Work Text:
She goes over the edge, and he learns what fear is.
It's a quick lesson. More than quick; it's instantaneous, and he grasps it immediately. It takes a split second to learn something like that. You feel it and then: aha, so that's what this is. It's easy. It's the easiest thing he's ever done.
Falling in love with her. That might take top billing if it wasn't so hard.
They're tear-assing along the ridge line, going flat the fuck out, arms pumping and boots scrabbling on the exposed rock. He never would have believed, until he had to do it for the first time, that you would need to run so fast to get away from something that moves that slow. But speed has a way of multiplying itself the more of them you get together in one place, and when a herd is closing in on you, cutting you off in every direction except two, you also learn what running means. You're not dodging one or two, or three, or even ten. You’re trying to slip past well in excess of a hundred, and they consume the world as they threaten to consume you.
This was supposed to be simple. The bike wasn't supposed to break down two miles from the shopping center. They weren't supposed to have to cut through the woods when the bridge was unexpectedly out. They weren't supposed to have to climb a hill, and once they realized they'd wandered into the middle of a fucking herd, the hill wasn't supposed to sheer away into a goddamn cliff, the flood water that knocked out the bridge roaring past forty feet below them, though it's not high enough to cover the massive mound of jagged boulders that serves as the bank.
None of this was supposed to happen, and here they are, and he thought he was afraid then.
The ground is wet and slatey, the rocks slick. They were slipping the moment their feet hit them. He pushed her in front of him, shoved her as hard as he dared without pushing her down, and she grunted and charged forward, and all he could do was stay with her and watch, his own gasps and the frantic pounding of his heart filling his ears.
It's all coming back to him. This is an element of fear—true fear—that he begins to gather as it happens. Time folds in on itself, runs not on one direction but in many, and he tumbles backward into a day far too much like this one, when they were running so hard he thought his heart might fucking explode and blood pour from his mouth. His strides were long and hers were shorter but somehow she more than kept up with him, springing through the tall grass like a deer.
He knew she was fast. He knows it now.
The blinding sunlight, then, and the racing clouds. The birds circling overhead when they collapsed, as if waiting for them to die. He remembers. Now it's overcast, the clouds thick and low, and the air smells like crushed plants and wet soil. All they need is more rain. Flood out the rest of the ground under their feet and wash them away.
Hell, might save them.
Time is mutilating itself, running in a torrent like the river. But it's also slowing down, so that it's as if he's running through that water, using every ounce of his strength to find the speed he needs, and the only blessing in sight is that the walkers are moving no quicker than him.
Which is why, when she falls, he has plenty of time to learn what fear is.
Not that he needs the time at all.
One bad step. That's all it ever takes. One bad step, one bad move, one single shitty decision, and the world crumbles. They're all dancing across a knife’s edge every single fucking day, and she looks as if she's dancing now, her arms lifted and flexing as the heel of her boot skids on the slate and her whole body swings to the side.
Into thin air.
Here's what fear is: it’s a pure diamond formed from every single moment of dread you've ever felt. He watches her fall and it's all there, superimposed over her in layers of ghost images. The car speeding away, the white cross slashed into the dark. The hallway, the fatal step she took and how he was too late to stop her. The shot, the blood splashing over his face, her body going down like every one of her bones was pulverized at once from the inside out. And later, and finally, and of course it was a herd again—again, because this had already happened, because time is running backward—watching her small body curled in the trunk of the car like she had taken shelter there and fallen asleep, watching that lid go down, watching her vanishing forever.
All the times he lost her. Lost. And here's the lesson, as she half turns in midair and reaches for him, and falls.
There is no line between grief and fear.
They're the exact same fucking thing.
In both of them, you lose control. In both of them, you simply act. So he's hurling himself forward and flinging his hands out to her, clawing as though he can drag the air itself back in—and his fingers are curled around her wrists and he's snapping her toward him so hard she cries out in pain, and he could not possibly give one iota of a shit.
Her boots are on the ground.
Running again. He has no idea where he's getting the oxygen from. Everything appears to have frozen, even though he's moving. Has no idea how he's moving, either. His veins have crystallized into that pure diamond terror, and every part of him is so clear. He's blown glass. If she struck him now he would shatter.
They break into the open, and the herd recedes.
He doesn't know how long they run after that. He's back in that day so long ago, one of his earlier lessons in what he now understands was a lesser species of fear—running with her through the same kind of pure clarity until he dropped down beside her. He doesn't drop this time; when they finally stop he whirls and grasps her by the shoulders and slams her against the nearest tree, pinning her against it with the length of his body and staring down at her as his breath comes in great rough heaves.
He's probably bruised her, in addition to whatever damage he's done to her wrists and arms. He’ll feel so bad about it later. At home, safe in the bedroom they share, he’ll rub her hurt places and brush his lips over them and tell her he's sorry until she's demanding that he stop saying that, but for now all he's conscious of is the heat of her so close to him, how she feels so small he could collect her into himself and protect her, and how he would tie her to this fucking tree right fucking now and keep her here forever if it meant he would never have to feel fear like that again.
Shit, he's sorry now. She's gazing up at him with enormous eyes, and God almighty, she's so afraid too.
He leans down, tips his brow against hers. Her scars are dark blurs in the shadow he casts across her.
“I'm okay, Daryl,” she breathes, and reaches up to curl her hands around the back of his neck. They're cool but she's not dead. She's here.
He caught her. At last, he did.
“Yeah.” He gulps air, squeezes his eyes shut against the tears. “Yeah. Alright.”
He's learned: fear is pure, is clear, and there's no difference between it and grief, and both of those are the price of one more thing he'll never give up no matter how much it hurts.
He'd rather love her and be terrified than feel nothing at all.