Chapter 79: the restless heart, the promised land

It rains that night. Not hard, not a storm in any sense of the word, no wind to speak of and no thunder or lightning. It's cold, and the chill of it seeps in through the windows, finds every crack and exploits it to the fullest extent - as if the cold itself is tired of being the way it is and is trying desperately to get warm.

Daryl wakes up in the small hours and lies curled under the covers, listening to the rain's fingertips pattering gently on the window. It's a comfortable sound, and it's comfortable to be awake to hear it. He's abruptly swept by a sensation he's experienced before but never to this degree: the simple knowledge that it's cold and wet out there and he's in here, and he has no reason to go out there until he wants to. That doesn't necessarily mean he'll be waiting until the rain fully ceases, if it continues into tomorrow, but he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to do anything.

But he said he was going to get Carol some rabbits and that's exactly what he means to do.

Beth's scent is still lingering in the sheets, clinging to every thread - all intensity gone, the memory of a smell rather than the thing itself, but it's strong enough for what he wants and he buries his face in the pillow, breathing her in.

The only thing better right now, better than the fact that he's warm and dry and in no imminent danger of not being either, would be her next to him, fitted against his chest and the bent hollow of his belly and hips, his arm slung loosely around her waist with all the lazy peace that comes with the certainty that she won't be leaving him. That she intends to stay.

He'll have that again, and it won't be long. And maybe when he does, the world will give them a storm like this and allow them to enjoy it to its full.

He sighs, and when sleep returns for him he follows it down without any hesitation.

By the rain has tapered off to a weak dribble, and not long after it stops entirely and the sky blows clear. He's up before then, moving quietly around, making coffee, drinking it sitting on the counter and watching the light bloom on the walls and ceiling. He likes being up very early, always has when he's felt sober and physically able, and only in part because once long ago it was one of the few times of day when he could count on getting much peace or time to himself. That kind of maneuvering through spacetime is no longer necessary, but the peace of these initial hours and minutes is still there - always will be, it's just a feature of how the world proceeds with itself - and it's nice to sit in it before he goes out into it.

Goes out into it to shoot and gut and skin some of its residents.

Not a big deal. Circle of life and all.

The sun is nearly edging above the horizon when he shoulders his bow and heads out the door, clanking down the steps to the path around. Everything is damp, a lot of it still dripping, and the first shafts of direct sunlight are catching droplets clinging to the ends of branches, and Daryl thinks of icicles. Probably not too much longer. When the cold snaps come they can come hard enough to break your neck.

He realizes, as he gets into the truck and turns the ignition, that he's looking forward to it. At the beginning of this whole Thing, when he was younger and measurably more of an idiot about a lot of stuff, he would have done anything to halt time in its tracks. To lay down spike strips and put up roadblocks, even to have taken out a couple of tires and slowed it down. He thought he was facing a deadline. He thought his time was running out and that was how he counted each hour of each day - one less hour and day to be with her, one more hour and day closer to when he would have to leave her forever.

Now he doesn't want to stop it. It's right that it should happen. Winter should come - winter is here, and as he drives down the street toward the roads that will take him out of town, he watches the houses thin and browning grass spread out on either side of him, naked trees rise all pale brown and black, and he thinks that this is very much its own kind of beauty. Time was, he found winter blandly hideous - even snow, because sooner or later snow turns into gray-spattered road slush and becomes disgusting.

But now he watches the woods gather and thicken as he leaves the last of the the town behind, and he loves it. How clear it is. How there's no foliage to catch the light and it just falls. How it's so much easier to see the sky and the pastel pink and violet of a November sunrise throwing his shadow down the road.

Once he would have considered this change of mind and heart and chalked it solely up to her influence. Had to be her. She was fucking with his life, wasn't she? She was making him change. She wasn't permitting him to be who he was. If he saw something differently, it would be because she had found a way to adjust his vision. No credit due to himself at all.

But now, fingers drumming absently on the wheel in time with Garbage on the radio, he wonders about that.

trying hard to fit among you
floating out to Wonderland

He really does.

He doesn't mean to pull over in the exact same place he took her tracking that day. As with so many other things, it's kind of just what happens. He's not thinking about anywhere specific. He's letting the world lead him, carry him, nudge him along, and he stops where he feels he should. It's only after he's out of the truck and slinging the crossbow over his shoulder, making sure he has his knife and a length of twine to string up whatever he manages to get, that he realizes where he is.

