Parallel bars again.
His left hand, still with a flexible black brace supporting his wrist, already resting on the one to his left, his right coming up on the other after he had handed his crutch to his therapist whose name she kept forgetting. His full weight on his good leg, both feet, naked, firmly on the ground. Slowly, carefully, allowing himself to evenly distribute his weight, his left leg taking its fair share for the first time in weeks with the brace that had been supporting his knee and ankle lying on the ground.
Wrapping him in her confidence, reassuring him wordlessly that he could do this, telling him that he had all the time in the world, that there was no need to rush this, that it was okay to avoid unnecessary pain.
That he didn't have to punish himself for what he believed he had done wrong.
He took a careful step forward with his good leg, his hands lightly resting on the bars, and his left leg gradually took his full weight. The shift came with the usual pain, but not more.
He was okay.
.-.
The day when her mother and Sophia arrived in New Atlanta had finally come. Several weeks had passed since the ordeal in the Feina headquarters, but the last of her bruises were still faintly visible on her skin, as were the last traces of the cuts inflicted by the administration building exploding and collapsing around her. During all this time, she had only linked with Daryl, but never met him or his brother again. There had been several vivid dreams, but she atrributed these to the close call she'd had at the end, to their regular links with her supporting him in his healing process when he allowed it, and to the sensations they had shared during the mission.
She missed going out on their mission with him. Memories of their training as well as the mission proper came up at the most unexpected moments, assailing her out of the blue, leaving her either smiling or sad, depending on the mood she was in when a smell or a sound threw her back to any random day of the months she had been working with him.
But even the smiles always came with a bittersweet pain that she couldn't get over.
No attachment.
She stood at the train station, fidgeting with impatience, and expected herself to be deliriously happy. But on her way to the track she had passed a pub in the wide hallways of the station and had suddenly experienced a vivid flashback to something she remembered from one of Daryl's last reports.
Apparently, it had been in this pub that he had run into Merle and his partner and had found out that they had caught on to their mission in some way, yet had had to endure hours of Merle and his partner making fun of him before they had gone home and he had been able to report to Hershel. He had, of course, left out all personal details in his report for TE, but there were small hints in it nevertheless that had told her how awkward and embarrassing the evening had been for him, and she felt bad just looking at the place. Knowing how uncomfortable he had been in there would forever taint every future experience inside it for her, no matter how pleasant it would be on its own.
The train carrying Sophia and her mother was announced and she forced herself back to the moment, trying to live it to the fullest extent possible - she had been waiting for it for years, after all, and had been prepared to wait many more for Sophia's safety.
„He was your husband."
His voice had been ragged with pain and he'd hardly been able to speak, but this had been important enough to him to address it. Somehow, he had known about Ed.
Did he know about Sophia?
Suddenly, she found herself wishing desperately that she could share this precious moment with someone who was able to appreciate how much it meant to her.
No attachment.
.-.
Surfacing from the haze of painkillers and sedatives one day after he'd taken a fall during his physical therapy, he only realized that he was wide open when it was too late. He sensed her standing out in the open, waiting for something, expecting something … looking forward to it, yet somehow not as exuberant as she herself would have thought she'd be on this occasion. His eyelids closed again like automatic shutters, impossibly heavy, their pull too strong to resist, as he heard the loud noise surrounding her and felt the sudden wind whip the tips of her short grayish curls around her head.
The sensations coming from his own damaged, exhausted body were drowned out by what he was so eager to receive.
He fell, and swirls of light and color caught him and carried him away.
.-.
As the noise of the train crowded out her pain and longing and it slowly came to a halt in front of her, she very briefly felt drowsy, tired, exhausted, and had to fight against her eyelids trying to close. A wave of pain shook her for an instant - her body's memory of the ordeal she had gone through? - , and then she was wide awake once more, and brimming with excitement over seeing her daughter again for the first time in six years.
The doors opened with a hydraulic hiss and she searched every one of them for her daughter's wavy brown hair and freckled face, for her mother's kind, mellow features and her sunny smile, finally unmarred by the sorrow of knowing that her daughter was unhappy in her marriage. Her eyes reached the end of the train and she was just about to turn around and check the doors toward the front when a pair of arms snaked around her waist and a familiar, beloved voice called out behind her. „Mommy!"
So often.
She had dreamed of this moment so often, both awake and asleep. She had imagined so many different ways for it to play out, and knowing herself as she did, she had imagined getting very emotional during this reunion. Yet the sheer power of the emotion she was experiencing now, with her daughter's arms around her and her voice in her ears, was completely unexpected.
Not a second had passed when her tears spilled down over her cheeks as she turned in Sophia's arms. She felt as if the sun itself were trying to break out through her skin, and she knew with absolute certainty that she had never known happiness like this before - not even on the day Sophia had been born. Her eyes caught those of her mother over Sophia's head, and she saw the unabashedly happy smile she had been hoping for - and of course her mother was crying as well.
And in the back of her mind sat a pain not her own, and she got a clear sense of someone standing next to her, watching, and the feeling of someone holding her, gently, firmly, to help her ride out the storm of her emotions. She hadn't been here alone after all.
No attachment.
.-.
Somehow, he stayed at the train station with her, even though he didn't consciously remember going there. He watched her face light up with joy when her daughter embraced her, saw her eyes become luminous with elation as he held her. Her excitement spilled over to him and he felt his heart racing along with hers and his breath coming faster.
He noticed her actually looking his way, as if he were truly standing next to her in person, on the brink of talking to him.
And that aching knot inside him loosened ever so slightly once more, the pain becoming just a little bit more bearable for a moment as he watched Carol hold her child, crying with joy, and he gently caressed her mind as it reached out for him to share her happiness.
No attachment.