He had been doing serious physical therapy for two weeks and finally had a feeling like he was getting somewhere with it. Merle wasn't looking like a wounded puppy any longer when he came to see him, so Daryl guessed he didn't look too bad anymore, either. His bathroom mirror told him that the lacerations in his face had healed without any additional scars, and as for the rest of him - one more or less, or even a dozen, really didn't make that much of a difference, and he always kept them covered anyway.

In all the time he'd been hospitalized, he'd only seen Merle and Hershel – and Jim, that one time. All the others from that night had asked to see him, yet he had turned them all down. He felt far too vulnerable in a hospital bed to let any of them see him like that. But that was over now. He was leaving. He had already said his good-byes and thanked his doctors, nurses, and therapists, so nobody would watch him now. Also, he had adamantly refused the customary wheelchair for his way from his room to the bus station outside because he was sick of wheelchairs and crutches for the rest of his life.

Slowly turning away from the window, he faced his brother who had already picked up his bag from the bed. „So", he said with a forced smile, „let's go home."

Merle nodded and opened the door. Knowing that Daryl wouldn't want him to hold it for him, he allowed it to close. His heart ached when he listened to Daryl's uneven footfalls and then heard him grunt with the effort of pushing the door open - ignoring the door switch that would have opened it for him automatically in a typical Daryl move.

„Actually", Merle began carefully once Daryl had joined him in the hallway, „your supervisor in that organization contacted me the other night." Daryl stiffened, his face going rigid. „He gave me an address, said you might wanna drop by there on the way home. Said you'd asked for it earlier, but he could only give it to you now."

Daryl stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes. Clearly, he was trying to get to his zen place and failing. His blue eyes looked stormy when he opened them again and shook his head.

Merle let out an exasperated snort. "Y' know, little brother", he started out in that tone of voice that told Daryl this was going to be long, "I try not ta meddle in yer life too much, bein' as I see too much of ya anyway. I realize that you're a hero now, and people will look up to ya, now that they've published yer names 'n' faces, but to me … You're my little brother, and when we was kids, I used ta wipe the snot off yer face, so I'll just say this now." Frowning, Daryl wondered where Merle might be going with this, but decided not to interrupt him for now.

"That piece of work that you sent off to hospital first –" Daryl inhaled sharply and started walking again. Merle allowed him to pass, watching him, but then caught up quickly enough, switching Daryl's bag to his other hand so he wouldn't hit him in the knees with it. "She's been askin' for ya from day one, both the old geezer an' myself", Merle went on, unfazed. "Gave the doctors shit, kicked some ass with your therapist ta make sure she was on board, kept badgerin' me askin' if you were gettin' better." He cast a sideways glance at his brother who insisted on staring straight ahead, his face a mask. "I got good vibes from her."

Reaching out for the hand rail running the length of the hallway for balance, Daryl came to a tottering halt and looked up at Merle with an exasperated sigh. "It's over", he stated forcefully. "We trained for that mission and then went on it together, and that's it. There's nothing beyond that. She's had enough shit in her life already, without me addin' to it."

When Merle frowned at him, Daryl felt his blood boil. How could his own brother force him into all this? "Will you fucking look at me?" he hissed, his voice and face menacing now. "And will you look at me again at home, while you're fucking helping me undress and get into bed because I can't do it alone? And that's not even the only way in which I'm fucked up? Who wants that? Who needs that in their life?" He started walking again, limping badly once more, and kept holding on to the handrail.

A patient came out of his room right in front of Daryl, forcing him to stop, and Merle caught sight of the empty room as the door swung shut. Quickly grabbing his brother's arm, he pulled him into the room and closed the door behind them. "Enough with the whining already", he snarled at Daryl. "How do you know that looks is all she's after? Didn't strike me that way, either that night or in the weeks since then, and she didn't seem to be operatin' under the impression that you're an asshole, either."

"She doesn't know anything about me", Daryl retorted, panting, enunciating each word as slowly and clearly as he could as if that would help Merle understand. Walking and fighting with Merle at the same time already had him exhausted again.

