He stopped briefly at the foot of the stairs to load his crossbow and wait for her to catch up before setting out again down the hallway along the row of cells on the ground floor. All the privacy curtains were drawn and not a single candle was burning anywhere. It seemed that, inside the prison, nobody except them was awake at this hour. Looking up at the windows set high into the wall, she watched the clouds racing past, alternately covering and revealing the moon. With the sun going down so early, the high winds, and the approaching winter, whoever was out on watch surely wasn't having an easy time of it. She shivered.
"Want me to get somethin' warm to wear from your place?" he asked with a sidelong glance at her. "Weren't exactly prepared for comin' down here and wanderin' your ass off."
"That's so kind of you, Daryl, but I'm fine, thank you. I was just thinking of the people who are out on watch in this weather."
He clucked softly with his tongue. "Always thinkin' of everybody else", he grumbled. "Hell, half the people you do shit for probably don't even thank you for it."
"Those that matter do. Always." His eyes lingered on her face for a moment, taking in the way her eyes shone and the corners of her mouth curled upward as she spoke, and he wondered silently about who she meant. Quietly opening and closing the gate to the warden's room, moving like a wraith again now that he had calmed down, he stepped through into it with her next to him. They entered the hallway leading to the communal areas - kitchen, showers, rec room, and the access hallways to the generator room and the stairs leading down to the tombs. It was his turn to shiver as he remembered her getting trapped down there with a bloated walker blocking the door of the cell that she'd fled into in the isolation ward. His chest tightened with the memory of believing her dead and turned, lost to him forever.
Her eyes had strayed toward that hallway as well, and when she noticed him tensing up beside her, she gently brushed the back of his hand with hers, ever so slightly, ever so briefly, bringing him back from the bad places his mind was taking him to. "I will be forever grateful to you for finding me", she whispered. "I could never have pushed that creature out of the way with that heavy door."
"'s what friends are for, ain't it?" he asked, his voice rough with emotion.
They had reached the kitchen and she motioned for him to sit at one of the tables while she walked to the single refrigerator they'd hooked up once they'd gotten the generators going. Obviously, as they didn't want to draw the wrong kind of attention, they were skimpy on the light and on noise of all kinds, but they used this one appliance for food that would spoil otherwise - as rabbit and squirrel stew definitely would. From the corner of her eye she saw him raise his right foot off the ground for a moment with a look of relief on his face as he sat down before the stony mask slipped back into place and he became the hardened, seasoned hunter and warrior again, setting his bow on the ground and leaning the stock against his leg. She got the bowl that she'd put aside for him, asking: "Do you want me to heat it for you? It'll only take a minute."
"Naw, I'd eat it raw", he mumbled as she sat down opposite him, placing the bowl and a slice of stale bread on the table between them. "Haven't had a decent meal the whole day. Had half a barbecued rabbit between the two of us before we set out on our way back, nothin' ever since." He started wolfing down the stew, scooping it onto the spoon with the bread, finishing it off in less than two minutes. Toward the end, while he was already wiping and licking the bowl clean with the last of the bread, his fingers, and then his tongue, he slowed down as he realized that there would be nothing to distract his attention from their conversation once he was done with this. Never a coward, though, he finished cleaning the bowl and set it back on the table, glancing at her folded hands and then at the floor. "That was real good", he mumbled awkwardly. "You cooked, or it would've tasted like shit."
She blushed in the moonlight briefly illuminating her face, and he could feel his pulse speeding up again. "There wouldn't have been anything but the first of Rick's carrots and potatoes without you," she said softly. "You take such good care of these people, Daryl."
"Don't care about 'em all, jus' about a handful", he all but growled. "They yelled for Merle to kill me in that arena of theirs, remember? My own brother!"
"I'm so glad you got out of there, and returned with Merle", she whispered, tears welling in her eyes. "If they had killed you there, for fun ... It would have ... That would have been as bad ..." She faltered, but he knew.
"No way", he protested. "She was your little girl. I'm a piece of shit, that don't compare."
"Oh, you're not, and it does", she breathed. "You're so much more than a friend to me, and you will never know how happy your letter has made me." She took it out of her pocket once again and placed it on the table between them, neatly in the middle, and he looked at the precise right angles he'd folded.
"You're not mad at me?" he asked again, his voice betraying his disbelief.
"Who could be mad at you for this? It's not as if you'd written anything offensive."
"But ..." He fidgeted, searching for the right words. Shit, he was no good at this at all. "You could do so much better", he finally managed. "Get yourself a decent guy that knows how to treat a woman right. Not a guy like me who don't know nothin'."
"Oh Daryl, you know everything that counts. You're still every bit as good as them, you know?"
He flinched, thinking back to the farm, to that night, to her leaning over him and kissing his temple, next to the bullet graze. To himself snapping at her for her trouble, because getting angry and yelling and fighting had been the only way he'd known how to react back then. Remembering himself getting into her face when she'd sought him out at his lonely campsite after her girl had shambled out of that horrible barn, along with half of Hershel's family, his neighbors and friends. Remembering her consoling him, when it was her who had lost so much.
