines on his skin. The rain was drumming against the windows of their bedroom, and she relished the heat seeping into their bodies, her own and his, that was the perfect contrast to that sound and the gurgling of the water rushing down the rain drain. „You’d refused to meet for so long - what changed your mind, that day?“ she asked softly.

She didn’t need to specify what day she was talking about. There was only one day in their life together that they both referred to in that way. His left hand went down to gently grasp hers and lace his fingers with hers. He adjusted his position ever so slightly, tensing up briefly and closing down their link for a heartbeat or two to spare her the spike that the movement caused. 

„Well, Merle was very insistent,“ he mumbled, sleepy now. For him, their lovemaking was never very physical, but it was always intense in every other conceivable way, and it left him drained every time. „And you wouldn’t know that, but our place was kinda shitty, so …“ He trailed off and laughed softly when she lightly punched his side with her free hand.

„You’re horrible,“ she complained, smiling into the darkness. „You could sell fridges at the North Pole, though - you were very convincing for a moment there.“ She turned onto her side to hug him, rearranging their arms and hands so everything fit and nobody was lying on any body parts. She could sense him getting drowsy from the combined effects of making love and the heat seeping into him, and his sleepiness seemed to be contagious - her own eyelids were getting heavy as well.

„It’s always been you,“ he whispered suddenly, his voice low and hoarse, and she could feel him turning his head to look at her blindly, the darkness in the room complete. „It was done, and you knew that through our link. I was finished. It was going to blow up no matter what, nothing left to do.“ 

For a moment, the post-lovemaking swirl of color surrounding them was replaced by darkness with blue emergency lights strobing in it. At the same time, she sensed his vivid memory of fighting his way up the staircase after she had freed him in the cell in which the Feina had tied him down. They both gasped in remembered pain.

„But you came for me,“ he continued in that same soft voice, mellow like warm honey, only its fringes still laced with agony now. He sounded … surprised, which in turn surprised her. How he could have thought that nobody would come for him as long as there still was time just because he had finished his part of the mission was utterly beyond her. If there was anyone in the world who deserved saving, she thought, it was him.

„You …,“ he went on, and she closed her eyes to take in the colors that he kept alive around them, letting his voice carry her, „you never saw just the mission, just the big picture. Through all of it, you always cared about … individual people. About what this would do for their lives. For our lives.“ She sensed him searching for words for a moment, collecting his thoughts before he spoke again.

„You caring about whether or not I got out, that was … like a promise.“ His voice was so soft now that she almost couldn’t hear him any longer, even though they were still entwined in each other’s arms, her cheek resting against him, hearing his heartbeat, feeling his chest rise and fall with his slow, steady breathing. All the colors still illuminating the darkness behind her closed eyelids were warm and soothing now. He was as deeply at peace as she had ever sensed him.

She ran her right hand across his chest to let it curl around his left shoulder, anchoring herself to him. Again, she ignored and refused to think about the ropey, thick line of scar tissue slashing from his shoulder toward his heart under her left temple. His chest and back were covered in old scars, and on most days they both took great care to not think about them, just like they avoided thinking about Ed on most days.

Not all, though.

Their past was a part of them, and refused to be forgotten.

„You caring about whether or not I got out, that was the world I was going for. People caring about each other. And if we could manage that, if this would be what was going to come of that night, then it was worth every effort we could make. It was a promise worth keeping, and you’d been offering to keep it the whole time - ever since that night, and maybe even before that. So I decided to give it a chance.“ She sensed him opening his eyes, taking in the darkness. „Does that even make sense?“

She took the time to think about what he had said, and how he had said it. She took the time to appreciate the subtle changes in the colors around them from before they had started talking about this, to now. She concentrated on his regular heartbeat, his calmness, the serene dance of their melding colors.

And she recalled his voice, and the wild race of colors, and the thumping of his heart in his heaving chest whenever they had talked about that night before, or about what had happened to each of them to bring them to this particular moment in time just the way they were, with all their memories, all their baggage, and all their damage.

„Yes, it does,“ she said finally. „It does make sense, but at the same time, it doesn’t.“

She sensed his confusion. “It’s always been that world,“ she explained. „You’ve always been willing to go all out on this. All the people in TE have. Some of them did die for this world that we have now. You had it right there, all the time. You needn’t have worried, you know?“

Daryl took in her answer and nodded slowly. „On a large scale, you’re right, of course,“ he conceded. „On a large scale, there will always be people who would do anything for the greater good. But in this case, the large scale wouldn’t do. I didn’t need a vision - I had that myself. But a vision -„ His hand found the nape of her neck in the darkness and started playing with her short, graying hair, causing her to shiver in delight. 

