She had always loved the small hours of morning. The world seemed … pure, and innocent, with hardly any people out in the streets and the noise and excitement of the day suspended for a few hours. Being out alone at night had never frightened her before, and didn't frighten her now. If anything, it was safer than before because of the small atmospheric Feina ships doing patrols of the cities at all hours, day or night. Right now, the sound of her own footfalls was the only thing she could hear, and the stillness was lovely. She enjoyed how the clicking of her heels on the sidewalk sounded like a metronome because she had the sidewalk all to herself - no pausing for obstacles, no slowing down for people crossing her path. Just her and the darkness, and the light of the stars from which their uninvited visitors had come.
And Daryl.
Daryl hovering in the back of her mind, watching quietly without interfering, allowing her thoughts to meander, but at the same time making sure that she would get home safely.
She felt something stirring inside her. So far, she didn't have a name for it yet. But she knew what had brought it to life.
Whenever they had to choose between several options, he always made it absolutely clear that he would not allow her to put herself in danger any more than she already was, and insisted that she went with the safest one. Her safety was his highest priority - higher even than their mission. And he was making an incredible effort to put up with her prying as well as her oversharing, only stopping her when he had reached his absolute limit. But the one quality of his that she probably appreciated the most was that he wasn't the least bit intrusive.
She was a woman. He was a man.
A man with free access to every part of her mind. If he so chose, he was in a position to inspect and pick apart any memory, any emotion, any secret she was harboring. With the careful way he approached her for each new day of their mission, she knew that he could be subtle enough to be able to do it without her ever noticing. Yet he took great care to stay away from what he considered her private life and history, never intruding on her privacy, and always, in fact, waiting for a little inviting nudge before fully opening up their link when they set out each day - or night. The way he „spoke" and acted around Hershel while in a meld with both of them suggested that he was putting up a tough façade for the outside world - but he wasn't fooling her.
As deeply private as he himself was, he absolutely valued her privacy and made sure to never violate it. He always respected her opinions and feelings. He discussed her hunches with her, just like he did his own, and didn't discard them from a high horse, arguing that he was her guide and, as such, knew better. He appreciated her input into what they were doing, weighed it against his own, and then went with what objectively made more sense in the end.
He valued her as an equal.
She had never enjoyed this kind of considerate partnership with any guide, not even with the women who had guided her so far. It was mindblowing, all the more so because of the one defining relationship with a man in her life - Ed, who had not done any of these things once they'd been married. Ed, who had forced her to do his bidding in every aspect of their lives together, who had forced his views on parenthood as well as parenting on her, who had never respected her privacy or her boundaries - Ed, who had abused and traumatized her physically as well as emotionally.
These two men, she had found, could not have been more different if they had tried.
And ever since their first mission day together, she had found that her heart started beating faster when she thought of Daryl.
.-.
He bid her good night with what felt like a mental caress as she boarded the last bus for the night, making sure he was gone before she gave the driver her destination so he could have her ticket issued. But even though he was gone from inside her mind, she could feel him at a safe distance, making sure that she was not intercepted by either humans or aliens, that she was able to board her next public transport safely, and reached her home unmolested.
As per their agreement, she told him that she was home through their link, which he had kept open until he received her message. Only then did he close it down. He had already been entering his notes into his report on his computer while he'd been waiting so he wouldn't have to either stay up all night or do it after their mission the next day.
Saving his work so far, he glanced at his notes and put check marks next to the points he had already covered in his report before setting both his pad and his laptop aside on the bed to get up.
Merle was asleep in the living room. He had left him there, watching TV, when he had set out on tonight's mission with Carol. As they had only been out that morning, resting only from noon until early evening, he hadn't even had to fake his yawning, and he had been tired when supposedly going to bed - but of course the adrenaline rush of their mission had kept him afloat through most of the night. Only now was their day catching up with him.
