[A/N: Hey lovely people. Reviewers, as always, your feedback is awesome, and I really love that Asha's relationships with Michonne and 'ghost' Merle are being well received. This chapter, however, is all Daryl and Asha.

I really hope you enjoy it. ;-)]

Asha awkwardly climbed the ladder to the top level of the guard tower. Hershel had cleaned, stitched and bandaged her hand―scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth the entire time. One of the bones in her palm was definitely broken, and another probably fractured. Apparently she was damn lucky Seth hadn't severed any of the tendons in the back of her hand, though there was some damage to the tendons attached to her middle finger. Hershel had splinted her hand flat, bandaged it, and secured it in a sling so that it lay against her chest and the movement of her entire arm was restricted.

It made climbing challenging.

Step, step and then jump her good hand upwards.

Eventually she pushed through the open trapdoor and into the small room at the top. Night had fallen, but the moon was nearly full and the space was etched in tones of grey. Beyond the square outline of the door, Daryl was settled on the balcony, back against the wall and legs stretched out in front of him.

She went out and sank down beside him. He pulled the ring pull on a tin of creamed corn―no doubt one of the stash collected from Seth's apartment―and held it out to her without taking his eyes of the black treeline in the distance.

'Thanks.'

He grunted and handed her a fork. She gripped the tin between her knees as she ate.

Asha's eyes trailed over the prison as she scrapped the edges of the tin. There was only silence from the courtyard tonight, the place feeling stark and empty in the absence of the usual gathering of people. Asha could almost feel the grief rolling off the somber walls, and for the first time in a long time she was glad not to be inside.

'Ya ok?' Daryl asked as she put the tin down.

'Hmmm. Do you think it's just Karen and David?'

He chewed his bottom lip and then shrugged. 'We might be lucky.'

'Yeah. We might.'

She didn't feel it though. Couldn't trust to luck anymore.

'I meant are ya ok...after today?' Daryl said.

She turned to look at him. He was squinting at her slightly in the dark, bottom lip still folded into his mouth.

'No,' she snorted. 'No, not really. But it doesn't really matter does it? Everything else just keeps on going. Nash's gone.' She wanted to vomit. 'Just like Dad, Ren, Merle, the people who died here last night...and several million other people...Not that any of that makes it hurt less.' She looked at him for a long moment, his face was reduced to rough planes in the half light, but his eyes were still piercing. He nodded before looking back out into the night, and Asha was glad he didn't try to offer some sort of empty platitude.

'You never visit Merle,' she said softly, after a few minutes of silence.

He hadn't, apart from that first night when they'd buried him, he'd never gone near his brother's grave.

Daryl grunted. 'He ain't there. Sitting at the end of a damn mound of dirt don't change that.' He gave her a sidelong look. ''Sides, you visit him enough for both of us.'

She shrugged.

'What do ya talk to him about anyway?'

'Dunno. Everything. Searching for the Governor, how this place's changing, Nash...' Her voice broke. 'You.'

Daryl grunted. 'Reckon he hears?'

Asha snorted. 'I see him,' she laughed bitterly. 'I full on hallucinate seeing your brother―well, sometimes it's just his voice―but it's there. Plain as day.'

Daryl was looking at her askance.

'I know it's not him,' Asha said, shaking her head. 'The only afterlife that's real is the one moaning beyond the fence. I know it's all up here,' she tapped the side of her head, 'I know it's just some sort of coping mechanism, but….' she trailed off and was silent for a long minute.

'But what?' Daryl eventually prompted.

Asha looked down across the yard at the line of graves. 'I dunno. I just… I like visiting him. I like the quiet. People leave me alone when I'm down there―most of the time anyway. Merle was my friend, first one I had in a long time, and it means something to remember that... And your brother's worth remembering.'

Her lip trembled and she felt tears prick in the back of her eyes. She was so damn sick of her own tears. She dashed them away angrily before continuing.

'He would have walked through fire for you. You would have done the same for him―just like Nash and I would have done for each other. I― ' She exhaled forcibly, biting down hard on her bottom lip. 'It helps to remember that. Even if it wasn't enough...for either of them.' She hung her head. 'It feels real. I don't want to let that go.'

Daryl gave a small harrumph, before turning his attention back to the darkness. His dark hair hung forwards over his eyes and Asha found her eyes tracing the line of his shoulders, down to his arms, bare in the summer heat, following the dent of his shoulder muscle where it flowed down to his bicep.

Something, remember―otherwise you might just end up punishing yourself.

She moved over, shifting her body so it sat against Daryl's, and linking her arm through his. She saw his eyes widen for an instant, before she rested her head against his shoulder. He didn't flinch, but she could feel a certain tightness to the arm she was wrapped around. She waited, acting like it was nothing that she was pressed up against him, waited as his muscles gradually relaxed.

