Just a quick prompt response I whipped up in about 15 minutes after seeing 'It's not meant to bend like that.' on someones Tumblr... I can't remember who it was, though! So if it was you, massive props for coming up with it, all the credit goes to you...

"Where's Daryl?" Carol gasped, hunched over with her hands braced on her knees. "Glenn? Rick? Oh, shit, where did he go?" Her legs wobbled with exertion and her vision swam.

"I don't-" Glenn gagged on his weak breath. "He was there at the gates! Gone after that."

"We have to… We have to go back!" She looked around at the bedraggled group of Terminus escapees. "We have to find him, we have to! Please…" She begged as everybody stood around, desperately trying to catch their breath.

"Carol," Rick said apologetically. "We can't go back, we can't risk anybody."

"Oh, fuck up, Rick." She snapped. Rick gaped at her. "He would do anything for you and you'd just leave him there? Like you left me, huh? Like you left Carl to look after Judith after he shot his own mother? Just piss off because you're looking out for yourself, again?"

"We'll talk about this later." He tried to shut her down.

"We will." She glowered, and stalked off back towards the burning community.

Glenn staggered after her, hoicking up a glob of phlegm as he left. Maggie and Michonne followed, before Carl, Bob, and Abraham followed, Carl glancing back over his shoulder at his father with an inscrutable expression.

Tyreese jogged a fussy Judith in his arms. "C'mon, we'll find somewhere to hole up until they find him." He prompted the remaining people. They followed him in the direction they had, until very recently, been running at full speed.

"We'll find him." Carl squeezed her arm unexpectedly. "He was right behind us, I promise."

"I know he was." She replied. Her voice was hard and trembling with suppressed fear.

"Carol!" Maggie hissed. "D'you hear that?"

They paused for a beat until they all clearly heard the snapping of branches and muffled curses headed towards them. Abraham hefted his crowbar and stepped in front of them, ready to defend them.

"You better show me who you are pretty damn smartly, son." He drawled.

"Came back for me then?" Daryl quipped as he staggered around a tree.

"Oh my god!" Carol choked and stumbled for him. "Daryl, I thought they'd gotten you…" She flung her arms around him and pressed her forehead to his chest. He hissed in pain and arched away from her enough to pull his arm from between them.

"M'fine. You alright?"

She pulled away, sniffling and wiping her face of tears and snot. He snickered and offered her his red rag. She gave a watery laugh and blew her nose. "Just fine." She whispered.

The way he cradled one arm against his midriff caught her attention.

"You're hurt?"

"Think it's broken." He held it up for her to see. It was most definitely broken about halfway up his forearm. It had a defined break, and the broken part hung at an angle towards the ground. The fingertips on that hand were bright white under the grime and walker muck and flopped limply. "Mother fuck!" He snarled as the bone shifted from its delicate balance and his hand drooped even more.

Bob stepped forward. "I can't do anything until we find somewhere to settle down for tonight, but it looks pretty clean from here. Can you hold on 'til then?"

Daryl swayed slightly from the pain. "Gonna have to. It ain't meant to bend like that, huh." He sagged towards Carol, and Glenn leaped forward to help her manage his dead weight as he passed out from exhaustion and pain.

Carol got under one of his arms, Glenn took the other side, and they hauled him back in the direction they'd come.

By the time Daryl came around, Bob had set his arm and bound it as best he could with some physiotherapist tape and crude splints made from the bamboo stakes found in the garden of the house they were staying in overnight.

"Ccc…?" He slurred. "M'arm's hurts…"

Tara, who had been keeping watch over him, headed out into the hall and beckoned to Carol, who was pacing with Judith in her arms.

She passed Judith off on the way into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She reached to brush his hair off his face and his eyes fluttered. He mumbled her name and she hummed at him. He turned his cheek against her fingers and let her stroke his face.

"Arm's fuckin' killin' me." He sighed as she began finger-combing his hair.

"I'll get you some painkillers once Bob comes back, okay, pookie?" She soothed.

"Could kiss it better." He suggested. He was falling asleep again and half delirious with pain, and as a result had lost his brain-to-mouth filter. She laughed softly. "Didn't think y'were alive." He said, shifting a little and opening his eyes. "Then you come burstin' in like some warrior queen all covered in clay and shootin' the fuck outta e'rybody… Felt like a real dumbass even thinkin' it, after that."

"I'm okay." She said.

"You're fuckin' indestructible is what'cha are…" He agreed.

She ceased her absentminded petting of his hair and face and made to get up. "I'll get you some water and pain stuff, okay?"

"Come back soon." He said, and shut his eyes again.

He was wide awake when she came back. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling and he was ashen-skinned.

"Daryl? Is your arm hurting?"

He made a noise of dissent. "Y'know what they were doing in there?"

"Terminus?" She asked, setting the glass of water and pill on the bedside table.

"Cannibals." He managed.

She became worried all of a sudden, that maybe the events at Terminus had finally done him in. After everything he had been through and kept going, what he had seen during the Governor's attack, losing Beth, and witnessing the horrors of the false sanctuary may have broken him. She pressed her palm to his forehead, looked into his eyes.

"You know where we are, right, Daryl?" She checked, looking for symptoms of shock.

"Ain't in shock. Just… Kinda fucks you up, y'know?"

"Of course it does," She soothed as she rearranged his pillow and smoothed his blankets. She had felt the chill in the air outside and knew it would get cold soon. "But you'll be fine. That was an isolated group of people, Daryl. Not everything is like that."

He made a noise in his throat. "You gonna sleep any time soon?" He asked as she yawned.

"I'm not sure." She admitted. "I don't like my chances."

"You could sleep here." He said, trying to be nonchalant. "If y'wanted to, I mean." He fidgeted with the blanket with his good hand. After a couple of beats, he dared to glance up at her face. She placed her hand on his stomach.

"I'm not going to hurt your arm?" She asked.

He reached for and downed the pain pill. "Remember bein' on the road before we found the farm?"

She laughed quietly. "And Glenn somehow ended up spooning you?"

He snorted. "Ain't nothing gonna hurt me worse than Glenn fuckin' drooling on me… An' I'd probably sleep better with you here. C'mon." He flipped the covers back.

She kicked off her boots before she turned off the lantern and slipped under the blankets. The sheets were clean and she was infinitely glad they'd managed to give everybody, unconscious Daryl included, a scrub down with no-rinse body wash they'd found in a camping kit in the house. There had also been some spare clothes in the drawers, so everybody was slightly cleaner than usual.

The body heat in the blankets wrapped around her and she all but melted into a puddle on the mattress. She draped her arm over his waist and he shifted so he could wrap his good arm around her.

"This okay?" She murmured into the darkness.

"S'okay." He confirmed.

"I'm glad you're okay."

"I'm glad we decided to share those nine lives." He teased groggily.

He kissed the top of her head and let her snuggle closer, and drifted off to sleep.

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