Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead, wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: This is a response fill for the USS Caryl's 2nd Fanfiction/Fanart Challenge on tumblr regarding the following prompt: (Scenario #2) "Natural disaster trope. Instead of the zombie apocalypse, some other country-wide/world-wide disaster has occurred." - As requested by Sempaiko.

Warnings: Contains spoilers for all three seasons of the Walking Dead, AU, smut warning, hurt and comfort, strong language. It also bears saying that I deviated slightly from the prompt in the process of writing this. It became a mix between the natural disaster trope and scenario #3 – which was: "Where they are in 10 years trope. Post apocalypse trope (a cure is found)." - So, you might want to view this as a mixture of both prompts.

Stardust

Chapter Two

She let go of a pitching mewl when his tongue found her clit, slurping and nipping as he went, his nose nudging against her center in a way that nearly had her flying right off the bed. He knew exactly what she liked, knowing how much she loved it when he scissored his fingers inside her, keeping a steady pressure against her clit as he shifted his weight onto her hips, holding her down as the pleasure built and she began to get oversensitive. A light sheen of sweat was glistening across her skin as his tongue traced the seam between her lower lips, one hand sneaking up to tweak a nipple and palm her breast as his name slipped from her lips in a breathy little purr.

He really knew her far too well.

Outside, a frightened child wailed, the sound echoing in the eaves before they were comforted by their equally sobbing mother. Whoever it was, to their credit, was clearly making an effort to quell their own sobs, because after a few minutes, the sound of a lullaby floated through the open window. Goosebumps broke out across her skin as the lonely howl of one of the many neighborhood dogs rose up to meet them, as one after the other rose up for the chorus.

The air was still, stagnant. As if everyone in a five mile radius were holding their breath.

Jenner had been wrong; the virus hadn't been their extinction event - but that being said, he hadn't been off by much. When it all came down to it, he'd missed the mark by what? Ten, maybe twelve years? And while it might not seem like much in the scheme of things, they'd been good years, worth surviving for.

However, somewhat ironically, Jenner had actually been right about a lot of things, right about France, about a cure. Because that was how it all started. How France, of all countries, ended up saving the world. They'd been close to something, close to a breakthrough when they'd lost power. But unlike what Jenner had figured, when the IVS, or the Institut de Veille Sanitaire had gone up in a giant mushroom cloud of smoke and ash, not all of them had stayed to the bitter end.

In fact, a small group of soldiers and scientists took off on foot before the facility blew – toting their research and enough supplies to get themselves situated somewhere else. It hadn't been easy, but over the next few years they'd continued their research wherever they could, turning schools and office buildings into makeshift labs. Collecting survivors wherever they found them until eventually, they'd found it, a cure.

The first phase came out in the form of an inoculation. It didn't help those who'd already turned, it couldn't reverse the process. But it ended the fear of turning without a bite and over time, a period of about six months to a year in some cases, when the immunity had built up in a person's system, it proved to be a cure for the bites as well.

The remnants of the military and government in almost every country around the world pulled together, setting up inoculation centers and traveling from camp to camp inoculating those who'd managed to survive. They'd made it to the prison on the fifth year; the same year they'd started experimenting with an airborne distribution system, something that proved to be far more inclusive and fast moving. And as the years passed, people started trickling back into the cities again, governments were reworked, cities started to rebuild, and people took stock of not just their lives, but the idea of having a future again.

But what they hadn't known at the time was that another threat, this one just as impossible to see as the virus that had come before it was already heading towards them.

He caught her by surprise when his lips closed around her clit, tongue dancing across the sensitive flesh as she bucked her hips, her pleasured cry echoing loudly into the hush as he hummed into her center. Driving her wild as the vibrations sent her careening right off the edge she'd been walking since he'd pressed his face between her thighs and done his best to send her to cloud nine.

A pleasure-addled haze traveled up the length of her like a blush, suffusing her with warmth and a lazy sort of want as she blindly captured one of his wandering hands, bringing it to her mouth as she peppered his crooked knuckles with sloppy kisses. She left wet trails wherever she went as she laved an uneven line across the pad of his thumb, tracing the dips and gouges of long healed scars, places where he'd cut himself oiling the wires of his crossbow or bailing off his bike in the middle of a fire fight.