Then she lifted her head and looked at him, pausing til he turned his blue eyes to her.

'I have a suggestion,' she said.

He arched his brows.

She leant forwards, heart pounding, and pressed her lips to his, softly and mouth slightly open. She kept her eyes open to his reaction. His whole body stiffened, even in the half light she saw his eyes widen and the black suddenly bleed out over the blue. His lips didn't move against hers, but his eyes held hers―and then she felt his free hand, grip her shoulder and push her backwards, very gently and―she thought―somewhat reluctantly. Her lips tingled as they broke away from his.

'Stop,' he murmured, his breath sounding somewhat short. 'I ain't Merle.'

Asha's mouth quirked. 'Well obviously. I reckon he propositioned me more than any other person I've know, and I didn't know him all that long.' She arched a brow. 'I doubt he'd be pulling back.'

Whilst she was talking, Daryl had disentangled his other arm from hers and was now gripping both of her shoulders, but he hadn't pushed her further away. Asha tried to hold his eyes, but he looked out over the guardrail, breathing heavily. She could feel his fingers pressing into her arms.

'Well?'

'Huh?' He looked back at her and her throat tightened at the guarded expression on his face.

'What do you think of my suggestion?'

'Ya don't want me,' he said softly, a crease between his brows and a sudden downwards twist to his mouth.

'What?'

'Ya heard me.'

She frowned, mind working. Why the hell would he think that, after all they'd been through together. Then she jerked suddenly with realisation, pushing back from him in shock. 'You think I want Merle?'

Daryl looked away, but she could tell from the way his jaw rippled that she'd got that right.

'Daryl...' She swiped the side of her face with her good hand and shook her head. 'It was never like that with him. Your brother was my friend, and I miss him. And hell, if he'd lived, who knows, but that's not what happened.' She reached out with her good hand, gripping the front of his shirt and tugging. 'But I never felt about him the way I feel about you,' she whispered, stomach fluttering. His face was tight as his eyes latched on hers.

'I don't look at you and see him, I see…I see the person who risks his neck for our people and thinks nothing of it.' Her voice gained intensity as she spoke. 'I see the person who never asks for anything back in return, who gives everyone else strength by being around, who would walk through fire for his family, who gave me the best day I've had since the world fell apart.' She broke off, choking on the lump in her throat and fighting for a moment to get her voice under control. 'Who cared enough to ride for nearly an hour with a half starved, flea ridden cat in a backpack to bring him home for me.'

His face was unreadable, but she wanted to think that perhaps some of the tightness around his eyes had faded.

'Now, if you don't want me, that's one thing, but this isn't about Merle...' She left it hanging, searching his face, looking for something to change, anything to let her know he believed her, that what she said had made a difference.

That he did want her.

Nothing happened.

Daryl's face stayed set in the same carefully blank lines, eyes guarded. For a long minute she held his eyes, waiting, but then, as she felt a crushing tightness build in her chest she twisted away and pushed to her feet, heading for the ladder.

She struggled to breath, feeling sick to her stomach. Had she really read him all wrong? She knew he cared, but she was sure there was more to it, that the way he was with her was different to how he was with everyone else. But if that was the case, why hadn't he said anything? Why hadn't he...done something? She ground her teeth together to keep her bottom lip from trembling. Her stomach suddenly twisted sourly, after what she'd told him earlier that day, after what he'd seen her do, he probably thought she was a psychopath, or at least half way towards crazy. She raised a shaking hand to her face. God, she was such an idiot.

Daryl's hand closed around her wrist.

'Where ya goin?'

'Down. Out.' Away. 'Just need some air.'

She tugged her arm, but his grip was like a vice. The rough skin of his fingers seared a trail of heat around her wrist.

'Let go Daryl. It's fine, I get it. After today,' her mouth twisted, 'I wouldn't want to be too close to me either.'

His hand didn't budge.

'That ain't it Asha, and what ya said just before, 'bout me not wanting ya…'

Her eyes jerked to his, blue and piercing. He was chewing on his bottom lip again.

She waited, heart aching.

'...that ain't it either.'

Asha felt the blood pulsing through her body.

Daryl swallowed and his eyes roamed around the room. 'Ya just...ya don't want this, not really. Ya just grieving.'

His eyes found hers again, and this time she could read their tightness for defensiveness.

He still hadn't let go of her.

'Yeah I'm grieving,' she said softly. 'I'm tired, stressed and lonely too. And part of this is because I want something in my life to be good right now, and part of it's because, if i'm gonna die tomorrow I don't want it to be with regrets that I could have done something about.'

She shifted, stepping closer towards him so that the wrist he still held was between them. 'But none of that means I don't know what I'm doing or what I want.' She smiled at him. 'You think this is the first time I've thought about this? That in some sort of half crazed grief stricken state the idea just popped into my head and on the spur of the moment I decided to act on it?' Her smile widened. 'Really?'