Silently padding out of his room on naked feet, careful to walk slowly and not bump into anything on his way for fear of waking his brother, he made his way into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water and one of the apples that Merle had proudly brought home after work - a rare treat. The cold started crawling in under his loose sweatpants by the time he was on his way back, and he cursed himself for not putting on socks to keep his feet warm.
Once he was safely back in the privacy of his room, behind his closed door, he crawled into his bed, making sure his feet were covered and no cold air could slip in under his blankets. He took a bite from the apple, relishing the tartness of the juice on his tongue, then set it on his nightstand next to his glass and continued working on his report.
He was finished not quite an hour later. Nothing was left of his apple, and his glass was empty. He had taken his scheduled pills with the last few mouthfuls of water and was ready - oh, so ready - for bed. His eyes were burning and he couldn't wait to turn off the light and close them for a few hours of rest. It didn't take him even five minutes to fall asleep.
.-.
„Are you sure this is the right thing to do?" Her mother sounded so very anxious, and she hated doing this to her. But of course she was worried about taking on the responsibility for her granddaughter all alone, with nowhere to turn to if she needed or wanted advice on how to deal with a young girl who had just started school - whose life was so very different from her own, and also different from Carol's at that age. Times changed so fast.
„I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't", Carol tried to reassure her. „I know you will look after her as best you can, and that you'll love her as if she were your own. You DO love her, and she will be well cared for here." Carol looked down at her hands, folded on the table, wondering how to continue.
„This may be my only chance to get away from him, mother", she whispered finally. „I have been wanting to leave him for years, but if I had done it before, he would just have followed me, and found me, and maybe killed all of us. He won't find a trail six years from now." Her eyes were full of sadness and longing when she finally met her mother's sorrowful gaze. „I know what this is doing to you, believe me - I do. But Sophia is getting older, and with the way he has been looking at her … I cannot risk it any longer, mom, and this might never come back. I have to leave him now, and leave her with you because he doesn't know your address and can't come for the two of you. It's the only way."
Sophia had been clinging to her waist the entire time, crying softly. Now the little girl looked up at her, eyes red, nose running, her tears streaking her little face. Carol's heart felt as if it might shatter into a million pieces at any moment. „But Mommy", Sophia sobbed, „we'll go back to Daddy when he comes home again, won't we?" Her distress was clawing at Carol's soul as she looked into her precious daughter's eyes while her mind was feeding her images of what might happen to Sophia a few years from now if her father got a hold of her at home alone.
Unable to tell her the truth for now, unable to summarily destroy a girl's unconditional love for her father, she went with a white lie. „We'll see, sweetie", she whispered, blinking back her own tears as she embraced her daughter and held her close, feeling her trembling and her breath hitching in her chest from crying. „We'll see what he wants to do when he comes home, and then we'll decide."
.-.
Carol sat up in her bed, wiping both hands first across her eyes and then down her face to dry her tears. Why was she having all these horrible dreams lately? It seemed as if her past were reaching out for her with greedy fingers, envying her what little joy she had in her life and therefore reminding her of her horrible past and of what she had lost to get where she was now.
.-.
Daryl sat up in his bed, his heart beating wildly. He had just surfaced from a weird dream in which he had first had a conversation with an older woman he didn't know and then consoled a little girl that seemed familiar somehow, even though he was positive that he had never consciously met a girl that age as an adult.
Why had he told that woman that he needed to get away from some guy that he sensed as a vaguely threatening presence in the background? A threat not only to his dream self but also to the girl he had felt crying against his waist? Why had this dream about people he had never met been so highly emotional for him?
Who were these people he had never seen, and why was he dreaming about them? Why did he feel that this guy that his dream self was afraid of was somehow a threat to him in his own real life?An idea struck him. Switching on the light on his nightstand, he reached for his water bottle and drank deeply. Then, lying back down again, he thought back to all of his previous guides and agents, and to having his links with them severed.