"Geezer told me that you two still do this 'linking' thing", Merle said cautiously. "Apparently, she told him about that. Woulda thought she'd know ya well enough from that, wouldn't ya? Woulda thought that, if she thought you were an asshole, she'da stopped doin' that."

Daryl's eyes were blazing now, and his self-control was completely shot. He knew he was going to regret his next sentence even before he said it. "Fine, you get your wish – let's go see her."

.-.

Instead of the bus, they had taken a taxi to save Daryl massive discomfort, and the driver, recognizing him from the news, had proudly offered to take them to Carol's address free of charge. Daryl, for his part, nearly died of shame for having to be helped into and out of the passenger seat, and he looked back at the driver with his face flaming and his eyes cast down as Merle was helping him out once they had reached their destination. "Won't be long, would you wait for us, please?" he mumbled. The driver, apparently still star struck, nodded at him with a wide smile and shut down his motor.

Once he'd gotten out of the vehicle, Daryl looked around himself as he regained his balance, still holding on to Merle's arm for support. "They sure found her a decent place to live in, what with her girl back with her now", he stated, and Merle was highly satisfied with Daryl's content tone of voice. "Never before seen a house with a garden attached to it, just for one family." Now there was a tone of wonder and awe. Daryl had never seen so much green in one place, and not just from bushes and dying grass, but real trees – and at private homes, no less. He couldn't help but smile at the thought of how much she would enjoy a garden with bushes and flowers and trees. It was getting hard to keep his link closed down, but he didn't want to flood her with all of his inappropriate shit.

Merle looked at the small display of the data card containing the address that Hershel had given him. Looking at the numbers on the low garden gates set into the high hedges surrounding them, he pointed after turning nearly through a full circle. "Should be that one", he said. "Lemme just check before you –"

But Daryl had already started walking. Now that he was here, it seemed he couldn't wait to see her, just this once. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad, after all.

.-.

She'd heard a car door close, and distant voices talking. The soft, declining whine of a maglev vehicle shutting down its motor. Maybe someone was getting a delivery.

She looked up from her reading to watch Sophia sitting in the sun next to a bush in full bloom, a pad on her knees, a number of colored pencils in her left hand, as she intently bent over a twig she was drawing. Looking back over her shoulder and into the house, she listened for signs of life from her mother who had gone in a few minutes ago to get them something cold to drink. A small part of her was wondering when Merle would contact her to let her know Daryl had arrived home safely. Gruff as he seemed to be, Merle sure had his heart in the right place where his younger brother was concerned, and he had promised to keep her updated.

And now she did hear footsteps, but they were approaching her garden gate.

Maybe the neighbors getting the delivery weren't home and she would be asked to accept it for them. She rose to her feet to meet the driver just as the garden gate was opened and Merle stepped in, holding it open for someone following him. Her heart seemed to stop.

.-.

Sophia sensed the change in the atmosphere around her. She turned on her chair to look at her mother on the porch, and then at the man standing in the open garden gate that she was staring at, her eyes wider than Sophia had ever seen them.

Her face first slack with disbelief, and then radiant with joy, as a second man slowly limped through the gate, placing his feet very carefully and keeping his eyes down, but always looking up in between to meet her mother's eyes with his own.

His face seemed familiar – and then Sophia recognized him from the news, and realized that he was the one who had blown up one of the two Feina bases in New Atlanta together with her mom.

.-.

Holding a pitcher of cold lemonade, she stepped onto the porch behind Carol's back and saw her daughter standing there, slack-jawed, staring at two men who were just entering the garden. One of them, the second, younger one, she recognized from the news.

The look on her daughter's face as she stepped around her to set the pitcher down on the table told her all she needed to know.

.-.

Merle looked from his brother to Carol, took in the expressions on their faces, and turned around to their cab to signal the driver that he could leave. Daryl wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.

.-.

He had been anxious about encountering her mother, maybe her daughter, about having to face them knowing how severely he had endangered her, but now that the moment had arrived he never even noticed Carol's mother or Sophia. Carol commanded his full attention.

She looked like an apparition straight out of a dream. Her shortish gray hair gleamed in the sun, looking like a halo around her pixie face. Her eyes were wide and full of emotions he couldn't read, their color so like that of his own eyes, now that he saw them in daylight. The look on her face stunned him. Her eyes seemed to be eating him up, and while he felt that he wasn't super adept at reading facial expressions, he did know for a fact that whatever he was seeing on her face and in her eyes was not disgust.

