Chapter 93: coda

She knows this scent.

She's young still, very, but she learns fast, and her continuing survival is testament to that, though luck has also played a significant role. Summer was good to her, and the fall as well, and deep inside her she's beginning to feel the hot stirring that will eventually lead her to her own version of this scent - strong, she hopes in her way, strong and good to her as the summer was, and putting good new life inside her that will survive as well as she has.

This scent, yes - her hooves picking their way almost daintily through the snow-crusted grass, curious, her ears open to everything but her primary attention fixed ahead and down. The scent of the two-footed Male - several times now she's come across it. Once not too far from her; he was there and watching her but he never came for her, and she noticed that, noted it, filed it away. So when she scented him again she wasn't afraid, and she wasn't afraid of the new scent with him, the Female - lighter and fresher, smaller. She grazed and left them to themselves, and later she tracked them back to where they came from and found the clearing in the last of the evening sun, the shadows long, and she nosed in the grass and smelled the musky, happy scent of their mating.

It was a good place. She stayed there for a while and moved on into the dusk.

Then a final time, or a final time before now - almost too late, she realized later, in the simplest possible way. Almost too late she scented him, and scented something hard, something almost like anger, but when the tree near her broke open there was no bloodlust mingling with him, no predator stench, and as she fled she knew he wasn't trying to hurt her.

And now here he is again.

She can't see all of him. His body is half lost under the broken pile of metal. She can see a hand, an arm, shoulders and a tangle of dark hair, and she can smell the sharp tang of blood, and she can see it spotting the white of the snow.

And she can smell the sharper, darker odor of pain.

Fully half of her instincts are screaming at her to run. But this two-footed Male has three times been near her and never once threatened her, and he's hurt and she doesn't know that he would be able to do much threatening now even if he wanted to.

She bends her head and noses at him, licks at the blood on his fingers. The back of his hand. She nudges his arm and he twitches, groans faintly, but otherwise doesn't respond.

Run.

She won't.

She closes her teeth on the odd, loose hide the two-foots seem to often have and tugs, tugs harder, and when she gets nothing out of him she begins to chew it, until at last he twitches once more and twists himself, does so violently enough to roll partway onto his back. His face is still partially obscured, but she can see that it's streaked with blood as well.

A lot of it.

He's still again, motionless and silent. She looks down at him for a moment, then raises her head and looks off into the trees. She glances up at the sky. The clouds are strange and have been very strange all day, but not in a way that frightens her.

Nothing is frightening her right now.

She returns her attention to the Male and watches him, and tries - in her ungulate fashion - to think what to do.

"Well, what have we here, brother?"

No.

The words themselves are pain and his very organs cringe away from them as they hammer through his ear canals. No. No one is supposed to be talking to him. Certainly not Merle. Unless something happened to Merle and Merle beat him here. Which wouldn't actually be all that surprising. He spent a lot of the last two years expecting that very thing, even if he hadn't wanted to admit it to himself or anyone else.

Wherever here is. Sure as shit not any sort of Heaven he's ever heard of, if they let Merle in.

"C'mon, little brother. The fuck're you doin'?"

I'm being dead, what the fuck are you doing?

The world is red - really more of a deep maroon, and it's flickering faintly, something like film grain floating around. Vague shapes that he can't make out. He'd try to feel his way through it, see if he has anything he would recognize as a body in an afterlife he hadn't really believed would be there, but even thinking about doing so hurts - and the fact that he hurts at all is indicative, come to think of it.

"You fuckin' pussy, you had worse in about fifteen separate bars before you got us stuck up the ass of this shitburg." Something cold smacks against his cheek and the grainy maroon explodes into an excruciating white. "Open those big baby blues, Darylina."

Under the rolling shudders of pain: profound irritation. Merle won't even let him be dead without harassing him.

"You ain't dead, you fuckin' idiot."

"Fuck you, bro."

Three words. They pass up through his throat like a cheese grater and claw their way over his tongue, somehow make it out in a breathless croak. They must have done something else in the process, because now he can taste blood, and when he moves the slab of warm roadkill that his tongue has become and presses it against the inside of his cheek behind the right corner of his mouth, the sting and the texture of badly bitten flesh and the fresh swell of sweet copper solves that particular mystery.

If he was dead, or at least dead in any conventional sense, he really doesn't think all this would be happening. So it's time to entertain other possibilities.

Such as.

"There you go." Merle sounds gratified. Fuck Merle. "Now go on, open up those peepers." Another light smack. "Go on, you little shit."

