#I’ve read so much. so much. and I still feel like I know nothing. and my supervisor is kinda useless | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zomquette · 22 hours ago

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Dunno ‘er - (part 2)

Daryl Dixon x Wife!reader

Summary: You didn’t sign up for a brainwashed death cult. But here you are—collared, bruised, and pretending not to know your own husband.

The escape plan? Still cooking.

But life has other ideas. Like watching everything you love go up in smoke. And then, when all hope’s gone, a miracle with a familiar face walks into your gun sight.

Problem is… you’re both one second from falling apart. Oh and you have a daughter waiting for you back home.

Genre: Post-apocalyptic angst, emotional/eventual smut, established relationship, captivity survival, hurt/comfort, reunion.

⚠️ Content Warnings: Graphic violence and murder / Captivity and psychological torture / Dissociation, trauma responses, emotional numbness / False death / burned body imagery / Religious cult themes / Grief, survivor’s guilt, PTSD themes / Explicit sexual content (PIV, double creampie, desperate/reunion sex/ Dacryphilia? Praise kink?) / Sexual content while grieving / Strong language / profanity.

Author's note: Seriously, if you can't handle angst, don't read this — it's pretty intense. I'm still a bit unsure about fitting so much into one part. I fear that that may have stripped it of all the tension, cliffhangers, and blah blah, but let me know what you all think. This is roughly 10% fluff, 50% angst, and 40% smut. And honestly, I'm quite proud of the smut I wrote, hehehe. I promised smut in the last part, and I am a woman of my word (I'm ovulating, so that's why it's filthy). BUT THIS IS SO LONG, WTF — every post I make gets longer than the last. Also, the rage I’m harbouring right now is unhealthy. I stayed up all night writing this, and it didn't save, so I had to use an old draft. Real ones would have seen the og post being posted at an unduly hour and deleted right after cause it was the wrong version. Anyway, this will never be as good as the original one I had, but whatever. I think I’ve just been trying to perfect this so much that I’ve grown tired of the story. I tried my best to make itly thorough, but I cba doing 5 or 6 part series, so deal with it. Anyway, erm, enjoy. 🔫 Good luck reading this, honestly, but if you do manage to get through it, please let me know what you think! If you want a part 3 or maybe I should just stick to one-shots, lol. rushed, be real

The sky was beginning to soften at the edges, that pale pink glow creeping over the tops of the houses like an afterthought. Alexandria was quiet—too quiet. The kind of quiet that didn’t feel like peace. It felt like absence.

Carol had barely slept. She’d tried—curled up on the couch with a half-read book in one hand and Dani’s head pressed against her chest—but every creak in the house made her sit upright. Every gust of wind that whispered against the windows made her turn her head. They were supposed to be back by nightfall.

They weren’t.

She told herself a hundred reasons why. A blocked path. A long shot. An overnight holdout. Nothing she hadn’t done herself. But as the night stretched longer, those excuses stopped fitting right.

The sun was just beginning to rise when the barking started.

Frantic, erratic barking.

Carol was already on her feet by the time she registered the sound. She crossed to the front window first, peeking through the curtains, her hand resting instinctively near the blade at her hip. Behind her, Dani still slept on the couch, curled on her side with one arm flung over her stuffed giraffe.

Carol hesitated, casting a glance back at the girl. Quietly, she moved to her side, brushing a few strands of hair from Dani’s face. The child didn’t stir.

Then the barking came again—sharper now, urgent.

Carol straightened, her pulse catching. She moved to the door.

Then she saw him—Dog—barreling through the gate, his paws kicking up dust, his fur slick with sweat and burrs. He didn’t stop for anything. Not the gate, not the guard. He bee-lined for the house like he had something to say and no way to say it.

Carol’s blood went cold.

“Shit.”

The door creaked open behind her.

“Is it them?” Dani’s voice, soft and raspy, still half-asleep. She stood in the hallway, holding her little giraffe toy by the neck, her hair mussed and face creased from the pillow.

Carol turned, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s Dog, sweetheart. He came home.”

Dani blinked up at her, confusion flickering in her features.

“But—where’s Mama?”

Dog let out a sharp bark then, circling back toward the gate as if expecting someone else to follow. When no one did, he whined—just once—and laid down at Dani’s feet, panting hard.

The moment stretched too long.

Dani’s little voice cracked.

“Where’s Daddy?”

Carol crouched slowly, gathering the girl into her arms. Dani didn’t cry. Not yet. But her lip wobbled, and her little fists clenched in Carol’s shirt like she already knew. Carol closed her eyes against the rising sun and whispered into Dani’s hair.

“We’re gonna find them, sweetie. I promise.”

------

The clang of the iron doors echoed louder than it should have. Morning haze burned off above, revealing a sunken courtyard lined in metal and concrete—an arena. It was crude but intentional, like a forgotten parking lot retrofitted into a coliseum. Creed soldiers stood posted on ledges above, rifles in hand, their blank stares as chilling as the frost in the air.

You and Daryl were led in side by side, wrists still raw from rope burns, flanked by two guards whose silence felt more threatening than any shout. Marshal waited at the far end, leaning against a pillar like he owned the damn sky. “Welcome to the next phase of your integration,” he said with a smirk. “Time to see what you’re really made of.”

Daryl’s eyes scanned over the crpowd and landed back on Marshal; “the hell does that mean?”

Marshal didn’t flinch. He only smiled—a small, patient expression that suggested he’d been waiting for Daryl to ask.

“What it means,” he said, tone steady and deliberate as his eyes flicked from Daryl to you, “is that we’re gonna see whether the two of you are built for survival, or just lucked your way this far.”

Daryl’s posture shifted—shoulders drawn tight, chin lifted ever so slightly. He didn’t blink. Didn’t speak.

“You both say you’re not part of any community,” Marshal continued, stepping in closer, voice still calm but now laced with something colder, meaner. “You say you’ve got no ties, no attachments, no liabilities. Well, we’re about to test that. See how deep that independence really goes.”

He made a vague gesture to the empty space in the center of the pit, and only then did you notice the chalk ring, faint but deliberate, drawn onto the dusty floor. A makeshift arena.

“Rules are simple,” Marshal said, glancing back at the onlookers gathering behind the barricades. “You step into the ring. You fight. No weapons. No kills. Just enough to show us you can survive without sentiment.”

His eyes landed squarely on you. “Win, and you prove you’re valuable to The Creed.”

Then to Daryl, his smirk returning. “Lose… and you prove you’re not.”

Daryl took a step forward, his voice dropping low with that same dry, dangerous rasp that never needed to be raised to hit like a bullet. “You want us to fight each other?”

Marshal didn’t answer at first. He let the silence stretch, enjoying the crackling tension like a man toasting marshmallows over an open fire. Then, with an infuriating shrug: “You said you’re strangers. Shouldn’t matter.”

You exhaled slowly, eyes sweeping the chalk ring, then up to Daryl.

He looked like he was staring down a bull, not his goddamn wife.

Daryl’s boots scraped against the dirt as he stepped into the ring with the stiffness of a man preparing for an execution—his own, not yours. His body moved like it didn’t want to, like every muscle was strung tight and on the verge of snapping. You tilted your head, watching him with a slow grin, even as your stomach coiled into knots.

You lowered your voice to a whisper only he could hear. “C’mon, Dixon. You’ve been waitin’ to knock me on my ass for years. Now, sack up and hit your wife already!”

His glare cut sideways. “Ain’t funny woman.”

“No,” you muttered back, cracking your knuckles, “but if you don’t swing at me in the next thirty seconds, this whole charade is gonna fall through.”

Around you, the crowd pressed in like vultures, a mess of hushed chants and boots grinding on dirt. Marshal stood still at the edge of the ring, arms crossed, unimpressed. His eyes were sharp, hungry for weakness, waiting for blood.

“Hit me,” you hissed. “Make it look good.”

Daryl looked like he wanted to argue—of course, he did—but then his jaw twitched and his shoulders rolled back, and suddenly he was moving. You ducked the first lunge, then let him catch you on the second, his grip firm but careful as he shoved you backward just hard enough to send you sprawling with a theatrical grunt.

You landed on your back, winded only by the sheer performance of it, then popped up fast and grinned like the world’s cockiest fox. “That’s the spirit, baby.”

He shook his head once, biting back a smirk.

You circled him again, letting your feet slide through the dust as you closed the distance. Then—without warning—you leapt forward and tackled him.

The crowd gasped. So did Daryl.

He landed hard, and you were on top before he could blink, straddling him with your knees locked against his sides. One hand went for his throat—not to crush, just enough to push his head back into the dirt, your body draped low enough that your lips brushed his ear as you murmured, hot and slow, “Ooh, gettin’ déjà vu, baby.”

His breath hitched. You felt it more than you heard it.

You leaned in closer, still whispering, still completely out of pocket. “Y’know, if this is what it takes to spice things up, we should fight in front of a cult more often.”

All joking aside, the last thing you two needed was for things to ‘spice up’ in the bedroom. Daryl’s eyes flashed, and in one fluid motion, he flipped the two of you over. It wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t even dominant. It was like his body did it on instinct, like the muscle memory of being with you overrode every ounce of caution.

He straddled you now, both of you panting, faces close, his giant hand going to your throat to give the illusion he was choking you now. Now you were the one getting Deja vu - for one suspended second, the world dropped away.

His palm hovered at your throat, barely brushing it, thumb ghosting the pulse there—not enough to leave a mark, not even close, but enough to look convincing to the frothing crowd around you.

Then he murmured low, voice rough and electric: “Keep talkin’, woman, and we’re gonna give the whole Creed a show.”

You snorted under your breath, “thought that was the plan.” You reached up and grabbed his wrist, eyes wild with mock fury, and hissed, “Well, this is familiar.”

His whole body tensed.

“You tryna get me killed?” he rasped low through clenched teeth, voice almost drowned out by the chant rising from the circle around you—“Fight, fight, fight!”—as boots stomped rhythmically against the dirt.

You batted your lashes, whispered, “You love it.”

Then you kneed him in the side—not hard, not enough to do damage, just enough to get him to roll. You broke apart in a scramble of limbs, dirt smearing across your cheek as you rolled to your feet, breathing hard, brushing your hair from your face in a single, showy sweep.

Daryl was up just as fast, crouched low, boots spread, that predator stance of his back in full force. His eyes flicked to you, then around the ring, then back again.

He wasn’t enjoying this. But to his credit, he was playing along.

You gave him a cocky wink and charged again, this time twisting mid-run so he couldn’t catch you outright. You ducked beneath his arms, spun behind him, and hoisted yourself up using his shoulders. Your legs swung around to lock around his neck. The momentum of your movements and your added weight brought him crumbling down to the ground, your iron grip not faltering.

The crowd hollered like it was a strip show. Your thighs were still locked around his neck, not crushing at all. Daryl would happily fall asleep like this if it weren’t for the angry mob surrounding the two of you. You grinned down at him, all sugar and sin. “That reminds me, actually,” you purred, angling your hips for dramatic flair. “—you still owe me for that bet yesterday, Dixon. And I’m thinkin’ this counts as double interest. I’m thinking maybe me on top and then-”

You didn’t get to finish the sentence.

Daryl’s hands shot up and dug mercilessly into your ribs—that precise spot he knew that gets you every time..

“Daryl!” you screeched, your legs faltering as your grip broke under the betrayal. That asshole was tickling you. You twisted, half laughing, half furious, trying to wriggle free, but he rolled with you, fluid as a predator, and the next thing you knew, Daryl was straddling you again, his face flushed, his breath warm and smug on your cheek.

“You fight dirty,” you gasped, still squirming.

He leaned down, pinning your wrists to the earth. “Learned from the best.”

The crowd roared its approval behind him—none the wiser to the fact that your brutal, breathless brawl had just taken a sharp detour into foreplay.

You were still breathless beneath him when his eyes flicked toward the growing crowd—some of them cheering, some confused, and one or two looking suspiciously too entertained. Marshal’s expression was unreadable, but his arms were crossed, and that never meant anything good.

Daryl must’ve felt the change in the air too, because the next thing you knew, he was gripping your waist and lifting you clean off the ground.

Your yelp turned into a squeal of half-genuine panic as he hauled you upright, holding you like a goddamn ragdoll in some bastardised wrestling move you were almost sure he learned from watching you and Judith play WWE.

Your legs kicked slightly in protest, your hands scrabbling for purchase on his shoulders, and your voice came out a little more shrill than intended;“Don’t drop me, Dixon. Not in front of my fans!”

Then you flipped backwards off him, hitting the ground in a clean roll that had half the crowd gasping and the other half cheering like they’d just watched a WWE pay-per-view. You let the momentum carry you into a crouch, then sprang up with a fake jab that Daryl dodged with practised ease, his eyes tracking you the way a storm watches a matchstick flame.

“Sell it,” you hissed when your face passed his. “Hit me like you mean it, or I will break your nose. For real.”

He growled low. “Ain’t hittin’ you.”

“Then throw me again, you stubborn bastard.”

He did. He swooped you up and dropped you dramatically—but with enough control that you hit the ground in a well-rehearsed tumble, landing on your side with a grunt that made it look real. He crouched beside you instantly, all faux menace and steady hands.

You stayed down for a beat—long enough to convince the watchers you were down for good—then moved.

Not fast. Explosive.

Your legs hooked behind his knees, yanked hard, and Daryl hit the dirt with a grunt of surprise, his fall cushioned only slightly by instinct.

