And then…

They were free.

Of course, things didn't happen as easily as they sounded, but there they were, Daryl thought, running through the woods, escaping the Terminus compound which was burning to the ground. They had killed their fair share on their way out, but he hoped more were dying, for the sins they had committed daringly against mankind.

He had fought side by side with his brother, and he had known it before but it still had made him feel warm and special that this was a dance they still knew how to do. They were good at keeping each other alive like it was their only business. The only other person who did the same for him as he did in return was Carol of course and Daryl found himself praying to a God he didn't believe in, especially after the massacres of the day, that she was alright, hiding somewhere, waiting for him to come back.

Everything in his body screamed that this would not be what she would have done, that this was not her and that in thinking she could do this he was pretending to not know her as well as he did, but the thought of her being around those Terminus people made him want to weep. Not cry, not fight, not go back in to save her, but simply weep. She had seen so much of what the world was capable of, and he knew she probably had more balls than all the men on this crew altogether, but he wanted her safe and shielded away from just this one atrocity, as if it would make all the difference in the world.

He remembered the fear he had felt, as his head had been about to be smashed with a bat, how she had been on his mind, the first time ever he had had a safe place where he could hide and pretend the fear was just a nagging feeling that wasn't controlling his body. She was everything.

Lazarus – Rick – fell to his knees somewhere in the woods, digging out weapons and talking about going back and finishing the rest of the Terminus psychos. Michonne argued that they needed to get gone, and be safe, live another day, when Daryl felt something, like a burn on the back of his neck.

He whipped around, beaten and battered, and was met by the most wonderful sight ever: Carol, safe, and carrying his crossbow.

His mind jumped to conclusions but his heart leaped even faster, and he ran to her, burying his nose in her neck, lifting her off the ground, as she looked teary and shaken, and just fucking safe.

"I knew you would come," he said for her ears only, placing a kiss on her neck. "I just knew it."

Until that very moment, he wouldn't have been able to say with certainty those things but with her in his arms, he knew he meant them and had never doubted her. He had known she would come back for him, and it made him feel like he had won the lottery. People talked a lot of shit about the feeling of being chosen, of being selected or whatever. It was shit. What he felt and would swear was the only thing mattering in the world, was that he had been wanted safe, and sound. He had been cared about enough to be searched for, and saved. He had done nothing to deserve it, yet…

He had been, saved, and not just today.

As he looked into her eyes, tears slowly rolling down her cheeks, feeling her shake in his embrace, he lowered his mouth and kissed her.

They had a past, of abuse and forced contact, but in this instance, he felt it was all wiped away, a clean slate. Slowly yet determinedly, like in all things, he ravished her mouth, leaving her and himself panting for more.

She was not idle, no sir, and the feeling of her fingers in his hair, which had to be disgusting still made him feel like the hulk on ecstasy. He was tripping, and she was his drug of choice, his green fairy, his … Maybe just his.

She was clinging to his neck and shoulders, pressing herself so close to him, and he heard the unspoken words:

"I love you. I came back for you. I'm not leaving you. You're a good man, Daryl Dixon. You're my man, Daryl Dixon."

When they broke apart, craving the next kiss already, he said in a low voice:

"And you're my woman, Carol Miller ex Peletier."

"Do you guys need a room?" Merle said behind them, and Daryl pressed his forehead against Carol's, knowing this was the end of that moment. "Because, spoiler alert, there's none. If you need a room, you need to find a house, clean it, burn the bodies of the kills you'll have made, and maybe then you can start fucking, but I'd imagine step three would be a turn off. Or not, if you're into that kinda things. Lord knows I'm not into anything right now," Merle said in a lower voice, as if talking to himself, "after the things we saw today."

"Carol?" Rick said.

Daryl felt her stiffen in his arms, and he moved to the side, though keeping very much by her side, holding her hand. All that poison from before was long gone from his lungs, if he went for the guy who had been dead except not, he would not simply knock him in the eye. He would end him. She just had to say the word. She looked at the leader of her people, and he was delighted to see the hint of a smile playing on her lips as she noticed the bruise and the black eye he had managed to leave on him when he had jumped him. He may have been weak, but his heart had been in for the fight, and for the vengeance Carol had never had. He squeezed her hand, as if to claim that was his doing and she squeezed back.

She looked past Rick, at the people with them, and whispered to Daryl:

"Is that…"

"My pain in the ass brother? Damn right."

"Come on, Daryl, Don't sell me short to your lady, have some… Wait a minute…" Merle said as he took a closer look at the woman in his brother's arms.

Carol stepped forward, to face both him and Rick, and Daryl was so proud of her.

