Super short one, sorry! :)
In the darkness Beth awakes with a start. Beside her Daryl twitches and strains, mutters and grunts. He's in a sweat. "Daryl," she whispers, "shhhh." She touches his face, pushes back his hair. Still he grunts and thrashes. "Daryl, shhh — Daryl, it's a dream. — Daryl, love, you're all right. Shhh…" With a jerk, Daryl awakens, gasping for a breath between the waking world and dreams. Beth brings her face ever closer to his. "Shhh, you're here, it's okay. It was a dream." Daryl's eyes dart back and forth, unable to leave behind what was in his mind's eye. Beth kisses his sweaty forehead and presses her face to his, wiping away the traces of tears. His lips tremble and his troubled eyes still water. "C'n you say what it was?" Daryl's head shakes. It's still too real, he's too unsettled, too upset. "Come're," Beth snugs closer to him. The room is wintry and their bed-warming stones have long since cooled, but beside her he's afire. Daryl's blood races, his brain and heart ricocheting in explosive urgent dread and terror. Again she smooths back his hair and wipes away tears. Beth finds his hand and brings it to her mouth to kiss. "Here," she says softly, and she lays his hand on the roundness of her belly, low where the baby just started moving. "Feel that? We're okay. It's alright." She wraps her arm around him as he tucks into her. Gently she strokes his head as she tries to regulate his harried breath. Beth entwines her legs in his, holding him as close to her as she can. "You alright?" Her whispered words are softer than the beating of his heart rate pulsing in his ears, softer than the sounds of his troubled sleep still echoing in hers. She kisses his temple. "We're safe. You don't have to carry that. Daryl," she kisses his name into his head, smelling him as she does. Her brave strong love, who shoulders too much. Daryl sinks into her, biting his lip to quell its quivering. Eventually he exhales and lets the fall and rise of her breathing anchor him. She, and the interment gentle fluttering bump-bump from the other side of her womb, holds him steadfast, tethered to this family in this moment, luring him from nightmare scenarios back to a quiet haven of stillness and serenity.
It had been so real... It could yet be real…
So many grisly, grievous scenarios hang overhead lying in wait, biding their time. Unseen in their dark bedroom but not unfelt, they pierce through his blood. For miles and miles of many traveled roads they had sunk into his bones, haunting their steps, tracking them, ever shadowing them through their progress. Her whispered touch disperses the storms of darker fates, but still they linger. Never gone, never far off. Even in the good moments, it's always just there, part of the milieu of living. But more than most he is adept at dismissing it. His childhood trained him in it. Deflection. Compartmentalization. Resilience. He's always had a short fuse and his learned defensiveness can make him volatile, but he's also had a lifetime schooling him to roll with punches, to take things on the chin, bounce back, brush it all off. Over a lifetime he's had to teach himself to look for good when it was so rarely evident. More than most, in far more ways than survival skills, he is equipped for this world. Leaving the hurt and the loss and the fear in the rearview mirror is part of the bargain of being alive, but he's not so brash nor so desensitized — if he ever really is — when his guard is down. Pragmatism doesn't follow him into slumber. He's knows no way to stave off dread in his sleep.
"Better?" she whispers.
He cannot tell her 'no'. Against her body Daryl nods and, still bleary-eyed, presses a kiss to her where his head lies.
The room returns to quiet stillness. He hears her heartbeat through her chest, feels her breath expand and slack. Their baby presses against his where his hand still lays, a foot he thinks, bumping and nudging. Beth's cool fingers work through his hair from the roots at the nape of his neck up his scalp, running his hair in its opposite path, weaving cool tracks of reviving newness through him. Daryl exhales, and so does she. "Love you."
Daryl nods, and grips her hand tighter, holding her to him. "Mmm,hmm."
"We're okay. We're gonna be okay."
His head at her shoulder, Daryl nods again. "Mm,hm." He pulls her in closer, and exhales again. "Love you," he murmurs. "Ev'rythin's good. We're good." He kisses her chest and focuses on the gentle nudge-nudge beneath his touch in the dark.
Thank you for reading!