The crowd reacted immediately—cheers, hollers, a few startled laughs—and you were already scrambling over him, straddling his chest before he could fully register what just happened. You raised your elbow in the air, giving Daryl the signal—a silent cue only the two of you would catch—and started ‘punching’ him with exaggerated flair. He played along, grunting like you were knocking the sense out of him, head snapping to the side each time your fist made theatrical contact.

Each blow was sold like a soap opera brawl, complete with breathy snarls and eye rolls, until the crowd started eating it up. Somewhere near the front, someone shouted, “Finish him!” and you gave a little wink like you might.

“C’mon, baby,” you muttered under your breath between ‘hits,’ keeping your expression fierce for the audience but your voice low just for him. “Gimme some sound effects or they're gonna think you're a bottom.”

He groaned dramatically in reply—part pain, part exasperation. “Remind me never to piss you off for real.”

You raised a brow. “You say that every time.”

Then you threw another punch, complete with an over-the-top snarl, and this time he flopped sideways, one arm sprawled out like you’d just KO’d him in a Vegas ring.

You leaned back, arms raised in mock victory like a bloodthirsty crowd champion. The Creed audience roared.

Then, just to seal the deal, you grabbed his shirt, hauled him up halfway—then headbutted him.

Not hard. Just enough to send him reeling backward in shock, the motion letting you roll smoothly off him like you’d planned it all along.

The Creed crowd loved it. They erupted, hooting and clapping, some banging fists against whatever passed for a makeshift wall. A few even started chanting something unintelligible, just thrilled by the show of violence.

Marshal didn’t look thrilled.

You circled Daryl as he sat up slowly, rubbing his temple and blinking like someone had just unplugged him from a simulation.

“That one was for the hickey you gave me right before council meeting last week, asshole.” you said sweetly, brushing fake dust off your pants.

“Cmon Dixon get up,” you barked, pacing like a feral thing now. “I swear to God, if I have to carry this whole scene myself, I want a cut of the ticket sales.”

He struck first—predictable. A sharp, looping jab aimed to rattle, not bruise. You ducked with a twist of your neck, caught his wrist mid-swing, and used his own weight to spin him in place, your boot skidding in the dust as you leveraged his momentum and shoved him shoulder-first into the ground.

But he rolled with it, literally, came up on one knee already moving, and this time it was you dodging a backhand that would’ve blacked your eye. He didn’t hesitate—not because he meant it, but because the crowd didn’t know he didn’t.

You kicked high. He caught it mid-air. Smirked. What an asshole.

You bent with the held leg and launched your other foot at his chest. He stumbled—more from surprise than force—and you dropped into a crouch, one hand finding the dirt. He didn't waste any time and lunged again.

You met him halfway—no wasted motion, no theatrics. Just two bodies colliding with the precision of old instincts. You traded blows: elbow to ribs, forearm to throat, the twist of his fingers catching your braid before you slammed your palm into his stomach and flipped him clean over your shoulder.

He hit the ground hard. You followed, straddling him yet again, making sure to keep him pinned to the ground.

And then—your faces aligned. Close. Breath mingling. His mouth twitched.

“Think Marshal’s buyin’ it?”

“Think I’m gonna lose my damn mind,” he muttered, gritting his teeth as his hands gripped your thighs too tight to be innocent.

You sat up on him, pinning his shoulders with your knees, then pretended to throw a punch—only to pause mid-air and flash a sickly sweet smile down at him.

“Smile for the crowd, baby.”

The crowd was howling now. Half of them were ready to crown you queen of this dirt-pit, the other half probably needed a cold shower. It didn’t matter. You were selling it.

And then came the whisper: “Ready to end it?”

Daryl gave you the faintest nod.

You feinted a punch to his side—he read it, blocked—and that’s exactly what you wanted. You twisted your arm in his grip, used the torque to propel your body up, and flipped yourself over his shoulder in a tight, ruthless arc. His grip slipped. His balance shattered. He staggered back, just for a breath—and that’s all you needed.

You ran straight for him.

A short sprint. Three steps. You jumped.

Your boot planted on his thigh, then his shoulder, and in a blur of motion you vaulted off him—body spinning in the air, twisting behind him like a goddamn storm—and brought him down with a brutal scissor-kick to the back of the neck.

He hit the ground hard. Wind knocked out. Face-down in the dust.

And before the crowd could blink, you were on him—foot planted between his shoulder blades, hand gripping his wrist, pulling his arm behind his back in a vicious, joint-lock hold. You leaned low, whispering just for him.

"You good? Ready for the big finale yet?"

His breathe studdered from beneath you; "thought that was the finale-"

The crowd was eating it up now, hollering, whooping, even laughing in scattered bursts. But Marshal didn’t look amused. His jaw was tight, his arms still folded.

That moment of connection flickered between you and Daryl—something hot and dangerous beneath the surface—and just as quickly, you broke it. You rolled, forcing him off, staggering to your feet with a limp you barely sold.

“Round two?” you rasped, catching your breath.

Daryl grunted, getting to his feet with a glare that was more fond than furious. “You’re an asshole.”

“You married me,” you said sweetly. “Suck it up.”

From the edge of the crowd, Marshal’s voice sliced through the tension like a blade.

“Enough.”

Marshal’s voice split the air like a bullet, slicing clean through the chaos with the kind of finality that didn’t invite argument. The shift was instant. The onlookers, once rowdy and riled with bloodlust, fell into a jarring silence—uneasy, expectant. Like they’d just sensed a storm rolling in.

You froze mid-step, chest rising with sharp, shallow breaths, hands still half-raised in your theatrical stance. Across from you, Daryl was already watching Marshal like a hound scenting something foul, his posture rigid, fists clenched tight at his sides.

Marshal stepped into the ring slowly, arms folded, his boots dragging dust over the edge of the chalk line like he was crossing into holy ground. He didn’t look amused. Didn’t look impressed. He looked tired of the performance.

“That was cute,” he said, his voice low and stripped of inflection. “Entertaining, even. But this ain’t a circus.”

He nodded toward the edge of the crowd, toward one of the waiting soldiers.

“We need soldiers.”

Then, eyes fixed on Daryl, he added: “You’ve been benched.”

Daryl blinked once, slow. “The fuck does that mean?”

Marshal’s mouth twitched—not a smile, not quite. “Means you're out. She needs a real fight - with someone who can actually keep up.”

You didn’t see the snap. You felt it.

Daryl stepped forward fast, body tight as wire, his voice a rasp of fury that cut clean through the space between you. “Fuck that.”

The crowd shifted like a tide turning—weapons twitched, fingers hovered near triggers, boots repositioned subtly for tension.

Marshal didn’t even blink. “Stand down,” he said, calm as poison. “Unless you wanna be executed for insubordination.”

Daryl didn’t move at first. His shoulders rose and fell with shallow, furious breath. His eyes never left Marshal’s.

That’s when you stepped in—just your eyes, one sharp look. Enough.

It didn’t say please. It said: Don’t you fucking dare. You’ll get us both killed.

His jaw clenched. You could practically hear the bones grind. But he stepped back—barely. One foot, then the other, like he had to pry himself away from the fight inch by inch.

You didn’t thank him. There wasn’t time.

You turned back toward the center as the new opponent stepped into the ring. One of Marshal’s men—a tall, wiry bastard with a sunken mouth and cracked knuckles. No theatrics. No grin. Just the cold, blank expression of someone who liked to hurt and had been given permission to do so.

He circled you like a vulture, eyes narrowed, head tilted slightly, studying the angle of your stance the way a butcher sizes up a carcass before the cut. You didn’t smile. You didn’t wink. No playful mask this time. You just rolled your neck until it cracked like splitting wood, dropped your weight low into your hips, and squared your shoulders as if made of stone.

Marshal gave the nod.

He didn’t wait. He didn’t feint. He lunged like he meant to kill.

His fist tore through the air with the speed of a blade. You dodged—barely—the wind of it rushing past your temple, but the elbow followed fast, and that one landed with surgical precision, driving up beneath your ribs so hard your vision flashed white at the edges. You didn’t fall. You couldn’t. You swallowed the pain like gravel in your throat, gritted your teeth, and met him halfway with a sweep of your leg that caught his ankle and knocked him off-balance. But he was fast—too fast—and his recovery was brutal. A sharp kick drove into your thigh, the kind that bypassed muscle and hit deep in the bone.

Daryl flinched on the sidelines, his fists clenched so tightly the veins bulged white along his arms. You didn’t dare look at him. Couldn’t afford to. One glance would undo the dam inside you, and right now, rage was the only thing keeping you standing.

You drove your fist into the man’s side, followed with a right hook. He stumbled but didn’t drop. He came at you again, heavier this time, his full weight behind each strike. You blocked with your forearms, tried to deflect what you couldn’t match, but the next hit came low and fast—his shoulder ramming into your chest like a battering ram—and it sent you sprawling.

You hit the dirt hard—hard enough that the breath tore out of you and something inside your shoulder screamed. His full weight had slammed you down, and your left arm was twisted awkwardly beneath your body, caught between bone and earth.

The pain hit instantly, flooding your entire side like molten lava.

A sharp, wet pop echoed beneath your skin—ugly, unnatural. Your shoulder socket tore free on impact, the joint wrenching loose with the kind of blinding agony that didn’t wait for movement. It was dislocated - there was no doubt about it. You felt it. You heard it.

Your scream didn’t make it past your teeth. You bit down so hard you felt the skin split in your mouth, tasted copper, refused to let anything escape.

Across the pit, Daryl moved—just half a step, just a flicker—but it was a full-body jolt, like watching a dam crack under pressure. His mouth opened, words shoved through clenched teeth. “Call it,” he barked. “That’s enough.”

Marshal didn’t even glance at him. Didn’t blink. Just kept his eyes on you like he was watching a fire that hadn’t quite burned out yet.

You forced yourself to your feet with one arm, the other limp and heavy at your side, and you saw it—Daryl saw it—the shift in your body, the unnatural sag of your shoulder, the way your dominant side refused to lift. His lips parted again like he was about to shout something worse, something final, but your eyes caught his.

Don’t.

Your opponent didn’t wait for the pain to settle. He grabbed your wrist—your good one thank god—and yanked. You pivoted with the force, used his own momentum to slam your foot into his stomach, hard enough to make him buckle. Then you spun low, your good elbow jamming into his back with a crunch that reverberated through your bones. He snarled, twisted—grabbed a handful of your hair and yanked your head back with a vicious jerk.

That was his mistake.

You drove your skull backward, slammed it into his face, and the sound it made—the crunch of cartilage, the sudden rush of wet breath—wasn’t just satisfying, it was necessary. His nose exploded under the impact, blood streaking down over his lip.

You didn’t pause. Couldn’t. You dropped into a half-crouch and launched yourself up off your planted hand, flipped mid-air like muscle memory had kicked in before your brain could stop it, ankles locking around his neck in a move stolen straight from a dirtier, hungrier kind. He had no time to react. Your weight pulled him off his feet, and both of you hit the ground hard, limbs tangled, his body slamming into the dirt beneath yours.

But this time you didn’t straddle him for show.

This was for survival.

Your knees pinned his shoulders. You reared back, drove your foot into his outer thigh once, twice—three times. You felt the tissue twitch under the impact, felt his leg jerk in response. He twisted, tried to buck you off, but you rode it out, kept your weight low, your good hand curled into a fist ready to drive into his temple if you were given the chance.

You couldn’t kill him.

But God, you wanted to.

You rocked your weight forward and pivoted, stepping back just long enough to wind up and bring your heel down hard on his knee with a crack that sounded like dry wood snapping in a bonfire. The scream that followed wasn’t human. He writhed beneath you, hand clawing at the dirt, but it was too late. That leg was gone. Karma's a bitch I guess.

The crowd recoiled. Gasps. Silence. One or two even clapped.

You stood tall, chest heaving, blood pounding in your ears, your arm hanging limp and useless at your side while your good hand curled into a trembling fist. You stared down at the man—sobbing, wheezing, gripping what used to be his knee—and felt no pity. No triumph. Only the endless, gnawing ache of restraint.

Because you could have ended him. Easily. You’d wanted to. But you didn't - that was your mercy.

Silence. No cheers. No chants. No roaring applause. Just stillness—unnatural and smothering, like the crowd itself had inhaled and forgotten how to let go. Dust settled in the space between heartbeats. Your chest heaved, your arm hung dead at your side, and across the pit, Daryl stood frozen, shoulders coiled tight as wire, one hand half-lifted like he might’ve moved to catch you if he could.

Marshal didn’t speak right away. He let the silence ferment, let it sting. His boots crunched slowly across the chalk ring, measured, unhurried, each step deliberate enough to curdle the air. Then, with a faint, deliberate click of tongue against teeth, he offered a slow round of applause. Not dramatic. Not mocking. Just three sharp, echoing claps, spaced apart like rifle shots.

“Well,” he said at last, voice easy and quiet, like he was remarking on the weather. “Wasn’t how I saw that going.”

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t. The fire in your shoulder had gone from burning to throbbing, every thud in your chest sending a pulse of white-hot pain down your side. You felt like you were going to pass out if you moved wrong. If you breathed wrong.

Daryl’s hand clenched into a fist, then relaxed again—barely. His stance had shifted. He wasn’t just watching you now; he was watching Marshal, watching every soldier on the ledge, watching the curve of a rifle barrel as though one might twitch the wrong way at any moment.