He can't. His eyes are stuck closed, literally stuck; he manages to scrounge together the will to try and he feels the pull between his lashes and his skin, tries to lift his hand to wipe at them, can't do that either. Fucking hell, if he is alive... What else? If he can't move, what does that mean? What happened in those final seconds? He rolled. Hit the windshield? Hit the window? If he was thrown forward and through the former... There wouldn't be any surviving that. But his head against the window - he felt a crack. He remembers that. The sensation of something breaking.

His back could be broken. His neck. He might be paralyzed. Lying here in the snow and fucking paralyzed, on the frozen shoulder of a road he hasn't seen anyone else on since he started down it.

Surviving a crash that should have killed him only to freeze to death. There's a kind of horrible, senseless poetry in that.

Snow. He's in the snow, he can feel it cold against the back of his hand, and he can also feel it stuffed under his coat and shirt, melting wet. He can feel. Not paralyzed, then. Probably not. But thrown clear, at least partially, somehow. Not in the truck anymore. Might be good. Might be very bad.

He can wiggle his fingers. Tries his toes; those too.

And now he almost wishes he couldn't feel, because the pain hits him again, pummels him all over, like he's one gigantic contusion.

He moans and it rakes against the back of his throat.

He saw her. She was there.

"That's what you think, man? Really? How the hell would that have happened?" Something crunches in the snow by his head. A shifting boot, maybe. Merle sounds very close. That might be the heat of another body near his face, the warm moisture of an exhale.

"How the fuck're you here,then?"

"You got yourself a powerful imagination, brother. Always did. Saved you, sometimes. You know that. You're an Olympic fuckin' champion at seein' what you wanna see. And you're just as good at not seein' a whole fuck of a lot else."

He tries to open his eyes again. This time there's a tiny bit of success; light beams in through a sudden crack, jabs his optic nerves, and he winces. But against the light, shadowy movement. Yes, very close indeed. Inches away, maybe. He smells it now; old cheap cigarettes, cheap liquor, sweat and the odor of a chronically unwashed body, the faintest sallow thread of sickness. No mistaking that. Not ever.

"Don't wanna see you, bro."

"You know that ain't true neither," Merle says softly, and this time the touch is gentler. Not really a slap. Almost a pat. "Look at you. Lyin' by the side of the road like a used rubber. Wake up, little brother. Wake up and deal with the world, or fuckin' die in it."

"Tryin'."

"Try harder."

"Shit, liked you better when you was in prison. Why can't you just leave me the fuck alone?" It sounds petulant and he's not proud of it, but what the fuck? He got this far, he told himself he was going to be okay, going to be all right, and now he's lying bloody in the snow with - for all he still knows - a couple tons of shitty truck wrapped around his lower body. He lost his home, lost her, and he was prepared to deal with that much, knew he could move on and survive and maybe even eventually thrive again, but now he's tired and he hurts and yes, he just wants to be done with everything. It's not even about melodrama. It's just about practical exhaustion, and about the fact that he already did what he had to do. He did the most important thing, much more important than himself and any life he was going to build anywhere else.

He saved her.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ, you stupid prick." Merle is all exasperation, and Daryl catches a blurry glimpse of grizzled features twisted into that same exasperation, eyes rolling. "You forgot what she told you? You made like you understood. You lyin' to her or somethin'? Breakin' her heart ain't enough? You gotta treat her like a kid too?"

He coughs, tastes more blood. "The fuck you talkin' about?"

"You don't get to save her," Merle says, quiet now. Calmer. His touch had almost been gentle; now his voice is as well. But hard. Unyielding. "She said it, you got it. Now you just chuck it away the second it ain't convenient for you to remember. She said you gotta let her choose, but you just left. Didn't say nothin' to her. Didn't give her a choice. Made it for her, like she can't make it herself." Merle pauses, shifts again and leans closer. "Like you don't know how that feels."

"Ain't the same."

"Hell it ain't."

"It ain't." The rush of anger is grimly pleasant. It makes him feel stronger. It gives him what he needs to move his legs; he can, a little, but they're pinned under something. "I was gonna... I ask her to come with me, I do that to her, it fucks her up. Her whole life. She'd say yes, but she'd be sorry. She would. You know she would. Fuckin' hell, man, you said it."

"And I ain't never been wrong about nothin', sure. Really is amazin' you're still breathin', you been walking around carryin' that much dumbass your whole damn life." Merle sighs. "Ain't even about her. You ain't a dumbass, actually. You know that too. You just got real good at fakin' it. But you was always the smart one, not just the sweet one. Deep down, you know she ain't why you left."

"Yeah? You know so much, you... you fuckin' tell me."