Daryl shrugged awkwardly.

She shifted even closer, until the back of both her hands, the one in the sling and the one still held by Daryl, were pressed gently against his chest. She could feel him breathing

'I'm not a little girl Daryl. I know exactly what I'm suggesting. Tell me that you haven't thought about this before.' Her eyes flickered from his eyes to lips and back again―the black in his eyes had expanded almost all the way to the edge of the blue. She slowly leant towards him. 'Tell me you don't want this,' she murmured, lips bare inches from his, '...and I will stop.'

She hesitated for a moment, giving him a chance to move―but when he didn't, she closed the distance between them, pressing her lips to his again.

She felt through the backs of her hands the instant he stopped breathing, but he didn't move away, and then his lips relaxed and moved against hers. She smiled, closing her eyes, and pulling his bottom lip between hers and pressing her teeth against it gently. He groaned, low and deep in the back of his throat, and Asha felt the sound surge in her stomach and pull through her entire body. Daryl's hand slid up the back of her neck, the rough pad of his thumb scourging along the side of throat before his fingers tangled in her hair. He let go of her wrist with his other hand grasped her hip, pulling her tight against him.

She could feel him, hard, pressing up against her.

She broke away gasping.

His hand fisted in her hair, tilting her head back and his lips went to her throat, trailing fire down her skin. She moaned involuntarily. Suddenly Daryl's hand was gone from her hip wrapping underneath her, his other hand arm pressed between her shoulder blades as he picked her up. She gasped, wrapping her legs around his hips, as he backed her against the wall. His lips were still blazing fire across her neck, up her jaw, before finding her lips again and claiming them hungrily with his own. She met him, hunger for hunger, wrapping her good arm around his neck, fingers digging into his shoulder, pulling him closer―and then grunting in pain as he pressed against her injured hand.

He pulled back immediately, dark eyes almost pained as he found hers.

'Ya ok?' he asked, voice hoarse.

'Fine,' she breathed, good hand going to the knot on the sling above her shoulder. 'Fine, just help me get this off.'

He supported her gently as she put her feet back on the ground, craning her neck to try to see the knot she was dealing with.

'Nah Asha, ya hand... Ya need to keep that on.'

'The hand's bandaged, it's fine. And I was never gonna sleep in this bloody sling anyway.'

Daryl hesitated, and she could see his eyes clouding―but before he could move back she grabbed the front of his shirt, holding him to her.

'Don't,' she said. His eyes were still dark. She loosened her grip, trailing her hand slowly down his chest until she reached the end of his shirt, then she slipped her hand underneath, brushing her bare fingertips against the skin just above his waistband, feeling his body jerk as she did so. 'Don't for one second think we're stopping.'

Daryl's hand gripped the back of her neck for an instant and she burned at the intensity in his eyes, then both his hands went to the knot and in moments her arm was free of the sling.

She bent and straightened her elbow a few times and then quickly wrapped both arms around his neck.

'Now, where were we?' she murmured.

Daryl growled, mouth against her throat, dark hair brushing against her cheek. His arms tightened around her, lifting, and she looped her legs back around him. Instead of backing her against the wall he moved sideways and then knelt, lowering her gently down on the bedroll. Her back relaxed into the blankets and her legs loosened. He supported his weight above her, sliding a hand along the side of her face, down her neck, chest and then the side of her ribs to her hip, before slipping his hand under the material of her singlet and teasing it slowly upwards.

His fingers felt as though they were made of electricity, sending static charges dancing across her belly. Her breath quickened.

His lips traced her collarbone, sucking, teasing, grazing with just the barest hint of teeth―mouth moving downwards as his hand moved up, bunching the material of her singlet as he went. She tipped her head back against the blankets and moaned. 'Daryl...'

The pressure of his mouth and hand was suddenly gone, and she looked up to see him settled back on his haunches between her legs. Breathing hard his eyes searched hers as she propped herself up on her elbows, communicating clear as day that she could pull back, still stop this, if she wanted. She laughed, low and throaty that he was even asking, and grasped the bottom of her singlet, pulling it―somewhat awkwardly with her one hand―up and over her head, before dropping it on the ground. Then she settled back on her elbows, grinning, as Daryl's eyes slipped from her face, down across her exposed skin.

'You're getting to see an awful lot of this bra lately.'

'Hmmm...' He was chewing on his bottom lip as he shifted towards her, walking his weight forwards on his hands until he had a hand planted either side of her elbows and his mouth was hovering just above hers, breath tickling her face.

'You wanna see what I keep in it?'

'Hmmm...' His lips pressed against hers and she wrapped her arms and legs around him, dropping back to the bedroll and pulling him with her. There was something profoundly comforting in his weight being pressed against her body―but it wasn't enough she desperately wanted to feel his bare skin against hers.

