Disclaimer: The Walking Dead belong to Robert Kirkman and AMC.

Yeah, I should be updating other fics, but this one-shot just happened to write itself. Special shoutout to Peta2 for being my beta, friend, sounding board and cheerleader and pushing me to just put my fingers on the keyboard and write something, anything. Thank you :)

"I love you

because no two snowflakes are alike

and it is possible

if you stand tippy-toe

to walk between the raindrops"
― Nikki Giovanni, Resignation

It rains the moment she sees him, it pours.

Beady droplets, chestnut-sized, pelt down hard, splashing in waterlogged puddles, shaking rocks and weeds off their stand, bending the lithe birch branches. A mid-summer tempest, spewing molten fury. How it's possible for thunder claps to echo deafeningly and the soil beneath her to fizzle away like crumbs of stale three-day-old bread when everything is immersed in an outlandishly gloomy hush and stillness beats her.

Water cascades cling to her batting eyelashes, veiling her vision. At first, it's just a glimpse, a fleeting image in the outskirts of her peripheral vision. Reality and illusion sluice in droves, belting through her in equal doses.

What grabs her attention in a chokehold is the sleeveless khaki shirt and the v-shaped shoulder blades as her hand snaps up to shelter her eyes. The second thing that resonates with her is the crossbow, swinging laxly on his back. He's not straight-backed as usually, his gait doesn't resemble the panther-like grace of light-footedness and speed. His hand is pressed on his side and he sways a tad, shoring himself up against the adjacent tree trunk.

But it's him, no doubt.

Her mouth opens, a set of trembling lips form the five-letter name, 'Daryl', and a desperate screech tears through her lungs. Just like that she charges forward, her dog-tired legs bestowed a whole new free will on their own. Because it's Daryl and the rest doesn't matter.

"Daryl!"

She screams again and again and again and she knows she can't be heard, no way, not over that clamorous storm party feasting around. The sensitive sinew of her throat chaffs from the inhumane effort and her heart is grappled beneath the serrated maws of invisible pliers, pumping a scorching pain across her chest. She screams again, her desperation panted out fused with phony hope.

And yet he stills for a vibrating second, his hunched nape perks up. He twirls around, the heels of his roach-stompers dig in the quagmire, and mirrors the exact same gesture she did just a few moments ago, bringing his hands above the sagging bags of his eyes. He blinks then, jaw dropping agape, and Carol laughs. Between tripping over everything that stands in her way, between scrambling up on all fours to dash forward once again, she meets the incredulity glistening in his gaze and chortles out loud.

She can swear that his mouth moves too, shaping into the circle of another five-letter name, 'Carol', and it doesn't take long for him to follow, he's running too. The crossbow band soars in the air and his loyal companion is swiftly tossed away as Carol wrestles with the fastened straps of her backpack until she yanks it off, always running, always sprinting like there's no tomorrow.

Closer and closer they get, pulverizing the distance.

The physical proximity she's been musing ever since her banishment is no longer a pipedream. He's there, close, so close.

Her foggy eyes drop on the garment of his shirt, ruptured and blood-stained, and the primal grin plastered across her features tides away, contorted into a grimace. Oxygen poisons her system like viperous flecks as she skids and tramples on rotten leaves and twigs and her surroundings flash out in a warped specter of mixed colors and shapes, feet plunging ankle deep in the mud.

Close they are now, almost in arm's reach.

The adrenaline-fueled resolution that propelled his limbs thus far lapses gallop after gallop until the frantic brunt of his gait devolves into an angular stumble. His knees buckle and she hears it now, as her arms lock around his waist and his eyes roll in the back of his head, she hears her name wriggling out as a breathless moan.

The momentum of his dead weight drags her down. Carol totters and plumps on the sedge-coated greenness of the drenched woods bed, hands clasped around his slumped torso to keep him atop and minimize the impact of the collision for him. Her entire body howls, crushed between two rocky surfaces as she is, but nothing registers with the escalating horror striking bombs in her bloodstream.