"You ran 'cause you're scared." Simple. Calm. Very, very certain. "You ran 'cause you looked at the things you could do and you only let yourself see one of 'em. You think you stayin' is gonna fuck her life up too? Brother, here's a truth missile flyin' up your tight ass: you just ain't that important."

Daryl blinks. Sort of. His eyes still aren't fully open, and nothing in front of them is very clear. Merle isn't much more than a dark blur against a seething gray background. "I ain't..."

"Don't get me wrong. You matter to her. Fuck of a lot. But she don't need you. And she can make up her own mind how much she wants to let you fuck her life up. If you even would. Yeah, she might decide she don't wanna see you no more. She might decide that's best. But then she decides. Not you. Either she's a kid to you or she's a woman. She can't be both."

He should have something to say to that. There should be some kind of response. Some verbal ammunition he can use to shoot back. But nothing is coming, no matter how roughly he fumbles through his aching head, and instead he drags in a ragged breath and shivers.

"She asked you a question, Daryl." And now, quiet and close, Merle sounds the most fully like Merle Daryl has ever heard. Grating, sure, and with that sardonic edge he's pretty much always possessed, but clear. And present. There with him. Real, regardless of whether or not he actually is. "Early on. You remember. In her room that night, she asked you a question. Your big scary fuckin'-up question ain't worth shit, but that one was worth a lot. You remember it. I know you do. You ain't answered it yet. Think maybe it's time you did."

Confusion. He almost whimpers. "What-?"

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Not Merle's voice, and not hers.

This voice is a lot closer to home.

There was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do.

Determined to save the only life you could save.

"Time to let go, little brother," Merle whispers. Suddenly his shape isn't quite so dark, isn't quite so solid. It seems to be melting into the gray. Into the low sky. "Been time, for a long time. Enough, now."

"Merle..." And he can reach, then, and he tries, lifts his hand, sees streaks of blood along its back, but Merle is gone, and in his place is a narrow head and pricked ears, doe eyes, and a rough, warm tongue licking at his cheek.

He yelps in pure surprise, bats at it, and it jerks back, awkward on its gangly, graceful legs as he manages to focus on it.

Okay, yeah, that's just weird.

The doe looks at him. He looks at the doe. Then, as if her job here is done, she turns away from him and flicks up her white tail, and bounds lightly off into the trees.

He stares at the place where she was. Stares at the clear prints of her hooves. Stares at the trees and tries to process.

After a few moments of this his body takes over. He's sick of the snow, sick of being in it, and it's agonizing to do it but he can: he pushes himself up and manages to turn and see what he's dealing with.

Totaled doesn't really capture what he's looking at. The truck doesn't even look like a truck anymore. It's a pile of twisted, rusting metal, a significant part of the cab deformed and crumpled inward. As near as he can determine, it came to rest mostly on its side, and at the point of impact - or just before - the driver's side door must have come open, and he was hurled most of the way out of it. His legs are pinned under the seat - which has been shoved forward and down at an odd angle - but they're not pinned badly, and when he tries to move them nothing seems to be broken. He grunts, braces his hands against the ground, and with a grinding effort he hauls himself backward, drags them free.

And he just sits there, blood congealing on his hands and - he's pretty sure - on his face, and he might be bruised all to hell and he probably has at least one fun species of head injury, but he doesn't think anything is broken anywhere. At least not badly. Not badly enough to stand out from the rest of the pain when he moves.

And he's alive.

He still doesn't believe in a god, no. But he's not sure what to call this other than a literal fucking miracle.

He turns at the waist, looks back toward the trees. "The FUCK," he yells hoarsely, and ignores the sandpaper-scrape in his throat as he does so. "I save your fuckin' LIFE, this is what I get?"

But then he's laughing. He's laughing, and it hurts a lot, and he can't stop.

So he does that for a while.

He's cold. The pain is abating, maybe just because numbness is setting in. Maybe he's in shock. He looks down at his hands, wipes at his face, his fingers come away sticky and bloodier. Gash, maybe. He feels again; there's a violent sting and it feels like the skin is torn along his hairline, so that's another explanation. His hands; there's a long, ragged cut along the back of his left one.

Right over his scar.

He's not sure where else he might be bleeding, but of the places he's aware of, the flow seems to be slowing to an ooze. There's a lot of blood, yes, but head wounds don't have to be severe to bleed a lot. Same for hands. He's awash in pain, but he really does think he might be mostly okay.

So he looks at the road, a few yards away. Looks to his right and sees his pack, also thrown clear, fallen open. Clothes strewn across the snow. The book, facedown like he was, pages wrinkled. Just visible, the curved back of the wolf.