Marshal tilted his head, just slightly, toward the man groaning in the dirt behind you. “Shame about the leg,” he muttered, almost to himself.

Then he drew his pistol.

The gunshot cracked through the air so suddenly, so violently close, that you didn’t hear it as much as feel it—like the sound tore through your ribs and rattled loose something in your spine. For a half-second, you were certain it was meant for you. Or maybe Daryl. Maybe both of you. Your breath caught somewhere high in your throat, chest seizing as every nerve braced for impact.

You flinched hard, your body twisting on instinct, and your left arm—the one already half-dead from the dislocation—jerked with the motion. Agony exploded through your side like shrapnel, so sharp and bright it turned your vision white. You bit back a scream, but Daryl’s sharp inhale carried across the ring like a warning bell, ragged and raw enough to cut glass.

Your knees buckled slightly, though you caught yourself before you hit the ground. For a moment, everything was too still. Too quiet. Your ears rang. Your heart thundered. And then your gaze fell to the dirt just feet in front of you—where the man you’d just fought now lay sprawled, motionless, a dark hole torn clean through the side of his head. Blood spread fast beneath him, seeping into the dry dust in rivulets that caught the firelight and made them shine like rubies.

Marshal holstered the pistol without fanfare. “Wounded is weakness,” he said simply. “Weakness corrupts.”

Your legs nearly buckled again, not from the throb in your shoulder or the lingering ache in your spine, but from something colder—something that wrapped around your ribs like a vice and refused to let go, because the truth of what had just happened was settling in, and it wasn’t shock or horror that filled your chest, but something far more damning.

You had killed him.

Inadvertently so, but it didn't change the brutal fact that it had been him or you, and you weren’t ready to be the one left bleeding in the dirt.

He was a Creed loyalist. You were a mother. A wife.

And in that split-second where the gun cracked through the air like thunder, your mind hadn’t registered fear for him, or sorrow for what you’d done—it had simply braced itself for the recoil that never came, for the pain that never followed, for the death that had passed you by.

You stared at the body crumpled in the sand, at the unnatural stillness of it, the blood that painted the earth like it had always belonged there, and what haunted you most wasn’t the sound of the shot or the look in his eyes—it was the sick, echoing awareness that you didn’t feel hollow.

You didn’t feel anything—no horror, no relief—just the slow, creeping realization that if it came down to it again, if it wer him or you, you wouldn’t hesitate. You wouldn’t flinch. You’d let it happen. Maybe even make it happen. ; because you had a daughter who still needed her mother alive, and a husband who fought tooth and nail for his wife. And that truth settled over your skin like ash—quiet, heavy, and irreversible.

The pit was still silent. You weren’t sure if anyone dared breathe.

Marshal's gaze returned to you.

It wasn’t a leer. Wasn’t kind. Just slow. Calculating. His eyes swept your frame like he was scanning for rot—one shoulder slumped too low, one hand curled and unmoving, blood at the corner of your mouth from where you’d bitten it to keep from screaming.

“Any injuries?” he asked, tone casual.

Your heart seized. The pain made it hard to think, hard to breathe, but you knew the answer had to be immediate.

“No,” you said too fast, eyes dropping to the ground, shame and fear twisting your voice into something thinner than it should’ve been. “No. I’m fine.”

Marshal watched you too long. Not suspicious—just curious. Like he was cataloguing you. Taking stock of what you’d held back. Then his head tipped slightly, just enough to signal his next move.

“You two. Report to the Commander,” he said, his voice slicing clean across the pit, cold and administrative now. “He’ll want to see you.”

Daryl’s body tensed beside you, still wired like a sprung trap, but he nodded once. Sharp. Controlled. You could feel the fire building in his bones. Not because of the command, but because of the fact that your arm was hanging loose at your side and your poker face was uncanny.

As the guards stepped forward to begin herding the crowd back, you let your eyes drift toward the smoke trail of Marshal’s pistol and then to the far end of the ring—where a group of lower-ranked soldiers stood clustered in loose formation, eyes flicking between the corpse, Marshal, and the two of you. One of them looked away when your eyes met. Another stepped aside, just slightly, like making room for you to pass. No one was watching too closely anymore.

You sipped to the edge of the gathering just as Daryl turned to follow one of the guards up toward the next gate, never once glancing your way, even though you knew—you knew—his eyes were screaming beneath the stillness.

You ducked around the side of a crumbling support wall, slipping through a narrow break in the concrete where the scaffolding hadn’t been finished. Your boots skidded briefly on loose gravel. You bit your lip hard, tears stabbing behind your eyes as the motion jarred your shoulder, but you didn’t stop.

No one called after you. No one shouted. If someone noticed, they said nothing.

You had 5 minutes, maybe less.

Enough time to get somewhere dark, somewhere hidden, somewhere you could scream into your arm without bringing the whole goddamn Creed down on your head.

You moved deeper into the scaffolding, away from the noise, slipping between beams and bent steel until the arena sounds faded into something thinner—just the wind brushing through the open concrete and your own shaky breaths trailing behind.

It wasn’t far, but it felt like another planet. Quiet. Empty. A half-built service hall, roofless, shadows crawling long across the dust. You found a corner where the walls curved in on themselves, and you sank there, back pressed against the cold steel, boots scuffing the dirt as you slid down to the floor.

You hadn’t realized how hard you were shaking until you stopped moving.

Your arm was screaming now, not just pain but heat—throbbing, swollen, wrong. You could feel the joint hanging half-loose, the weight of your own arm pulling against the socket like a torture device. The adrenaline had worn off, and now your body was just a cage of nerves and fire.

You took a deep breath. Braced your heel. Gripped your wrist with your good hand.

And pulled.

The scream punched out of you before you could swallow it down. Short. Raw. Half-choked. It echoed against the hollow scaffolding like a flare, and your vision went white for a second, head spinning with nausea and heat.

Panic bloomed sharp in your chest.

You’d just made a sound. Too loud. Too much. Too exposed.

You scrambled back, heartbeat pounding, breath caught in your throat as footsteps crunched fast across gravel. Heavy boots. No time to hide. No time to fake it.

You pressed yourself tighter to the wall, back teeth clenched, heart climbing higher up your throat—until the figure rounded the bend.

And it was Daryl.

You sagged.

Just a little. Just enough for the fear to break and relief to roll in like a tide. Your whole body slumped toward him, breath catching on something ragged.

“Shh. Just me,” he said finally, voice low and soft, rough with unshed fury and held-back comfort.

You gave a small, broken laugh that tasted like tears.

He reached for you—so gently, like his hands didn’t quite believe they were allowed to touch you. When you didn’t flinch, he pressed his fingers to the edge of your shoulder, light as a feather. His jaw clenched.

“Shit, baby,” he murmured.

You nodded, swallowing hard.

“Were you tryin' ta fix' that on your own?” he muttered, voice fraying at the edges as his eyes swept over your face, then your posture, taking in the tension, the sweat, the way your lip was nearly bitten through. “Jesus, you coulda made it worse—why the hell didn’t you wait for me?”

You couldn’t look at him. Not right away. Not when your body was still fighting not to scream.

“I didn’t want them to see,” you managed, the words small, ragged, sharp-edged with pain and something like shame. “You saw what happened to that guy back there. All cause of his leg-" The pain was so overbearing it was heard to get out a full sentence, not without pausing to take a shallow breath. "Fuck, I definitely made it worse."

Daryl let out a slow, quiet exhale, and then his eyes met yours again—steady, grounding, blue like dusk. His hand brushed against your waist, tentative.

“Gotta take a closer look, alright?” he motioned at your shirt, silently asking if he could take the thing off of you.

You didn’t hesitate. You nodded.

You trusted him more than you trusted the ground under your feet.- why he still was nervous about asing to take your shirt off was beyond you.

He moved closer, his hands going to the flannel shirt they’d thrown at you that morning. It was two sizes too big, probably belonged to someone long dead, and stiff with dirt and dried sweat. He undid the buttons with slow, careful fingers, peeling it away from your skin to get a better look at the damage beneath.

His breath hitched. The joint was swollen to hell. The skin already bruised, tinged ugly with purple and red.

“Fucker got ya good, baby,” he whispered, so low you barely caught it.

You just leaned your forehead against his chest, letting the smell of him wrap around you—blood, dirt, smoke, and Daryl.

His arms were already enveloping your frame in preperation. One hand braced against your ribs, the other settling over your bruised skin..

“Alright,” he muttered, voice like gravel but softer than you’d ever heard it. “I need ya relaxed, okay? Just breathe. Ain’t gonna lie, this’s gonna suck. But after, it’ll be a lot better.”

"That's what she said," You chuckled.

He froze.

Just for a second.

Then his brow ticked, his jaw twitched, and he gave you a look so flat, so utterly unimpressed, it might’ve knocked the pain right out of your body if looks could cauterize.

“Really?” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face like he regretted every life decision that led him to this moment. “You got one shoulder hangin’ by a thread, and that’s what you open your damn mouth for?”

But there was a flicker behind the irritation, something small and warm. The barest quirk at the edge of his mouth that betrayed him completely.

He shook his head, more fond than annoyed now, and positioned himself at your side again.

“Fine. You wanna joke through this, go on. Whatever floats yur boat.”

Your smirk faltered just a little.

He leaned closer.

“Deep breath, baby.”

You nodded again, squeezing your eyes shut, trusting him in a way that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with the way his hands held you like you were breakable, even when you’d just broken someone else’s leg.

“Alright, on three. One. Two—”

A white-hot bolt of pain tore through your shoulder before he could even say three. You cried out, breath caught halfway between a scream and a sob, but the pain stopped almost as soon as it came, replaced by a deep, nauseating throb—and a sudden, shocking relief.

It was back in.

You collapsed against him, arm limp but whole again, sweat beading on your brow. Daryl pulled you into his lap like it was second nature, one arm wrapping around your back, the other cradling your head like he needed the contact just as much as you did. He didn’t say much, just cooed you, small mumbles like ‘you’re alright,’ repeating it over and over until it would hopefully become true. He held you. Rocked you. Pressed his face into your hair and let the silence stretch between you like a blanket.

His fingers moved in slow, steady circles across your spine. He didn’t pull away, didn’t break character, didn’t speak any of the thousand things you could feel hammering behind his ribs.

He just stayed. Because sometimes that was the only thing left to give.

And you took it, without question, curling into him like a heartbeat—quiet, wrecked, and tethered to the only safe thing you had left in this godforsaken place.

You just let him hold you, your body curled into his like muscle memory, every tremor in your limbs answered by the steady rock of his hand over your thigh, his thumb brushing soft patterns through the dirt-smudged fabric. His other hand moved in slow circles through your hair, catching every knot and strand with the same reverence he might give a prayer.

But eventually, you felt your voice claw its way up.

It came out broken. Nasal. Thick with exhaustion. Your face was buried in his chest, cheek sticky with sweat and tears, and still you said it, soft and raw like confession.

“…It’s gonna get a whole lot worse than this, isn’t it?”

Daryl didn’t answer at first.

He just kept stroking your thigh, hand tightening slightly like he could hold the pain in place, contain it in the spaces between your skin and his palm. His fingers threaded through your hair again, a little slower now, dragging the weight of the moment down with them.

Then, voice low, gravelled at the edges, more breath than sound: “Yep.”

Your hand drifted, almost without thought, to your ring finger—a reflex you’d picked up when things got dark, when you needed the comfort of copper pressed against your skin like a vow you could still touch. But your fingers met only bare flesh, and the absence struck with the sharp, sick shock of dislocation—like your shoulder popping loose all over again, but this time deeper.

Daryl noticed it too.

“Hey,” he said softly, catching your hand in his calloused grip. His thumb brushed over your knuckles, slow and steady. “It’s just a ring, alright? Don’t matter.”

You looked up at him, your throat tight, tears stinging hot at the corners of your eyes. “No, it’s not,” you said, your voice raw and a little cracked. “It wasn't just a ring and you know it.”

He took your hand gently, rough fingers curling around yours like a promise he didn’t know how else to keep. Then, without a word, he lifted it to his lips and kissed the place where your ring used to be.

“No, it don’t matter,” he murmured, voice thick, his breath warm against your skin. “I’m yours. Always been. Always will. Don’t need no jewellery tellin’ ya that.”

You looked up at him, eyes glassy, lashes trembling with the weight of everything you couldn’t say. It wasn’t that you didn’t believe him—you did. You just missed the ring. Missed what it stood for. The copper band he’d forged by hand. The night he gave it to you, asking you to be his even when the world had gone to hell. And now… it was like it never happened.

“Fine. I’ll getcha another one. I'll make ya... a hundred more rings,” he said quietly, thumb brushing over your knuckles. “Each one better than the last.”

That managed to crack a smile—small, but real. The kind that pulls from someplace deeper than your pain.

“I love you,” you whispered, the words barely more than breath.

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at you for a long second, like he was memorizing the shape of your face, the curve of your lips, the sound of your voice when it said those words and meant them.

Then he leaned in, slow and steady, his mouth brushing yours in a kiss that was less about passion and more about grounding—about staying human.

“Love ya too,” he whispered against your lips.

And even as the ache in your shoulder pulsed like a living thing, even as dread curled low in your stomach for whatever came next, you knew it was true. Maybe you didn't need your ring after all.