She trailed her unbandaged hand down his back and then slipped it inside his shirt finding the ridges of his spine.

The strength in Daryl's body was suddenly as unyielding as steel and his lips broke away from hers, face tight. Eyes guarded, he held her gaze as she slowly moved her hand across his back. Her fingertips found a rough raised ridge marring the otherwise smooth skin and he jerked, jaw clenched, and looked away.

Asha's brows furrowed, as her fingers spread out, finding and lightly tracing the ridges all over his back, from waist to shoulder and covering the width of his back. For a moment she was unsure what she'd discovered, only knowing from Daryl's response that they were significant. Then suddenly she realised what was beneath her fingertips.

They're old scars.

Merle's comment about their father and Daryl's face outside the shack they'd found in the woods suddenly fell into context. She closed her eyes for an instant, swallowing hard, heart breaking for the children the Dixon brothers had been.

Her hand stilled and Daryl looked back at her, eyes raking hers, searching for something. His eyes were dark in the half light, but Asha drank them in, heart swelling at the strength and fragility of the man in front of her. 'Wow,' she breathed, 'your father really was a cunt.'

She brought her hand around to the side of his face, running the pad of her thumb across his forehead and cheekbone, swallowing the tightness in her throat and cherishing the microscopic feel of his face relaxing into her palm as his eyes closed. Her breath caught as she savoured the fact that he hadn't pulled away as soon as she'd trailed a finger across his back. She slid her hand around the back of his neck and pulled his face down to hers, trapping his lips. Then she reached for the end of his shirt to pull it over his head.

Daryl tensed.

'You don't have to hide anything from me Daryl,' she said quietly.

'Don't want ya damn pity.'

'Good. My pity is reserved for people who bitch and moan about their circumstances but never try to change them or rise above them. Besides,' she slid her hand up his arm and inside the shoulder of his shirt, so that her fingertips reached the side of his neck. 'I have this image in my head of how this part of you looks,' she trapped her tongue between her teeth as she dragged her fingertips slowly along the muscles from his neck out to his shoulder, 'when I'm wrapped entirely around you and you're above me.'

Daryl's breath hissed in his throat and she found his eyes, blazing at her.

She could hear how husky her own voice was as she continued. 'And I want to see if the reality looks, and tastes, as good as it does in my head.'

She pulled her weight up, trailing her tongue along his neck before biting him gently through his shirt in the muscle above his collar bone.

She could feel him breathing raggedly, and then he growled, a sound of desperation and hunger that surged through her blood and left her gasping herself. Daryl tore himself away from her, reaching behind his shoulders and pulling his shirt over his head, breathing heavily.

Asha smirked, running her eyes appreciatively over the well defined muscles in his bare chest and broad shoulders, as she felt heat tug low in her abdomen in response. She hooked her ankles behind his lower back and pulled him towards her.

The sensation of his bare skin against her stomach, her breasts, had her skin covered in goosebumps. She trembled, writhing against him and moaning involuntarily.

'Christ woman,' his voice was rough in her ear, 'ya keep makin' those sounds and this is gonna be over faster than either of us want.'

He suddenly stopped, jaw rippling and eyes narrowed as he backed up.

'What?' Asha's senses were all blurry, but she was getting really sick of all this backing up that Daryl was doing.

'I...ah, ain't got any...ah...'

She looked at him blankly, trying to follow what he was saying, but really just feeling her body aching in the absence of the pressure of his body. Eventually his words sank in.

'Oh...right.' She collapsed back on the bedroll. She hadn't actually thought about that. Her whole body was thrumming with need. That just wasn't going to cut it, and from the way Daryl was breathing, he was right there with her. For a moment she was seriously tempted to tell him not to worry about it. After all, they could both be dead tomorrow.

Yeah, or you could end up like Lori.

Damn it.

Then she suddenly pushed back to her elbows. 'Daryl, where are we?'

His brows furrowed. 'What?'

'Where are we?'

'Guard tower.'

'Right.' She rolled over and started searching through the blankets and miscellaneous belongings piled against the wall. 'And Glenn and Maggie have pretty much claimed this space right?'

'Yeah.'

'So don't tell me they didn't have a standing order with you to pick up condoms on supply runs, because I sure as hell know they did with me and Michonne. There's gotta be a box up here somewhere.'

She heard Daryl join the search behind her.

'Asha,' he said after a moment.

She glanced over her shoulder. He was holding up a square foil packet between two fingers, box discarded near his knee.

'Yeah?'

He nodded, eyes heating as they trailed across her in the half light. 'Yeah.'

She grinned, settling on her back on the bedroll and beckoning with her good hand for him to come back between her legs.

[A/N: I know some of you have been waiting for this chapter for a while - so would love to hear your thoughts!]