"Daryl…"

It's just a whisper and the distraught mindset wobbling in the confined walls of her skull doesn't allow her a spare glance at his face. She perches him in her lap, propping his back over her arm and then stoops over, teeth and free hand ripping his shirt into shreds. Frantically examining the wound lacerating his side she finds it superficial, the blood clotting around the open gush, already working to heal it.

She's still staring stumped at the throbbing flesh as if suspicious of this unforeseen blast of serendipity but calloused fingers paw her chin, tilting it up until she's forced to gaze straight inside the azure haven seeking her eyes. A move so compatible with Daryl's demeanor; crude and unrefined at first impression, teeming with such an opulence of affection and delicacy upon careful inspection that her airway clogs up.

"I was lookin' for you."

The masculine scent beneath her filters through her nostrils. It's earth, sweat, dirt and dried blood. It's safety, protection, selflessness and sacrifice. It's Daryl and no one else.

"It's nothing," she gasps the alleviation oozing off her every cell like steam and shunts greasy strands of hair away from his face. "Just a scratch. I'll have you-"

"Everythin' s gone," he rasps barely audibly as somnolence takes over, prevailing stealthily but steadily.

"Sshh… Don't talk now."

He derives mettle and fleeting consciousness from the happiness squirting out of her in grooves and grits his teeth, that vaguely simian mouth, underbite pushing the bottom lip forward, resting under droopy eyes.

"Listen to me…" Daryl heaves. "The prison… Gone… Hershel… Dead… Everythin' s gone."

The new info kicks in violently, twisting her gut and tart bile bubbles up her stomach but after a while of unswerving eye contact Carol nods and lets everything other than his presence ebb at the back burner of her senses, postponed for later.

When her lips fully blanket his, she feels him responding with everything he has. His mouth flexes, parts open just a slit and a weird sound, a half-sigh half-whimper escapes; his hand cups one side of her head, demanding that she slouches lower, closer. She nibbles his bottom lip and it goes pliant, but only for a second. Daryl groans his frustration for the loss and slicks his tongue in Carol's mouth, swirling it lazily in sync with hers. He conforms without protest to the pace she dictates and the kiss builds up, from explorative and tentative to heated and passionate. The monotonous uproar encompassing them in a soaked embrace rattles on and on and water pools around the tangled bodies. It's still raining.

"It's ok now. I got you now," she hums between kisses. "You're ok."

"Carol…"

She blames the whipping rain for the sting of bee bites in her eyes and blinks in a frenzy to rid the mist.

"What, Pookie?"

"Everythin's gone," he murmurs again but something quirks the corner of his lips upwards until that outrageously charming lopsided smirk –the one no person should ever be gifted with- brightens up his features to gainsay the sorrow-ridden gruff of his voice. "'xcept you."

The hand on her cheek glides but she snatches it before heating the ground; their fingers, laced now, rest on his chest. Peppering his face with tender, triumphant pecks, he's still smiling under her mouth as his lids shut and he goes limp in her arms.

She doesn't mind. She can take care of him. She can take care of them both. They are Daryl and Carol after all, freaks and survivors. She snuggles him against her as if the well-toned, dauntless hunter is the finest of porcelains, a cargo simply too fragile and precious to be exposed out in the wilderness for any longer. Keeping his face buried in the crook of her neck to shield him from the storm, she takes in their bearings, gauging their next decision.

That's the thing about rain. Rain means catharsis. It purifies them both, bathes them in holy water, scouring away sins, guilt, repentance, past mistakes never to be replicated.

Somewhere in the distance, impervious to the heartfelt scene or inspired of it, a deeply-rooted flower guzzles the water greedily, almost with gluttony, until the budded petals crack open to reveal pinkish spider webs adorning the chalky paleness of the supple surface. It's the Georgian state flower, a Cherokee rose blossoming against all odds.

And that's what I want to see on the show! This may stay a one-shot or be explored a bit more with a couple of chapters. Let me know what you think! A kind word always brightens up a cloudy day :)

Caryl on!