_____________

They led you through the winding gut of the compound in silence—stone and metal corridors that stank of wet iron and dust, like a slaughterhouse that’d been hosed down too many times and never properly dried. The guards flanking you didn’t say a word.

Daryl kept close. You could feel him even when you couldn’t look at him—every footstep in rhythm, every muscle in him strung like wire, ready to snap. His hands were balled into fists, jaw twitching, eyes everywhere. Watching every shadow like he expected it to reach out and swallow you whole.

You didn’t speak either. You didn’t need to. The ring finger of your left hand brushed his once, just briefly, the faintest nudge between curled knuckles. He didn’t look at you, but you saw his thumb twitch.

Ahead, a pair of steel doors groaned open. Marshal stood by the threshold, that cracked smirk stitched into his face like bad taxidermy. “Commander’s waiting,” he said. “Let’s not keep him.”

That didn’t sit right. Nothing here ever did, but this felt off. There was no reason for the Commander in all his infinite glory to see you. Not unless you’d either proven yourself… or failed.

You stepped through together.

The room beyond was a brutalist chapel—high ceilings, exposed steel beams, one stained-glass window that’d clearly been stolen from a church long collapsed. Makeshift pews lined the walls, but no one sat. No one spoke.

The Commander stood at the far end, hands clasped behind his back like a preacher. His hair was white—not grey, white—and buzzed down to the skin. His face looked carved from stone, weathered and scarred, but his posture was graceful. Eerily so. Marshal took his place beside him, his mouth bent in the kind of sneer usually reserved for livestock that refused to die quickly.

The Commander smiled. “Welcome.”

Daryl shifted forward a fraction, his body angling just enough to place himself slightly in front of you, protective instinct flaring sharp and silent beneath the surface.

You let your eyes sweep the space again before flicking your gaze back to the Commander, your expression unreadable.

“What is this?” you asked, voice light but laced with bite. “We here for Sunday school or something?”

The Commander’s laugh came easy—too easy. Warm, affable, almost disarming in its sincerity. But it died before it reached his eyes, the sound fading fast into something hollow. Something practiced.

The Commander’s smile barely moved his mouth, a thin line carved with deliberate intent as his gaze swept the room, pausing on each of you with the unnerving stillness of a man who already knew how the next chapter would end.

“This is where the cleansing begins,” he said, the words soft enough to mimic welcome but spoken with the precision of a knife unsheathing. “Don’t worry—we won’t make you sing.”

The quiet that followed was absolute, the kind that coated the inside of your ears like wax, the kind that arrived before pain.

And then it began.

You didn’t see them coming—not at first, not fully—just a flicker in your peripheral vision, the suggestion of motion too fast, too fluid. Two guards emerged from the shadows like teeth from a closed jaw, hands already reaching, already locking in. You barely had time to turn before they were on you, palms pressing hard to the pressure points beneath your arms, nerves struck with deliberate accuracy. Your body spasmed with instinct, not decision, your breath caught mid-inhale as you opened your mouth to shout—

—but another hand was already there, clamping tight over your face, muffling the cry into a useless vibration against their palm.

Daryl’s reaction was immediate.

You felt it before you saw it—the air change, shift, twist. He was across the room in a blink, already moving with that lethal sort of purpose that made everyone else seem slow by comparison, his body weight tipping forward like he was ready to go through bone if that’s what it took.

Your name left his throat like it was being torn out.

He reached for you at the same moment Marshal stepped in.

The club caught Daryl mid-lunge, smashing across his ribs with a thud that sucked the sound out of the space, his body twisting under the impact but not falling. Not yet. He staggered, caught himself, went for them again.

You weren’t passive—not for a second. You twisted, thrashed, drove the back of your head into someone’s nose with a crunch that made your eyes water. One of them cursed, but the grip didn’t break. You tried to wrench free, tried to swing your boot, but they were ready—this wasn’t the first time they’d done this, and your resistance had already been factored in.

Your eyes locked with Daryl’s just as he flung one of the guards off him with a roar that was barely human.

You reached for each other.

Your fingertips brushed.

And then it happened.

A sound split the moment open—sharp, cracking, awful. Pain exploded through your skull, white and absolute.

Your legs went out beneath you.

The world spun. Your stomach flipped once, hard, as the floor rushed up with sickening speed, and for the briefest second, you couldn’t tell which way was up or whether you were even still breathing. The scent of blood and oil and scorched candle wax filled your nose, thick and iron-heavy, as your face hit the concrete.

Daryl saw it all.

And in that instant, something in him snapped.

No words now, only raw fury— Daryl charged forward again, not caring if he bled, not caring if he lived, just needing to reach you. Another blow came, this one to his thigh, staggering him, followed by another to his neck. He kept moving. They swarmed him—two, three, four bodies at once—and still he fought, clawing forward with the kind of desperation that made men legends or corpses.

Then came the strike to the head.

It landed with a sickening thud.

He collapsed without sound.

His last thought was your name, slurred and broken in his mouth.

The final thing either of you saw before the world fell away was the Commander—arms behind his back, posture serene, eyes locked on the two of you as though he’d just clipped the wings off a pair of butterflies and was waiting to see how long they twitched.

____

Pain came first.

It bloomed behind his eyes like a bruise turned inside out, then crawled down his spine, slow and electric, until every nerve felt like a wire left out in a storm.

His skull throbbed. His mouth tasted like rust.

And something heavy was pressing against his chest—like the air itself had thickened, curling around his ribs and refusing to let go.

When Daryl opened his eyes, the world tilted sideways.

The light was low, flickering. Torchlight, maybe. Shadows danced high on cement walls, smearing like oil against cracked plaster. He was on the floor, slumped on his side, hands bound behind him with something rough—coarse rope, already biting into his wrists.

He tried to move. The pain in his ribs answered first. Then his head.

He winced. Gritted his teeth. Memory staggered back into place like a drunk man through a broken door.

You. Your scream. The guards. The Commander. Your body crumpling.

He jerked upright—or tried to. The bindings held. His muscles screamed.

His gaze snapped up, darting around the dim chamber. There was movement ahead. Figures. An open space beyond the iron bars of the room he’d been dumped in—more like a cage, really, though it looked like a repurposed basement. Through the bars, he could see a crowd gathered in front of something… a pit?

No. A fire.

His gut twisted.

Then he saw you.

Time didn’t stop. That would’ve been a mercy.

Instead, it kept moving, slow and brutal, stretching seconds into something foreign as you were dragged forward, knees scraping the dirt, hair tangled around your face, lips parted but silent. You were barely recognisable, head hung low, your body completely limp. You didn’t cry out. Not once. And that should’ve comforted him—should’ve given him something to hold onto. But it didn’t.

Because your silence was the worst part.

Even now, at the end of the world, you were trying to stay strong for him.

He called your name. Didn’t realize he’d done it until someone elbowed him in the gut to shut him up. He tried to fight—jerked against the restraints digging into his wrists—but they kept him pinned like a dog at a slaughterhouse, forced to watch as the Commander stepped forward and spoke the sentence like it was routine.

“No,” he rasped.

No one heard him. He tried to stand again. The rope bit deeper. He staggered, fell hard on one knee, then pushed up anyway, shoulder against the bars, eyes wide and locked.

The Commander stood near the fire, calm and unmoved, hands folded behind his back. One of the figures spoke to him—too quiet to make out—but the reply was crystal clear.

“She was wounded. Weak. It would’ve spread.”

Then the Commander raised his knife.

You didn’t make a sound when they pulled your head back.

Didn’t flinch when the blade touched your throat.

Daryl’s blood ran cold.

“Don’t—” he growled, but his voice cracked, weak with panic and breathless fury. “NO—!”

But it was already done.

In one brutal motion, he sliced your throat, the life spilling from you instantly.

Your body spasmed once, a sharp, instinctive jolt like the soul trying to claw its way back in—but it was too late. Your eyes never left his. Not even as the blood poured from your throat in thick, wet streams, staining your chest, your collar, your life, until it was all he could see. Your knees gave beneath you, trembling, caving, but somehow you didn’t fall right away. You stood there swaying like something still trying to understand what had happened. And then your lips moved—barely—shaping a word without breath. His name. Just his name. The last thing left in you.

And then it was over.

They didn’t let you fall gently.

They seized your body like it was already trash, like it had never been anything sacred, and dragged it across the dirt with no reverence, no pause, no care. And when they cast you into the fire, it wasn’t a ceremony—it was disposal. Like you weren’t someone’s wife. Like you weren’t a mother with a child waiting for you. Like you hadn’t been the one to teach him what love meant.

Daryl didn’t scream.

He roared.

He slammed his shoulder against the bars, again and again, animal and feral, vision blurred from more than pain. It didn’t matter that they beat him again. Didn’t matter that they kicked him down, or that they laughed, or that someone muttered “shoulda killed ‘im too.”

He didn’t stop until he had nothing left.

The flames licked higher, and the stink of burning flesh filled the air.

He watched your body—the one he knew better than his own, the one he’d memorized in pieces: the freckle below your ribs, the old scar on your thigh from before the world ended, the stretch marks across your stomach from carrying the life you made together. The body that curled against him on cold nights and leaned into him when words failed, the body that had carried his daughter into this broken world, arms that held her, lips that kissed the top of her head with the kind of quiet reverence he’d only ever seen in prayer—that body. Yours.

He watched it burn.

The fire didn’t hesitate. It crawled across your clothes like hunger, devouring everything in its path—your legs, your stomach, your chest—until it reached your outstretched hand. The same hand that had stroked his hair. The hand that had wiped his blood from his brow. The hand that wore his ring like it was welded to your skin until it was ripped from you by them.

The pit. The fire. Your body.

The last time he’d seen you, you were reaching for him.

And now…

You were gone.

It didn’t register at first.

His brain couldn’t catch up.

He didn’t feel the burn of the ropes. Didn’t hear the crackle of flames. Didn’t even realise he was screaming until his throat gave out and he collapsed, chest heaving, stomach twisting, retching dry onto the dirt because there was nothing left in him but the scream.

They killed you.

They fucking killed you.

And he wasn’t there to stop it.

He wasn’t holding you.

He wasn’t telling you it’d be okay.

He was just watching.

The world narrowed to smoke and ash, and the echo of your name carved out of him like bone. He felt like someone had plunged into his chest and ripped out his heart. And worst of all, they made sure he was still breathing to bear the pain of it.

You were everything. His anchor. His voice of reason. His reason, period. You were the only future he let himself want.

Now you were gone.

And the world had the audacity to keep turning.

They took your ring. Then your life. Then your body. All in one day. And he let it happen. Let them strip you of everything that made you his. And now there was nothing left. No trace. No proof except for that steady, monstrous ache behind his ribs from your death. The kind that didn’t explode. The kind that stayed. The kind that settled into his bones and promised to never let go.

It hurt in a way he didn’t have words for.

It was heartbreak. Pure and unrelenting. Not sharp, but total. Like the color had been stripped from the world, and all that was left was this—this awful, frozen moment where love died in front of him, and he just had to watch.

The only thing left of you now is Dani.

She still had your eyes.

She’d ask where you went. What happened.

And he’d have to look at her and lie.

And he couldn’t bear the thought—Dani looking at him with those wide, searching eyes, and realising he wasn’t the one she needed. Because he wasn’t you. There was no way for him to go on.

Unless he made them pay.

Unless he made every last one of them remember what they did when they dared to put a knife to your throat.

He would bide his time. Wear the mask. Keep his head down like they wanted. Pretend he was broken.

But he wasn’t.

Not really.

He’d just been reborn into something worse.

Because they killed the woman he loved right in front of him.

And now he had nothing left to lose.

“You are free,” the Commander said, like it meant something. The crowd cheered. Daryl barely heard it over the roaring in his ears. He could’ve thrown up. Could’ve killed them all. All he saw was red.

_______

You came to like something had been torn out of you in the dark. It wasn’t the pain that woke you, though there was no shortage of it—the sharp flare in your shoulder socket, the hot ache in your neck where your muscles had seized, the hammering pulse behind your eyes that throbbed in rhythm with the low, electric hum of artificial light. You were kneeling on something cold, unforgiving and slick, and the first thing you felt beyond pain was the way your knees had begun to go numb from pressure. Your wrists were tied behind your back, raw with dried blood, the bindings too tight to be anything but deliberate. So basically the norm for you.

But none of that mattered.

Not when you raised your head and saw him.

Daryl was in front of you—on his knees, hands bound, mouth bloodied, shoulders sagging beneath the weight of whatever hell had come before this. He looked broken in a way you’d never seen before, like his bones didn’t quite know how to hold him up anymore. He wasn’t looking at you. His chin hung low, and though his chest still rose with breath, you could see how shallow it was, like every inhale had to fight its way through something invisible.

And Marshal stood beside him.

The sight of that man lit a fire in your ribs so suddenly that you nearly vomited from the bile it brought with it. You lurched forward, or tried to, but your body wouldn’t move fast enough, wouldn’t obey the simple instruction to reach him, touch him, do something.

“Welcome back,” Marshal murmured without turning, his voice unhurried, like he’d been waiting for you. There was a smile on his face, but it wasn’t warm, wasn’t even smug—it was too calm for that, too pleased with himself, like he was watching a snake shed its skin. “Perfect timing.”

Your breath hitched hard in your chest, every draw of air too sharp, too fast, like it was cutting something on the way in. You tried to speak, to call his name, but your mouth was too dry, your tongue swollen with dread, and the only thing that came out was a rasp of sound that tasted like copper and dust and fear.