Waving away Merle's hand offered for support, he set out across the garden, following the pebbled path cutting through the lawn. All he was aware of was his need to get to her.

.-.

Carol started walking toward him without ever realizing what she was doing. She never even noticed the black brace on his hand and wrist or the splint on his leg. All that mattered was that he was alive, and on his way home because he was well again.

All that mattered was that he was here with her.

She took a deep breath which felt like the first one in weeks, months, and it hit her how badly she had wanted to see him, even while they had still been working on their mission.

And the look on his face said that he felt just like her.

.-.

They stopped within arm's reach, each drinking in the sight of the other. Each of them looked for the cuts and bruises that they had last seen each other with, and was relieved at finding them healed.

She had to know. She had to ask. „How -"

He shook his head. This was not a subject he wanted to talk about. It had been keeping him occupied and lying in a bed for weeks, and he was done with shit. „'m good, don't wanna think of that now", he mumbled.

„Same here", she breathed, and her mind supplied his with a brief flash of her daughter skipping along a sidewalk ahead of her in the sun, laughing and carefree. At some point while they had been approaching each other, they had linked without even noticing it, and once she felt him right there with her, she took him in, sinking into him, mind and body, giving herself to him completely.

Closing the distance between them, he folded his arms around her, breathing her scent, feeling her delicate bones under his strong hands and wanting nothing more than to keep holding her in his arms forever, or at least for the rest of his life. He let out a tiny whimper as he all but molded himself around her.

She smiled into his chest as she smelled the lingering scent of disinfectant on him, and then she put her arms around him. „This okay?" she asked. She felt him nodding, his head coming down on her shoulder the way it had inside the burning Feina headquarters. She felt his chest expanding as he breathed her in once more.

„I've missed you so much", he whispered. „Forgive me for bein' stupid?"

„How could I not?" she whispered back. „You weren't being stupid. It wasn't your fault - and this has been worth the wait." She tilted her head away from him for a moment to catch his eyes, her own shining with tears of gratitude. „This is all I could have hoped for and more, Daryl."

His heart skipped a beat as he heard her say his name for the first time ever. He let out a shuddering breath as he pulled her back in again. „Yeah, same here", he mumbled. „'m so sorry that I couldn't -„

She raised one hand to put a finger over his mouth, silencing him. „It's okay", she whispered. „I understand. It wasn't your choice. You didn't want me to see you like that, and a part of me will always be grateful to you because I could never forget that. It's enough that it's worked out in the end." She turned her face into his neck, breathing in his shaving soap and marveling at his soft, smooth skin. „Don't stress yourself out over something you had no control over."

„You talk to Merle?" he asked suspiciously.

„Daryl", she scolded him with a soft laugh. Actually hearing her voice, hearing her laugh, was wonderful. „Have you forgotten that I was inside your mind for months?" She felt his shock and soothed him at once. „I know you, Daryl. I do. And I understand. In your place, I might have reacted just like you did. We're good. We are."

.-.

It had been a month since his discharge.

He had moved in with her and her family, and Merle had found an apartment close by - just in case.

Daryl had kept his bed for it still made things easier for him on bad days, while she had found a carpenter to go over the frame of her own bed to make it higher, adjusting it to his. They had been lying side by side for more than three weeks now, without ever touching after he had gotten undressed and gone to bed, always first, always alone, always without help.

He knew that she was suffering. He saw it in her eyes, in her face, in every line of her body when she finally followed him into their bedroom once she could be certain that he was lying down and covered up to his shoulders. He was all too aware that she suffered from his lack of trust, but he couldn't bring himself to take this final step.

And he knew that he was breaking her, one tiny bit at a time, a little more each day.

Every night she took great care to keep her link closed down from the moment he left her to go to bed. She didn't want him to sense how much he was hurting her, but he knew anyway for she was an open book and couldn't keep any secrets from him. As she had said herself, they had been in each others' minds - there were no secrets left to keep.

