What Are You?

Alive

Unfortunately, he never got the chance to talk with Tyreese.

Shortly after Rick told him that Carol was gone, the prison was attacked. Apparently the Governor wasn't as dead as they'd hoped, and over the short months they'd been left in peace, he had amassed a small army. Ultimately the prison was destroyed, their home gone, and the group was in tatters.

He had barely made it out alive himself, and somehow, somewhere along the way, Beth had made it too. The time they would spend together would be nothing less than interesting; he never dreamed he would want to help Beth Greene check off her silly damned bucket list. He wasn't gonna lie, she wouldn't be his first choice for company in a world full of undead, but over time, he came to like her.

He saw a lot of Carol when he looked in her eyes; loving and kind with an iron will. It was like he was witnessing her change from the quiet, pathetic girl to a strong, independent woman all over again. It was beautiful and painful all at the same time, seeing his best friend and close companion in this slip of a girl, but he would take it over having nothing to remember her by at all.

And so he let his guard down, let himself warm up to Beth, let her get close. And he clung to that small part of Carol that existed inside her like a stray cat to a kind owner, and he told himself that it was just until he found her again. She wasn't replacing her - she could never replace Carol - but if the years passed and he never saw her again, she would do. She'd have to. It was a small crime, and she was pulling him through. But even that wasn't meant to last.

On the fifth night out from the prison, Beth was kidnapped.

It was all so sudden - they'd found a small church, everything was fine, and then there were walkers and they got separated and the next thing he knew Beth was speeding away in a car with a white cross on its back windshield. And just like that, his small connection to Carol was gone.

And then Terminus happened.

A place of refuge, it said. Those who arrive survive. Just follow the train tracks and you'd be taken to sanctuary. He didn't believe it for a second. But Rick did. And Carl did. And maybe, just maybe, Carol did too. And so he went, trudged along with the others even when he'd lost hope. That place, however unlikely it may be, was his only chance of seeing Carol again, and maybe even Beth, too.

Though disappointed, he wasn't surprised to find it to be a Hellhole covered with pretty lights.

They were cannibals, disgusting creatures that didn't quite deserve to be classified as human beings. They were sick, and they were wrong and they were no better than the walkers they were trying to fend off. And he had almost died at their hands.

They'd taken he, Rick, Glenn, Bob, and a few others he didn't know into a room to be slaughtered and skinned and roasted like pigs. He noticed a few other unfortunate 'victims' across the way in another room, hanging from meat hooks like dead cows, and he nearly vomited at the thought of one of them being Beth or Carol.

They started with the strangers on the far end. They slit their throats one by one, and he decided that he wouldn't miss anything when they got to him. He would be glad to die. To be taken from this world, to never have to feel pain or loss or regret or anything ever again. At that moment, he'd been so fine with it. Calm and collected. At peace, even. But then something else happened to yet again knock him off kilter.

It started with an explosion.

And then another.

And another.

And then all Hell broke loose and suddenly they were running and shooting and gathering everyone up and hopping a fence and escaping that horrible place as it burned to ashes. It was when they stopped to take a rest and regroup that he was finally given reprieve from the torture he'd been through.

Rick had suggested they stop - count survivors, take a breather - and Daryl had been off a ways, still in the group but distinctly apart, leaning against a nearby tree to try and collect his thoughts.

He had been staring off into space, trying to unscatter his brain and think of something but not being able to, when he suddenly got the oddest of feelings. He supposed it was one of those sixth sense things, where someone's watching you and you just know, but it was probably just instinct.

He looked up, searching the area for all of two seconds before his eyes landed on the source.

Carol was standing some feet away, beyond the group's circle and behind an oblivious Rick, looking like she was about to fall to the forest floor in a tired heap.

He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

It was Carol standing there, just yards away.

His eyes widened, trying to make the connection that his brain couldn't.

It was Carol.

His breath hitched, suddenly realizing that this was actually happening.

Carol.

He didn't think, he just acted.

He ran to her like a dehydrated man to a desert oasis, all but barreling into her and wrapping her up in his arms.

His grip loosened when he realized she wasn't hugging him back, but then her arms wrapped around him and held him close, and he only held on tighter in response. His eyes had filled with tears somewhere along the way, and before he knew it, she was crying too.

Daryl locked his arms together and lifted Carol into the air, crying and smiling into her shoulder and breathing in her scent through all the death and decay.

He didn't care that her face was dirty, or that her poncho was covered in entrails, or that her hair was matted with blood. Because she was there and she was healthy and she was real and she was alive, and that was all that was going through his head as he held her against him.

He carefully lowered her back onto the ground, afraid that this was all some sort of twisted dream and he would wake up and it wouldn't be real, or that he was already dead and God was giving him one last glimpse of Heaven before sending him off to Hell.

He felt a slight pressure near his shins and realized that it was the bow she held in her hand - his bow.

It was stupid.

And dumb, and silly, and small.

But it only made him cry harder.

She'd remembered.

She'd been trying her damnest to raise Hell and break them out of there and yet she still thought to bring him back his bow. Carol damned Peletier was nothing short of amazing. A Godsend. A Guardian Angel.

Overwhelmed with emotion, he leaned forward and rested his head on her collarbone, feeling as though he would be unable to breathe if he didn't.

Carol dropped the bow and automatically raised her hands to his head to hold him there, and he silently relished the feeling as she ran her fingers through his hair, feeling as though at any moment he would go weak at the knees and fall to the ground from how right it felt, how perfect everything was in that moment.

He pulled back to stare at the woman who'd come so far to save them, probably gone to measures that even he couldn't fathom, and felt a fresh wave of tears sting at his eyes as she smiled up at him with tears of her own.

She was alive.

She was alive, and God help the person who burst that wonderful, perfect, flawless bubble they were in.

She was alive, and as long as he held her nothing else existed.

She was alive, and that was all that mattered.

She was alive.

She was alive...