Maybe it hadn't worked with one of them? And maybe he was receiving input from them now because these emotions were so strong, because this fear was so all-encompassing, so overwhelmig, that it spilled over to him? This looked like a good working theory, and he decided to go with it for the time being.
He tried to remember who he'd been linked with in the past and went through them one by one. But as he'd always excelled at pushing people back and keeping them at a distance, he soon realized that he hadn't been close enough with any of them to share information on the woman, the girl crying against his dream self's side, and the guy threatening them in the background.
The dream remained a mystery to him.
.-.
Blinking hurt as badly as if her eyelids had been lined with sandpaper. Despite her exhausting day with two runs, one in the morning and one at night, Carol had been unable to go back to sleep again after her dream. She had made herself a cup of tea and sipped it in her kitchen, looking at the pictures of Sophia that she had brought with her when leaving Ed, but the storm of her emotions had just kept raging on, refusing to subside as she recalled happy moments shared with her only child.
She had one hour left before Daryl would contact her again. The minimum time between two runs had already passed since the last one, and then some, and she knew that if the dream hadn't kept her awake all night she would be more than well rested and looking forward to going out again. Being in a meld with Daryl was still a fascinating experience for her and she knew even now, when they had only been working together for a relatively short time, that she would miss him more than any of her other guides once they were separated again. Not only was their meld much more intense than any she had been in before – the respect he had for her and her needs made this bond so special to her.
As she knew that staring at the walls of her home would not get her anywhere and she would not manage to get in any more rest before their scheduled mission time, she decided to get them a head start by leaving early. Her one window gave her a view of a cloudless blue sky, and she hoped that being out in the sunshine would distract her from her misery. She eagerly got dressed, grabbed her keys, and left her apartment.
.-.
It was slightly uncanny that Daryl didn't even have to touch her mind to know she'd had a bad night. He came into their meld already radiating concern for her, and of course, with her so exhausted, he was instantly worried about her safety. In an atypical move, he outright asked her, using words instead of his usual prompting nudge, if she was fit to continue their mission today or if she needed to take the day off. The idea of sitting alone in her apartment, listening to the silence and remembering what she had endured and lost, horrified her and she rejected his offer within a second of him making it, adding that she'd had a bad dream that had kept her up half the night. He did insist, however, on her taking several short breaks during the day, instead of the one or two longer ones that she normally took to lose less mission time over such useless pastimes as eating and drinking.
As they were inconspicuously following a pair of policemen patrolling the area, with Daryl taking down their route and their calling points and timing in his notes, she began to notice that his mind was drifting. He had to ask for street names several times, which was unusual since he normally had an open map on his computer that he could refer to immediately. It wasn't like him to be unprepared, and after he'd asked his third question over half an hour she called him out on it. "You're distracted, Daryl – what is it? Do you need a moment to yourself?" she asked solicitously, allowing her concern for him to show.
She felt him withdrawing slightly at once. Carol had already found out that he was terrified of being fussed over, and so she usually did her best to refrain from showing any concern for him at all, even when his temper grew short while they were out or when she noticed him getting tired and distracted. "Nah, 's nothin'", he deflected her, as she had expected. "Had a weird dream last night that I keep thinkin' 'bout, but it wasn't bad or anything. I did get to sleep afterward", he couldn't resist adding. She retorted with a mental image of throwing something at him, at which he laughed good-naturedly.
In a way, she was missing him already, even with him still there.
.-.
In the early afternoon he decided to call it quits for the day. Her exhaustion was beginning to compromise him through their link, making it hard for him to concentrate and to keep providing her with the information that she needed to avoid both police and military patrols as well as random shop owners who might notice that she had already passed their stores three times over the past hour, while still taking down all the information that she was transmitting to him through their link.
As always, he made sure from afar that she didn't come to harm on her way home. Only when he sensed her falling asleep after having some piece of fruit that he didn't recognize and a cup of tea to go with it did he close down their link and allow himself ot succumb to sleep.