jigsaw

by victorionious

Rick's lost everything. The prison's gone, everyone in it is gone, save Carl and Michonne, and he's probably about to lose them too, if the guns pointed at their heads have anything to say about it. Having anything come back to him, right then, was the farthest thing from his mind. But there he was. Set during "A."

LETHOBENTHOS - the habit of forgetting how important someone is to you until you see them again in person

There was a gun to Carl's head, a gun to Michonne's head, a gun to his head, his daughter was probably dead, everyone he loved was probably dead – Rick hadn't had time to process any of it. Not a lick of it. Michonne finding them had been an act of a god he had long since stopped believing in, he didn't dare hope to find any of the others. There was no peace to be made with the loss of all those people at the prison, both those that were just becoming familiar and those that had been there since the beginning. There was no wall upon which he had carved their names into the stone – there were simply too many of them. He didn't have time, he didn't have space, he couldn't think of them, couldn't dwell on them.

Then Daryl walked into the clearing, and his heart stopped. There had been a sense of loss, but a general one, no specific person hurt worse than any others, short maybe of Judith, but he couldn't think about her if he wanted to take care of Carl. Seeing the man walk into the clearing, not in the greatest condition, but undeniably whole - it was just one more piece of the scattered puzzle that once made up his heart, falling into place.

But it didn't remove the gun from his or his family's heads. And then Daryl tried to take the fall for them, not realizing that the game of justice these fuckers played wasn't fair at all, and that undeniably whole turned into undeniably damaged, and then Carl was dragged away screaming, and then everything sort of tilted to the side, and it was just red, red, red, for a while, after that.

Rick didn't really come back to himself until Daryl handed him a washcloth, gently encouraging him to wipe the blood off his beard.

"You're my brother," he said, words shared easily, the feelings behind them firm and strong and a long time coming.