And the worst thing about it was that he knew full well that she was aware of what had happened to him, both as a kid and in recent years. Unable to keep this fact secrect from him, she had told him that he had shared his nightmare with her by accident, and she had no issue whatsoever with it - apart from passionately hating his father for doing this to him, for hurting him on such a fundamental level, stunting him this badly. They both suffered the consequences of that damage every day in every single one of his social interactions, and evey night - in his reactions to her entering their bedroom.

He was afraid that if this went on much longer, if he couldn't get his shit together, she would kick his ass out - and he couldn't even blame her. He had known long ago that he was not what she needed or deserved - and now they were both getting proof of that. But it was her who was suffering.

He hated himself a little more each day.

There were nights when he wished he hadn't taken a leap that day and made the decision to come here.

There were nights when he wished that the ceiling had crushed him, or that he'd been dead already by the time she found his cell.

She didn't deserve his shit.

.-.

She yawned, pointedly looking at the chrono, and he knew that she was cueing him in, prodding him to go to bed first and hide in it as always because she was tired and wanted to sleep. But he was fucking sick of his boundaries and his inability to venture beyond them.

Looking up, meeting her hurt, tired eyes, he whispered, „You go first."

She stared at him wordlessly, but he just nodded.

So she got up and left.

He gave her ten minutes before he followed. They had been comfortable on their sofa, so he wasn't wearing his splint. He had taken it off in the bedroom and left it next to his bed, along with the pair of crutches he kept around for the bad days when every movement caused him pain. She would see these things, either as he was using or wearing them, or waiting for him just in case he needed them, and like Merle, she would hurt. He was disgusted with himself for doing this to the people who loved him.

He looked around the room, making sure all the windows were closed - several windows in one room! - before switching off the lights and leaving. His heart clenched painfully when he realized that, just like with Merle, he was trying to walk as quietly as possible, knowing that it hurt her to hear him limping. He took two breaks on his way up the stairs, his mind flashing back to that night in the Feina headquarters.

When he passed Sophia's room, he softly cracked open the door and peeked in, making sure that she was sleeping soundly. Sophia had welcomed him into her life wholeheartedly, happy - at least at first - to see how happy and loved he made her mother feel. These days, he'd almost be afraid to ask her. He wistfully smiled to himself as he continued on to their bedroom at the end of the hallway.

This door, too, was closed, and he stopped for a moment to take a deep beath, bracing himself. By now he felt that his heart was beating loud enough to wake up both Carol and Sophia, as well as Carol's mother in her room on the first floor.

When he opened the door, quietly, just in case she was asleep already, he saw that her light was still on. This made him wonder, since she had been tired enough a few minutes ago to all but give him a prompt to call it a night and retire. Opening the door all the way, he switched off the hallway lights, stepped into their bedroom, and closed the door behind himself.

As he started to make his way toward his bed, again suppressing his limp as best he could, he saw her arm snaking out from under her covers to turn off her light. „Wait, no!" he called out, and then, when she froze in mid-motion, he added with a shy smile, „I need the light to find my bed, don't I?"

She made a noncommittal sound. Even with her link firmly locked down he felt her anguish clear across the room. Biting his lip and the inside of his cheek, he made a valiant effort at reaching his bed quickly and with a minimum of fuss. Again, her arm moved, but he spoke up once more.

„No", he said quietly. „Leave it on."

Again, she froze, as did he, for just a moment.

Then he reached out and switched on his own lamp as well, taking a deep breath and trying to reach his zen place.

Turning around to face her, he whispered in a strangled voice, „Tell me if it gets too much so I can stop." She stared at him in wordless expectation, but he felt no need to explain. What he was about to do would be enough of an explanation.

He slowly started to unbutton his shirt. Tears welled in her eyes almost instantly, and he had to look away or he wouldn't have been able to breathe any longer. He firmly kept his eyes on the lowest buttons of his shirt as he continued undoing them, and then slipped out of it and laid it down on his bed. As always, he was wearing a T-shirt under his shirt, a black one today. Closing his eyes, he braced himself. He didn't think he had ever set out on a more daunting task in his life - and that included blowing up the Feina headquarters.

