A/N: Whoa! Something that ISN'T Downton Abbey! Holy Crap - anyway, this is my first time writing Walking Dead anything, so please be kind. This is for peaceloveunityrespectcalamit y on tumblr, who prompted me with a "fluffy smut fic", which I decided to turn into an actual, non one-shot fic. So this is the extremely short preface.
Stay tuned for more Caryl.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead in any part. SPOILERS up to episode 3.08.
Where Have You Been
Carol's arms tightened around Daryl's neck as she pulled him close.
It felt like a dream.
Sunlight blared down on them out in the courtyard, walkers hissing and growling just beyond the fence that had admitted the Dixon brothers only moments before. Merle had come through with guns on him at once, Rick, Carl, and Hershall all aiming some sort of firearm at his head. He had both arms up, Carl's eyes on the metal attachment that now covered Merle's right hand.
Carol on the other hand, had dropped her knife the moment she saw Daryl's face at the fence. A strangled sob escaped her lips, and she choked back tears as she flung herself at the man who looked at her with a weary face.
Relief washed over the older woman as she felt Daryl's warm, rough skin beneath her bare arms. She didn't care that she was making a scene - and she full well expected the man in her arms to recoil at the sudden touch. When he didn't, she didn't think to ask why, she merely tightened her arms around his neck and shoulders, breathing in the smell. His smell. The smell of blood, of dirt, and of the forest.
Carol lost all sense of time there as she held Daryl close to her, feeling his breathing, hearing her own sobs that began - completely unintentionally, that shook her small shoulders as her chest exploded with the realization that Daryl had come back.
He was back.
Stay safe. He said to her - she had upheld her part of the bargain. And the moment she saw Rick come back with Michonne, and Maggie and Glenn - without Daryl - something inside her broke.
Her calm had been damaged, shattered, and when the looks of pity had been exchanged, and Maggie and Glenn's injuries seen to, Rick came to her and told her that Daryl had been captured in Woodbury.
Rage exploded within her in that moment, at Rick, for not staying to free him, and at Daryl for not adhering to his own advice. And for almost a week, she was forced to keep a straight face, and happy as she was that Hershall and Beth were reunited with their family, she felt as though the only, small piece of family she had left was now lost.
But all of that was forgiven the instant she saw him sauntering up to the gate, burying his arrows inside the skulls of the dead as they went.
And here she was, with her arms thrown around him, sobbing into his shoulder unabashedly, unable to keep the collected persona that she had developed after years of an abusive marriage.
To her surprise, after what seemed like an eternity of nothing but silence and breathing - combined with the tension of the group around them, Carol felt a strong arm wrap around her waist. Gingerly at first, and then tightening, awkwardly.
Finally, he spoke, his voice hoarse. "Steady on, woman."
Carol let out a sob that sounded more like laughter than anything, and she smiled widely as she finally let him go. Stepping back, he let go of her waist and she saw his face for the first time.
"You sure took your sweet time comin' back." She retorted after a moment, smiling into his unreadable expression.
He looked at her with those blue eyes that lit something, a spark in her chest, and another smile made its way back to her lips. If she had been looking, she might had seen the slight twitch of his lips, a twitch that spelled out the beginnings of a smile, in his own way.
"Got held up." He said simply as she stepped aside to make room for him to walk ahead.
And just like that, the group of them - Rick, Carl, Carol, Hershall, and the Dixon brothers, all walked back into the prison that had become their home, their safe place.
Carol watched the muscles in Daryl's back and shoulders shift as he walked, crossbow in hand, and she realized that her whole existence had just spun to life again.