As Hershel had told her, sitting by her bedside, about the agent that Daryl had lost, and about him actually accepting help from a psychologist to get over the guilt resulting from what he perceived as his own fault - when, according to Hershel, he really hadn't had any influence whatsoever on Jim's fate that day -, she could just about imagine his mental state right now. He had probably agonized over Jim the entire time that he hadn't worked after losing him, blaming himself and wallowing in guilt. Learning from Hershel that Jim had survived and would heal again would first and foremost make him feel responsible all over again for what had been done to Jim, but once he overcame these feelings this might have a highly cathartic effect on Daryl - or so she hoped.
If he overcame them.
„Daryl, please", she whispered, trying to get through his perfect walls, past the anguish and self-loathing he was bleeding into their meld. „None of this was your fault. You've always done the best you could - nobody could have asked for more from you."
He all but exploded, his pent-up hatred at himself getting the better of him and shattering his resolve to keep his distance. „None of it was my fault?" he mimicked her, his voice dripping with scorn. „I should've fucking looked for him, instead of just giving him up! I was responsible for him, and I let him down!" She could feel his chest heaving, his broken ribs stinging. The regular beep echoing his heartbeat sped up, the corresponding graph on the monitor screen probably redlining.
„Do you have any idea what they did to me during the ten minutes they had me?" he whispered into their meld, his voice high and breathless, remembering the beating they'd given him, ignoring his injuries, before lashing him to their table, remembering the pain racing through him as one of them had dug his claws into his damaged leg. „He was with them for eight months! He was rotting -" His mental voice gave out on him at the mere thought of what Jim had endured. The physical torture he himself had been through was nothing, compared to that. „They let him rot in his own filth", Daryl whispered brokenly. „Can you imagine that? Being chained in place and lying in your own excrements? For eight fucking months?" He had started to cry, hot tears rolling down his temples and into his hair. His disgust with himself was choking him. "I should've looked for him", he repeated, barely audible even through their meld.
Spent, exhausted, he closed his burning eyes, cutting off her view of the ceiling above his bed, his good hand clenching into a fist until his fingernails had gauged bleeding holes into his palm. His breath hitched in his chest, jarring his broken ribs, as his sobs subsided from sheer exhaustion. The beep of his heartrate began to slow down again. Then, completely unexpectedly, he began to talk.
"The last thing I received from him was this burst of light – that was probably a Feina hitting him over the head", he mumbled. She could sense him controlling his breathing to ease the pain in his ribcage, and the fractures in his arm were throbbing painfully. His eyes were still closed, so she wasn't getting anything visual from him about his condition, but all the aches and pains that he was transmitting, no doubt unintentionally, told her enough. Aching for him, she listened as he went on.
"We knew the exact spot where they'd taken him", he whispered. "We went there to check if he'd left behind any hints about … But there was nothing. We asked the shop owners in the area, but they hadn't noticed anything or were too afraid to talk. He'd been carrying an aereal photograph of the base when they took him because we had just picked that up at a dropoff, and as they knocked him down from behind right away, without even stopping him first, he had no opportunity to lose it before they searched him." His guilt washed over her. "I never noticed that fucking alien creeping up on him from behind", he whispered. "I shoulda noticed him – that's what I was there for. Should've heard him, seen his shadow, smelled him – anything."
Her eyes unfocused.
He came back as she was preparing her meal and stayed until she had finished it. He knew all the ingredients, he knew what drink she was having with it, and he paid careful attention to her sensory input as she was cutting and stirring and measuring out seasoning and then eating.
Realizing, from this statement, why he had taken such care to perfect his sensitivity to her input crushed her. She remembered how he had insisted that they not go out before he was able to pick up on any and all sensory input that she got from her environment, down to the taste of her food.
She was not prepared for seeing Daryl injured and in pain, but if she wanted to get him out of this deathtrap alive she had no other choice. Peering into the cell, she saw a man kneeling on the floor in the center of the room.
She remembered the figure cowering in the cell as she had stood beside Glenn, and the abominable smell emanating from it, and imagined having a connection with this person that went as deep as her own with Daryl – and it hit home how devastated Daryl had to feel over this.
She vividly recalled her own relief when it had registered that the figure in there wasn't the man she had been looking for, and tried to imagine that it had been Daryl, covered in his own filth, with ulcers eaten into his skin, and with a hole scraped into his skull where his implant had been – and felt tears running down her cheeks. "It wasn't you", she whispered, barely coherent, and dimly noticed his confusion at her statement.