„Once the war is won, a vision will no longer keep you company,“ he said softly, and she received a brief memory flash of Daryl returning home to an empty apartment, with the unspoken knowledge hovering over it that Merle would not be home for several hours yet - and that he would not wish to spend time with Daryl once he was. A crushing loneliness enveloped her for an instant but dissolved again before she became fully aware of the pain it brought.

„A vision is not about the people but about the big picture, and I had that myself. But you -„ His sense of completeness, of fulfillment, of being whole, had her heart soaring and she was amazed and gratified by the joy he was feeling all over again at meeting her. „You knew that the vision would come true. We had done what we’d set out to do that night, the vision was complete. And the odds were against us in so many ways, it really defies description.“ He chuckled quietly.

„Just think about it - the timer already counting down. We were exhausted, I was injured, and when you entered that cell, we had what - two or three minutes left to get out?“ His memory of the cell before she had arrived in it flashed into her mind, along with his overwhelming fear of the two aliens preparing him for interrogation. „But even with the requirements for the large-scale vision already met, you still cared for that one person - the vision alone was not enough to satisfy you. You still cared enough to risk it all for that one person that you knew was still in danger. You were willing to risk losing the vision, yourself, not being around to experience it, to give that one person a chance at it that would not be around for it otherwise - without you.“

„How could I not care about the best thing except for Sophia to ever happen to me? In what world would it have been fair for you to die that night?“ she mumbled against his shoulder, feeling warm and drowsy. The heating blanket had switched itself off, but his body still felt like a furnace against her, as did her own against him. She felt his hand on her skin from both sides of their meld and shivered with delight at the sensation. „I was getting ready to pay Merle for nagging you.“

It was a beautiful day, with a blue sky, a light breeze and birds singing. The kind of day she had cherished. The kind of day that had made you forget, for just a little while, what had happened. What they had lost. What the world had come to. The kind of day that had you rejoice in the fact that you were alive and breathing.

Every trill of the birds, every chirping of the crickets hidden away in the grass, even the humming of the multitude of insects waking up for the day seemed to be driving him to his knees.

Because she wasn’t there any longer to appreciate this beautiful day.

Because she was dead.

And they hadn’t even found her body to bury.

At long last he reached the empty grave with the cross at its head and sank down to one knee, his crossbow on his back.

His body seemed unwilling at this point to allow air to pass into his lungs. Heaving in one painful breath, he reached into his shirt with one hand and withdrew it again slowly, bringing out a single white flower, five delicate petals arranged around a sun yellow center.

He lowered his head, closing his eyes, as his thumb caressed the flower in his hand ever so gently.

Now that she was gone forever, he wished desperately that he had done this more often while she had still been there to enjoy this tiny bit of appreciation. Wished that he had shown her every day how much she meant to him. How much he cherished her. How precious she was to him, how important her life and well-being.

He wished that he hadn’t been a dick and been open to her about how he felt.

As with so many other things before and after the Turn, he had failed her, allowing her to believe for even a single moment that he took her for granted. That he wasn’t aware every second of every day of what a monumental change she had brought about in his life. That he owed who and what he had become to her, and her alone, because she had been the first person ever to believe in him.

He was about to look for her body one last time - or her walker.

And before maybe being faced with either of these - her dead body, with too much of it gone, or damaged too badly to turn, or else a dead-eyed walker wearing her beautiful face - he needed to pay tribute to and remember her as she had been while alive:

The way she had taken care of everyone, taking upon herself so many of the „menial“ tasks that you only noticed when they weren’t being attended to; making sure everybody had what they needed; saving a kind word for everyone who came to her. Her smile. Her laugh. The way her blue eyes shone when she looked at him.

How would he ever go on without her there to pick him up when he faltered?

How would they all?

He placed the flower on her empty grave, in the center of the ring of small pebbles he had prepared for just that purpose, silently promising her that he would always remember her the way she had been in life, that he would not allow whatever he was about to find in the Tombs now to tarnish his memory of her, and then caressed the cross, resting his hand on it for a moment as he attempted to compose himself. He sat motionless, bowed down by the weight of his grief.