Then the Commander stepped forward, the rustle of his coat the only thing you heard over the ringing in your ears. His face bore that same expression he always wore—the one that made your stomach curdle—composed and measured, like a man about to deliver a eulogy for someone he never cared about. He didn’t look at Daryl. He looked at you.

“You told us you didn’t know him,” he said, his voice unshaken, smooth like worn marble. “But when we faked your death, he screamed for you. Weeped like a baby.”

The air left your lungs in a single cold rush, and the world stopped spinning for one breathless second. Your gaze snapped to Daryl. Really looked. And that’s when something inside you buckled. His lip was torn, his temple bruised, and his collar was wet with blood you weren’t sure was even his anymore. But his shoulders trembled. He hadn’t broken.

Not yet.

You shook your head. Not in denial—just to get words out, anything, anything at all. “Don’t—please—”

But it didn’t matter. Marshal crouched beside him, slow and steady, like it was routine, and grabbed a fistful of Daryl’s hair, forcing his head upright so you could see his swollen face. You saw his eyes. Glazed, but still there. Still fighting. Still breathing.

“He didn’t take the lesson,” Marshal said, as though you weren’t already collapsing beneath the weight of what you knew was coming, “so now you will.”

The Commander tilted his head slightly from where he was standing in the background, his expression unchanged, like he was waiting for a dog to finally heel. “That lie cost you,” he murmured. “But today… we’ll free you from it.”

The gun appeared like a magic trick—no grand reveal, no announcement. Just there in the Commander’s hand, passed from Marshal like a holy relic. There was no ceremony in the way he raised it. No speech. No cruelty, even. Only the quiet efficiency of a man carrying out a decision he considered final.

The barrel touched Daryl’s temple.

And the shot rang out.

You didn’t scream right away. The noise you made was trapped behind your ribs, crushed into your lungs by the weight of the moment. But when it came, it erupted from you like something ripped open from the inside—a cry so guttural, so raw, it felt like it might pull the last of your voice straight from your throat and leave you nothing but ash.

You threw yourself forward with everything you had, ignoring the pain that screamed through your shoulder, the pop of your joints, the stab of something tearing—but it was too late. Daryl’s body had already gone limp, folding sideways into the dirt with an awful, boneless grace. There was no twitch, no sound. Just silence.

You couldn’t stop the sob that broke next. It tore out of you like something dying. Your voice was raw now, splintered with panic and disbelief, the way it had sounded only once before—when you gave birth and thought you might not survive it.

“Please,” you sobbed, struggling like a wild thing. “Baby, look at me—you can’t leave me —”

You couldnt breathe. You kept telling yourself to wake the fuck up. Wake up from this nightmare, next to daryl in your bed. You'd curl tightly into him, take in his musk, he'd stroke your hair while you traced his imperfections on his skin like they were the very opposite of that.

Marshal had walked towards you and held your chin, tilting your head to look up at him through our red glassy eyes. But when he looked at you now, something had shifted. There was no amusement left. No satisfaction. Only a quiet, unsettling stillness.

“You’re free now,” he said with absolution. “That connection made you weak. It made you lie. But now there’s nothing left to tie you down.”

Tears blurred your vision, burned hot and blinding, streaking over your cheeks in stinging silence. You weren’t sobbing anymore. Your mouth was open, but no sound came out. It was as though your voice had died with him. Your body trembled, but you didn’t collapse. Not yet. Not until Marshal leaned forward and, with something close to care, cut the restraints at your wrists himself.

You didn’t catch yourself when you fell. Your arms flopped forward, numb and useless, your knees hitting the stone with a hollow sound that echoed off the walls. You didn’t look at him. You didn’t look at anything. Not even the fire, still burning just feet away, casting long orange light across the floor where Daryl had fallen.

You stared at the space he had left behind.

And whatever was left of you cracked.

Not with rage. Not with grief. Not even with despair.

With silence.

The silence that followed was worse. It wasn’t the calm kind. It was thick and suffocating, like someone had poured concrete over your chest and expected you to keep breathing through it. Your ears rang from the gunshot, your vision swam at the edges, but none of that mattered—not really. Nothing did, except the image burned into the backs of your eyes: Daryl collapsing in front of you, body limp, blood warm and spilling across the concrete, and then nothing. No movement. No sound. No breath.

You didn’t cry again, not after the first ragged sob slipped out of you and died somewhere between the ropes binding your wrists and the dirt floor beneath your knees. The sound had come unbidden, raw and strangled, but even as it broke free, it felt distant, like it didn’t belong to you anymore—like it belonged to someone else entirely, someone softer, someone who hadn’t just watched her entire world bleed out on the floor.

You breathed, but only because you had to. Inhale. Exhale. Slow. Mechanical. The kind of breath that didn’t mean life so much as continuation. You weren’t a woman anymore, not exactly. You weren’t a widow, not yet. You weren’t even a soldier. You were just breath and bones and grit. Just the pieces that remained.

It was disorienting in a way that felt almost obscene—how had you ever existed without him before? Whatever version of yourself had managed to live in a world where Daryl wasn’t within arm’s reach, breathing the same air, was a stranger now. A ghost. And the thought of finding your way back to that kind of existence, of surviving in that silence again, felt not only impossible but wrong.

The numbness was total. Not soft, not merciful—but loud. Deafening in its hollowness. It rang through your skull like a pressure wave, muffling every other sense beneath it. Pain should’ve been there, should’ve been screaming—your shoulder was still ruined, your knees pressed hard into unyielding concrete, your head throbbing from whatever blow had half-felled you—but none of it seemed to land. None of it registered.

There was only the absence. Only the jagged outline of where he used to be. And in that emptiness, something settled.

Not rage. Not grief. Not yet. Those things required more of you than you had left. What settled was purpose.

Because no matter what they thought they’d taken from you, no matter how certain they were that you’d break just like the others had, your daughter was still alive. You couldn't let her become an orphan. Dani was waiting for you, and she didn’t know her father was dead. She didn’t know that you were too.

And you were the only one left who could keep that from becoming permanent.

You didn’t notice Marshal until he crouched beside you again, his shadow crawling across the stone in tandem with your hollow stare. His voice was low, almost reverent, as though he feared disrupting the stillness that had wrapped itself around you.

“I knew it the second I saw you,” Marshal said, his voice low, almost reverent, as though addressing something sacred rather than broken. “Back in those woods. You had it—that thing most don’t. Pain doesn’t ruin you. It reshapes you.”

His words drifted through the silence like smoke, curling around the edges of your awareness, but you didn’t respond. You weren’t even sure you were still breathing. You were there, yes, in body—but your mind was standing at the edge of some quiet abyss, watching itself from far away.

“I told the Commander we needed someone like that,” he went on, unhurried, as though this was all unfolding according to some script only he had read. “A firestarter. Not just someone who survives the burn, but someone who walks through it and comes out clean on the other side.”

Slowly, you raised your gaze, just enough to meet his. The movement wasn’t defiant. It wasn’t emotional. It was mechanical, like some buried instinct had twitched to life out of necessity. Whatever he saw in your expression—vacancy, obedience, surrender—was enough to satisfy him.

Your silence sealed the illusion.

Marshal stood, brushing invisible dust from his knee as though this moment wasn’t stitched with the last of your humanity. He turned to someone just out of sight, his voice as steady as ever. “Clean her up. Feed her. She’s earned it.”

You didn’t watch him walk away.

When the hands came, you didn’t flinch. You barely noticed them. You didn’t speak. You didn’t even blink. You let them take your weight, lift you from the blood-slick floor, guide your body like it wasn’t your own. Whatever they’d done—whatever they’d taken—had hollowed you out so thoroughly, you barely noticed the warmth of their grip or the sound of the fire crackling behind you. It all felt far away, like a story you were being told about someone else.

But somewhere, buried deep beneath the numbness, something shifted. Not rage. Not revenge. That was all smoke now. What remained was quieter. Heavier. It settled into the space your grief had hollowed out and anchored itself like a root cracking through stone.

It wasn’t for them.

It wasn’t even for him.

It was for her.

For Dani.

Because she was all that was left of him. Because she didn’t know what had been taken from her yet. Because you had promised her you’d come back, and promises made to children had weight. Had teeth.

And if that meant tearing yourself in two—if it meant burying every scream and smile and soft thing inside you—then so be it.

Because one day, somehow, you’d find your way back to her.

And on that day, no one—not Marshal, not the Commander, not even the fire—would be able to stop you.

——

Turns out that taking your husband’s death in stride made for a hell of a promotion.

Grief would’ve gotten you kitchen duty, maybe a cot in the barracks if you’d played your cards right. Hysterics? A bullet. But silence? Composure? The ability to let a man bleed out at your feet and not flinch when the fire took him?

Apparently, that made you leadership material.

Marshal didn’t even wait a full day. You were summoned at dawn, the knock on your door light and precise, like someone trying not to wake what was already dead. The soldier who stood there said nothing. Just turned. Walked. And like a good little recruit, you followed.

They took you to the central chamber—the same one where you’d watched the Commander strip lives down to bone with a few carefully chosen words. Now you stood beneath the same skylight, washed in grey morning light, not entirely sure where your limbs ended and the concrete began.

Marshal entered first. He looked cleaner than usual. Face freshly shaven, black shirt tucked in, like this was something sacred.

The Commander didn’t bother with ceremony. He didn’t ask if you wanted the role. He didn’t explain what it meant. He just turned to face you, eyes sweeping over your stillness like it proved something.

“You’ve adapted well,” the Commander said at last. His voice wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. It simply was. Final. “Marshal spoke highly of you. Your performance in the ring. Your composure since. Your clarity of purpose.”

“Others… fall apart. Wail. Break. You buried the weakness. And what remained—” he turned, finally, and looked you dead in the eye, “—was worth keeping.”

He crossed the floor, each step unhurried, until he stood before you. Taller. Older. But not frail. He looked at you the way a man might examine a blade he’d forged himself.

“I name you General.”

The words dropped like a blade against an altar. There was no ceremony. No oath. Just that sentence.

Marshal stepped forward, then, and placed something in your palm. A thin band of blackened metal with a single etched mark—a crescent, sharp as a scythe. The symbol of rank. Cold and heavy in your hand.

“Wear it on your hip,” Marshal said softly, voice close now, near your ear. “Let them know what you are.”

You didn’t flinch. You just nodded once and fastened it to your belt.

The Commander inclined his head—dismissal, not praise—and turned away again. The matter, it seemed, was closed.

Marshal lingered, though. He waited until the Commander had vanished into shadow, then walked with you out into the hall, slow and unhurried, like two old friends on a morning stroll.

“I told him,” Marshal drawled, voice echoing lazily off the corridor walls as the door closed behind you both, sealing the chamber like a tomb. “Told him you wouldn’t crack. The others thought you’d go down screaming—or not get back up at all.”

He walked beside you like nothing about this moment was strange. As if promotion through grief was the most natural thing in the world. As if the silence trailing behind your footsteps wasn’t made of bone and ash and something close to mourning.

“But not me,” he went on, with that infuriating little shrug in his voice, like everything had already been proven. “I figured you had the spine. Something in the way you moved, y’know? Like someone who’s already had the worst day of their life and just kept walking.”

You didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak. Every ounce of your energy was spent on forward motion, on placing one foot in front of the other with a precision that felt practiced and numb.

“Still not talking?” he asked, almost amused. “Yeah, I get it. Takes a minute. First time I lost someone close, I didn’t talk for three days." Just sat on a roof staring at the rain, prayin' I'd get the balls to jump."

Damn. If only he had some balls.

He tilted his head toward you, as if waiting for you to react. You didn’t.

Marshal sighed through his nose and kept pace. “So… he was your husband right? babydaddy? Both?”

The question hit harder than it had any right to. Not for the words themselves, but for how casually he said them—like he was asking what brand of boots you wore.

“Well,” he continued, unfazed, “you’re better off. That kind of thing—attachment, whatever—it just slows you down. I mean, shit, I used to have a wife. Think I even loved her once. But when she got bit, you know what I did?”

You didn’t answer.

He smiled anyway. “Sat with her ‘til it got dark, then I put a knife through her temple. Buried her in the garden, poured some moonshine, and went to sleep like I hadn’t done a damn thing wrong. Woke up clean.”

Marshal gave a light laugh, like he’d just told a half-decent bar story. “Point is, we’re not made for soft shit. You cut it off before it festers. And you—” he looked at you now, a little more directly, a little more keenly “—you’ve already done the hard part. You let go. Now you get to be something better.”

He stopped walking. You stopped, too, more out of rhythm than obedience.

“I’ve got plans, General,” he said, tone dropping low, like he was inviting you into some secret. “Big ones. Creed’s gonna outgrow this place. We’ve got outposts forming, whispers from the coast. The kind of movement people write about. But movements need faces. Voices. People who don’t flinch when things get messy.”

You turned to him, at last, your expression unreadable. A mask so perfect it didn’t even feel like skin anymore.

“Just tell me where to start,” you said, your voice coarse, a faint echo of your one from before.

He grinned, like that was all he’d wanted to hear.

“Right answer.”

Marshal reached out—not possessively, not forcefully, but like someone testing the edge of a blade—and tapped your shoulder once. The bad one. You felt nothing. His smile deepened when you didn’t so much as blink.