His body was a road map, a canvas of everything they'd experienced together and beyond. And as sappy as it was to admit, she knew it all by heart.

Her mind hiccuped as he grinned up at her, face smeared with her juices as he licked his lips, smirking, like he knew full well what he was doing to her as she panted down at him, fighting to catch her breath as her eyes sparkled, promising retribution.

And he didn't have long to wait. Because she caught him in the middle of tossing himself back onto the bed, leaping at him and taking him down in mid-pounce, laughing into the curve of his shoulder as he grunted, limbs flailing in surprise as they nearly tipped right off the bed. They caught themselves just in time as they teetered on the edge.

She shushed him in mid-word, swallowing whatever he'd been about to say as she captured his lips in a searing kiss, using his distraction to her advantage as her fingers angled south. His flanks quivered when her hand curled around his length, but when she started moving, thumbing the head and slicking the crown of his dick with her own juices, he nearly choked on a moan. His hips rocked up, trying to speed her along as she leaned down and let her tongue trace a slow, torturous line all the way up the length of him. She thumbed back his foreskin and applied suction to the head as he cursed, his fingers digging gently into her hair in encouragement.

"Jesus, fuck –"

Somewhere close by a single gunshot blared out into the twilight, lonely and impotent as silence followed in its wake.

She felt somewhat cheated when, after a few heated moments, he tugged her off, his crooked fingers dancing down the dips and curves of her collar bone as he reeled her in. But that feeling quickly dissipated when she realized what he had in mind. Excitement stirred deep in her belly as she felt his hardness, slick with spit and pre-cum, brush against her hip.

His hands rubbed down her skin, trailing down the long, clean lines of her back, leaving nail marks across her freckled-flecked skin as she arched into his touch. The sensation was only highlighted by the fffzzzt-pop as the gas powered generator they'd switched on when the power had gone out nearly two days before finally ran out of gas.

But before she could really process it, he was moving behind her, his hips grinding up against her ass as he positioned himself behind her, rubbing against her in all the right ways as she wriggled her hips back against him in response. She could feel him fumbling behind her, his breathing heavy, anticipatory as he lined up and started to–

And quite suddenly, despite the fact that this was one of their favorite positions, something in her baulked.

She shook her head, sensing more than seeing when he cocked his head in silent question. She turned around to face him, one hand trailing eagerly along his inner thigh before she let it rest on his arm, catching his gaze in the low light.

"I want to see you," she hummed, voice low, almost baseline as a hint of that same, south Georgian sweetness fractured across her tongue. It reminded her of molasses skating across the rim of a jar, syrupy and thick as her fingers swiped through the sticky mess.

Sophia had loved molasses.

His expression splintered, caught somewhere between an embarrassed smile and something she didn't have it in her to explore. Not now, not today. He straightened, one leg teetering dangerously off the bed, looking like he was about to say something before he simply abandoned it and caught her by the chin. His calloused fingers gentled across her face as he brought her in for a slow, lingering kiss, one that meant far more than any words he could have offered.

It was the kind of kiss that reaffirmed everything she already knew. That he was hers just as surely as she was his. It was one of the only constants they had left.

When he finally slid back into her, the movement easy and warm as he buried his face into her breast, tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She gave into gravity and slid down the length of him, ducking her head into his chest and letting him take the bulk of her weight until he was sitting upright on the mattress. Her arms were tight around his neck, legs wrapped loose around his waist as they moved together. She could feel every inch of him like this, the way the muscles in his belly rippled every time he lifted her up, the long, clean length of him moving inside her, even the way his balls started slapping against her ass as he picked up the pace.

She could feel it all. And somehow, even today, that was important.

He caught her unawares a few moments later when somewhere in between one stroke and the next; he snuck his hand down and started thumbing her clit. She tightened around him, her body shuddering as he rolled the sensitive little nub underneath his thumb; his breathing had devolved into a series of harsh pants, loud in the exaggerated quiet as he mumbled nonsense into the place where her neck met her shoulder. Heat flushed across her face as she leaned down, catching his lower lip between her teeth as her nails dug deep into the meat of his thigh.