"'m sure glad you're not mad at me", he finally managed to say. "Losing you as a friend would've been a bitch. Didn't want ta ruin what we had, so I didn't give it to ya, but when that walker grabbed me ... Every day out there could be my last, and when I thought this was it for me ... I knew I wanted you ta have it, and know ... With me still there, not just ... when I'm gone."
"You were gone once, and I wish I'd had it then", she said wistfully, and he cast his eyes down again, unable even to look at his own large, tanned, calloused hands on the table, so unlike her small, white, soft ones still resting on the other side. "But of course you didn't have a choice. You'd believed Merle dead, and then you found him again. He helped save your life in Woodbury. But with everyone angry at him for the terrible things he'd done there, and unwilling to compromise, for your sake ... He was the only family you had left, and they forced you to choose. They shouldn't have done that to you."
He was struck speechless. Of course, he wasn't eloquent to begin with, in the sense of being good at talking to people and making them understand and follow his line of thinking, especially where his feelings were concerned. But this statement of hers had him completely mindblown. She had given voice to what he'd felt at the time, but could never have put into words. He had understood not wanting Merle with them. Not after what his brother had done, and especially not with the way Glenn felt about Maggie. He could get that. Hell, he would have been the same had their positions been reversed.
But Rick not stepping in to negotiate a compromise, such as giving Merle a cell in a different cell block and keeping him separate from the group, yet still accessible for Daryl, had been like a punch to the gut. He'd felt that he was getting kicked out along with his brother in return for his dedication to the group. After risking his life for every single one of them countless times, after never having asked for anything, that was what he'd gotten. He was surprised to find that the memory still stung after all this time. His vision was blurring. He swiped at his eyes and was surprised when his shaking hand came away wet.
Carol rose from her chair, picked up his clean bowl and carried it over to the sink to give him time to compose himself again. Merles death such a short time after Daryl had been reunited with him had been a terrible blow for the younger Dixon brother, even more so because the Governor had forced him to put his own brother down after he'd deliberately allowed him to turn. She had tried to pick up the pieces after Daryl had returned with Merle's body and buried him, not accepting any help from them, but it had been hard and had taken a long time. From her point of view, he wasn't quite done with his grieving yet, so she tried to give him some space whenever it seemed like he was going back there. Attempting to console him, she knew, would have him out there again in a heartbeat, hunting for the rest of the night
Instead, she turned pouring water into the sink, rinsing and cleaning the bowl and then drying it and putting it away again into a big affair until she saw him sitting up straighter from the corner of her eye. This was her cue for returning to the table and sitting back down. Slowly, giving him time to recognize she was reaching for him and withdraw if he needed to, she slid her hands across the table and grasped his hands in hers, cradling them. He remembered her holding his left hand like that after he'd told her about the walker grabbing it. His stomach did something that felt funny, and his heart started thundering in his chest again. What was it about her that had him react to her touch like that?
"Rick never told me everything that happened at Woodbury and before you left with Merle", she said softly. "Sometimes, it seems, the good Deputy still likes playing his cards close to his chest and I feel he counts on us not talking about this. But I do know you'd never have left without saying good-bye if your hand hadn't been forced - by Glenn, Maggie, Rick, any or all of them. And I do know that you're too good a man to get rejected like that. Rick did tell me you'd said that I'd understand - and I did, and still do. This doesn't stand between us. And neither does Sophia."
She felt his hands clenching in hers, but didn't let him escape her hold. "Please", she whispered, making it about herself so he could allow himself to give in. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to say this again." Patient as always, she waited until she felt his hands relax once more before going on. "I know you're still blaming yourself for not finding her before she was bitten, and that this is one reason why you feel that you're worthless." Her heart ached when his shoulders slumped as if the weight on them was too much to carry. But it was true, she didn't know if she'd ever be able to address this again, so she continued. "The truth is that you went out to look for her every day until you got hurt. You did all you could. All of your time on that farm was dedicated to finding her and giving her back to me. It's why I fell in love with you."
He was stunned, and it was obvious. His hands went limp in hers, his jaw went slack and he actually stared at her, meeting her eyes. "You ...", he began, but he ran out of words. There was too much he needed to say, all of it at once, and he just didn't have any words left.
"Thank you so much for telling me - and with you still here, so we can enjoy being together", she went on, smiling at him. "You're the second most precious person in my life, Daryl, and you've made me so happy. Everyone always thinks I'm this weak, sad woman, but you don't." She hesitated briefly before continuing. "You understand when I'm sad and why, and you listen when I need to talk, and you're always there for me. I value your friendship so much because you don't make friends lightly - and this", she let go of his hands and instead held up his letter, holding it ever so carefully because it meant so much to her, as much as it had to him, "has made it so special. I hope I won't -"
"You won't", he interrupted her, sounding out of breath. "How could you. You'd never do anything ... I know that. None a them" - with a flick of his head in the direction of their cell block - "can't hold a candle to ya." For a brief moment, the kitchen went completely dark as the clouds covered the moon again. When it came back out, he was standing, with his bow on his back. She hadn't heard a sound, not even of the chair being pushed away from the table, and it brought back home to her how deadly he could be if he so chose. "But I gotta warn ya, I ain't the romantic type. No holdin' hands or kissin' or stuff in front of an audience. We ain't a damn show."
She beamed at him, rising herself and following him as he started back to their cell block. "I'd figured as much, but thanks for the warning."