When I woke up it was so early the room was still dim, and I could feel Daryl's chest rising and falling beneath my cheek as he slept. I took it as a sign that I hadn't overstepped, though he may just have been too exhausted to care. I tried to relax into sleep again, but someone opened a door in the hallway, and Daryl shifted under me as he awoke. I didn't want him to feel awkward without the cover of darkness, so I kept my eyes closed as he slipped out of the bed and laid my head on the pillow.

I could hear him talking to Carol in the hall, who soon came in to check on me. She helped me to the bathroom, and then Hershel gave me the okay to move to my own cell for the rest of my recovery. I spent most of the day reading and holding the baby, who had finally been named Judith, or talking to Beth and Maggie. Maggie was clearly overwhelmed by guilt that she'd been right next door but unable to help so I told her about provoking the Governor intentionally, and that I'd rather it was me than her. She'd probably saved my life in the truck, by slowing the bleeding, and once we'd talked through everything and shed more than a few tears, I knew we'd get past it.

Carol brought me dinner again and let me know with a small smile that Daryl was on the first watch. I tried to sleep, but without the distractions of the day, my mind would go back to relive the moment when I killed the Governor. Who was I now? I'd already lost much of my identity when I was separated from my family and my old life, and now I felt I'd drifted even further from my old self. I was still lying awake when Daryl's shift ended and he appeared in my doorway. "Hey," I whispered.

"Why you still awake?" he grumbled. "Should be gettin' yer rest." I didn't know how to answer, but he shrugged off his vest and toed off his boots, and jerked his chin at me. "Move over," he whispered roughly, and I scooted myself against the wall so he could lie down.

"Yer thinkin' so loud I can hear it," he muttered eventually, interrupting another cycle of thoughts. "I was just . . . thinking about how I didn't think we should kill Randall," I said finally. "How I didn't believe in the death penalty, or that we ever should decide when someone else lives or dies, if we're good people. I used to write letters, go to protests . . . and then I just decided. And did it myself, more . . . more violently than I needed to. Because I wanted to. I needed –"

A ragged sob caught in my throat and Daryl rolled toward me, sliding his hands up to cradle the back of my head, and pulling me into the hollow of his neck and shoulder. He didn't try to stop me from crying or talk me out of feeling bad about it, just held me and let me sob. When I'd slowed to shuddering breaths, he finally spoke. "Yer still a good person," he said quietly. "Good people have ta do things to survive, but they think about it, like yer doin' now. It matters, even if ya had to do it. And ya did, you know. You protected Maggie, protected everyone here from whatever he woulda done. An I woulda killed him, if ya hadn't. Wish I could've." I could hear the guilt in his voice and hated it.

"I wouldn't have wanted you to," I said honestly. "I know you had to kill a few people just to get to me, and you don't need more to deal with." He shook his head, "I don' think it's as bad when y'ain't doin' it ta save yourself. Don' like it, but I woulda killed however many it took."

"For someone who doesn't talk much, you're pretty good at it," I said, lightening the mood. "And you're right, he would've hurt other people if one of us didn't kill him. I think I was just sheltered so much before, that I didn't really understand how hard the choice is, sometimes. Or that there's not even a choice. I mean I knew, I just didn't know." I could feel Daryl holding back a laugh, and I pinched his side. "Shush, you know what I mean."

"Fer someone who talks a lot, sometimes ya ain't very good at it," he rumbled, "especially on Vicodin, and when ya should be sleepin'." He wrapped his arms around me like the night before, and I realized that something had shifted between us as well, moving us to a new place where the rules had yet to be defined.

The next few weeks proved that to be true, though Daryl and I hadn't talked at all about what had changed. He slept with me every night, and when I was recovered enough to take watch shifts, we were almost always scheduled together. It was easy to talk to him when we were out there at night, eyes scanning the fields and woods for any movement. He didn't do much talking, but I ran ideas by him for building a sustainable life at the prison, and he made suggestions occasionally.

Every once in a while Daryl would share something about his past with me. Sometimes it was a funny story about Merle (which usually made me cringe internally) or a comment about his mom. He told me he'd gone back to Woodbury and found it deserted of people, and then had to put down Merle as a walker. He didn't look at me while he talked, but I slipped my hand into his and he gripped it tightly.

He told me that Merle had wanted to rob the group when we joined them at camp and that Daryl hadn't known what he was going to do. He didn't want to go along with it, but Merle was the only family he had, so he'd spent as much time away from camp as possible, trying to decide if he was going to stick with his brother or not. It was clear that he'd been carrying a lot of guilt about this for the past several months, and that with Merle's death came a sort of relief that Daryl felt conflicted about. He'd also gotten my knife and boots from Woodbury, which he handed me without comment, and I pushed away all thoughts of the room from which he'd retrieved them.

He showed me more constellations, though Sagittarius remained my favorite, and he eventually, after I bugged him enough, told me the legend of the famed archer who stood guard against the monsters, which I thought was quite apropos. I thought of those moments on the farm often and wondered what he'd been thinking about as we lay there. If I'd leaned over and kissed him, would he have kissed me back? Pushed me away? Pulled off my clothes and buried himself in me under the stars, the way I'd imagined in my tent later?

The others in our makeshift family understood that Daryl and I weren't exactly "together" in any capacity, but that we were also important to each other in a way that we hadn't really figured out yet. My physical and psychological recovery from the assault meant that nothing was going to happen right away, but as I steadily improved I thought about it more and more.

I had taken my wedding ring off after Woodbury when I realized that I wasn't the same person that had left Oregon for a backpacking retreat almost a year ago. I was sure that if I ever got home, my husband would try his best to get back the marriage we'd had, but I didn't think it would work. He couldn't understand what I'd been through, and the ways I had changed. I hoped that he had found someone to partner with, and to be another support for my kids but even if he hadn't, I knew I wasn't his wife anymore.

I often had nightmares about the Governor and would wake up shaking, or in the midst of a scream. Daryl never asked me about them, but would pull me closer to him, and trace soothing circles on my back until I calmed down and fell asleep. I think he had nightmares too, and would sometimes jerk suddenly awake after moving restlessly, but I'd lace my fingers through his as he slowed his breathing and it seemed to help.

Every day brought us slightly closer together, and I trusted Daryl more deeply than I ever had with anyone before. I'd been forced to entrust him with my life, back at the trailer, and then repeatedly while on the road, but it had grown into something more. I trusted him with myself now, everything I was, and he hadn't let me down each time I'd given him something more.