Haltingly, she described to him how they had found Jim, how afraid she had been of looking into that cell once Glenn had frozen to a halt in the light filtering from the room, knowing that Daryl was down here somewhere and she would have to see him injured, in pain, helpless, and what a relief it had been to see that the person in that cell, whose condition had had Glenn shocked speechless, wasn't him.
Daryl had gone still, and suddenly she felt the tension between them.
Hastily, she went on to describe to him how Glenn and Jim had found out, while waiting for her and Daryl to emerge from the doomed building, that Jim was the agent Daryl had lost eight months before.
And she told him that Jim had wept when he had believed Daryl dead in the collapsing building.
"He isn't holding anything against you", she concluded softly, sensing his disbelief.
She felt his denial in the wake of her statement which prompted her to make a bold suggestion. "Why don't you see him? He's been asking if you'll be okay, but it seems he's just as stubborn as you are about believing things he's told – or he's just very suspicious of everyone right now."
Knowing him, she realized that going to see Jim would be almost as impossible for him as seeing her – but she did hope that both men would benefit from such a meeting. Then, suddenly, she had an idea. "It would give Jim closure, Daryl. Seeing you, talking to you about everything that's happened would really help him, I think." She firmly clamped down on her bad conscience over playing his own guilt against him like this.
He didn't react to her suggestion, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing – he would need to process this and get used to the idea of meeting Jim in person before he'd be able to go through with this. To give him the space and time he needed, she withdrew from their meld with a gentle caress that soothed him more than he cared to admit.
And then he was alone again.
.-.
Rick had no idea who might be coming to see them at this hour. Maybe it was one of Lori's friends, coming to her after work and offering to help once the baby was here. She had had a few difficult weeks during this last stage and her friends had been wonderful, already helping with housework and cooking when she wasn't feeling well.
Thus, he was completely unsuspecting as he opened the door.
A young Asian male stood in front of him, his face the picture of outrage. Rick hardly had time to wonder what he had done to piss him off before he started to talk.
„I'm Glenn, and this is for Daryl."
Stunned speechless, he watched the young man's fist coming at his face almost as if in slow motion, and then the world went black.
.-.
His touch was as light as a feather on her shoulder, and it sent shivers down her entire body. She had not been touched gently in so long that her skin had nearly forgotten what a gentle touch was. His breath ghosting over her cheek almost had her yelp with delight as he moved closer to inhale the scent of her skin and hair. She gave herself completely over to his control – something that, considering her past, she had never believed she would ever be capable of doing. But knowing him as she did, she knew that he would never misuse her trust.
He could feel his heart racing in his chest, but hers was even faster, like that of a small bird, and he felt that she was equally fragile. After realizing, down in that basement, what it was that he had shared weeks before, he was almost afraid to touch her, for he knew all too well that it was so easy to hurt others – with touches, words, and looks. And hurting her was the one thing that he never wanted to do, even accidentally.
She could feel him cradling her mind, protecting her as carefully as on the very first day, anxious to keep her safe – and she had indeed never felt this safe in her life. She knew beyond doubt that he would die for her without a second thought, but also live for her without a second thought, which, on some days, was so much harder for him.
As he held her, keeping her away from everything that might hurt her or make her feel sad or afraid, he sensed her relaxing into him, her trust in him without end, humbling him. Her hand reached out to cup his face, still marked by their ordeal, and her fingertips seemed to set his skin on fire. Unable to hold it in any longer, he exhaled slowly, breathing her name.
As his hand slid up her naked arm, his fingertips barely grazing her skin, she felt as if her very essence were dissolving into sheer bliss. She could feel waves of goosebumps running up and down her entire body just from his touch, and sensing him so close to her, sensing his devotion, was almost enough to drive her over the edge. Her throat constricted as she whispered his name into his ear, her breath tickling him and his growing hair tickling her.
.-.
He jerked awake, his entire body on fire, the sudden, violent movement causing him agony. He only recalled where he was when he saw the rails to the left and right of his bed, keeping him from falling out during his frequent nightmares, and all the life support shit still sitting next to his bed. Heat rising into his cheeks, he frantically checked to make sure that his link wtih her was closed.
He just hoped he hadn't shared this dream, the way she had shared hers.
.-.