He stops at the treeline and looks around, takes a breath.

He wouldn't have recognized it by sight. This far past the end of summer, it was long since rendered unrecognizable, at least at a glance. He recognized it because he felt it. Because he keeps coming back here, keeps being drawn by gentle fingers hooked under his ribs. Because when he took her here and they did what they did and he showed her more far more of himself than he had ever shown anyone - par for the course with her - they both left something behind.

You don't love that way and leave no trace.

He stares at the trees, the lingering shadows that consume their outlines a few yards in, those naked branches, bare tangled twigs that used to be undergrowth, leaf litter gone to mud. He steps forward and lays his palms against two slender hickory trunks that flank him, thinks of the frame of a door, and blinks, hard.

It's still beautiful. But it's changed so much. It's not the way it was. Nothing is the way it was and even after winter when spring circles back around, even when spring flows thick and smooth into summer, it won't ever be that way again. Because he won't be. Can't be.

Because he went into the water and he came up changed. And he never stopped after that.

Nothing is ever the same two seconds in a row. Every time he sees something is the last time he ever will.

He braces against the bark and feels it scrape his hands as he steps between the trees and through that door, into woods he's never been in before.

But he does recognize some things. By sight but also by smell, by what he hears, by how it is when he pauses and close his eyes and feels the air against his skin and the world that contains it. It's all still here, fragments of it just like the fragments he and Beth left, and he hasn't lost his ability to be in the world and know.

He hasn't lost the ability to pay attention. If anything it's sharpened. Honed. He can pay better attention than he ever could before, because he has so much more of it to pay.

Especially in places like this, where he thinks he's probably more present than he is anywhere else. Except when he's with her.

He's unfocused as he moves deeper in among the trees, padding over the soft leaves and softer mud, scanning the ground ahead for tracks and signs of runs but also scanning everywhere. He's only here for the rabbits, but he's taking everything in, everything that might mean anything and everything he knows doesn't and won't. Light glittering through falling water and scattering in tiny flashes against his eyes, catching like drops on his lashes. The steamy puff of his breath. The thinner, blunter scent of the wet leaves rotting in the cold and the paler smell of peeling bark and the flesh beneath. Very faintly sulfuric whiff of a stream or a creek nearby, running high; he doesn't remember noticing a creek here before but that doesn't mean there wasn't one.

Creaking branches. Cracks. Little pinpricks of sound from a cardinal, answered by another. Somewhere off to his right a meadowlark is stretching its throat.

The yielding ground under his boots. Fingertips of a breeze across his skin, through his hair. The weight of the bow and the itch of his wing - less than it did. It's healing. Time to finish it soon.

Almost done.

The solidity of himself, the robust structure of his own skeleton and the muscles laced over his bones. He's here. He has a right to be. He has a place, and really that place is anywhere.

The sense memory of her in front of him, pressing back against him, the clean smell of her hair and her skin and the sharper scent of her sweat. Her cunt, musky and sweet; he hadn't been able to pick up that scent then but he knows she was ready for him - they were ready for each other a long time before they hit that clearing. Her slim, strong body. Her heat. The low music of her voice.

He's making his way through the ghost of that day. That's what they left. This place is haunted. He is.

His chest is tight and he hardly notices. He's too busy noticing every single other thing.

A run, cutting through the tangles of bare vine and brambles - a space that stands out clear and unmistakable when he doesn't look directly at it. He determines its line, the way it extends, swings the bow into his hands and begins following to the side, heading down a gentle slope. Watching for ears rising out of the ground as his footfalls spook them, pausing now and then, but still not entirely focused on any of it.

He's thinking about memories and the ones he carries around. The ones he's accumulated here, the ones he can't let go of. Memories make haunted houses of our minds, crowd them with shades; we move through them and their fingers glide along us like cobwebs. They're thick inside him.

Or he thinks about Aaron's shop. All those shelves, all packed with stories.

Being here is doing very odd things to him.

Not that it didn't before.

