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His days had been bleak, his nights desperate. Ever since they'd found her scarf mere feet away from what had remained of T-Dog's body, next to the door leading out into the yard, he'd been feeling as if steel bands around his chest were keeping him from breathing. He'd noticed that his hands were trembling constantly, and practically every sound louder than his own quiet footsteps scared him shitless.
Every time he closed his eyes he was treated to visions of walkers tearing her to pieces after they'd finished feasting on T. He hadn't slept in three days. He'd been suffering from nightmares every single night since he'd been a child, and he couldn't imagine what his mind would put him through if he were to sleep now, after she'd died like this.
They had scoured the Tombs, putting down every walker they'd found, and started burning their grisly remains. They had buried what was left of T and had held a solemn service for both him and Lori. Daryl had asked to do his mourning for Carol in private, not caring any longer about giving away such an intimate piece of information about both himself and her, and the others had respected his wish.
He had dug her token grave alone, had knelt over the empty hole with her scarf in his hands, but had ultimately been unable to place it in her grave and bury it in her stead. This was the last thing she had touched, and he couldn't let go of it. He had filled the grave and put up the marker with her name on it at its head and had sat beside it through half the night before he had composed himself enough to join what was left of his family inside the prison again.
Now he was sitting opposite the door in solitary that he'd passed that day with Carl by his side, saying he'd come back to it later to take care of what was hiding in the isolation cell. He was trying to get up the nerve to pull aside the walker blocking it and face what was behind it. He'd been sitting on the cold floor for what felt like ages, jabbing the tip of her knife that he'd found buried in a walker's neck alternately into the ground before and the wall behind him in a vain effort to relieve his nervous energy.
He had lost so much in his life, and there were so many things that he'd never had to begin with - and now this. He had thought that his life was finally beginning to take a turn for the better when he'd noticed the respect and kindness with which she had treated him after she'd seen through the smokescreen of gruff rejection that he'd started putting up around himself years back to avoid constantly getting hurt because he'd let somebody get close to him. How stupid he'd been to believe that she was someone he might get to keep in his life, making his days brighter than they'd ever been.
Ultimately, life kept denying him any semblance of happiness that he might have hoped for. And losing her, after he'd been so happy to have her in his life, made what he was left with yet once again all the more bleak and unbearable. But dragging this out any longer was not going to get him anywhere - if anything, it seemed to get worse with every passing minute; he should really get this over with sooner rather than later.
With one last angry jab of her knife he surged to his feet, grabbed the walker lying in a heap in front of the door and dragged it away with a viciousness that surprised even himself. It wasn't as if the thing had had a personal agenda here, after all. It had been a mindless piece of walking flesh, hungry for the living. Nothing personal at all. Not directed specifically against her, nor him. Ironically, knowing this only made it worse.
Dropping the walker in disgust, he turned back to the door that was just creaking open again, but even with the walker removed, whatever was behind it did not have the strength to open it all the way. So he stalked to the door and yanked it open, knife in hand, a lump in his throat, holding his breath. If he was lucky, it would be just another walker. If he was not, as he was used to being, it was HER walker that he'd have to put down, doing her this one last favor, even if it would kill something inside him, destroying everything bright and carefree that he might have left within him.
Bracing himself, he looked into the cell, and found himself staring at her pants, her boots, her top, her adorable short curls that she'd started growing out with Ed no longer around to pull on her hair. As he stood looking, what still looked like her head started turning toward him and he tried to ready himself for yellow eyes and flaking gray skin and a festering bite wound similar to Sophia's somewhere on her body, but he stood his ground, even though his heart was racing and he couldn't hear anything any longer over the roaring of his own blood in his ears. This was it. He needed to be strong for her this one last time. He could not let her down in this.
Disbelief started flooding him as he got to see more of her face as her head kept turning, and when her eyes opened, revealing not yellow irises but blue ones, his breath hitched in his throat with a soft whimper and his heart seemed to stop.
Her exhausted features lit up as she recognized him, and he stood in front of her, his feet nailed to the ground as he was flooded with an emotion that he couldn't have named for the life of him. All of a sudden, he seemed to be filling with sunlight and heat, and there was so much of it that his body couldn't contain it. Just this once, it seemed he would get off the hook, as would she. Just this once, they both got lucky.
The sun inside his mind broke out of him in a rapt smile as he reached out for her and swept her up in his arms to carry her out of the Tombs, holding her close, breathing in her scent, not caring that, after all this time lying in that cell, she smelled nearly as rank as he did after all the walker killing he'd done, his face half buried in her hair, soaking up the sensation of her heartbeat and her weight in his arms with his entire body as he carried her.
This once, he was blessed with the one gift that he wanted above all others. This once, he wasn't losing what he wanted to keep. And that sunny, light feeling was still filling him to bursting and he was half afraid that he would split because this incredible emotion was so much larger than himself, but he had no idea how to let out even the smallest amount of it, nor did he know if he even wanted to let go of any of it because it felt so ...
He had no words to describe it. It was completely overwhelming him. He felt as if he were drowning in light.
As he stepped into the hallway of their cellblock to take her to her cell, he saw her head turning toward the window, taking in the light, the fresh air, the sight of the sky with clouds racing across it, and he was grateful that he was able to give her this. Tears pricked his eyelids and his chest constricted once more in an effort to withstand the raw emotion filling him as his eyes kept drinking in the sight of her, alive in his arms.
And then it hit him. All at once, just as this intense sunshine-rainbow-birds singing feeling was threatening once again to burst through his skin, he found the name by which it went, and he wondered, for just a moment, if you could even survive feeling it more than once.
For the first time ever, Daryl was filled with joy.