“You were wrong, y’know.”
Carol looked up from her bowl of food, startled by Daryl’s blunt break in the quiet of the camp.
“About what?” she asked, pushing the berries around in her bowl idly.
Daryl shifted in his seat, almost squirming, like he was trying to force his words out.
“Back at the prison…that morning before the Big Spot run,” he went on, fidgeting until he set his own food bowl on the ground by his feet.
It felt like a lifetime ago. Carol squinted her eyes, trying to remember. She’d let Patrick work the kitchen by himself that morning while she had taken Daryl to the fence to show him how the walkers were clumping up at their perimeter.
“You said,” he paused. “You said you liked me first.”
Carol blinked and then smiled. “That wasn’t a lie. Before the others—“
“Right, but it was…wrong…about YOU likin’ ME first,” he garbled, staring at his hands like he was pondering a deep confession.
Carol didn’t respond, waiting for him to continue on his own.
“I been…I been on your side since the start,” he murmured, glancing at her briefly before back to his hands. “Maybe didn’t always seem that way, but…it’s always been you and me.”
Carol set her bowl down, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Really?”
He awkwardly lifted his shoulders. “Yeah, we…”
There was that word. It hung in the air between them like a spotlight. Carol knew that it had always been him and her. Daryl and Carol. The oddballs who had stuck together. The two that had been surviving and enduring long before the Turn. Maybe it didn’t happen quickly and maybe it didn’t happen smoothly, but here they were…together at the end of the world.
It gave her a bubbly feeling in her chest, still, to hear ‘you and me’ become ‘we.’
“Yeah…” she replied when he trailed off, smiling gently. “We.”
Daryl stared at her, then reached over and gave her knee a squeeze.
gracieabrams
2087
romaincrisis
origamiaround
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
jimmyeatworldofficial
germansingergirl