The spoor is fresher now, maybe less than half an hour old, and the run itself is clearly well-established and frequently used. There are burrows nearby - he can tell without having to see any of their inhabitants firsthand - and sure enough, when he pauses again he sees it a few yards away: ears poking up above the damp leaves, twitching, and then a head with an equally twitching nose, shining black eyes in which he'd swear he can detect alarm. He's motionless and it is too, bow aimed, and when it comes to its tiny rabbit decision and launches itself out of its hole he lets the bolt fly.

He hits it side-on, right in the flank, and pins it to the ground with a soft scream. Before it falls silent he's moving, crouching over it and gripping it by the body and head, breaking its neck in one quick jerk of his wrist.

He pulls out the twine and binds it by the feet, straightens up and ties it to his belt.

There's no specific pleasure in this, in killing it. There never is. But he did it and he did it well and that's a satisfying thing, and he's always liked the weight of a good kill swinging against his thigh. What it means.

Once it meant that he would actually get dinner. Sure as shit no one else was going to feed him.

The run hasn't ended and he continues along it, gaze down and up and directly ahead all at the same time, and it's not long before he gets another one and just as neatly. It joins the first one, and when he takes a third the sun is cresting the edge of mid-morning and he figures it's time to call it a hunt. They'll all be bedding down anyway, and they'll be tougher to get. And he has more than enough if it's just going to be the two of them.

Fried rabbit. It's been a while. Been a while since he hunted at all. It feels good.

Like so many other things these days, it feels right.

He's heading back in the direction of the road when he finds it.

He's not looking for it. Naturally he wouldn't be. Except it's entirely possible that some part of him was, and although very little here is actually familiar, at least by sight, he would be able to find his way back to this place in his sleep. In his dreams.

He has, many times.

He stands at the edge of the tree cover and stares at it, heart pushing against his collarbones, beating in rapid little flutters. It hurts. It hurts, and he's not even totally sure why.

That wide stretch of grass, bounded all around by the trees. Open and welcoming - even now he can feel it. When he found it he knew it was perfect and it still is. Even if the grass is brown and dead, even if so many of the trees are bare and dark with wet. Even if the light is a pale imitation of what bathed them that afternoon.

Even if it's gone and he'll never get it back.

He pulls in a breath and it strains in his lungs, and he steps out of the shadows and into the clearing.

He moves slowly, carefully, as if he's afraid of disturbing something - he is afraid of disturbing something, unsure of what exactly but the apprehension is real and it scrapes at him like coarse-grained sandpaper. This was a bed the world made for them, one of the many, and it was theirs for the time they were in it, but that time is long gone.

Now he walks to its center and stands, turning in a slow circle, searching the trees and the grass and every inch of space in between for something he couldn't begin to articulate. Something that curls between his ventricles and clamps down on them both.

But- He stops turning and looks ahead, hand on the bow's strap, attention caught and held. Maybe he's having trouble conceptually nailing things down right now, but he can articulate this.

He can touch it. He crosses the grass to it and does so - lays his hand against the trunk of the tree and presses his palm to the carved X in the center of its circle, two of his fingers fitted against the little notches in the bark left by her shots.

He smiles. She was good. She had a talent for aim.

Has one.

So from here he could turn and look back across the grass and find that ghost memory, twine its cool gray tendrils around his fingers and allow it to draw him toward where she was, where he went to her, combed his hands into her hair and kissed her and fell down in the grass with her, rolled and laughed and kissed her again, bit her, mock-fought and played with her like they were animals, made love to her the best he could and lay exhausted and tangled with her after as the sun drenched them in warm gold.

He was idle and blessed with her that day, and if he wanted to he could find the place where it all happened and stand there, and be haunted.

But he doesn't.

He remains where he is, hand against the target he made, a different man in a different time in a place that's become so different as well, and he knows what this is and why he's here.

In so many ways, some of which he doesn't and will never fully understand, he's saying goodbye.

If he's here and that's why, there's one more thing that has to happen, and two thirds of the way back to the truck it does.

He's not tracking anymore - not consciously. To a certain extent it's something he never shuts off, couldn't if for some reason he wanted to. He notices, notes, files away, only later realizes he's retained the information. So when he comes on the deer trail and starts following it - it's pointed roughly in the direction he needs to go anyway - he isn't thinking about it.

He could. Because wasn't this part of it? After. She saw and heard and smelled and felt, she shot the crossbow, and then she tracked and she did that well too, and he got to see it all and seeing it was, in its way, as good as anything else that happened in that clearing. A kind of sharp purity in her that he hadn't known was there.

