RESET: We spoke about this briefly but I’d love a fleshed out reunion with Rick and Daryl please! Daryl looking ten years younger and making his way to Rick’s house (because of course he knows where he lives, how can he not from all the time they spent talking about the world before the turn). Daryl pretending his motorcycle broke down so he can watch Rick’s house from across the street, not really caring if he’s seen because he knows Rick won’t remember...
(con’t)… But Rick does. -- @majestiel
Daryl’s not sure what brought him here of all places.
…Hell, screw that, ‘course he is.
He’d thought about tracking down Carol first, but Carol can more than handle herself and some asshole like Ed isn’t gonna make her break stride. He’d thought of checking on Aaron –– back in bliss with Eric, probably –– or Glenn, just to see him standing again. And there’s a tiny, niggling voice at the back of his brain wondering if it’s possible to track down a five, six year old girl named Lydia.
But when it’d come down to it, there’s only one place Daryl’s instincts could drag him. So, here he is.
Standing on the kind of street that would gladly hose him off it, all white pickets and flowerboxes, and a sheriff’s department car parked in the driveway across the street. He’s leaned back against a bike he’d rebuilt a decade ago or last month, arms that feel too weak and too empty of scars shoved deep in his pockets.
There’s nothing for him in this house. Not one person in there’s gonna recognize him. But he can’t stop himself from looking.
The door swings open and he spots Lori first, and he’s surprised how hard the sight of her hits him. They’d never been close, not in the ways Daryl’d gotten close with the rest of them over time, but at the start of all of it they’d been family. Her hair’s got a red tinge to it he didn’t quite remember, and she’s got an easy-elegant beauty about her he did. She’s his first real glimpse of someone he’d met after the dead rose, and he’s so focused on her he doesn’t notice anything else ‘til he hears a low, shaky “Daryl?”
They’re alone on the street now, and Daryl can’t stop staring. Fingers itching to follow suit and trace over this man, drink him in. Rick’s in front of him, alive and whole and so young. Looking back at him with eyes so much older, eyes that know all the same stories Daryl’s eyes do.
He gives in finally and reaches out, bumps a knuckle against Rick’s elbow just to reassure himself again that he’s real. He’s here and he’s real. And, somehow, he knows Daryl.
“I looked,” croaks out, Daryl’s own voice barely familiar in his throat. There’s a choked feeling that won’t die and his knuckles go up again, catch in the cloth at Rick’s elbow and hang there. (Here and real.) “Six goddamn years, Rick. I couldn’t stop lookin’.”
“You found me.” Rick says it so simple, a soft look in his eyes, and it’s like the war and the fight and the distance never happened. They’re what they always were to each other, underneath the filth of the world and their own bullshit.
He hangs in Rick’s eyes another heartbeat. Wets his lips, looks down.
“Everyone’s sayin’ the only people who remember that shit… the mass hysteria or whatever…”
“That what you think it was?” Rick asks, and Daryl huffs a snort, casting a sideway smirk at him.
“Can bein’ sick make ya know things you don’t know? Places y’ain’t ever been, people you…” The smile falters. His gaze sinks again, foot scuffing loose asphalt at the road’s edge.
Rick’s feet shift an absent step closer.
“Guessed that,” mumbles out, and Daryl’s not sure if he means back then or now. He’d hoped for it back then. Hadn’t been able to let himself stop hoping. But the belief had died a little more with every day. Now the guilt for every moment he spent hunting or trading or visiting the communities instead of searching for Rick is swelling sharper back through him. Of failing, of missing some trail––
“I was carried off in a helicopter.”
Daryl’s pulled sharp and quick from his thoughts. A snort startles out.
“Sure. And the Easter bunny was flyin’.”
Rick doesn’t smile back. For a beat, there’s a look in his eyes that seems older than Daryl. His gaze drifts down the street, seeing something past it. Something that doesn’t exist yet and, hopefully, never will.
“Not unless he’s got one sick sense of humor.”
It’s a lost look, the kind that’s lived hell and loneliness day in and day out, and Daryl finds himself less interested in following it to its source than pulling Rick back from it. He twists his fingers tighter into Rick’s sleeve. Nudges the soft skin of his elbow.
And he’s back. A smile blooms over Rick’s face, beyond warm, beyond grateful. Heartbreak moving in reverse. Daryl feels an echo it in his own chest, and lets them linger in that for a moment. Then: “…And Lori?”
Rick nods, but Daryl wonders if he’d heard another question (if Daryl’d put one there), because his fingers move absent to hook into Daryl’s sleeve now and he answers: “She and I were on our way towards over before everything. Couldn’t admit it yet, but. We were too different people, and all this has only…” He shrugs, and Daryl nods ‘cause he gets it. He knows them, or knew them, or will know them, in another life. “Gave her my blessing to go to Shane if she wanted. Two of them got close, apparently, while I was in the hospital.” An odd look enters his eye that’s not quite happy, not quite bitter, and Daryl chases it toward give Judith a shot to make her way into this world.
Daryl thinks about Carl and how that boy doesn’t know him. Thinks about how grateful he is that he’s just breathing at all. Rick’s warm under his hand and Daryl realizes he’s gripping his elbow now, not the sleeve. Just holding onto the one thing he’d been so damn sure he’d lost forever… and hadn’t.
Rick’s eyes come back to him and sweep down slow, intensity and an ache of possibility forming. A new direction, second chance. A fresh start on all they might’ve missed before.
“We,” Rick says, firmly, and Daryl’s life clicks into place after more than six years of drifting, “are going to find the rest of our family. And then we’re giving ourselves the life we should’ve had in the first place.”
“Together,” Daryl offers, meaning all of them, both of them. Rick’s hand catches his nape, his eyes catch and hold Daryl’s, and they seem young for the first time Daryl’s known them.