She was going to-

Her head arched backwards in a silent cry as she rippled around him, bearing down as her orgasm took her by surprise, rendering her boneless as Daryl cursed. There was sweat glistening at his temples now as he rode through her pleasure just long enough to thrust, once, then twice before tipping head long into his own.

And for a long smattering of beats, neither of them stirred, remaining splayed out across each other, comfortable and sweaty as she listened to his breathing eventually return to normal. The sheets were tangled down around their ankles, highlighting the difference between worn cotton and scar-scattered skin as she let her fingers trail through the tangle of hair that spanned from chest to groin. Daryl just huffed up at the ceiling, twitching and grunting whenever she skimmed past a ticklish spot, apparently content to let her wander as one hand came down to palm the curve of her hip.

She'd had to teach him about the joys of the afterglow. To show him through example the pleasure that could be wrought out of even the most seemingly insignificant things. Things like chasing each other through the covers, cuddling together and talking about nothing in particular. It hadn't come naturally to him, but he'd warmed up to the idea after a while. Enough that falling asleep while still tangled together became more of a norm for them over the years than an oddity.

It was a sentiment that actually summed up the past decade they'd spent together surprisingly well.

She sighed when the sound of emergency sirens started up again, loud and startlingly close this time as Daryl stiffened underneath her. For good or ill, he'd never lost that edge, that awareness; even after he'd gotten a job up at that old car repair shop across town, it had taken years before he'd felt comfortable enough to pack his crossbow away for good.

She waited until he'd relaxed a fraction before she slipped out of bed and padded across the room. She wrapped her arms around herself as she neared the window. Her nipples were oversensitive and tight as the late summer chill drifted through the open window.

She squinted off towards the horizon, the acrid scent of burning pine was heavy in the humid summer air as she rubbed her arms solicitously, trying to rid herself of a sudden rash of goose bumps as she caught sight of them, racing each other across the sky as gravity beckoned them downwards.

It was hard to believe that something so beautiful could be so deadly.

A soft rustling issued from the mess of sheets behind her as Daryl levered himself off the mattress and joined her at the window. He didn't say a word as he pulled back the shades and rested a hand against the window pane, fogging up the glass as they watched the plumes begin to spread out, the shortening distance only better showing their arc as they plummeted through the thin layer of clouds, setting the sky on fire.

"Do you think they made it?" she asked, voice soft, almost hushed in spite of herself as his hip brushed against hers. "Rick, Carl, Michonne and the others? Do you think they made it to the evacuation site?"

The first, distant flare streaked across the sky as the closest meteor broke through the atmosphere. It was the first of many, hundreds, perhaps even thousands. No one was exactly sure; all they knew was that it was enough. That it was over.

And while he didn't reply, his hand still found hers, hesitant, yet bold all at the same time. As if making up for the fact that in spite of all the years that had passed since they'd first met, since their first glance, their first kiss, their first everything – he was still unsure of his welcome.

His muscles were twitching underneath his skin, tensing and releasing erratically as the red streaks grew impossibly large on the horizon, setting fire to the twilight as they lit up the skyline in a blanketed haze that stretched for as far as the eye could see. She couldn't quite make out his face, just the curves and arches that captured more shadows than she figured any face had a right to. But then again, she didn't have to see his face to know what he was thinking. And, just like she knew it would, something in him relaxed as she leaned into him, soaking up his warmth and breathing him in, perhaps for the last time as he shifted in place, twitching like a child with a secret.

"Carol, I-"

But she just smiled into the near dark, the distant explosions lighting up the tired panes of his face as they looked off into the distance, watching as the fiery plumes broke through the atmosphere and hurtled to Earth. She squeezed back just as gently when his hand firmed around hers, the earth quivering under their feet, the hallmark of an incoming roar of sound as somewhere above her, Daryl's breathing hitched, stopping in mid-word as the deafening roar of a thousand distant voices rose up as one.

This was it.

She smiled because even though it was clear that humanity wasn't meant to survive, it was comforting to know that some things would never change.

A/N #2: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – This story is now complete, thank you for all your lovely comments and interest, I am thrilled you enjoyed!

Reference: The IVS, or The Institut de Veille Sanitaire, translates into the Sanitary Surveillance Institute, and is basically French equivalent of the American CDC.