She followed this trail and he followed her, all the way to the end and what they found there.

You found her. All you, Beth. All you.

So maybe part of him is thinking about it, that haunted part, because it can't not. But the rest of him is focused on the truck and the drive back, the rabbits that need skinning and gutting, the problems inherent in trying to do that in the kitchen, whether the downstairs kitchen has a garbage disposal and, if it does, whether Carol would have too much of a problem with him using it for the rabbit organs, when a flicker of warm brown a little way in front of him brings him up short.

And he already knows what it is before his eyes make sense of it.

Two things, actually.

The flicker of brown is what he sees first and primarily, and as he drops into a swift, silent crouch it resolves into more than a flicker. About twenty yards away, caught by a narrow shaft of sun and darkening as it moves out of it and into another one, it's a shade of brown that manages to be both light and rich, containing a lot of other colors joining and intermingling with a kind of complexity that the human eye can probably only capture a fraction of. It's glossy, looks like it would be soft to the touch, and then there's additional movement and a slender neck lifts, an equally slender head with bright black eyes, ears pricked and flicking at the air.

As soon as he saw the color and the movement the bow was in his hands, already cocked and loaded, and now it's up and aimed. But his hands don't know what his mind did seconds ago and they haven't yet gotten the message: he's not going to shoot, and not just because he doesn't need or want the meat.

This is the doe.

Same damn one. Like there aren't any other deer in this fucking forest. In a saner time and place in a considerably less bizarre life he would have done a lot of scornful internal name-calling at this point, maybe even forced himself to shoot the thing just to shut his brain up. Can't be the same one he saw twice before; the odds are ridiculous and he's ridiculous for entertaining the idea.

And yet. It is. He's sure.

Older. When he first saw her she had been little more than a fawn, still small and gawky and speckled white, but he had seen in her the foreshadowing of the doe she would become. When he saw her with Beth she had been well on the way there, speckles faded, coat darker, larger and clearly more comfortable in her own skin. Now she's almost fully grown, and when she takes a step forward and drops her head he can see the extraordinary grace in even that simple movement.

He's not going to shoot. But just to his right, half obscured behind the low crotch of a tree and flashing in the wire-tangle of undergrowth, is a hard blaze of hunter's orange. A subtle movement from that direction and he sees the sun winking off the barrel of a rifle.

He can feel the point of the aim. He can almost feel the hiss of the bullet. As if it's him in those sights.

He doesn't think. Thinking never gets you anywhere in these situations. He swings his aim up and to the right of the doe and lets the bolt fly.

Beth has always been able to manipulate time. That was her, that was her divine power. He was the beneficiary but he never had any more to do with it than that. Sometimes - the best times - he allowed himself to believe that he might be helping her, that he might actually be part of the process. But it was never him. He could never do that because this isn't his world.

But time slows now. Slows deep.

He sees everything. The shocking brilliance of the bolt's fletching. Water dripping from the trees - diamonds polished into spheres, elongating as they drift light as feathers toward the ground. Actual feathers joining them as starlings explode out of the trees, the iridescent sheen against the inky darkness. The doe smoothly lifting her head, lazy as a giraffe as the sun once again slides across her eyes. How she rises and turns as if she's performing wild ballet, floats into the air and down again, extending her long, elegant legs and launching herself back up. Some part of him knows it's terror, knows he's frightened her for her life, but to him in this moment it looks like joy, and he's still never seen Beth Greene dancing but he wonders if it might not be something like this.

He sees the light, its particles in lapping waves, and honest to fucking God he sees the bullet, watches it warble through the air above the doe's head, leaving silver-gold ripples in its wake.

All he can do is smile. Because it's so beautiful. Everything is so fucking beautiful.

He used to think you had to get high to feel like this. He suspects now that the exact opposite is true. He's never in his life been this sober, this here.

And it's over.

And a very irate hunter is stomping out of the trees and toward him with the rifle over his shoulder and a murderous scowl contorting his features, thin red curls haphazard under a camo cap.

Daryl pushes to his feet and calmly waits for him to get there. The man isn't large, appears to possess very little real muscle mass, and he's red in the face in a way that indicates both anger and a need for more exercise. He probably doesn't get out that much. He probably also isn't that skilled a hunter. Daryl fucked up what would have been a lucky kill.