Then he stepped back and nodded toward the corridor ahead. “C’mon. Let’s make the rest of ‘em jealous.”

____

The days blurred like smoke on water—not fast, not slow, just distorted. You hadn’t even noticed the sun rising anymore, only the weight of your boots and the sound of doors opening ahead of you before you stepped through. General. That was your name now. Not your real one. Not your given name, the one you've gone by your entire life. Not the one Daryl whispered into your shoulder in the middle of the night... Just General. A title that hung on your spine like a weapon, heavy and sharp.

In the two days since your so-called liberation, you hadn’t stopped moving. Marshal kept you close, walking the perimeter of the inner compound, inspecting patrols and supply lines, overseeing training sessions where recruits sparred with dull blades and sharp eyes. He showed you off. Paraded you like some living emblem of what it meant to survive Creed fire and come out whole.

“Eyes front,” he’d murmur as you passed the bowing acolytes. “They need to see strength, not softness.”

So you gave them strength. Barked orders. Held your chin high. Smiled only when it served you. You ate beside Marshal at every meal, and when he leaned in too close or spoke too casually—jokes about husbands, about daughters, about how pain was just love shedding its skin—you laughed like it didn’t slice straight through your gut. He didn’t mean to mock you, you didn’t think. But his words still clanged, loud and graceless.

“You never said - was he the dad? That Dixon guy?” Marshal had asked once, as you walked the south corridor. He didn’t look at you when he said it.

You had nodded. Just once. A sharp little thing, like a salute. The kind of response that meant everything and nothing.

You kept your hands steady. Your back straight. You thought of Dani... Daryl.

The same cell. Same stone. Same metal bars.

Only now, the cell across from him was empty.

It had been two nights, and Daryl still stared at that space, haunting him. The cold where you used to sit, curled and whispering hopes through the bars. The dried blood smudge near the drain. The memory of your scream.

He couldn’t sleep.

He hadn’t spoken in days.

Not because he couldn’t, but because there was no point. Most of his words had burned up in that fire anyway. What was left were grunts. Breaths. Muscle. The feel of rope biting into his palms as he dragged beams across gravel yards, sweating through his shirt until the sun dipped, and they locked him back in the cell.

He couldn’t stop looking.

At the guards. At the keys. At the gaps in their routines. At the flicker in their torchlight. At the way one of them always dropped his rifle to piss behind the south gate after final lockdown.

They thought he was broken. Good.

He was going to make them bleed for it.

____

The sun was too bright. Not warm, not kind. Just bright—the kind of blinding that turned sweat to sting and dirt to paste. Daryl’s hands, torn raw at the knuckles, worked the shovel with dull rhythm, carving through the gravel as if by compulsion. They’d set him to trenching along the perimeter fence, claiming it was for drainage, but it was busywork. Pointless. Just a leash long enough to keep him moving.

He had kept his mouth shut. There was nothing to say, to ask for. No one to answer.

The guards posted near him were two of the worst kind—bored, bitter, cruel in the casual way men were when they thought no one could touch them. They weren’t just watching him. They were waiting. It was obvious in the way they leaned against the posts, spitting seeds and elbowing each other, like the job was just a break between drinks.

“You hear what Marshal did during her intake?” one of them said, loud enough to carry, not bothering to keep the grin from his voice. “Ripped that shirt right open. Said he wanted to see if the scar was real. Said it looked like it was straight outta a horror movie.”

The other laughed—a wet, hacking thing that sounded like it came from the belly. “Man, the way she flinched? Shit, I would’ve kept goin’. Coulda had a whole show if Marshal wasn’t so damn stingy.”

Daryl didn’t move. His fingers curled tighter around the shovel handle, knuckles going bone-white under the grime.

“Real tragic, ain’t it?” the first continued. “ Mama had so much feist. Waste of a good piece of ass, if you ask me.”

The second guard whistled low. “Think she begged first? Screamed? I’d put money on it. Looked like a screamer.”

The shovel slipped from Daryl’s hands and hit the dirt with a dull thud, a quiet sound that somehow felt louder than it should have. He didn’t move at first. Just stood there—spine straight, chest rising slow and deep like something trying not to snap in half. His fingers curled once at his sides, twitching like the tension needed somewhere to go.

The two guards were still laughing. Still running their mouths.

Daryl turned.

No words. No sound. No warning.

He moved fast—faster than either of them had time to register. The first guard barely blinked before the edge of the shovel split across his jaw, the impact cracking like a gunshot. Bone shattered. Teeth flew. He dropped to one knee with a garbled scream before Daryl wrenched the shovel back and swung again—this time blunt-end first—right into his temple.

The second guard stumbled backward, drawing his weapon with a curse, but Daryl was already on him, driving forward with the force of a battering ram. He tackled him to the ground, knees slamming hard into the man’s ribs, one hand wrenching the gun from his grip while the other grabbed a fistful of his collar and slammed the back of his skull against the gravel once, twice—three times—until the resistance gave way and blood began pooling fast.

The first guard tried to crawl, face a ruined mess of pulp and bone, but Daryl turned on him with nothing left to hold back. He grabbed him by the belt and yanked him back like he weighed nothing.

He brought the shovel down like it was an axe—once to the spine, then again. And again. There was no grace in it. No clean kill. Just a raw, animal kind of violence—ugly and necessary.

His breath tore ragged through his chest as he stood over the wreckage. Both bodies stilled. One gurgled once and went quiet. The other twitched, then didn’t.

The other workers had gone silent. For a moment, the whole yard held its breath, as if the world itself recognised that something old and sacred had been unleashed.

Daryl stood over the bodies, panting, fists dripping, chest heaving with something that had no name.

And then he ran.

Through the gate. Into the trees.

No hesitation. No plan. Only instinct.

He didn’t know where he was going. But he knew he'd be back.

To make them all pay.

____

You were tightening the strap across your thigh when Marshal barged in without ceremony, his breath fogging in the colder air of the chamber. His eyes were alight with adrenaline, that twisted edge of anticipation he wore whenever something went wrong in just the right way.

“Two of ours are down,” he said, voice clipped but eager. “One’s missing. Blood on the gravel, bodies were found at the north wall. Tracks heading into the trees.”

You didn’t freeze. You didn’t blink. You simply straightened, fastened the last strap, and reached for the sheath at your hip.

“How long?” you asked.

“Not long. Less than an hour. It was fast. Efficient. Looked more like an animal than a man, but—” he tilted his head, eyes dragging down your arm like he expected praise, “—I know work when I see it. This was deliberate.”

You nodded once and stepped past him, boots already moving toward the outer corridor before he finished speaking. He kept pace beside you, hands folded behind his back like the whole thing was an experiment you were walking into. A test. A stage.

“You want to lead the hunt?” he asked, casual. Almost amused.

“I’m already doing it.”

You crossed into the yard where the air smelled like blood and burnt oil, your eyes sweeping over the cluster of armed men standing in loose formation near the gate. They were waiting. Watching. Some with curiosity, some with tension.

All of them obeyed when you raised your voice—low, calm, authoritative.

“North perimeter’s compromised. We have two confirmed dead, one unaccounted for, and tracks headed into the pines. I want six units. Three per group. Sector assignments will be rotated every hour. You see something, you don’t shout—you signal. You don’t engage unless I say. You follow orders. Or you join the ones who bled out.”

No one questioned you. Not even Marshal. He smiled slightly as you issued your orders like you’d been doing it your whole life, as if command had grown from your skin like armour. There was no tremor in your voice. No crack in your tone.

There was a slight hum in your skull. The one that came when the world tilted a little too sharply, like it always did when someone said the word escape. There was even a tinge of jealousy in your chest. Then it was replaced by pity. Because you knew they would be dragged back.

You didn’t let yourself wonder who it had been. Didn’t dwell on the bloody bodies or the missing name. Workers tried and failed all the time. You’d seen it before. You’d clean it up again. Still, something about Marshal’s expression gave you pause.

“What?” you asked, glancing at him.

He shrugged, but it was a smug gesture. Light. Easy. “Nothing. You wear the title well, General.”

You didn’t answer. Just looked back to the gate.

The hunt was already underway.

-----

The forest felt endless.

He didn’t know how long he’d been running. The canopy above him blurred into streaks of dark green and dying light, the air thick with humidity and his own ragged breath. His legs burned. His ribs ached. His boots pounded the earth like a drumbeat begging to slow, but he wouldn’t let them. He couldn’t.

Branches scraped his arms, thorns dragged like claws against his jeans, but none of it registered. Not compared to what he’d left behind. He didn’t know if he was more ashamed of the rage or the fact it had taken him that long to let it boil over. He was finally out - but it was without you.

Two of them hadn’t walked away from it. That was all he knew.

The forest began to thin. He slowed just enough to keep his breathing even. He hadn’t run this far to collapse. He swiped at his face and didn’t stop moving.

It was the shape of something manmade that pulled him forward—a faint glint of rust through the trees, the broken silhouette of a long-abandoned gas station nestled in overgrowth. Half-collapsed, half-swallowed by ivy, the old building slumped against the edge of the road like a dying animal. Its sign had long since shattered. Only rusted poles remained where the name might have been. Weeds grew through the cracks in the concrete, and a single pump leaned at an angle like it had been punched sideways and never stood again. But it was something. Shelter. Cover. Supplies.

He paused at the edge of the clearing, one hand pressed against a tree, catching his breath, eyes scanning for movement. Nothing. Only the soft rustle of branches and the occasional distant groan of the dead.

That's when he saw two walkers lurching near the back of the station, slow and disoriented. He crouched, crept forward, and took them out quick. Clean. Blade to the base of the skull. He dragged their corpses into the woods, leaving them in a way that looked like a scuffle had happened. A trail. One they’d follow. Let them run in the wrong direction.

Then he doubled back and slipped through the busted rear entrance, heart thudding hard beneath the damp fabric of his shirt.

Inside, it was still.

Dust hung thick in the shafts of light breaking through broken panes. Shelves had long since collapsed, candy wrappers and rat nests littering the floor. The air stank of mildew and old oil, but it was empty as far as people and walkers went.. He moved slow, clearing corners one at a time, bootfalls nearly silent on the stained linoleum.

He didn’t breathe easy, not really. Not until the last corner was clear. Then he sagged against the side of an empty cooler, pressing a hand to his ribs, sweat trickling down his spine. He counted each breath like it might be his last. That's when he heard something from outside.

_______

The trail didn’t fool you.

It was good—subtle in ways the average Creed lackey would never catch—but not good enough to hide what it really was. They were covering their tracks. Every broken branch had purpose. Every overturned rock, every blood-speckled leaf followed a pattern too clean, too deliberately staggered, too familiar.

Because it was yours.

A move you’d crafted seasons ago, back when survival meant something more than symbolism and pageantry. You’d taught it once—to people who mattered. People who didn’t wear uniforms or follow slogans or look at you like you were anything but someone trying to stay alive. And now it stared back at you from the earth like a signature carved into soil.

Marshal was barking orders ahead of you, his voice crisp with expectation, but not urgency. Two men down was an inconvenience, not a threat. He stood near the treeline, gesturing with one hand for his squad to follow the trail of walker corpses heading eastward, already convinced the work was nearly done.

You didn’t speak right away. Didn’t move either.

Just stood near the edge of the brush, eyes tracking the drag marks and the half-shuffled footprints, letting the recognition sink deep into your ribs like a bruise you’d forgotten how to name.

When Marshal noticed your hesitation, he stepped closer. His tone was more relaxed now—comfortable, even��as if he’d grown used to speaking to you not as his subordinate, but as his closest confidant. Or maybe just his newest trophy.

“You see something I don’t, General?” he asked, voice low, laced with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’ve been staring at dirt for the last two minutes like it's talkin' to you.”

You didn’t answer at first. You kept your gaze fixed on the ground, the muscle in your jaw ticking once as you shifted your weight forward, crouching to trace the heel-drag pattern with your fingers.

“It’s not walker blood,” you murmured, mostly to yourself. “Too bright. Too spaced.”

Marshal tilted his head, humored but mildly intrigued. “That what’s got you squinting like an old crow? We’ve already got a lead. They’re following it now.”

You stood slowly, brushing your hands off on your thighs before glancing toward the direction the others had taken.

“It’s misdirection,” you said, flatly, without drama. “Manufactured.”

Marshal frowned, but it was faint, like a crease appearing in otherwise smooth stone. “And you know this because…?”

Your eyes slid to him. “Because it’s mine.”

That gave him pause. His smirk faltered, then rebuilt itself slowly, shaped now into something more curious than mocking.

“Well, shit,” he chuckled, hands sliding into his pockets. “Didn’t know you taught tricks. Looks like someone’s been studying the old playbook.”

He glanced down the trail again, then back at you. “You think our escapee doubled back?”

“I think he’s already gone,” you said, voice smooth. “And I think if you want a chance at catching him, you let me follow the real trail while your dogs chase ghosts.”

There was a moment of silence between you then—thin, but weighted. Marshal studied your face like he was seeing something he hadn’t expected, or maybe something he’d been hoping would surface all along.

He smiled again, more relaxed this time, and gestured half-heartedly to the forest. “Alright, General. If you think there’s a better trail, take it. Just don’t get yourself lost. Hate to have to replace you after all the effort I put in.”

You nodded once. Sharp. Precise. The way he liked it.

