Disclaimer: The characters from The Walking Dead are the property of the creators of the graphic novels and the television series. I, sadly, own nothing.

Moments

By The Archer's Queen

Moments. They were all that he held onto from the moment he was face down in the dirt with warm blood coating his face from the veining trickle that flowed freely from a dead comrade. They'd tugged him up roughly. They pushed him back into the dark. He heard the screams, the whimpers, the blood-numbing wails. And all he could feel was grateful that she wasn't there.

Moments flashed through his mind, broken and blinding like pieces of a shattered mirror trembling in morning sunlight. They filled him, carried him through countless days, maybe weeks at Negan's side. He held onto them, focused on them at night when he thought his strength might fall away into the night and leave him with his last breath. But he always woke up. He wasn't sure if he should blame her or thank her for giving him something to hope for.

The glimmering tears in her surprised, doe eyes at his unexpected gesture. A fresh flower plucked from the earth, slowly dying, cradled in the brown glass of a beer bottle, carried three miles just to comfort her, to bring her a little peace. Maybe she wouldn't cry herself to sleep that night.

The gentle, unexpected warmth of a kiss against his clammy temple. He'd flinched like a coward, expecting pain where there was only goodness. Something had changed in him, something deep down, something that he'd shut off a long time ago for self-preservation. He was every bit as good as them. She'd said it, and her words had healed a piece of him. Only her.

The taste of salt and blood in his mouth, a reminder he'd nearly lost his life and his damned mind out in those woods with a bolt in his side and a walker chewing at his boots. He'd looked for her, risked his neck and then she'd asked him not to go back out. I can't lose you, too. And he'd hit back in the only way he could, throwing things like a dick and calling her things he wasn't proud of, watching her flinch and hating himself for putting that kind of pain in her heart when she was already filled with so much fear and guilt for her little girl. You just wanted to look for her.

A heartbeat, rapid and broken against his palm. Her limp frame shuddering in front of him as fingers threaded into red clay dirt and held on as if her life depended on it.

"Sophia. Sophia…" She wept and sweat poured down her body, purging her soul.

A sleepy, sated grin after the first full meal in weeks. Her lithe fingers wrapped around the neck of a whiskey bottle and tossed back a swig before handing it to him. Surprise and lust flickered in the blush on his cheeks. "I can handle myself just fine, Daryl. I'm not a shrinking violet."

The tense posture, a woman on a mission, rifle posed clumsily in her sinewy arms, almost dwarfing her small frame. He'd trailed behind her. His eyes were drawn to the spot at the nape of her neck where her short hair was growing out, curling and teasing his urge to reach out and touch her.

"I must look ridiculous. I've never shot a gun in my life," she'd uttered with a smirk. It was a vague attempt at hiding the budding self-confidence she'd only just begun to find since Ed's massive shadow had fallen and let her start to thrive. She'd reached up toward the sky like a root seeking water, bending, parched and straining for the last spark of life.

She'd swept across the grass. Her footfalls were almost too quiet from months on the run and training herself to be quiet as a church mouse. His ears were attuned to the quiet, to listening beyond the whistling silence and the blood pumping through his veins. His ears were practiced, trained to alert him to protect the group. His ears were attuned to her. His eyes were trained on the curve of her neck, the way her hand brushed over the sore muscle. His fingers worked against the pleasantly soft material of her shirt, and he caught her grin, felt the blush fill his face and warm his ears. She teased him. Damn it, she knew how to tease him and get him riled up, and all he knew was how to deflect, how to tell himself this was bullshit. What would a woman like her want with a man like him? She was soft and beautiful and strong in all the right ways and places. He was scarred, tattered and burned. No pretty flowers peppered the soil of his heart.

The tattered remains of the wrap she'd worn, stained with blood and carrying her scent. The tightness in his throat and chest and the stinging in his nose and eyes had had him reeling. She could have died a long time ago. Before. And then? Then she was gone. Just gone. A memory echoing off of a tomb, a whisper of what could have been.

"Daryl? Are we safe?" Light and delicate in his arms. Fingertips caressing the back of his neck. Warm breaths seeped through the fabric of his shirt, clinging to his skin. His hands trembled, and her body curled into his. He carried her, walking down death row toward the cell block. Soft moans on her lips were a relief. This was real. She was real. Alive. Not gone. She just flickered out for a while. And the Cherokee rose upon her empty grave wilted into the red Georgia soil.

"Daryl?" Her voice was the ghost of a whisper. Her blue eyes were nearly grey, pupils wide and dark. She took him in with the breath that shook her shoulders. Those blue eyes, the memory of them was so vivid, like a picture in a book, a snapshot. They'd gotten him through the nights on the cold cement floor of Negan's cell. They'd gotten him through the beatings. They'd gotten him through the nightmares. Somehow, she was still there, waiting for him. "Daryl?"

He fell into her, pulling her into him. His hands didn't know what to hold onto. His fingers threaded into her hair. He cradled her, caressed her, felt her sigh in his embrace. The warmth of her came through, and her hands moved to his chest and then her hands were on his shoulders. And then she held him. She held him as he held her, and for the first time in far too long, she wasn't just a memory. She was there, real, his own Cherokee rose taking root in his heart and stretching toward the light.