AN: This little story was brought about by the Tumblr prompt that wanted Carol and Daryl as soulmates. I think that they very easily fall into that category, but I also think the image of it has been done a good deal. This was my attempt to do something at least a little different, though it's not greatly original by any means. It's just a little something for your entertainment value.
Still, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Many years hung between the three pairs of them. Long years bordered them on either side.
The first pair of them stood straighter, prouder because they were unaware of all the things that would happen in their lives to strip them of that first false pride of youth. At fifteen, they had their lives ahead of them—long lives during which neither of them would ever grow old. They were immortal. Their dreams were more than dreams. They were promises for lives that would be perfect. Lives that would be everything they could be and more.
At fifteen? His body and back were strong. His eyes were clear. His life had been hard, but the hardship only brought him hope that there was something better to come. Life had nowhere to go but up. He had come from nothing. He was no one. But with her? He was someone. And he would become so much more.
At fifteen? She was fresh-faced and a shameless dreamer. Her smile was bright. Her eyes were brighter. Every day was filled with an enthusiasm that anyone around her would have loved to bottle for just a taste of the daily joy she experienced just in living life. She was in love and she could barely see beyond the stars that filled her eyes. For her? He was everything. Their life together would be unlike any fairy tale she'd ever seen. It would be better. A thousand times better. A million.
But life, it seemed, had other plans for them, as life often did.
His duty to his family took him away. It took him across state lines. It took him a different place and a different world entirely. It made him forget her and, in time, she forgot him too.
Her need to leave her parents' home—to marry and to mother—changed her dreams and redirected her toward another who was there and ready to marry her.
Twenty five years fell between them.
Twenty five hard years drove a rift between their fifteen year old selves and their forty year old selves that was as great as the continental divide. Staring back? They could hardly recognize their own countenances in old photographs. They certainly couldn't recognize one another.
But life brought them back together, though both twenty five years older and heavier with the life-knowledge of those years apart.
Life had a way of doing that.
At forty? He was bitter. He was angry even if he wasn't sure at who. He was furious, even though he seldom knew why. Life had taken everything from him, and he ignored what it left. He ignored what life returned. He was blind to any good fortune. All he could see was what he'd lost, and never what he might have found as he'd dragged his feet along the rocky road of life during those long years.
His back wasn't as strong now, but he was harder. He was impenetrable. He'd hadn't felt loved in twenty five years and he walled himself up away from the possibility of love in the present. He didn't accept her because he wouldn't let her in. He couldn't let her in because he was afraid of her.
He was immortal, but it was an immortality filled only with hurt, sadness, loneliness, and loss. He was powerless to change it because he refused to change it.
At forty? She was broken. She was a shell of her former self. The light in her eyes had been dimmed by the hatred of the man that she'd trusted to love her. The smile that had once been so bright to anyone who saw it was rarely taken out and dusted off. There was little to smile about. Even the good in her life felt constantly shadowed by her knowledge that nothing good was certain. Nothing good could be trusted. It wasn't permanent. It was better not to let her guard down.
She might have loved him, but she was afraid to love him. She feared him because of his anger. She shied away from it because she knew that anger could bubble and become something dangerous—especially to her.
She had a daughter to protect, and that was more important to her than even the greatest possibility of rekindling flames from still-burning embers. If he couldn't be rehabilitated from his current self and become, again, the man that she'd once known him to be, she couldn't take the chance that he would be bad for the girl.
She'd rather live the long life that lay before her alone—with her daughter, only, to keep her company while she remained with her—than to risk repetition of the pain and suffering that she'd only barely survived, coming through it only a shadow of what she'd once been.
So they went their separate ways, having only met briefly again at a fork in the road. Each of them took the path that belonged to them, but couldn't travel together.
Life took them in different directions. Life had a way of doing that.
Their paths twisted and turned and doubled back on themselves many times. He married. She remarried. He divorced. She had other children. He lost the only member left of his clan—their branch of the family name doomed to go extinct if ever his life should draw to an end. She watched her daughter walk the aisle. He worked long hours and lost himself in a career that—though cruel to his body—was kind to his spirit. She nuzzled and rocked her grandchildren and told them fairy tales that she'd once believed to be true. He travelled, alone, with a mutt as a faithful companion and saw the Grand Canyon. She laughed and she cried and she found herself again—full bodied and not the once-shadow she'd been—even if she was almost wholly unrecognizable to the fifteen year old inside of her. He learned again to smile and to laugh. He learned that he was not immortal and that life was not as cruel as he'd believed it to be.
And for forty five long years, life marched on leaving its tracks across their souls and across their faces.
Life had a way of doing that.
At eighty five? His sight was such that he saw mostly shadows. They danced in front of his vision and the game began to tell the fact from the fantasy. People danced in his memories that weren't even alive. He saw faces and he heard voices, as clear as if he could feel them were he to reach out and touch them, that belonged to people who were merely ghosts.
But their presence still comforted him. It was only the good that he seemed to draw to memory, and he was pleased to see them. He was pleased to hear them.
But one ghost, above all, brightened his days. She stayed by his side at all times. When he touched her, he could feel her—soft and sweet and wholly his. She kissed him gently and nuzzled near him. She smelled like a summer day—like jasmine and honeysuckle. She was so soft, and so sweet, and God how he'd missed her.
Life must be good, for it had seen fit to return her to him.
At eight five? Her memory was better than they thought it was. In the residence that she called home, surrounded by others who were lost to their own worlds, they thought that she was mad. She told stories about fairy tales come true. She told stories about princes and princesses long separated by dragons and witches and horrible curses—but they found their way together again. They thought she was mad because she insisted, to everyone who asked to hear her tales, that they were true.
Life made fairy tales come true, even if it took its sweet time. Life had a way of doing that.
At eighty five, she'd found him. Like a sweet surprise on Christmas morning to her inner child—the inner fifteen year old that had cheered and clapped with an enthusiasm unbecoming of her eighty five year old shell—he had appeared. He was there, bent and tired. His hair was white, to match her own, and his eyes were clouded but still beautiful blue to her mind's eye.
She'd requested, and they'd granted, for they were old and had no plans to frown at, that they be allowed to stay together—just like best friends. And together they remained, always.
They went to the garden and she told him about the flowers there—flowers he said he saw in her hair, flowers he said withered because they were ashamed that they couldn't compare with her. They sat on the patios together, hands clasped tight around knobby knuckles, and listened to the rain—rain she said sounded like him drumming out a rhythm on his car dash on a Friday night. Rain he said was cool against his face like her lips when she showered him with appreciation and love.
At night, tucked away in their separate beds by staff that didn't know the years that lie between the pairs of them, they waited for the lights to go down and the silence to be complete. And then she came to him and slid in close to him.
He sought her out, her voice reminding him of who she was—and who she'd been—and she closed her eyes to his the soft pads of his fingers as he caressed her cheek and found her lips.
Every night she put him to bed with a kiss. And every night she woke him with one.
They were not immortal. Their lights grew dimmer each day. Their roads grew shorter. Their lives grew closer to their ends.
But together, now, they walked the road—hand in hand—just like they'd always known that it would come to pass. It was just like they'd dreamed it would be, back when all the years that lie between them were stripped away, and they dreamed their dreams of immortal life.
Life had brought them together many times, finally bringing them together for good so that they could be complete. Together they had started their journey and together they would finish it—the hardness of the middle was nothing but padding to their stories and something to chat about to fill the idle hours spent together.
They were complete. And life would let them go that way. Together, just as they were meant to be.
Life had a way of doing that.