And then you turned and vanished into the woods, one boot after the other, eyes tracking the subtle path only you would’ve noticed. It wasn’t marked with panic or haste, but strategy. Intentional obfuscation. A diversion made to buy time—and that was what made your heart start to pound.

People who used this move were dangerous. After all it was your move.

_______

The forest opened up without warning.

One second, you were tucked beneath the heavy arms of pines, the air thick with sap and old rain, and the next, the trees gave way to a patch of cleared ground—uneven, mottled with patches of gravel and moss, as if the world itself had tried to reclaim this place and only half-succeeded. In the centre stood a gas station.

You stood still for a moment, just outside the reach of the clearing, listening.

Nothing.

No birds. No footsteps. Not even wind. Just the low, hot breath of the forest pressing against your back and the distant rot of something that had died weeks ago and hadn’t yet stopped stinking.

Your hand tightened around the hilt of your knife.

The trail led here. The subtle one—the real one. The one you’d followed from a snapped vine near the creek bed, the one someone had tried too hard to make look accidental. Every turn had confirmed it. This was no rogue worker. Whoever came here knew how to cover ground. How to double back. How to make blood smear like accident and not direction.

There was something about the air that changed before you even stepped inside—a stillness too deliberate, like a breath held too long, like the world itself was waiting for something to break. You crept along the outer edge of the station, careful to keep your footfalls light, your weapon drawn but low, ready but not aggressive. The siding flaked beneath your fingertips, warm and brittle, the building groaning faintly as the wind caught under the eaves. It should have felt abandoned. It didn’t.

Your gut twisted—not with fear exactly, but with a pressure you didn’t know how to name, like your body was trying to warn you before your mind could catch up. Something was here. Someone. It wasn’t a logical feeling. There were no clear signs. Nothing disturbed. Nothing broken. But still, the closer you got, the stronger the feeling became, like gravity itself was trying to pull you inward.

By the time you stepped through the rear entrance—door creaking on its hinges but offering no resistance—you already knew you weren’t alone.

You didn’t shout. You didn’t call out commands. You just stood there for a moment, breathing through your nose, trying to place the shape of the unease that had started to bloom beneath your ribs.

The air was soured by time—thick with rust and mildew and motor oil, sharp with the scent of old blood and dust, the kind that clung to your clothes and your tongue long after you’d left. Sunlight cut through cracks in the roof, casting long, ghostly columns across the wreckage of the station’s interior. Aisles leaned at odd angles. Packaging had melted into the shelves. The silence wasn’t clean. It was full of ghosts.

You stepped forward, slow and careful, scanning between the shelves. One aisle at a time.

“This isn’t gonna end well for you,” you said, your voice cutting the silence like a blade—not shouted, not loud, but firm and cold and clear. A statement, not a threat. Not a warning - just a fact.

There was no response. Not right away. Just the sound of breath caught mid-motion. Like someone had frozen behind one of the shelves.

“Come out where I can see you,” you said, stepping deeper into the rows. Your voice didn’t shake. But it wasn’t steady, either. There was something brittle at the edges now. A warning crack before the collapse.

The sound of your voice slammed into him like a hammer to the sternum—low, steady, not shouted, but heavy with something he couldn’t name, like truth dragged raw across gravel. It was unmistakable, even wrapped in grit, even worn at the edges by survival. It was you. It was your voice, but it wasn’t soft the way he remembered, wasn’t teasing or warm or sarcastic. It was clipped and direct, sharpened down to the bone like everything else in this world, and that was what undid him.

His back pressed harder to the metal shelf behind him, and his fingers tightened around the knife in his grip, not from intent to use it but because it was the only thing tethering him to the moment. His pulse was everywhere—in his throat, behind his eyes, pounding in the tips of his fingers—and the breath he tried to take caught halfway and dissolved into nothing. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he remembered how.

Something inside him began to crack, slow and silent like ice shifting under weight.

He hadn’t imagined it.

It wasn’t one of the dreams that taunted him in the half-sleep of a cold floor and a concrete cell. It wasn’t the whisper that followed him through every labor shift, the one that sounded like her laugh, like her sigh, like the first time she said his name in the dark. This wasn’t the echo of memory warped by grief. This was now. This was real.

And yet, he didn’t answer. Not right away. Because something primal in him still feared the truth. Still believed that turning that corner would cost him everything if he was wrong.

But then he heard her boots crunch forward—one, then another. Steady. Careful. Getting closer. The sound of her moving cut through him sharper than any blade.

His eyes flicked toward the end of the aisle, just a sliver of light between broken shelves, and for a heartbeat, he caught it—just a glimpse.

A shoulder. A lock of hair. The edge of your jaw. The line of your arm steady on your weapon.

And it hit him all over again, harder this time, like the wind knocked out of his lungs and the floor pulled out from under him all at once. His knees went weak, his grip faltered, and the breath he finally took sounded more like a sob than a sigh, though he kept it behind his teeth.

You were standing. You were walking. You were alive.

Your were real.

But you didn’t look like the woman he used to fall asleep beside, or the one who used to hum under her breath while cleaning blood off her knife. You didn’t move like someone who’d ever been held gently. Your body was all tension, your eyes cold and alert, like softness had been trained out of you one wound at a time. The version of you standing there now looked like someone who’d been surviving instead of living—like the world had stripped you down to the parts that could fight and buried the rest somewhere too deep to reach.

And yet it was still you.

“I’m not in the mood to chase,” you said, each word carved from the grit of your throat. “And I’m sure as hell not in the mood to kill someone who’s just hiding. So don’t make me.”

He didn’t know how long he stood there, half-concealed by the shadows of the aisle end, barely breathing, barely thinking—just staring, heart thundering with the impossible weight of recognition because it was you. And yet not you. And that paradox alone left his mouth dry, his pulse skittering, and his knees dangerously untrustworthy beneath him.

There was something in the way you held yourself that made the air feel thinner. You didn’t look fragile. You didn’t even look afraid. You looked sharpened—reforged in fire—and he didn’t know whether to be proud or devastated that the world had made you into this. For one breathless moment, he let himself believe that he could keep watching you like this forever, that you wouldn’t vanish again if he blinked too long. That the grief choking him since the pit had been a lie.

But then the toe of his boot knocked against a broken glass bottle, and the sharp scrape of it skittered across the linoleum like a gunshot in the dark. You reacted before the sound even finished, instincts firing faster than thought, and before he could lift a hand or even fully turn, your weapon had snapped to attention, pointed straight at him from across the aisle with lethal, unflinching precision.

He lifted both hands immediately. His knife dropped to the floor with a dull thud, his fingers opening like surrender was the only language he had left, and still, he didn’t speak. He didn’t dare. The only thing that moved was his chest, rising and falling in jagged rhythm as his eyes stayed fixed on yours, drinking you in like a man starved.

And you… you couldn’t move either.

The moment your eyes landed on him—on his face, his shoulders, the familiar set of his mouth—you stopped breathing entirely. You didn’t lower the weapon, not at first, not even when the shape of him settled into clarity. Your body held position like a dam holding back floodwater, and for a single, suspended second, all you could do was stare, too stunned to speak, too stunned to blink, too stunned to accept the thing your heart already knew.

It was him.

Alive.

Real.

And standing at the opposite end of the aisle like a ghost resurrected just for you.

You weren’t sure if the sound that came out of you was a gasp or a sob or some mangled hybrid of both, but it broke whatever spell had been holding you in place, because your fingers loosened ever so slightly on the grip, your arms trembling in their sockets, the gun still aimed but your certainty dissolving. His name rose in your chest, but it got caught behind your teeth, too thick with disbelief, too sacred to release without proof. Because if you said it, and it wasn’t really him, you wouldn’t survive it.

But he didn’t vanish.

He didn’t speak either.

He just stood there, hands still raised, eyes still locked on you like if he looked away you might disappear all over again. And that was when you finally let the weapon drop—not all the way, not at first, but just enough to acknowledge what your heart was already screaming.

You didn’t know whether to run to him or collapse where you stood.

But you knew one thing, deep and feral in your gut—this wasn’t over. It had only just begun.

Your lips parted before the sound came, breath catching halfway up your throat as if your body had to fight to let the name escape. You hadn’t said it in days. Or maybe weeks. You’d whispered it to yourself in the dark, in the cold, in the quiet between orders and silence, just to remember the shape of it—but this time, it felt like a prayer you weren’t ready to finish.

“Daryl?”

It came out cracked. A question. A confession. A hope.

And then he exhaled.

That’s all he did—just let out a breath so full of disbelief and wonder it shook loose the silence between you like the final piece of a collapsing dam. His hands, still raised in surrender, trembled once as a smile twitched—small and ruined—at the corner of his mouth. He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. His body said everything. The slack in his shoulders, the sting in his eyes, the way his lips moved around the unspoken words like he wasn’t sure his voice would hold.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

Not empty—but full in a way that felt overwhelming. A silence packed with heat and scent and movement and memory, like the whole room had bowed to make space for the impossible thing happening between you.

Your gun hit the floor with a thud that didn’t echo.

Your feet moved before your brain did.

One second you were standing there, arms trembling, heart breaking open like a wound that had never truly closed. The next, you were running—sprinting across the ruined tile, your boots slipping slightly on the broken glass and torn paper, not caring if you fell, not caring if you bled, just needing to reach him, to feel him, to prove he wasn’t made of smoke and memory.

Daryl closed the space between you like he’d been waiting his whole life to do it, his steps heavy and uneven, like his knees couldn’t decide if they should give out or carry him faster. His eyes never left yours, not even when you collided—so hard and fast that it knocked the breath from both of you, your chests crashing together with the force of everything you hadn’t dared feel until now.

You sobbed into his shoulder the second his arms locked around you.

There was no delay. No awkward pause. No question of whether he would catch you. Daryl wrapped you up like he’d been born to do it, his hands clawing at your back, his head burying into the curve of your neck, his arms caging you in like the world might try and steal you from him again and he wasn’t about to let that happen. You could feel the noise that came out of him, low and ragged, less a sound than a breath that caught in his throat and turned to something half-feral, half-frightened, all love.

You didn’t hold back.

Your body shook so hard you nearly dropped to your knees. Your hands gripped the fabric of his shirt like it was the only thing keeping you upright. The sobs came fast, ugly, unrelenting, like everything you’d buried just to keep breathing had finally broken the surface and refused to stop. You could smell him—blood, sweat, dirt, smoke—and it hit you like a memory so strong it felt like drowning. You pressed your face into his collarbone, breathing in deep, desperate gasps, like scent alone could prove it was him.

He lifted his head to look at you—really look at you—and the moment your eyes met, the air between you seemed to collapse. His gaze was glassy, flickering with a hundred emotions all fighting for room, the disbelief carved so deep into his expression it was as if he were afraid to blink in case you vanished. He needed to be sure, to confirm with his own eyes that this wasn’t a trick of the light or some final mercy dream sent to soften the blow of grief.

And when the truth settled—when his mind caught up with what his heart already knew—his head dropped against your shoulder, not from exhaustion, but from the sheer weight of feeling that overtook him.

You welcomed him without hesitation, your arms wrapping around him like they’d been searching for his shape this whole time. Your fingers clawed at the back of his shirt, trying to ground yourself, to remind your body that he was real, that this wasn’t a hallucination born from fatigue or hope or desperation. You sobbed, sharp and sudden, your face tilted toward him as the dam inside you finally burst.

You hadn’t let yourself feel it—not really—not until now. You’d kept the grief locked up tight, buried beneath obligation and instinct and survival, but now it was clawing its way out with a ferocity that terrified you. The pain of losing him surged through your chest like a second heartbeat, loud and uncontrollable, and now that it was out in the open, you had no idea what to do with it.

You collapsed into him, trembling, your hands fisting into the fabric at his back like you were afraid he might vanish if you didn’t hold on tight enough. Your breath hitched as you buried your face against his collar, the scent of him—earth and smoke and blood—ripping another cry from your chest. He was here. He was real. He was warm.

“I can’t believe it,” you choked out, your voice wet and raw. “You’re alive… you’re…”

His fingers curled tighter in the fabric of your jacket, knuckles white with the strain, like if he didn’t anchor himself to you, he might fall straight through the floor. His chest convulsed with a breath that never fully landed, just trembled apart in his throat, and then—like something cracked open deep inside him—he began to nod. Small at first, barely perceptible, then over and over again, his face buried in your neck, breath ragged, tears searing hot as they soaked into your skin. His whole body shook with it, not a sob exactly, but something quieter, more devastating—like surrender.

“You’re okay,” you whispered, again and again, each repetition softer than the last, unsure if you were trying to calm him or convince yourself. “You’re okay… I’m here… you’re here…”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. But the way he gripped you—arms tightening like he could press you into his bones, hand cradling the back of your head with a desperation that bordered on reverence—told you everything you needed to know. He had thought he’d lost you. And now that you were back, he wasn’t going to let you slip away again. Not even for a second.

His voice cracked where it met your throat, low and hoarse like it had been dragged over gravel. “But I saw you,” he rasped, the words catching on a sob that hadn’t quite landed yet. “They—I saw you, they—”

“I know,” you breathed, the sound of it already fraying as it left your lips. “They pulled the same thing with me.”