Wedged halfway under the mutilated front of the truck are the sad, broken remains of the crossbow.

He sighs. Looks at the road again. The clouds are close and moving fast. It doesn't look at all like a winter storm. It does look oddly familiar, though.

The fuck you want me to do now?

Go back, man. Jesus.

Ain't exactly got wheels no more.

Got legs, don't you?

Got a wing.

He has no answer to that. It's miles. The road he chose took him partway back to the farm before it turned north, but it's still a good way. He has no idea how long it will take him.

Better get going, then, huh?

The fuck's her dad gonna do when I come staggerin' up the drive?

Maybe best not plan too much right now.

Just saying.

He stares at the road for another few minutes, legs stretched out in front of him. Looks back at the truck for another few, and at the pack. The things he brought with him. All the things he has in the world, except for the boots on his feet and the clothes on his back. The money; he still does have that in his pocket.

How much of the rest of it does he actually need? How much of the rest of it has he ever needed?

The wolf, the book. He gazes at them and he expects the pain to flare, but it doesn't. He somehow feels that the wolf has done its work. As for the book...

He has a very good memory. And he has songs in his bones.

Groaning, he gropes at the air and drags himself to his feet. Stands there for a long, final moment. Starts toward the road. His boots touch it and he doesn't hesitate; he turns left, south, back toward the farm, and he has no idea how far it is or how long it'll take him to get there, but he has legs and he has a wing, and maybe he's nuts...

But maybe he'll be all right.

And it's slow going, sure, every step fresh pain, but then after a little while, as the trees crowd in and move away again, the pain eases and it's better, it's easier, and he's standing straighter, as if every one of those painful steps back toward where he came from is healing him. That's ridiculous, there's no way that can be happening, but there's still what he feels - and he's good at seeing what he wants to see, so maybe he can make himself feel what he needs to feel. Maybe he can do that.

Maybe he can do all kinds of things he never knew he could do.

Wide, white fields. Darker and darker, wind picking up, but he's moving fast enough to keep back the cold... And is it really so cold now? Is that a wind that carries a chill?

What's that smell?

The light explodes and the thunder crashes right over him the second the ozone hits his nose, and he stops hard, jerks his head up, and just as he does the sky opens up on him in a flood.

A flood of warm summer rain.

He stands there and stares at it long enough for water to fill his eyes. Then he squeezes them shut and tilts his head back as far as it'll go, wrestles off his coat and lets it fall and spreads his hands to catch water in his cupped palms, opens his mouth, and as the rain washes away the blood he starts to laugh again, laughs until he hurts, laughs until he feels just fine, starlings and mockingbirds bursting out of the trees and the snow around him melting to nothing, the world washing clean of winter, and he knows he's well.

He runs.

They still talk about that storm.

They say it shouldn't have been possible. The fact is, when it comes to weather all manner of things are possible, and and this particular thing was merely a freak occurrence, yet another oddity in a year full of meteorological oddities, so maybe it's not even that strange in context. But it really might have been the strangest, so they still talk about that December summer storm and they shake their heads in amused bemusement. No one has ever been able to explain it, including the people whose job it is to explain things like that. It simply happened.

An Act of God, some people say. Which is what we call things when we don't know what else to call them.

The fact that we even have the term is evidence that these things do happen, regardless of the reason. So maybe the storm was possible and maybe it shouldn't have been, but it came. When it was over the snow was gone, and there was no more snow for the rest of the winter.

Everyone was perfectly okay with that. After so much strangeness everyone was happy to get back to normal. No one has ever been able to explain it; maybe there was no explanation.

Except we know better, don't we?

Because this is a very old story.

He runs. He runs and it's so easy, splashing through puddles, arms pumping - the pain still present but distant and unimportant and no longer bothering him. He'll hurt later. Later, when he can afford to.

In the meantime he's soaked, soaked to the point where one can't get any wetter, which is actually kind of a good place to be, kind of freeing, because you don't have to care anymore. You can just be wet.

You can only get drier.

He might still be laughing. He has no idea. He's panting like he might be, but he's also panting like he's running, gaze simultaneously locked on the road ahead and expanded to take in everything around him. Paying attention. Confused birds hurtling through the air in flocks and murmurations and exaltations, grass and trees whipped by the wind, clouds churning above him - not ominous, no matter how low and dark they are, but feeling like they're urging him, pulling him. Get your ass in gear, come ON. Because he only has seconds, even if he doesn't know exactly how many. Not that it matters.

Run.

