The Readers Muse on Tumblr made a terrible post and told me I had to fic it and so I took up the challenge and immediately regret it, but here it is. I'm so sorry. :(
Title is from the song "All Apologies" by Nirvana.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. TWD is the property of Robert Kirkman/AMC, and are not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.
He smells her before he hears her - a fetid, heavy stink that enters the copse of trees in time with the snap of a twig.
Rick inhales sharply. Maggie covers her mouth with both hands. But Daryl only looks over his shoulder when Glenn says her name.
"Carol, no…"
He wishes he could do this moment over again. He wishes he could rewind time, back to when the leaves beneath his feet were his only focus, the Terminus escape plans his only concern. But the hands on Hershel's watch continue to tick tick tick by, and Daryl must come to terms with who he is seeing.
What he is seeing.
She's wearing a tattered, bloody sheet, her cargos and combat boots (the boots he brought back for her, the boots that earned him one of her small but bright, cheeky smiles) the only parts of her clothes showing. Dry gore the color of red dirt is streaked across her forehead, her cheeks, swept up into the fluffy spikes of her hair. But it's her eyes that leave him breathless. He's been breathless in her gaze before. This is a different kind. He literally can't breathe.
The blue is gone, washed out and dissolved into the milky gray of the dead. They're already sunken in her face, the hollows beneath her eyes bruised black. It's what finally forces him to push himself off the tree and start towards her.
He ignores Rick reaching out to stop him, shrugs his placating hand off his shoulder ("Daryl, don't-") and leaves everyone behind so it's only him and her, the way it always was. The way it will never be again.
When he's a few feet away from her, he stops, plants his feet where he stands and waits for her to come to him, her arms outstretched, hands reaching for him. No, not him. His flesh. His blood. That's all she'll ever want from him again.
By the time she's close enough to grab him, he already has the knife in his hand. Her blunt, grubby fingernails graze his vest, latch on, pull herself towards him, she breathes putrid air into his slightly open mouth, and he realizes that this is the first and last time he'll ever hold her in his arms. Then he jerks his arm up and embeds the knife into the moldy, soft (too soft) underside of her jaw.
She's frozen for a split second, and Daryl must imagine seeing the life leave her eyes, because she's already dead, and then she's pitching forward, mouth an oily, gaping hole in her sickly green face. He catches her but drops to his knees at the unexpected weight, noticing for the first time the crossbow strapped to her back. How did she get it? Did she go back for it? Was getting his crossbow the reason why she was…?
A cry warbled its way out of his throat, and even though she smelled like death, he dropped his head to her curls and inhaled, as if he could suck whatever was left of her soul into himself.
He feels someone kneel next to him, feels a hand grip his shoulder tightly. "Daryl," Rick starts. "Daryl…we have to move. Gareth and his people could be on their way right now -"
"Not yet."
"But -"
"Not. Yet." He can barely see Rick through the burning tears that blaze his vision, but whatever Rick sees has him retracting his hand as though burned. Daryl turns back to Carol (no, not Carol…) and carefully, gently, removes the crossbow from her back and sets it aside, before he picks her up, standing when all he wants to do is lay down and die, right here with her. He feels tears beading at the corners of his eyes when he looks back at Rick.
"We bury the ones we love."