AN: Thank you so much for the reaction to the last chapter! I promise that I'll be answering everyone's messages and comments as soon as I have a chance, but please know that I read and value them! (Enough so that I've decided to write this chapter and, hopefully, at least one more for this little story). Thank you so much for the encouragement.
I hope you enjoy! If you do, please do let me know!
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"Son of a bitch!"
Daryl spat the curse to himself as he drove just fast enough to keep himself from tipping the hell over, because he didn't want to miss anything. He didn't want to take the risk that he might miss a thing. Because, if he missed it this time, he might never find it again.
Some variation on the theme of "son of a bitch" had played like background music in his head since he'd left. If he had done it right—if he'd done things differently—then, somehow, he could have made everything work out like it did in his imagination.
That's what he told himself, but he was no fool. He also understood that imagination was just that—imagination.
It wasn't real, and his imaginings often involved people and the way that they would act or ought to act. If life had taught him damn near anything, it had taught him that people were not predictable or reliable, not even when their intentions were the best.
After all, not even Daryl managed to act like he did in his daydreams.
In his daydreams, Daryl had said I love you to Carol, just as he'd done in reality, but he'd done it differently. He'd done it right. He'd done it in such a way that, when he'd said it, she couldn't bear to be separated from him. He'd said it with the proper strength behind the words—the proper whatever the hell it was that made people think they couldn't live without you—and Carol had responded maybe a little like something in the movies or one of those damned romance novels.
Daryl didn't care if there were tears or there weren't. He didn't care if she leapt into his arms, or hugged him gently. He didn't even care if she'd taken him off his feet in some kind of over-the-top ballet leap like he'd seen in some romance movies.
Whatever the hell she'd chosen as a reaction would have been fine with Daryl, so long as that reaction ended in the declaration that wherever he went, she would go—she would follow him to the ends of the Earth, or some shit like that.
Those were the words he'd wanted to hear from her. And, though her declaration of love was important to him, and though it had been pretty much the only thing that had held the pieces of his heart together as he'd driven away and thought about the fact that it hadn't worked out like he wanted it to work out at all, and she wasn't coming with him, those three words hadn't been enough to keep him warm at night.
Those three words hadn't filled his arms the way that he'd hoped her body would, and they couldn't quite fill his heart in the same way that having her there could.
How far had he gotten before he'd turned back?
Too damned far.
And for what?
The further he got away from her—from home, because he'd realized that she was his home, no matter where she was—the more that he'd realized he was off on some kind of fool's errand. He was out to discover the truth, but that word had less and less meaning to it the further that he went.
There was no truth, perhaps. And the truth, in finding it, would only shift again in a moment.
The only truth that concerned Daryl, the further he got away from her, was the fact that he felt like there was a sucking hole in his chest. There was something missing that he couldn't fill.
He ached for her like he'd never ached for anyone before—not even when he'd been a snotty-nosed child aching for his mother, and his father, and the life that he craved from them and which he had to accept, very early on, that they were never going to give him.
Daryl ached for Carol. And the ache and the pain only intensified the longer that he travelled and the longer that he tried to convince himself that this was how it should be.
He would find the truth, and she would find peace and restoration. And, at the end of it all, he would go back for her. He would go back, and he would find her, and he would be home again.
And, then, his words wouldn't fall short ever again, and she would hold him in her arms forever.
It was only when Daryl found that he was truly beginning to fear death—and, by extension, to fear the world around him—that he decided to turn back. He decided to swallow his pride, and to say to hell with some metaphorical truth and to simply embrace his own truth.
He realized that he was feeling fear of the world around him—of losing a fight and dying—in a way that he hadn't felt before, because he feared dying before he had the chance to tell her that he loved her, again, and this time to do it right.
He feared dying before he had the chance to truly love her properly, as he wanted to do in his daydreams.
He wanted to hold her—not like he did when she gave him her body and let him love her and root into her, never asking him to put name to the need that he felt to be as close to her as was humanly possible. No, he didn't want to hold her like that—not just like that. He wanted to hold her more closely still. He wanted to hold her loudly, and openly, and proudly. He wanted to hold her endlessly, and with the quiet comfort of knowing that there was no need to stop holding her ever—not even when the sun came up and not when they heard the voices of someone else coming close.
He wanted to hold her, and he wanted to tell the world that he was holding her—that he would hold her forever. That he had chosen to do that, and she had chosen him, unworthy as he was, as the man who would hold her forever.
He liked the way those words felt in his mind. He liked the way they tasted on his tongue when he spoke them into the wind just to hear how they might sound.
He even told a Walker or two that he loved Carol, and that he was killing them to get back to her, so that someone else bear witness to his truth.
The whole way back, Daryl had cursed himself.
If, somehow, he'd managed to say what he truly wanted to say—or to make those three words say what the hell he'd really meant for them to say—this might have all gone very differently. It might have been an entirely different story.
Maybe, even, they'd be on their way to New Mexico, like they'd said they would be someday.
Daryl had held onto that dream, perhaps, a little too hard, and he hadn't realized that she'd been joking. He hadn't realized that she wouldn't go with him when he left.
He would have taken her anywhere that she wanted to go, but if she wanted to be right back where they'd been, he'd stay with her there, too.
He travelled through some harsher weather that would have once made him stop or turn back—weather that would have at least made him take shelter, before—kept warm by only the promise that, when he reached her, he would never sleep cold again. He would never know another cold night or day. He would forever be warmed by her body and her presence.
He would never, never let her go—and any life she chose, any life at all, would suit him just fine, as long as she was in his arms.
And he would tell her that, somehow. He would tell her every last damn word of it.
When he got back, he'd been met by a certain amount of fanfare. There had been a rush of people he'd known coming to greet him, asking for stories about his trip and updates on what he'd learned, and there had been a small crowd of new people gawking at him with question on their features.