She sat up in her bed, her eyes wide, her blood racing through her veins, her whole body singing, and hoped that she hadn't been loud enough during her dream to alert her neighbors – for how could she ever explain what had happened to her? Mortified, she reached out to reassure herself that her link with him was closed.
She just hoped she hadn't shared this dream, the way he had shared his.
.-.
The truth of the matter was that he missed her more than he dared admit even to himself. He vividly remembered being linked with her, sharing her experiences, tasting her food, sensing the texture of the meal on his tongue that she had prepared for herself during their training together, feeling the rain that night when she had run into Esnik as if it were pelting his own skin. While he had always known that he was both a strong transmitter and a sensitive receiver, what he'd had with her was still unprecedented in his experience.
They hadn't shared minds.
They had become one.
And losing half of himself hurt so fucking much.
No attachment.
.-.
Ultimately, he didn't have to consciously make up his mind - it just happened.
Michonne was taking him to the Physical Therapy room in his wheelchair, and when he hit the door switch with his braced left hand and the doors swung open to admit them, he was just there.
At first, they didn't even know it.
Daryl took note of the emaciated man getting a massage in the far corner of the room as Michonne took him in and stopped his chair next to the parallel bars, putting on the brakes. She first walked the length of the training course herself to make sure the floor mats were flat and secured so they wouldn't slide under him, and then came back to him.
„Okay, Daryl, let's do this!" she encouraged him as she held out her arm for him to grab.
But Daryl stared right past her.
When hearing his name, the man on the massage table had come up as if he'd been shot, supporting himself on his elbows, and was staring at Daryl with wide eyes that seemed to be eating up his face. Behind his right ear, Daryl spotted a dressing on his head, surrounded by an area where his scalp had been shaved for surgery.
Suddenly feeling cold all over, Daryl took in the dressings and bandages on the man's arms and legs. Stared at the dressing behind his ear. His eyes widened as he fought to breathe. Instead of taking Michonne's arm to lever himself out of his chair to stand, he blindly waved at her, whispering, „Go."
Michonne took in the stark look on his face, the expression in his eyes, and followed his line of sight to see another man with just that look on his face staring back at Daryl. The massage therapist had likewise stopped working, and Michonne caught his eyes and tilted her head toward the door. They both walked out of the room without another word spoken, leaving their charges alone.
Wincing, Daryl turned around and grabbed his crutches from the back of his chair. He had only been on them twice since Michonne had started working with him, but they were still better than pushing the chair himself, with his shoulders instead of his hands and arms taking his weight - his left arm just wasn't up to that yet. He kept raising his head to stare across the room as he gently lifted his injured leg off the footrest. Making sure that the brakes of the chair were on, he braced the crutches on the floor and fought to stand by alternately pushing and pulling himself up.
By the time he reached the massage table, he was shaking with exhaustion and pain, and tears were running down his face. „I'm … I'm so sorry, Jim", he whispered. „I failed you, and I can't imagine -„
Jim had started crying as well, at some point during Daryl's trek across the room. „No", he whispered. „It's okay, you couldn't have known. They took out -„ His voice failed him as he lifted a shaking hand to the dressing behind his ear. „I woke up and you were gone and my head was exploding", he managed to continue after a few moments. And then, softly: „But now they are gone, and we're still here." He took in Daryl's injuries, and drew a deep breath. „We're still here. We did it. You did it."
Daryl stared at him, his doubt obvious. „I didn't do anything. I failed you, I should have saved you when they took you. It was Carol and Glenn who found you."
Jim shook his head as he slowly sat up. „But don't you see? You did save me, Daryl." He ignored Daryl shaking his head and went on. „Back then, there was nothing you could have done. Once they had taken out my implant there was no way for you to find me, or even know that I was still alive. What you did was take on a new agent and bond with her in an amazing way that has you both look out for each other, no matter what - so that, when you took over for her and got taken by the Feina, she came to look for you."
Daryl remained silent, but he had stopped shaking his head. He had never seen the events of that night from this angle, and it would never have occurred to him to give himself any credit for what had happened beyond helping to plan the mission.
Jim went on. „If the two of you didn't care so much, if she hadn't come for you, if you hadn't been there, I would have died in the explosion. I owe you my life, Daryl. I am alive today because of you. What more could you possibly have done for me? What more could a friend ask of you?"
A knot in Daryl's chest loosened as he met Jim's eyes, and he let out a shuddering breath.
He had been forgiven. The weight of the guilt that had been crushing him lifted off his chest.