"Hello Merle," she said, with all the control she had, which was a lot.

After a second, she spoke again:

"Hello Rick."

"That was you?" He asked, pointing at the burning buildings behind them, and Daryl wanted to clog him again.

Just because.

"We owe you our lives…"

And Lazarus went in for a hug. Daryl saw Carol hesitate for a second or even less before letting him hug her, and reciprocating, though the hunter could see a reservation in her gesture.

She took a step back, and said she needed to show them something, and they started walking, to a cabin, where walkers who had met their final demise were laying on the floor. It was gore, but a big Afro-American man was waiting there, and Daryl figured it must have been his doing. He noticed that the rest of the group were more focused on the man and the package in his arms than on the display of violence.

When she reunited Lazarus with baby Judith, Daryl was amazed. Sure, it had been a lucky thing, being reunited with the giant who was acting as the baby's nanny while he had been away, but things worked out, sometimes.

He amended that in his head to "more than sometimes", thinking back to the way he had seen a woman in distress in the hands of the guys he was travelling with, and he had ended up claiming her, endangering them, and yet, saving them.

He found that he was always touching or brushing against her, her arm, her hand, her hip. It was if he needed to remind himself constantly that she was there. She smiled shyly and coyly at him several times, and every time he felt like he felt like he'd died and gone to heaven or he felt a warmth spread through his body all the way to his heart.

He had been close to dying before, perhaps even closer, but it was the first time he had had someone he needed to survive for. When he had been with Merle, he had known or hoped that his brother would be crushed if he were to die, but that he would go on, as evidenced by the fact that he now seemed to be acting as Lazarus's second in command. However, today, there had been something more, an incentive maybe, though the term didn't show the reality of it. He had needed to stay alive for himself, to give himself a chance to see Carol again and tell her all those things he didn't know how to say. He had needed to come back for her, because even if she hadn't felt the same, he knew she would have needed to hear those words, from someone who had no reason to lie to her or to try to deceive her. And of course, he had needed to come back, for her, because no matter how strong she was, he knew, he just knew his death would have been too much.

She searched for his eyes, and then she exchanged a look with Tyreese before saying:

"Now, we bury our dead."

He had expected nothing else from her, he thought as the others looked at them bewildered. Those two little girls needed a decent resting place, and Carol would provide, even if she had to be the one digging the grave with her own hands. After the carnage they had seen that day, it felt even more important to Daryl to do just that and perhaps give peace to two little girls whose numbers had been up. He went into the cabin and looked for a shovel.

They had gone back to the site where they had encountered, and brought an end to their misery to Lizzie and Mika. It was her, Daryl, Merle, Rick, Glenn, Maggie and Tyreese.

The whole bunch had almost come, but Sasha, Bob and the new ones, from the army, had stayed behind, with Carl and Judith, trying to see if they went back to the house where Carol had found Tyreese that morning to see if it could be made safe for all of them tonight. Sleeping at the cabin surrounded by Nicolas's body and more was not something they wanted to do. That other house though, it would be a certain distance away from Terminus, perhaps deceivingly so: the people from the compound who would have made it out alive would have crashed closer to the camp, and those who would be seeking revenge would have imagined that the bunch who had escaped would have gone further away, trying to escape them. Sometimes hiding in plain sight was the best plan, and Carol had wasted no time in explaining this to Rick and his band as well as Abraham and his own bunch of people.

It was a temporary thing, they would have to decide the next day where they wanted to go. Carol had only postponed the moment when she would need to ask herself what she did next.

Rick had talked, about her allowing them to be with her, and while it had seemed very humble, and sweet, she was in two minds about it, like she was about many things.

She had insisted on Lizzie's and Mika's graves, and the men had come in numbers, just in case they encountered termites.

As she watched them dig the graves, she thought that it looked very much like a punishment most of them were inflicting on themselves and she would not judge whether it was deserved or not. For Tyreese, it was a personal failure, and she hoped to be able to speak with him about it, but truth be told she just didn't know if she would have that time.

For Merle, Glenn and Rick, it looked like a punishment, like they were castigating themselves for not having been able to save those girls. They had been part of their people, their community at the prison, and there was something really personal going for each and every one of them, even though some had barely known the girls. For Maggie, it looked like something else altogether.

Carol had seen that Beth was not part of the people whom she supposed she had rescued from Terminus, and from the way the woman carried herself, Carol tended to believe the Greene sister had been missing for longer than just now. Maggie had a bible, and was looking for the part she wanted to read for the service.

Carol looked at the holes she had helped dig, unwilling to let the men do all the work. She had some atonement to do to, thinking about the promise she had made to the girls' father.