„Don't, please", her voice stopped him. He looked up at her, meeting her eyes, naked fear meeting naked anguish. „You don't have to do this, Daryl. I don't need to see this. I know enough, and it's heartbreaking, and it's destroying you. Don't do this to yourself, please."

„It's not wearing them that's destroying me", he whispered. „It's hiding them from you that's destroying me, us, you, so I have to stop doing that." And with that, he carefully sat down on the edge of his bed and slipped off his T-shirt.

Her breath caught in her throat as her mind took her back to a spray pattern of blood on a faded wallpaper with a flower design, to a half naked, sobbing boy cleaning a room of his own blood after getting whipped in it with a belt.

His back was covered in scars - raised, crisscrossing, discolored, gnarled scars. They even looked painful, and she couldn't imagine what it must have felt like for him to get beaten like this, often enough, cruelly enough, to leave such marks on his body. Reaching for his waist with both hands, he pushed down his sweatpants as far as they would go while sitting down, and then stood up, the fresh, red scars on his left leg and arm jumping out at her.

Very slowly, as if he was trying to seduce her, he turned around, his head lowered now, his face burning crimson, his eyes on the ground. He pushed his sweatpants down over his thighs and they were loose enough at that point to just fall off him.

She never even noticed his pants.

Her eyes were on his chest, also covered with marks left by his father's belt - and by his father's cigarette butts. When he awkwardly shifted his weight while opening the straps of his wrist brace and taking it off, exposing more raw scars on his arm, her eyes were drawn down, past his waist and hips, to what she could see of his legs.

She remembered the wild abandon with which he had jumped off the roof, expecting to die, to keep the Feina from getting their hands on him and his knowledge. And she looked at his crippled leg, and the scars where his splintered bones had ripped through his skin, and the surgical scars inflicted to heal the damage from his jump. The tears just started flowing, without her ever consciously realizing that she had started to cry.

Only when she noticed him trembling, with pain, or exhaustion, or the cold, or maybe because he was crying as well, did she remember that he had been standing there, all but naked, for nearly ten minutes, and that he was always worse off when he was cold. Patting his bed with her hand, she whispered, „You need to lie down, Daryl. You'll catch a cold, you're all but naked."

Turning his back to her very slowly, he sat down on his bed again and put his T-shirt back on. Once more she reached for her light. „Leave it on", he whispered, his voice rough with emotion, and she realized he would allow her to watch evey last painful moment of this process. Forcing herself to lie still and not try to help him, as he hated that more than anything, she quietly watched as he effortlessly, almost elegantly, swung his good leg onto his bed and then leaned forward to gently grasp the damaged one under the thigh and around the calf with both hands and carefully lift it up.

After covering his legs and bunching the upper half of his blankets around his hips, he slowly lay down, supporting his weight on both his elbows all the way to keep from jarring his broken body. A deep sigh escaped him and he closed his eyes, grabbing his blankets and pulling them up to cover himself. „Now you can switch it off, if you want to", he mumbled.

She did switch it off then, and once he had taken his nightly dose of painkillers and then done likewise, her hand found him in the darkness, first touching and then taking and holding his right hand. She felt him shuddering with suppressed emotion and rolled onto her side, moving onto the hospital bed he was lying in. „It's okay", she whispered. „Don't hold it in. I will deal with it. I can take it."

A keening sob escaped him, and then he came undone in her arms, crying for all that had happened to himself, to her, to Jim. Crying for all that they had lost, for all the pain that had been inflicted on them, for all they had suffered. She held him as he raged and sobbed and whimpered, marveling at one point how Sophia could sleep with the sounds of Daryl's grief ringing through the house,.

Once he was spent, he rested his sweaty head against her breasts, drawing a shuddering breath. She could feel his sorrow and pain through their link, and she wrapped her arms around him once more, and while she felt him in her arms she also sensed her arms around him as the lines between them were beginning to blur again. Awestruck, she took in the storm of dancing, swirling colors he conjured up around them as they melded, breathtakingly beautiful even as it was dying down around them, with his emotions more balanced now.

For the first time in almost four weeks, they both slept soundly.

.-.

