There was no way in hell that Daryl could have missed her level of anxiety as she passed the gate after handing her key card to the guard – a new one, not the man who had issued it and let her in. She looked at him long enough for Daryl to be able to notice that the guards had changed during the hour and a half she had been in there, but not long enough to make him notice her. He waited until she had taken a dozen steps on the sidewalk before carefullly coming forward, no more than suggesting that he was still present in her mind.
Carol surprised him by all but mentally embracing him – something that had never happened to him before. While still outwardly calm, she was a roiling sea of emotions on the inside, surging and tumbling over each other and threatening to drown him. She seemed breathless as she allowed him into her mind, ecstatic and wild-eyed with delayed fear at the same time. "You're here!" Her relief bled into their link, almost overwhelming him.
"Course I am, where else would I be?" His bewildered, unfiltered reply did nothing to soothe her – if anything, it agitated her even further. "Hey, you can trust me, ‚m not goin' anywhere", he mumbled in an effort to calm her down. Of course he was on an adrenaline high himself, coming right out of their first mission – and one into the heart of enemy territory, no less. Facing that gray Feina through her eyes, his first close encounter with them in three years, had terrified him far more than he cared to admit, even to himself, and she had been brave. But it wouldn't do for her to be out on the street in such a state – he had to talk her down from her high. Being this excited might make her careless - and being careless could get her arrested.
Her answer was nothing that he couldn't have expected - he had withdrawn to give her control so she could follow her instructions. "As soon as I went in there I no longer felt you - until that moment at the end", she explained, a slight note of accusation in her voice – but he hoped he was misreading her on that count. "I was in there with those … traitors … and that gray tyrant all alone!" This time, there was no mistaking her disgust with the humans cooperating with the Feina, nor her aggravation at seemingly being left alone, and Daryl cringed back from it. He could feel his whole body tensing up from this discussion, which was never good for him. He needed to either get her to relax – or leave their meld for now in his own best interest, which he didn't want to do, not with her in the state she was in. Not with her vulnerable.
He began by redirecting some of his awareness back to himself, to his body, to his home, taking note of the thick air in the apartment, of how tense he was, of the sweat running down his back, of how much he was hurting. If anything, he was surprised at the fact that he hadn't noticed this at all until now. Daryl pushed his chair back from the rickety table, slowly, carefully, then splayed both hands on the tabletop and rose to his feet. He needed to get to his bedroom, and quickly. He had seriously underestimated how taxing this was going to be after his long break, and he had to do something about it now, before she came to harm.
Pain surged through her left leg, white-hot and sharp like a knife. It made her gasp, nearly forcing her to break her stride.
Daryl recognized his mistake the moment he made it. Instantly narrowing their link down to a mere pinprick from his side, still receiving input from her while only givng her a sense of being accompanied by him but without actively giving her any input himself, he leaned against the table and the work countertop, swaying, trapped within his body again. He sucked in a gulp of air, his chest heaving, and clamped down on the raging pain and the anxiety crashing down on him. There was no way he could leave her like that. He needed to open their exchange again, and quickly, to help her calm down and bring her home safely. She must not feel that he was abandoning her in an overwhelming situation.
The problem was that he himself had just overwhelmed her. Guilt swamped him.
Clenching his teeth, Daryl made his way to his bedroom as fast as he could and sat down on the bed. It hadn't been this bad in more than a year, and he was glad that Merle had nevertheless agreed to keep the bed despite his misgivings. He didn't think he could have managed to sit on a regular bed right now, and fierce gratitude swept through him, followed by guilt over not appreciating his brother enough. Daryl knew all too well how hard all of this was on Merle, even though he kept trying to put on a brave face.
He leaned forward. Opening the top drawer of his nightstand, Daryl blindly grabbed the largest of the pill bottles lined up inside it, popped its lid and dumped two of the white pills into his shaking left hand. Sliding the bottle and its lid onto the nightstand, he grabbed the plastic bottle of tap water next to his bed, unscrewed the cap, and quickly downed the pills with a huge gulp of water. Next, he hastily placed the open water bottle and its cap on the floor at the head of his bed again before lifting his legs with a grunt, using his left hand to support his left leg. He stretched out on the bed, on top of his covers, closing his eyes and willing himself to relax.
Daryl reached out, fully opening up their link again.
Carol had kept walking, even maintaining her pace, and she was expecting him. He sensed that she was still anxious, but the degree of composure she had achieved on her own since he had abandoned her, withouth help, was amazing. They were still so in tune with each other, despite their brief separation, that she felt Daryl approaching and more or less pulled him in as soon as he tried to reinitiate their meld.
He expected fury, and accusations, and bitterness, and anger - all perfectly justified - over all but leaving her like that, abruptly and without warning. Instead, Carol radiated concern, and he felt humbled by how gently she addressed him as she kept walking down the road. She changed her handbag from her left shoulder to her right and searched the food stalls she was passing for something she liked, just like they'd planned, so as to give him a chance to check behind her for people trailing her. Nobody passing her in the street would have been able to notice anything extraordinary about her - she looked every bit the casual stroller. "What happened? Did you run into something?"
For a moment, Daryl couldn't process her words. They didn't make any sense to him at all. Then, slowly, he realized that she simply didn't know. Apparently, this wasn't in his file, or at least not the part of it that his agents received when getting paired with him. Carol might not even know that he had ever been out there himself, as an agent, until his guide had abandoned him in a moment of panic, just like he himself had nearly abandoned Carol not five minutes before – with the difference that things hadn't worked out all right for Daryl.