Good.

"The fuck're you doin'?" The man stops less than a foot away from him, and Daryl catches a brief flash of apprehension sneak across his features; standing here, this close, he's almost certainly aware in a way to which his anger had blinded him that Daryl is significantly larger than him and could do pretty significant damage if he wanted to. And has a very big knife. But he's started and he seems to be stupid so he just keeps going. "I had 'er, you scared 'er the fuck off, and you coulda hit me, you moron."

He looks Daryl over, and again there's the apprehension. "You even supposed to be out here? I should fuckin' report you."

Daryl shrugs, perfectly placid. Once he would have been angry right back. Now he doesn't give even a tiny bit of a fuck. He did what he was here to do. "Didn't know. Didn't see you."

"Didn't see- You fuckin' liar, you couldn't have been more than thirty yards away."

"Didn't," Daryl repeats. "Sorry." And he takes a fraction of a step closer, looking down at the man and very consciously looming, and his hand isn't on the hilt of his knife but it's in a place where it very easily and quickly could be.

He doesn't have to be angry to be intimidating. He realizes it suddenly and with piercing clarity. He doesn't have to yell or wave his arms or throw punches or threaten to do so. He probably wasn't very intimidating before, honestly. But now he's calm, and he doesn't give a fuck, and he's making that as clear as he can.

He doesn't want to break this man, but he will if the man forces his hand. Because this asshole doesn't get to do what he almost did.

"Tell you what. Could be I'm not supposed to be here-" Supposed to be here a fuck of a lot more than you. "-so I'll just get outta here and let you get back to..." He injects his voice with all the cool scorn he can muster. "...whatever you was doin'."

The man swallows, manages to maintain his anger, but now it's a mask and beneath it... Relief. Because this is an out that allows him to keep possession of his balls, or to pretend he has. "Yeah," he growls. "Yeah, you just fuckin' do that. I see you again, I will make sure you get in some big goddamn trouble for it. Swear I will."

Daryl nods, steps back, slings the bow's strap over his shoulder without any further hesitation and turns, walks back down the trail. He has nothing to prove, and it feels good. It's nice not to have to prove anything. Nice to not have any fucks to give for it, for what he intuits are all the right reasons.

He can feel the weight of a glare on his back, and it returns the smile to his mouth. Ruined the asshole's day. He's sure he has.

The asshole won't find the doe again. Daryl has no way of knowing that, but naturally he does.

When he exits the treeline he doesn't look back. Doesn't look back as he drops the rabbits in the truck bed, climbs in, swings it around and heads back toward home. Almost noon now, the sun high and warm even if the day is retaining its chill.

It wasn't easy to be out there. But it was necessary.

The sun washes over his face and he starts to sing under his breath, softly, mostly unconscious of it.

lucky are you who finds me in the wilderness
I am the only unquiet ghost that does not seek rest

It's possible that it shouldn't be pleasant to get blood all over your hands. But it is. It is for him, at least right now - and he does skin and clean the rabbits in the sink, as carefully as he can, because he doubts Carol would be impressed if he did it on the porch. He was barely into his teens when he learned to do it and well enough that it's quick and not even all that messy. The guts and skin go into a big ziploc and into the freezer; he'll get rid of them later.

The rabbits themselves go into the fridge. And that's that.

He doesn't do much for the rest of the afternoon. He naps. Reads about Alice floundering in the Pool of Tears. Calls Beth, mostly to check in; the conversation isn't long. Doesn't have to be. They never had particularly lengthy conversations, even in the beginning. Beth seemed to imbue every single syllable with more meaning than the English language should allow for, which made for a kind of efficiency; she can say a lot without saying a lot.

And now they don't need to say very much at all. They could; he thinks they might when they're together again. He has things to tell her. But not like this. He soaks in her voice, and he soaks in the thing she tells him: she's going to be at the library late on Tuesday, studying for an upcoming English Lit essay.

So - he knows then, hearing between all the lines - he'll need to make sure he's here by the time she gets out of school.

The thing he most feels the need to say and most wants to hear isn't news. Not at all. Nothing novel, and yet even now it slams into his head like a t-boned car every time he hears it.

I love you.

I love you.

Jesus fucking Christ, he does. He still can't even remotely handle how much.