He'd half-fielded the questions being thrown at him, he'd half-listened to the stories being told to him at a thousand miles a minute, and he'd half-heartedly hugged those that rushed him for some sign of physical affection, but he couldn't give anyone or anything his whole attention because, as he searched the crowd, he found that he couldn't locate the one thing that mattered most to him.
"Carol's gone. She left."
When the words were finally said to him, they cut through him. They were like a hot knife burning through Daryl's internal organs.
"Left? When? Where did she go?"
He hadn't cared, in that moment, who heard him or who answered him. His answer came in something like a shower of words from different people. His tired, emotional, worried brain put the pieces together for him, holding onto those words as the only hope that he felt he had left at the moment.
"She went looking for you. She said she'd take the main roads. Left about six or seven months ago."
"Son of a bitch."
Daryl hadn't waited. He hadn't rested. He hadn't shared a meal or a drink with anyone. He'd immediately started down the same highway that he'd just traversed without any hesitation. His only regret was that he hadn't know, coming down it even moments before, to be on the lookout for Carol—for any signs that she'd passed through the area, or any indication of where she might have gone. He might have saved himself time. He might have been in her arms sooner.
Now, he had to backtrack…again.
He knew her, just as she knew him. She would have taken the main roads, because she would have known that's what he would choose to do.
When he'd left, he'd wanted to be easy to find. He'd wanted to be easy to follow. Even as he'd been leaving, his heart hadn't wanted to leave. His heart had believed—foolish as hearts seemed capable of being—that she would follow him. She would realize that he needed her and, maybe, when she found him, she would say to him that she needed him, too.
He'd taken the main roads to make that easier, laughing to himself, at times, about how foolish he was to think she'd ever set out after him.
Now, he realized that he hadn't been quite so foolish—and maybe he did know her as well as she knew him. She'd come after him, and she'd taken the main roads.
Now, he only had to creep along them, looking for signs of her and cursing the fact that he'd waited so damn long to turn back for her. Now, the snow had fallen. Now, a lot of time had passed. Now, her tracks had been covered over and he couldn't follow things like burned out campfires and little signs that she might have left him, even subconsciously, so that he could find her as she moved along.
"Son of a bitch," he'd muttered to himself what felt like ten times a mile.
It was like trying to find the needle in the proverbial haystack, but holy shit he'd never wanted anything—anything—as much as he wanted to find her, so he would keep moving at a snail's pace, and he would keep looking for any sign at all that she'd passed through.
He wouldn't give up. He had whatever the hell was left of a fucking lifetime, and he'd dedicate it to her, if that's what he had to do, just the way he should have so damn long ago.
Maybe, he thought, if he'd told her that at the beginning—the first time that he'd felt the practical hunger for her that had nearly consumed him for all these years—everything would have been very different. He'd always been bad at using his words, though. She'd teased him about that, though she'd never truly held it against him.
Dusk was starting to fall. The gray, monotone day was beginning its descent into night. Daryl would have to stop, again, for at least the night. His vision was starting to fail him. His mind was starting to demand rest. He was beginning to see things—like black cats darting out where there were none—and he knew that it was time to start looking for something. He would have to find some sort of shelter from the Walkers, and the animals, and the cold—not to mention any two-legged beasts that might be around. He would start again in the morning, but for tonight, he needed somewhere to sleep.
After all, he didn't want to miss a sign in his near-delirium.
He smelled woodsmoke. There was a camp somewhere. One of the houses dispersed on the side of the highway, perhaps, was occupied. He saw the smoke rising up from the chimney not long after he smelled it. He was riding in that direction, since the house sat right on the side of the highway, but he wouldn't stop there.
For Daryl, where there were people, there was often danger. He was determined to go just far enough to feel safe, but not too far. He couldn't risk missing something. He couldn't risk missing her.
And then, his blurry eyes offered up a vision—another hallucination like black cats running rapidly across the road and, sometimes, straight at his tires. The mailbox of the house sat slightly crooked, its post rotting, right on the side of the highway. It was a relic of the life they'd known before. Painted on it, he could have sworn he saw a word that was familiar to him. Even as he passed it, it made his stomach do a somersault.
Dixon.
He shook it out of his mind for a moment. He rolled past it a few feet, trying to convince himself it was just another metaphorical black cat that wasn't really there, and then he turned the bike in a U-turn and circled back. If it was a black cat, then so be it. He could turn again and continue on his way, satisfied that the word was nothing but a trick of tired eyes and somehow inexhaustible hope.
As he circled back, and his eyes settled on the word painted on the other side of the mailbox as surely as it had been on the first, he stopped the bike.
Dixon.
His heart pounded in his chest. He looked toward the house—the house where the woodsmoke drifted out of the chimney.
He rolled his bike carefully toward the house. He rolled right into the driveway. He stopped at the gate to the fence and turned the bike off. He no longer cared if he was in danger or not. His tired eyes, peering through the fence at the house, could see that, painted by the door, was the same word that he'd seen on the mailbox.
Dixon.
And this wasn't done in the fashion of an age gone by. This was simply something put there recently—recently enough that weather hadn't eaten through the words or the sentiment.
What need did anyone have to mark a house with something that mattered so little these days? Yet, there it was…a word that had once mattered a great deal to Daryl, though the meaning behind such things faded with time, the same as the letters on the doorframe would.
When the door to the house opened, and she stepped out, Daryl nearly fell in his rush to get off the bike.
She stopped a moment. She stared at him, and then she rushed toward him, too, to open the locked gate that separated them.
As she lumbered toward the gate, her movements very different than he recalled them ever having being before, Daryl's heartrate changed again and his stomach did another of the almost violent somersaults.
"Son of a bitch…"