He hadn't walked away from it.
His walls were up in no time at all.
No attachment.
Closing his eyes, he forced himself to breathe more evenly, trying to consciously relax the knotted muscles in his legs and his back the way he'd been taught, to imagine his pain and fear as a dark liquid leaking out of him through his fingers and toes. Ironically, he could sense that consiciously calming himself down helped her in turn. Carol's concern was receding, was no longer pounding against the fortress he had made of his mind, as she calmed down along with him.
Once his breathing and heartbeat had slowed down somewhat and the effect of the painkiller was setting in, Daryl opened his eyes again.
Sensing him in the back of her mind, Carol had felt him calming down further, and by now he had managed to completely block the pain. She felt that Daryl was okay again, apart from the excitement over their successful first mission, and eagerly approached him as he opened up further. A blurry image started forming in her mind, making her frown.
"What are you looking at?" she asked him, using language to a far greater extent than he did as it was usually him addressing her during their melds and she wasn't as used as he was to conveying abstract ideas and questions through their link. "Is the sky cloudy where you are?"
Lying in a room without windows, Daryl had not the faintest idea of the sky right now and vaguely shook his head. "Dunno", he mumbled, both in his mind and out loud. "I don't have a window in here. I'm looking at …" He broke off, stunned, his eyes widening. He was looking up at the white ceiling of his bedroom, and she was receiving that image through their link.
He was not supposed to transmit anything of his own surroundings. And he wasn't.
They were already starting to link subconsciously. She was picking up his sensory input.
He froze. Normally, guides and agents reached this stage after roughly a year of working missions together. Once they reached it and started receiving unsolicited input about their daily lives from each other, they were broken up for their own protection. If anyone in TE learned about this incident, this would be it for them.
No attachment.
"Jesus Christ, Dixon, get a grip!" he mentally scolded himself and immediately controlled his output, shutting down the image for her. "Sorry", he then addressed her again, "you're not supposed to receive anything on where I am from me, but it seems I'm still a bit out of it - no need to let Hershel know." He grinned crookedly. "That was my ceiling."
He got a feeling that Carol was chuckling softly to herself in amusement, and of course she was unable to rein in her curiosity. "Why are you looking at your ceiling? It looked quite boring – no offense meant."
"None taken", he assured her, his own amusement likewise seeping into their link as she continued walking toward the nearest bus stop, holding a sandwich by now and taking hearty bites of it every few steps. She had bought this at one of the stalls while his head had been up his ass, he assumed. "I'm lying down. I get to be comfortable for this – unlike you. No offense meant." He grinned.
The warmth that he felt from her after this was unlike anything he had ever experienced, and his chest tightened for just a moment. "So, you did hurt yourself because I was distracting you", Carol concluded, guilt and remorse accompanying her statement. "I'm so sorry I did this to you. Are you okay?"
Daryl's mind raced as he wondered what to tell her. He wanted to kick himself for giving away so much about himself during just one meld with her – and during the tail end of a mission, to boot. With only brief pangs of pain still spiking through the merciful blanket the painkiller had created, however, he was beginning to believe that he would be able to hide his condition from her for the rest of this session. And so, with his conscience screaming at him, he decided to lie. "Yeah, 'm good, don't worry 'bout me", he assured her, and he could feel his face grow hot with shame.
She was his agent. He was her guide.
She needed to be able to trust him - and he had just lied to her.
He felt like trash.
It was almost worth it, however, as Carol's joy at his answer was instant and overwhelming. "Oh, I'm so glad to hear that", she all but gushed into their meld. "I was so worried that you'd hurt yourself while you were concentrating on me." Her happiness was contagious, and her obvious and genuine relief soothed his qualms over lying to her - but it didn't silence them.
"Yeah, that's … you haven't done anything wrong, and I haven't hurt myself, so … let's just get you on the bus?" he suggested, trying to get her to concentrate on their work again. Taking full control once more, he made sure to continue walking at her pace and finish the sandwich. As soon as he had made Carol swallow the last bite, he had her wipe her hands on the rough paper napkin and then look around for a trashcan. Carefully exaggerating the movements of her head as she was searching, he made sure that she still wasn't being trailed and then swung her around the next corner, turning left.
They were exactly on schedule – on leaving the admin building back at the Feina compound he had checked the time and the progress of the bus she was supposed to catch. As the bus was running slightly late, he had seized control of her for and instant and dropped her handbag on purpose, spilling some of its contents so she had to gather a pen, her keys and a battered old tin box of mints from the marble floor before continuing on her way. This had delayed her enough so she would now arrive at the exact same time as the bus, to get whisked away toward the next larger traffic hub without lingering here for all to see – and the Feina to find, if they had sent someone to follow her that he had failed to spot.
Carol could see the bus approaching as she herself was about twenty yards away from the bus stop. She finally allowed herself to feel relieved – their mission had been a great success, after all. After signing a confidentiality agreement following her presentation to Esnik, both with a pen and her thumb print, she had received floor plans for the admin building in which they'd been meeting. With the help of these plans, as far as the Feina were concerned, her company would be able to determine the equipment they would need to supply the new computers and prepare a bid.
She couldn't wait to drop them off at the safe place Hershel had pointed out to her.
With these plans, the TE experts would be able to calculate the amount of explosives needed to take this place down.
Daryl caught her fierce delight as she boarded the bus, but as he was not supposed to know where she was going, and with Merle due home in another hour - which he would need to get his shit together again - he had already conveyed his farewell, and withdrawn.
Alone again, he watched her tightly coiled yellow galaxy of light moving away from him.