Just a quick one shot of what I think Daryl was thinking at the end of "Consumed". I hope you enjoy it.
FYI: I do not own The Walking Dead
His world stopped in that one instant. His body, his mind, frozen, unable to process what had happened right in front of him. Unable to even breathe. Watching, as the tangle of arms and legs fly through the air…hitting the ground. Then…stillness.
A body wrenching fear possessed him. The same fear that Daryl remembers surging through him as he was being dragged to that steel trough in Terminus. The fear that his life was ending. Now, watching strangers grab her limp body, he knows he will die without her. He needs to get to her, to tell her, touch her one more time….
Suddenly he is all movement, trying to push towards her, fighting. He feels something holding him back, pulling him as he tries to get to her. He doesn't understand the words that are being said to him. Not until he hears what he NEEDS to hear.
"We can get her back", are the words that break through the fog and reach him. As he tries to catch his breath, he begins to think. "What's it gonna take?" he asks, barely able to get the words out. But he knows the answer before he asks. He needs to get to Rick. He needs help.
He doesn't allow himself to think at all until he is driving out of Atlanta. Then the fear hits him again like a brick wall. This was his fault. He had brought her there. Put her in danger. The woman he loved could very well die before he could ever see her face again. Before he could tell her all the things he knew he needed her to know.
As the kid sitting in the passenger seat quietly watches, tears Daryl didn't know he had been holding back slowly fall down his cheeks, as his mind repeats the one word that has become his reason from continuing to live this tortured life…..Carol.