He came into the room to find her waiting for him - for the third night in a row since he had asked her to go first. They smiled at each other, not with the heat of a raging fire but with a quiet, steady warmth that made him feel home, and accepted, and safe. Peering back over his shoulder to make sure that the lights were out, he pushed the door closed with his elbow before walking on.

As he reached the bed, he paused for a moment, closing his eyes and taking in the steady, soothing sound of the rain drumming against the bedroom windows. The room was cool, but when he looked down, he saw that Carol had already switched on the heating blanket spread out under the sheet of his bed. He gave her a grateful smile. The day had been hard, with the cold aggravating the nerve pain in his leg, and as he had been sitting on the New Atlanta Council all day he hadn't been able to get much rest.

Daryl leaned his crutches against the wall and got undresseed, completely comfortable with Carol watching him as he took off his clothes and brace. Slipping into his warm bed he gently lifted his bad leg up and covered it. Looking at her in the bed next to him, he was pleased to note that she didn't seem to be sad, unlike the first few times he'd needed to use his crutches at home. While he passionately hated them, he nevertheless wasn't stubborn enough not to use them when even bending his knee to get out of bed in the morning brought tears of pain to his eyes.

A groan of pure pleasure escaped him as he relished the heat seeping into his muscles. He had already been reaching for his bottle of painkillers, but lowered his hand again as his tense body started to relax. „C'm here", he mumbled, lifting his right arm for her to slip under and snuggle against him.

Her hand came up his side, gently caressing him, and she felt goosebumps rising all over his skin and spotted a flash of red in the darkness. Feeling his hand slipping up her back under her pajamas, she shivered with delight and let out a soft, purring hum. Letting go of himself, he felt her skin with his hands, and he felt his hands with her skin. He felt the heat of his bed seeping into her and into himself. He felt her tremble with lust as his hand on her back reached the nape of her neck and started playing with the soft, short hairs there.

For just a second he tensed up when her lips found his jaw, but his eyes were already rolling up as he felt his body react to her kiss, a swirl of color exploding around him. His breath hitched in his throat for the briefest of instants, and then he turned onto his right side and took her in his arms, dipping his face into the hollow between the base of her neck and her shoulder. „Carol", he mumbled, grateful all over again that he was able to say her name to her face. „Carol. Carol."

Her soft laugh was infectious. „Daryl", she whispered back, equally grateful. „Daryl. Daryl. Darling."

He stiffened in her arms, and for an instant his self-loathing reared its ugly head again, but then he drew a deep breath and started to undress her, once again feeling her skin under his hands and his hands on her skin. She moved languidly under his fingers, arching her neck and back, and he sensed the waves of pleasure rippling through her just as she sensed his body reacting to her response.

They moved slowly, always careful to be gentle with each other's bodies, and for a second she regretted switching off her light for she loved watching his eyes while they were doing it. This was only their third time, and they were still learning, but his eyes, the day before, when they'd been alone after they had come home from his PT session, had nearly driven her insane with desire.

He was amazed all over again at how different it felt for her, at her body's response to his rough hands, to his skin touching hers. She was amazed at how uncontrollable his body's answer was to her soft skin, to her whimpers of pleasure, at the dancing colors all around them. Each of them felt their own hands touch the other's skin, and simultaneously felt not only the touch of their lover, but also their own hands through their lover's mind.

It was an unchoreographed, intuitive dance, a perfect balance of give and take, receive and surrender, bathed in the colorful glow of their meld. The ultimate fulfilment, with each responding instantly to every desire, every need of their partner. They all but drove each other out of their minds with pleasure, and by the time she finally moved on top of him, gently and carefully, they were already sated and the final act had the sole purpose of granting their bodies release. Closing her eyes, she marveled at the kaleidoscope that he was creating around them.

Once it was done, his arms were there to catch her, and he cradled her to his side as they both continued caressing each other down from their high, her breath ghosting across his bare chest and his fingertips coaxing little moans out of her by gently sliding and tapping across her back.

„Carol", he whispered sleepily.

„Daryl", came her soft answer.

The steady sounds of the rain against the window, the steady beating of their hearts, the slow swirl of dancing colors, still vibrant, but also more soothing now, the dance coming to an end.

The wings of darkness caught them.