Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s a lot from what follows that he’ll never remember clearly. It’s not just that he’s drunk, because he’s sort of not anymore, like he cried it out of himself and all that’s left is this quiet space, like the rooms his father left behind when he was done screaming and throwing shit at the walls and hurting whoever was in the way. With words. With fists. With other things. He would finish and leave and there would just be this… empty quiet. And Daryl would sit in it, often alone, and listen to the sound of his own breathing, close his eyes and listen to the blood rushing in and out of his ears, and think I’m alive.

Because in those moments it was all he was sure of.

He’s thinking that now. They shouldn’t be out here, it’s not safe - there was noise before, because he was an idiot and a fucking asshole, and excessive noise usually results in one reliable thing - but he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t think she cares either. No speaking, not now - not since he started crying, and not since he stopped. Maybe they screamed out all their words, like the tears and the moonshine. Maybe it all bled out of them. They scraped each other raw. Flushed each other out and maybe now the wounds can close.

It’s all quiet and he’s curled against her. Somewhere between sitting and his knees. He doesn’t remember going down but apparently she went down with him, because her arms are around him and she’s practically cradling him, holding his head against her chest, her hands moving slowly over his back. His eyes are hot and swollen and he doesn’t want to open them, doesn’t want to move, and she’s making him feel like he doesn’t have to.

And that’s so good.

He doesn’t understand her. He doesn’t understand this. He doesn’t understand why she’s still with him now, much less with him the way she is, so close to him, holding him so close to her, warm and soft in more ways than one. He wants to touch her. He wants to cling to her. But his hands are loose on his thighs, limp and slightly curled, and they feel so heavy.

It’s not just about understanding, he thinks vaguely, or the absence of it. There are a lot of things he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know where they’re going to go next. He doesn’t know what they’re going to do. He doesn’t know how to answer all the challenges she’s issued in the last twelve hours, because he doesn’t for a minute imagine that a drink was the end of them. He doesn’t know what else has begun here, and he doesn’t know if this is actually the beginning of it, or if it’s coming, or if it started a long time ago.

He doesn’t know if anyone has ever held him like this. Ever.

He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, and he doesn’t know how to tell her, and he doesn’t know if he should.

They shouldn’t be out here. But there’s an intimacy to mutual rage; he knows that better than most people. There’s an intimacy to how things go when someone tries to hurt someone else. Everything he knew about her - everything he watched and noted and kept deep inside himself in the half unconscious hope that someday he might be able to make some good use of it - fashioned into bolts and shot at her, and as they pierced her she stood against them and wasn’t afraid and didn’t for a moment back down. There was such an intimacy to that. Such an intimacy to what came after. Her walls never keep people out, he’s realizing, that’s not what they’re for, but his walls were built to hide.

He doesn’t want to let anyone get too close, but she’s so close to him now, wrapped around him - shielding him from everything. He feels safe. Protected. And maybe the rage is gone and the pain is washing back like a tide, but the closeness is still here, and in the empty space left behind is not only his breathing and his blood but hers.

Because his head is against her chest, and all he can hear is the steady beat of her heart.

The space is quiet but not empty. She’s in it with him. In this moment he allows himself to believe that she won’t leave him alone.

Which is a very dangerous thing.

Later on the porch they won’t talk about it. She’ll drink and he’ll drink a little less, toy with the memory like his knife. After the shack burns is when the memory will start to fade, its edges fuzzy and indistinct like the last remnants of a dream his mind has, arbitrarily, decided isn’t important enough to retain.

But it was important. And it wasn’t a dream. It happened. And one thing does stay.

When he watches her sleep in the last light of their dying fires: her heart. When he carries her through the graveyard: her heart. When he watches her play, listens to her sing, pulls her into his arms two steps from the kitchen door: her heart. When he looks at her in the candlelight and doesn’t speak and she does, one word, a word that might be everything…

Her heart. Always beating.

But this is it. In this quiet space that contains the whole world, or at least everything in the world that still matters.

And he thinks we’re alive.

It’s all he’s sure of.

It’s all he needs.