A breeze blew through your hair that lays long over your shoulders. The wind had the warmth of summer yet the scent of fall. Autumn was coming in and you were ready for the change. You were ready for the cooler temperatures to cut through the long summer humidity. You were ready for all of the green to slowly fade to yellow and orange. You were ready for the season to change... But for today it was still summer.
But it wasn't humid and dense as most Georgia summer days were. Today was warm but pleasant. It was full of sunshine but the rays didn't burn your skin as you sat beneath it. Today was beautiful.
The sound of fabric rustling beside you makes your head swing to the left, catching sight of Daryl Dixon sitting down on the step next to you. His boots press to the ground with a soft thud and his scent swirls around you as his body shades you from the sun. Sweat and wind, a combination you never would've enjoyed a lifetime ago. But now the scent fills you with a sense of safety and familiarity because it belongs to him.
Daryl pulls something from his pocket as he sits there next to you without a word. A cigarette, and placing it between his lips he lights it with his silver lighter. A click and soon smoke rolls out in front of him, and you watch it blow off in the breeze.
"Those are going to kill you one of these days." You speak up first, and Daryl turns his head to meet you gaze.
Plucking it from his lips with his fingers, blowing the smoke out in a grey stream, Daryl responds. "Always sayin that, haven't killed me yet."
He was right. You always used to say that when he pulled one of those cancer stick out and lit it up. Back before the dead began walking and after.
Before, you thought it was a habit you could get him to break. You thought after time he'd quit. That he'd quit for himself or for you. But after the world went to hell, you knew there was no chance he would quit now.
Releasing a sigh, you turn your head and look out at the wide stretched field beyond the gates. The green rolling forward for miles until it becomes constructed with the forest line.
"They look happy," Your voice enters the quiet that had fallen over the two of you again. Your words deciding to change the subject. "don't they?"
They did to you. Their smiles were undeniable. Maggie glowed with something you hadn't witnessed from her before and Glenn looked overjoyed. They had managed to find something everyone wished for in life... True love. And against all odds, the end of the world brought them to each other.
"I suppose so." Daryl responds with a shrug as he blows out another puff of smoke.
Turning your head, you return your gaze back to the man sitting beside you. Studying him as he stares off into the horizon like you were seconds ago.
"We were never that happy, were we?"
Your question makes him tense, you can see it. His muscles constricting as you bring up a topic that neither one of you enjoys to acknowledge. Your heart aches as you ask him the question, but you sit there strongly waiting for an answer.
Daryl slowly drops his head, and with time he shrugs and gives you a response. "Don't know. Weren't ever married."
Bringing the butt of his cigarette to his lips for one last drag, he flicks it off onto the cement in front of him. And you watch the last of the smoke roll off his chapped nicotine touched lips.
"Was that our problem?" You ask in a low voice, and Daryl lifts his head slowly to look at you. His blue eyes meeting yours, and like the first time they threaten to steal all the air from your lungs.
"Do you think it could have been different for us if we had said those words? If we had made those vows to one another?"
Looking at him in this moment, you don't register the man in leather with muscles that have bulked up over the span of all this time. You see the man you fell for a lifetime ago. With his hair shorter and lighter, his skin still kissed by the sun but clothed in clean plaid fabric. You sit beside the man you loved long ago.
"Do you think it would've been different? That we could've been different?"
Daryl stares at you as you pause, his eyes scanning over you as he thinks of his answer. And slowly but surely, his lips begin to move.
"They're jus words."
They are just words. A pair of two words. And sometimes a message of words shared to one another. But they symbolize much more than two syllables. They speak of a commitment. To love, to life, to each other. And you couldn't help but wonder if that's what you both had missed.
"Words we never said." You whisper to him.
Your eyes are locked with his, and swirling within his heavy blues, you see everything that could've been between the two of you. Everything you had always wished for with Daryl but never happened.
Maybe it wasn't meant to be, you and him. Maybe it wasn't part of your life plan. But looking at him now, still with him day in and day out after everything that went down a time long ago, the pain still stings. The hurt of what could have been in your mind, what should have been.
With a sigh, you are the one to break away from your steady gaze on each other first. Closing your eyes as the sight of his face still remains in your vision, you stand to your feet.
Reopening your eyes, you look down at the redneck with his head down looking at his hands that sit on his thighs.
"Coulda woulda shoulda huh?"
Daryl lifts his head just as the words escape your lips and with one final look you turn to leave.
A part of you wishes for him to call after you, but as you walk in the quiet sunshine you know Daryl better than that.
Maybe you both never said the words because they weren't meant to be shared between the two of you. Maybe they were never said because he couldn't say them or wasn't ready to. Maybe you'd never know.
Maybe this would forever be a what if that plagued your mind and a question that pulled at your heart. Or maybe it was a question that simply had no answer.
A/N: I liked the idea for this one, not sure how the writing turned out...?