He doesn't want to be able to handle it. There are some things he never wants to get entirely comfortable with.

Never.

That's a long time.

Dinner with Carol. He wonders if he should be nervous, since this is the first actual specific meal he's intentionally shared with her and it's been a long time since he intentionally shared an actual specific meal with anyone but the Greenes, and even longer since he was the one providing the main course. But he's not nervous, and there's no reason to be.

And while Carol has never fried rabbit before, it's not as if frying anything is complicated, and it's amazing. Baked potatoes with sour cream. She has wine, and while he doesn't much care for wine as a rule, this is pale and slightly sweet, and it's not at all like what his mother drank.

So it's good.

Like every time with her before this, a lot of the evening is transacted in comfortable silence. She talks a little, about how there's this thing in the back of the house where the roof is leaking and she can't seem to figure out where the trouble is - he offers to take a look at it - and about how she's sure two of the cats hate her because they keep taking casual swipes at her legs - this as one of the two is winding itself, purring fiercely, around Daryl's ankle.

About how she's been feeling a lot better lately. About... About how she's glad she's not in here alone, because the cats sure as hell don't count as company. About how it's just nice to hear him moving around up there even if she doesn't see him much. How she sleeps better.

This while not quite looking at him, though he doesn't think she's nervous. She's looking down at her fingers pinching the stem of her wine glass, low red sun catching the curve of it through the kitchen window and painting the wine itself in shades of honey. Her eyes are distant, and she's wearing the look of a woman who wants to say something she regards as important and therefore intends to say it carefully.

Then she does look at him, and somehow he knows what she's going to say before she says it. Because she was always going to say it. It was just a matter of time.

He doesn't mind. Not anymore.

"What I've been saying." It comes out slowly, each word considered before it passes her lips. "About Ed. What you say. You know. Don't you? You know what it's like."

He doesn't hesitate. He nods.

"Who was it?"

"My dad." They finished eating about fifteen minutes ago, and he goes into his pocket and pulls out his cigarettes, shoots her a questioning look, and when she gives him an okay inclination of her head he lights one up and exhales. "Mean sumbitch. Worse than mean."

She sighs. There's a lot in that sigh. Some of it he can feel, and some of it remains mysterious. "Did you get away from him?"

Yes. Which is true, as far as it goes. True in a very technical sense. He got out. He got away. Away from that fucking second-round shack, away from a man who was already drinking himself to death. A man who was really, by then, weakening, and soon wouldn't be able to hurt him anymore anyway

Except that had also only been technically true. Which is to say it wasn't and isn't true in any way that matters.

"After a while," he says quietly. "Took a long damn time."

A lifetime.

"How?" She's searching his face, and he doesn't know what she's looking for. He wonders if she knows. "How did you get away?"

For a long series of moments he doesn't answer. There might not be any one answer, at least not one that totally captures it. The way. What it took. Part of the hardest thing he's ever done. Maybe the hardest thing he'll ever do.

But he went to that stretch of open land under the stars and he cracked open a beer and he had a smoke, and he told his big brother it was all right. And he meant it with everything he is.

"I let go," he says at last. The red coal-end of his cigarette catches his attention, and then without meaning to he shifts his gaze down to the fresh pink scar on his left hand. "Ain't carryin' him around no more." He looks up at her and smiles - barely a smile at all, the gentlest convex curve. "Only asshole I'm carryin' from now on is me."

"You're not an asshole," she says softly, and she's almost smiling too. He half-shrugs and tugs the duck ashtray over from the corner of the table.

He's willing to allow how that might be so. Some of the time.

"You said..." Again she toys with the glass, and he watches the wine move just a bit, like a deep lake beneath which something large is stirring. "You said you were going to figure out how to live in the world."

"Mmhm." He did.

"Have you?"

He laughs - a breath. A meant laugh. A real one. There's something funny about this, something he can't quite pin down, possibly simply that every element of this since the beginning has been patently ridiculous. He's ridiculous. Beth said so - she was talking about his cock but whatever, same thing - and she was right.

And then she said he was beautiful. Maybe she was right about that too.

He shrugs again, and the smile he gives her is wider. Not much, but it is.

"I'm tryin'."

That's enough.

Note: songs are "When I Grow Up" by Garbage and "Bone of Song" by Josh Ritter