Carefully, and gently, Daryl and Tyreese each carried a body and laid them to rest at the bottom of the graves.

It never stopped, Carol thought, as Daryl came to stand next to her, and she was reminded of a moment which had been so much more appeasing to her soul.

Maggie chose her words carefully, making a quick speech, but an effective one, and in the ways she said certain things or emphasized others, Carol could almost hear Hershel again. Another soul they had lost.

Though who were "they"? Was there a "they" anymore?

They all took turns to say a quick word for those who hadn't know the girls, to a longer one for those who needed to say goodbye, and then all tossed a handful of dirt on the corpses they had covered with some seedy and holey sheets. When they were done, the men started shoveling the dirt back in the graves.

She stood on the side, and it felt like this was the place where she was doomed to be.

Rick had mentioned having them, her and Daryl, joining the group, or re-joining in her case, and she wondered how realistic it was. People still saw her as the woman who had murdered David and Karen. She didn't want to be around people who believed she was a lose canon, but would keep her around as their lose canon, the one that would protect them if need be.

Protecting her group had been all she had ever wanted. When she had seen Maggie, Michonne, Judith… Each and all of them really, seeing them alive, on their own two legs, it had made her so happy it had surprised her. She would never wish them ill, but they were not her people anymore.

She looked at Rick who was working with the same intensity he did everything. He may have traveled half the road to meet her, but she didn't know if she wanted to do the rest of the road, or even if she could. She understood him more than he would probably know. She had been grateful back at the farm then at the prison when he had taken charge, because she hadn't wanted to lead. She had hated the way he had treated Lori, though a part of her saw his reasoning, blaming the woman for Shane going ballistic. It was a shame Carl had had to end him. However, when examined under a larger spectrum, things were not so simple as to be pinned on the pregnant lady.

Rick had been a reluctant leader, but a leader nonetheless. When they had needed him to step up, he had. He never had the time, or the opportunity though to deal with everything he had had to do and the losses that had happened. It didn't make up for the shit he had put her through, banishing her, which meant leaving her out to die, but Carol couldn't say she didn't understand him. She didn't agree with many things, but she saw his pain, and the fact that it went on being unaddressed. She had seen the happiness on his face when he had seen his daughter, and it had warmed her heart, because she knew a part of him would always wonder if Judith was his, but when he had found her again, he had accepted in his heart that genetics or not, she would always be his daughter, because she had been his wife's daughter and she was his son's sister. Rick was no mean man, but that didn't mean he was a good one either. He could change though, but she didn't think she could be the one to induce that change, nor did she know if she wanted to be. Michonne seemed like a better choice. She had as complicated a history with Rick as Carol did, and she still believed in him. Merle perhaps would be a good choice too…

She was interrupted in her thoughts when she felt Daryl's presence next to her.

She wanted to put her head on his shoulder, and shut her eyes. She didn't know if she wanted to sleep or just pretend, all she knew was that she wanted five minutes when she didn't analyze everything, when she didn't need to make a decision right away. She wanted five minutes, for her, and for him.

This whole thing, being reunited with his brother, and meeting up again with her old group, it had the power to change everything. She wouldn't begrudge Daryl if he chose to stay with his brother. However, she didn't know how she fitted in that group anymore, this way, or anyway.

Daryl didn't reach for her hand, but she could feel him here. When she had found the sanctuary, the place with the candles and the dead and she had seized the actual insanity of the people doing what they were doing, she had thought of him, alone there, and it had been even worse than when she had found his crossbow. He could fight people, but that was if they gave him a fighting chance at all, and she had been sure they wouldn't. That shit about who was the cattle and the butcher… She had been so scared. For him. Never for her. Or maybe for once, a little for her. What if they took away her man, and she survived, as she always did, would she have been able to go on?

"I'm here", he said softly. "I'm not going anywhere. Not without you."

She smiled at him, as it was all she had strength for. He gave her a tiny smile back.

They had so many things to figure, but in that second, she got her wish, her five minutes when she didn't have to think about it. She allowed herself to feel comforted by his eyes on hers, and even replayed their kiss in her mind. She wondered if there would be a second. What about a third?

Sure, there were a thousand questions in need of an answer, but for those five minutes, they didn't matter. It was him, and her and she knew he felt the same.

Telepathy, she thought. Or close enough.

When the men were done shoveling, Carol went to kneel on each grave a last time. When she got up, they headed back to the house Ty had hidden in that morning.

She dreaded the talks and decisions she would have to make, but with Daryl's hand in hers, at least she was not alone.