Because I need some happy, and this right here? Is the kind of happy I wish this soul-crushing show would allow us to have from time to time.

Feel free to join me in my happy little bubble of denial right here.

Mistakes are all mine.

xxxxx

"Hey, Man. Can you not?"

Daryl paused long enough in his relentless pacing to look in his companion's direction. Bringing his thumbnail to his mouth, he soon resumed the nervous movement, his strides stuttering here and there with each stifled scream, each pained grunt that reached their ears.

"That," Glenn blew out an anxious breath. Pushing up from his squatted position outside of the Hilltop leader's bedroom, he groaned, pushed his fingers through his air. "That's starting to get annoying. Please stop."

Daryl honored the request, stopping right in place. His grimy fingers started to fidget with the fancy curtains that shaded the high windows, twisting them round and round before letting them go. When Glenn sighed, he stopped that, too, gripping the window sill and staring out at the blue sky day, the various members of the small community milling about like nothing was out of the ordinary, and maybe it weren't. To them.

"I don't get it."

"Don't get what?" The question was more gravel-laced than usual, but Glenn didn't pay it no mind, and Daryl was grateful.

Glenn joined him at the window, his worried eyes brightening upon sight of Enid in the distance, and he spared Daryl a sideways glance. "That's my wife in there with Dr. Carson. Not yours. Well, yours too, kind of, but you know what I mean."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Either way Daryl wasn't sure.

"I'm supposed to be the worried one."

"You ain't?" Glenn grinned at him then, and he looked so much like the boy he'd first met at the Quarry, the boy that had burned away at the Farm that Daryl felt something in himself ease.

"Scared shitless. But we're still here. After everything, you know."

"Could have been different."

"Could have," Glenn agreed. "If you hadn't listened to me, come back to Alexandria…"

"Stopped me from leaving my home."

They turned at the sound of the familiar voice, the healthy wail that echoed then in the grand old house, and Carol smiled at them both.

"Maggie?"

"Why don't you go see for yourself? Go give that little boy of yours a kiss for me?"

Joy seemed to light Glenn up from the inside out, and the grin from earlier paled in comparison to the one that bloomed in wake of the welcome news. Daryl found himself breathing deeper and more even than he had since this whole thing started, and his lips curled in his own version of a smile.

"A son. Hear that, Daryl?"

Carol laughed at the clumsy, excited kiss he pressed to her temple, the way he dashed into that bedroom like a kid being granted permission to open his Christmas presents, and her tired blue eyes found him, as they always had. "A beautiful, healthy little boy."

Daryl held out his hand. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." She took his hand, laced their fingers together, leaned into him when he brought their joined hands to his mouth. His heart thumped steadily beneath her ear, a comfort she'd come to relish in the last few months, and his strong arm came around her, supporting her much like he had when all had seemed lost, when she had foolishly thought loving her family, loving him wasn't worth the cost. She'd been so wrong, but he hadn't told her so. He'd shown her, just by being there. Without judgment, without expectation. Simply being there and helping her put the pieces of her broken heart back together in her own time, healing and learning to really live.

"You okay?"

Her hand cradled his jaw, and her kiss found the corner of his concerned mouth before she pulled back to smile at him, teary and bright and full of love. "Better than okay."

"You don't gotta be."

"I'm perfect. And so is that little boy in there."

"A boy," Daryl repeated in wonder. "The old man would be proud."

"So would Beth."

"She would."

The moment of reflection stretched between them, filled the quiet spaces, but it wasn't one of sadness. Not anymore. Never. Because they had lived and they had loved, and all that pain was filled with beauty, too, and it'd taken months for her to get there, but Carol didn't regret a single moment. Squeezing his hand, she pressed another kiss, lingering and light, to his lips. "C'mon, Pookie. Let me introduce you two."

xxxxx

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