A.N: I'm off script again and adding some depth - as always I'd love to know what you think.
Beyond exhausted but unable to sleep, Daryl found himself pacing the yard and watching the perimeter in the small hours of the morning. Even though he knew that she was safe, that she was inside sleeping, still breathing, still alive, every time he closed his eyes he saw blood splattered across her skin. The solution to his restless mind had always been to keep moving, burning off the excess energy until he physically couldn't keep moving, and so it was that he found himself repeating a familiar pattern. Making himself a track, he moved along the fence, checking the entrances to the yard and then looping back by the cell block entrance to the spot where he had started, the spot where Axel had died.
Stopping, he looked down at the ground, examining the blood stains on the concrete in the moonlight. He chewed his thumbnail, another old habit that he found impossible to break, and exhaled a sigh. Had Axel not been standing at her side when the shooting started, Carol would have been dead when he came back. Had he not left the group with his brother, would he have stood in the convicts place? So many instances where things could have ended in a completely different way. Coincidence or fate? Who knew.
"He was telling me about his brother when the shooting started." Daryl whirled around, bow raised before his brain registered the voice that had spoken to him. Nobody could sneak up on him, his trackers instincts were too sharp for most of the group to get within fifty feet without him knowing, but Carol had learned a lot from him during the winter. She was the only one who could get close without him knowing, the only one who could breach his defences without sending him into a full on panic. She was the only one he had ever wanted to let close to him.
"Jesus Woman!" he exclaimed, wondering if his heart was actually going to burst out of his chest like a cartoon character. "Coulda shot ya!"
If his outburst surprised her, it didn't show in her face, proof positive that she was about as used to his outbursts as anyone could get. Carol wrapped her arms around herself, turning her face up toward the stars as she suppressed a shiver. The silence was comfortable for a moment before she continued. "I was hurt that you left," she didn't look at him as she spoke. He couldn't look away.
He hadn't seen her reaction when she realised that he wasn't coming home after the Woodbury raid, nor had he seen the stricken expression or heard the tone of her voice as she cried out and had to be comforted by Rick. He hadn't witnessed her emotions but he could imagine their intensity if they had been anything like his own. "At first I thought that it was selfish but then I remembered how you were back at the quarry when you thought Merle was dead and I was glad that you had a second chance. Not many of us get those."
"I shoulda bin here when the Governor attacked," he exclaimed, shifting his weight from foot to foot, feeling awkward about the admission. His own emotions were a mystery to him, uncharted territory, anger being the only one he ever gave any airtime. Daryl didn't know a damn thing about love, wasn't even sure that he believed in it, but he believed in her and in whatever it was that she made him feel. Whatever it was, he craved it, the warmth that suffused his chest when she was close, the sparks that seemed to shoot through his system when she smiled at him, the way his heart trip hammered when she spoke, like this tiny woman in front of him had the remote control to everything he saw, thought and felt, the off switch to his anger and the ability to make him see himself differently. He craved her like he craved his next breath.
"I'm glad you weren't," she told him. When she met his gaze again, he was shocked at what he saw there, such pain, such hope. "If you'd been here, you would have been standing at my side. Could have been you Daryl," she explained. "You wanna know what hurts me the most? When I was lying here, waiting for one of those rounds to go right through him and into me, I was glad it was him because you were still out there somewhere. I could use him as a shield because he wasn't you..."
A tear slid over her cheek as she raised her face to the sky again, fighting for control. Daryl waged his own battle, understanding that for a woman like Carol the thoughts she'd had in those moments were toxic and she had probably been struggling under their weight since Axel's death. This was the thread she had hung by when he saw her in the cell block after the attack, this was the reason she'd been so damn quiet. "Don't make you a bad person," he said softly. "Weren't nothin' you could do to save him."
"What kind of person thinks like that?" she asked him, tears streaking down her cheeks, leaving silver trails in their wake. "Who looks into the face of a dead friend, uses him to save herself and thanks God that it wasn't someone else standing in his place?"
Did she even know what she was saying? For a moment he watched her, resplendent in her anguish, the moonlight highlighting her delicate bone structure and the soft angles of her face. He moved toward her, slinging his bow over his shoulder, ignoring the voice inside that told him not to overstep the boundaries, and pulled her to him. "He's gonna pay for what he did here," he assured her, barely recognising the low, threatening growl as his own voice. "I swear it on my Mama." The instant he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, she turned into him, burying her face into his chest, her tears coming thick and fast.
It wasn't as bad as he'd expected. Having never been a fan of body contact he had half expected to be completely overwhelmed by her presence, even though he had instigated this moment. He was overwhelmed by her, but not in the way he had anticipated. Rather than feeling panicked by her proximity, he found himself appreciating the way her body fit against his own, her head against his shoulder, breasts against his chest, soft planes against hard edges, perfection. He held her for what seemed like hours, letting her cry herself out, rubbing the warmth back into her arms to help ward off the chill of the night air.
Sunrise found them sitting, side by side,against the wall of the cell block, Daryl's arm slung around her shoulders while one of hers wrapped around his waist. Neither of them had spoken in a while but that was okay, neither of them felt the need for words. Eventually she shifted against him, stretching slightly and turned her face toward his.
"Thank you," she said softly, "for just being here when I needed to let all that stuff about Axel out."
Daryl shrugged, exhaling a short chuckle that brought the ghost of a smile to her face. "S' alright," he told her, "you'd do the same for me right?"
Their gazes collided, world narrowing down to one single moment, like the inhale before a scream, air pulsating with an intensity that he couldn't explain, and then she answered. "Any time."
After she returned to the cell block to try to grab some sleep before breakfast, Daryl walked the perimeter, easing the ache that had formed in his muscles from sitting on concrete for hours on end. He wasn't an expert when it came to women, hell he was probably the opposite, he'd certainly never wanted to get close to one before she came along, but he figured that last night had to be a step in the right direction. No matter whether she wanted him or not, he'd always be able to hold onto those hours outside the cell block, just them and the dawn chorus, her arm around his waist and her smell burned into his brain. As far as memories went, it'd be better than most of his other ones that was for sure.