He does. No idea for how long. Half an hour. An hour. Longer than he should be able to. Nothing is working the way it should. Nothing is making any sense. He pounds the road, and it's like being on that bike, like he could spread his arms and soar, like the wing on his back bursting free of his skin and tearing through his drenched shirt and lifting him into the air - unsteady, unbalanced, but flying.

I want to be afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

Except it can't last.

It abandons him all at once, just after he turns back onto the road that runs between town and the farm, and he staggers to a halt, bends over his knees and gasps in wrenching heaves, throat raw and head throbbing and all the pain rushing through him like water behind a broken dam, and he's so angry because he's so close and he's come this far and he should be able to go the rest of the way. He should be. For her.

For her song.

Sudden heat on his back. Sudden burst of light. He manages to lift his head and look around, and if anything it's raining even harder but now sunlight is streaming down with it, pouring over everything and burning away the last of the snow. It's almost too much and he blinks and scrubs one-handed at his eyes, his hair dripping all around his face.

That's a truck.

That's a truck down the road, coming toward him. He can't lift himself - now that he's stopped he's not sure he can move much at all, not sure why he isn't simply collapsing, but that's definitely a fucking truck, and his breath knots in his throat, twists itself around his heart, and he watches it get bigger and bigger, faster, until all at once it's there and braking hard, spraying water.

He should lift himself. Can't. All he can do is stare, hysterically relieved laughter tearing at the tangle of his respiration, tears mingling with the water in his eyes, as Beth shoves the door open and stumbles out, her hair and shirt and jeans instantly as soaked as his and her doe eyes wide.

"Daryl?" She stands for a few seconds and then plunges forward, and all he can do is wait for her. "Daryl, you- Oh my God." She reaches him quicker than he would have believed - except there really is no limit to what he can believe right now - and takes his head in her hands, tilts him up and pushes back his hair, searching him, her eyes gone even wider. Huge and clear and crystal blue. "Are you alright? What happened to you?"

She's so fucking beautiful. Not that this comes as any kind of surprise. She was beautiful in the rain that first night, she's just as beautiful now.

"There was a deer," he gasps. Yes, keep things as simple as possible. Stick to the facts. "And I'm an idiot."

"You're... Daryl, fuckin' hell." She's trying to pull him closer, looking him over, but he frames her face and lifts her to him, and finally he has the words and they're not very good but they're his own, and they come all in a flood, just as true and just as easy as that first I love you.

"I can't go." He swallows, almost chokes, lurches onward. "Beth, I... It's so fuckin' stupid, I know it's stupid, but I... It's you, what I plan to do, it's always been you, and I know it's the worst fuckin' idea, I know it's probably not gonna work, I know that, but it's you and I wanna stay and I wanna try and if you wanna try, if you think you can do that, I-"

"Shut up, Daryl." And she clenches a fist in a fold of his shirt and drags him down.

She's very, very good at shutting him up.

"He was talkin' to me about it." She leans back and combs her fingers into his dripping hair, tips his forehead against hers, and she's talking in her own rush, a helpless, giddy smile curving her mouth. "Daddy. He came back in, and I dunno what you said to him, and he's still so mad and I still don't think he wants you anywhere near me, but he was askin' me about it and he was listenin' and I think he was actually tryin' to understand, and I..." She kisses him again, open-mouthed and wet and pulling him into her, pushing into him, and he has no idea if he's moaning or laughing, holding her close, and he's pretty sure he's bleeding on her and it doesn't matter.

"I wanna try," she gasps against his mouth. "I wanna try, I do. Yeah, I know it's probably not gonna work and I don't care. Let's try."

Girl, he whispers, and then he kisses her for a very long time, kisses her in the warm summer rain, kisses Beth Greene and she kisses him back, and she's not a goddess, she's a girl, she's his and he's hers and he has no idea what comes after this break in his life, this dividing line, this ultimate delineation. No fucking idea.

But he knows he has this.

"C'mon." She pulls back again, still holding onto him, tugging him now. "Get in the truck."

He totters when he tries to follow her, but she slides a shoulder under his arm and bears him up, and he can go this last little bit, his head falling back, rainbathed and sunbathed and so blessed.

"Where're we goin'?"

She pulls open the passenger's side door and steadies him as he levers himself, groaning, onto the seat. "I'm gonna take you to the hospital."

Oh. Good. Good, that's probably a smart idea.

"What about after that?"

She lays her hands against his cheeks and leans in, kisses him again, again and again. Kisses him hard, so hard the bite on the inside of his lip stings like a motherfucker, and he can't even begin to care. She grins against him, and this isn't perfect.

It's better.

"I can take you home."

And will I tell you that they lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness.

And they did live. - Stephen King