And that was when it hit him—the sob he’d been holding back since the moment your voice first cut through the dark. It didn’t explode from him; it collapsed inward, a sharp, uneven inhale that never made it all the way out, like he was still trying to wrestle it into silence even now. But you felt it—the way it rippled through his body, not just in his shoulders but down to his bones, like something had broken open beneath the surface and he didn’t have the strength to stop it anymore. He sagged into you, not dramatically, just a fraction—but it was enough. Enough to know that whatever kept him upright until now had finally given out.

You cupped his face before he could retreat again—both hands, firm and unshaking, holding him there like you could keep him from splintering. The scratch of his stubble burned against your palms, and still, you didn’t let go. His eyes met yours—those pale, wolf-bright eyes—and they were barely holding together. No trace of the man who had walked beside you days ago. These eyes were starved. Hollowed. Torn raw at the edges from seeing too much, from believing too little. They didn’t look like eyes meant to hold joy anymore. They looked like they were built for grief.

“I thought I lost you,” he whispered, and his voice cracked on the word thought, like even saying it might kill him. “I saw it. I saw them—”

“I know,” you said again, but this time the words collapsed in your throat, your voice blown wide open with feeling. “I know, baby. I know.”

And something inside you broke, right then—something you didn’t have a name for. It cracked down your spine and shattered in your chest, left you trembling with a grief that didn’t have a place to go. There were no good words left. No logic. No plans. No promises.

So you did the only thing your body knew how to do.

You kissed him.

It didn’t feel like a kiss—it felt like impact. Like gravity reversed and slammed the two of you together with such force it shattered every lie you’d told yourselves just to stay alive. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sweet. It was breathless and clumsy and soaked in panic, the kind of kiss that felt like drowning with your mouths wide open, like maybe if you didn’t inhale the other person fast enough, they might disappear again. His teeth knocked against yours in the chaos of it, his lips trembling with the sobs he couldn’t release, and your tears spilled freely, tracking down into the corners of your mouth, warm and salt-stung and unrelenting.

You felt the sound before you heard it—the low, helpless noise that scraped out of him from somewhere deep in his chest, something that sat halfway between a groan and a wounded animal’s cry. His hands were in your hair before you could register the movement, dragging you closer like proximity alone might make up for lost time, like if he could just fuse his skin to yours, nothing would ever tear you apart again. One hand fisted in the back of your jacket, the other trembling against the curve of your spine, sliding lower, frantic and reverent all at once, as if he didn’t know where to touch you first because he couldn’t stand the thought of not touching you at all.

He moved without thinking—pure instinct, pure need. Your body was suddenly pressed back against a rusted metal shelf, the cold biting through your jacket even as his mouth devoured yours, even as his breath poured into you like something sacred. His hands skimmed down your sides with a fever that felt more like prayer than lust, like he was checking to make sure you were really there, all of you, unburned and breathing. And then they found your hips, strong and decisive, and he lifted you—just like that. No hesitation, no warning, just that same animal desperation in the way his arms wrapped under your thighs and the way your legs clung to his waist like muscle memory.

You never stopped kissing. Not even for air. Not even when your back hit the floor and the stench of the gas station rushed into your lungs. You could’ve been lying in dirt or on broken glass or in the middle of a damn inferno and it still wouldn’t have mattered. The only thing that mattered was this—this unbearable closeness, this impossible proof that he was here and you were here and somehow, impossibly, you’d found each other again.

Every point of contact felt vital. His chest crushed against yours, his heartbeat thundering like a war drum under your palms. His thigh slotted between yours, grinding hard enough to draw a whimper from your lips, and still, it wasn’t close enough. Your hands roamed like you were blind, like your fingers were trying to memorize what your eyes still couldn’t believe—his shoulders, the scar at his collarbone, the line of his jaw and the curve of his skull beneath your palms.

Daryl didn’t talk, not really. Not when it counted. But right now, he was saying everything you needed to hear. Not with words—but with the way his tongue tangled with yours, the way his breath hitched when you rocked your hips up against his, the way he buried his face against your throat like he was trying to crawl inside your skin. You didn’t say anything either—not because you didn’t have words, but because language would’ve ruined it. Nothing could hold this. Not grief. Not rage. Not love. Only movement. Only heat. Only the frantic, aching choreography of two people who had forgotten how to survive without each other.

And that—that was your fluency.

This was how you spoke.

Your legs were locked around his waist like a vise, trembling with strain but refusing to let go, and your hands couldn’t stop pulling him closer, dragging at his back, his shoulders, clawing like you could anchor yourself in the curve of his spine and stay there forever. There was no space between your bodies, nothing but heat and panic and the sick, beautiful ache of reunion as he held you upright, one arm clamped tight around your lower back, the other braced against the broken floor to keep you both steady in a world that no longer was.

You couldn’t breathe right. Couldn’t think. Every nerve in your body was alive with it—this collision, this reunion, this need that felt bigger than you, bigger than both of you, like grief made manifest in the shape of desire.

And he was unraveling right there with you.

Daryl wasn’t thinking in words anymore. He was running on instinct, acting on a hunger so deep it didn’t feel like lust—it felt like survival. His hands found your shirt and tore it open in one violent jerk, the sound of fabric splitting loud enough to make your breath stutter, and the second your skin was exposed, he was on you. Mouth hot, insistent, desperate as he kissed a line down your chest like it was a map he thought he’d never see again. His lips landed over your heart, over your ribs, over the spots he always touched, and now pressed into like they were proof that you were real, that he hadn’t imagined you back into existence.

You arched into him, hips tilting up, breath ragged as his mouth found your sternum, then lower. Of course—of course—he didn’t pass your breasts without worship, not even now, not even in the middle of a damn apocalypse resurrection. His hand palmed you roughly through your bra while his mouth trailed lower, fast and hungry and nothing like the teasing he used to do, because this wasn’t about foreplay or build-up. It was about claim. About remembering. About burying himself in you so deep he’d never have to crawl out again.

He was afraid.

You could feel it. In the way his breath hitched every time your fingers moved through his hair. In the way he touched you like you were on borrowed time. In the way his eyes flashed upward every few seconds, glassy and wide and unbelieving. He was terrified this was a hallucination. That if he didn’t fuck you hard enough, if he didn’t make you scream and cry and come undone in his arms, then you might vanish again.

But you couldn’t hold back the cry that tore out of your chest, your voice cracked and pleading as the emptiness clawed at your insides. “Daryl—”

His head snapped up, eyes locking on yours, face flushed and tearstreaked and so goddamn soft you thought you might break open from the sight of it. And when he looked at you, he didn’t see uncertainty or hesitation or fear—he saw you shaking beneath him, desperate and wrecked and alive, and it lit something inside him that had nothing to do with dominance and everything to do with belonging.

You were already lifting your torso, fumbling for his belt with clumsy, shaking fingers. It took too long. It always took too long. And when your hands slipped, when a frustrated whimper escaped your lips, he didn’t mock you like he usually would. He didn’t smirk or tease or make some offhand comment about how you couldn’t wait two fucking seconds.

He knelt there in front of you like something half-feral, trembling and breathless, and moved with that same single-minded urgency, his fingers flying to your jeans, dragging the zipper down like the delay itself was killing him.

You didn’t take your pants off. You shoved them down just far enough. You didn’t want preparation or patience. You wanted him. Now. You wanted him inside you so deep the ache wouldn’t go away for days. You wanted to feel sore. You wanted to feel branded.

His voice was hoarse and warm against your lips as you writhed beneath him, just a breath of comfort threaded through the chaos. “It’s alright, baby. I gotcha. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

It didn’t match what he was doing. His tone was tender, low, steady—but his hands were shaking as he hooked your underwear with your jeans and shoved them down in one rough motion. There was nothing slow about it. There was no grace in the way his fingers curled into your hips as he slid between your thighs, no hesitation in the way he groaned when your legs tightened again around his waist and pulled him flush against your body.

You shifted beneath him, the cracked linoleum biting into your spine, the brittle sting of broken glass tangled in your hair like a crown of thorns you didn’t dare acknowledge. Above you, a ragged hole in the station’s collapsed ceiling cast a shaft of silver light through the dust-choked air, illuminating your body like something divine—skin glowing pale beneath the grime, your chest rising and falling in frantic rhythm, eyes wild and wet and locked onto his like he was the last living thing on earth. And to Daryl, you were.

His breath caught in his throat. It was almost too much—seeing you like this, raw and spread out under him, haloed in dust and blood and light. You were wrecked. And holy. And his. Every part of him screamed to reach you, bury himself inside you so completely that nothing—not time, not fire, not the Creed—could ever sever what bound you together.

You tugged him closer, hips shifting, knees rising to cradle his body with your own like instinct had overridden every fear, every question, every word. The press of him against you sent a tremor through your spine, your muscles clenching in desperate anticipation, not just for pleasure but for proof. Proof that this wasn’t a hallucination. That he was here, real and solid and warm, the weight of him anchoring you back into your body after days spent floating on agony and denial.

“I need you,” you whispered, barely louder than the whisper of dust falling around you. “I need to feel you. I need to know you’re real.”

And he gave you that—without a word, without hesitation. Just a groan, low and guttural, as his hand slid beneath your thigh and hitched it high over his hip, aligning himself. His forehead dropped to your shoulder, breath scalding against your skin, the tremble in his arms betraying the fact that he was just as wrecked as you were—torn open by grief and stunned by hope.

And then, he pushed inside.

It wasn’t urgent. It wasn’t fast. It was unbearable in its slowness, every inch a reclamation, every second a sacrament. Your body welcomed him like it had been waiting, like it had been hollowed out and shaped only to fit him. The stretch was divine, brutal in its pleasure, a burn that made your back arch and your breath catch and your fingers rake down the length of his spine because you couldn’t hold this, couldn’t stand it, couldn’t survive it unless he gave you all of it—his weight, his heat, his voice gasping brokenly against your throat.

He bottomed out with a low, breathless groan, and the moment he did, something in you shattered. You felt the tears break loose again—this time not from fear or grief or even relief, but from sheer overwhelming joy. From the way your body clenched around him in welcome. From the dizzying rush of feeling everything at once.

The sound that left your throat barely resembled anything human—it was a gasp, yes, but not one you recognised as your own. It scraped from your chest like something long buried, like a sob half-remembered from another lifetime, one where he hadn’t been ripped from your arms. You hadn’t known how hollow you’d become until the moment he filled you again, until the weight and warmth of him settled into the ache that had lived inside you since the day he was ‘shot’. Each slow roll of his hips sent another wave crashing through you—deep, thorough, grounding—and it was more than just sensation. It was reclamation. It was breath after drowning. It was colour bleeding back into a world that had long since faded grey. His mouth found yours again, and this time it wasn’t a kiss so much as a seal—a dam against the sound of your cries, which trembled high and frantic in your throat, cries not of pain or desperation but of raw, unfiltered relief. You were finally whole again, and that truth settled into your bones with every movement. After days of unbearable numbness, of walking through the world like a ghost in your own body, every nerve had been sharpened to a blade’s edge. You felt everything now—his hands, his breath, the press of his chest against yours—and It hit you all at once—a rush so heady it was almost narcotic, like pleasure waking every nerve at once after days of silence, flooding your system with heat, hunger, and the dizzying high of finally being alive in his hands again.

There was no rhythm. No restraint. Just the frenzied collision of flesh and feeling—each thrust growing rough with purpose, deep with urgency, like he was trying to brand himself inside you, like every stroke was a prayer and a promise and a plea. The heat of him filled you again and again, thick and relentless, until it felt like your body couldn’t possibly hold anything more—but you begged for it anyway, legs wrapped tight around his waist, hips lifting to meet every punishing drive of his. He didn’t ease up, didn’t slow, not when every sharp drag of his cock left you gasping like the air itself couldn’t reach your lungs unless he gave it to you.

It wasn’t about chasing pleasure. It was about surviving the ache. About staying here, in this body, in this moment, where you could still feel him—hot and hard and alive, grinding into you like he could carve your name into his bones. His breath came harsh against your mouth, mingling with yours, teeth grazing lips like he wanted to consume every sound you made. Every moan. Every desperate sob.

Your hands were everywhere—threaded in his hair, tugging hard enough to hurt, raking down the slope of his back, the curve of his spine, clawing at him like you could tear your way into his chest and never leave. You grabbed at his ass, urging him deeper, harder, faster, trying to keep him pressed so far inside there’d never be a world where he wasn’t. Your name broke on his tongue in pieces, ragged and reverent, lost between the kisses he planted against your throat, your jaw, your open, gasping mouth.

You didn’t just want him close. You wanted him fused to you. Imprinted. Etched into the wet heat of you forever.

“Yes—fuck, yes,” you gasped into his ear, the words high and ragged, cracking under the weight of everything pouring out of you at once. Your voice didn’t even sound like your own anymore—too breathless, too raw, too consumed by the white-hot bliss unraveling you from the inside out.

That did something to him.

His pace shifted, stuttered, then surged—all control lost. His hips slammed into yours with reckless abandon, faster, harder, as if the sound of your voice had lit a fuse in him he couldn’t extinguish. His whole body was shaking with the force of it, sweat slicking his skin as your bodies collided over and over in a rhythm that felt more like a goddamn resurrection than anything else.

“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” he choked out, the words torn straight from his chest, cracked and desperate. His forehead pressed hard against yours, breath fanning hot over your face, his eyes clenched shut like the intensity of it all was just too much to bear. He drove deep, hitting that spot that made your whole body jolt and seize, again and again, until the pressure inside you coiled so tightly you thought you might break apart from the sheer pleasure of it.

Your back arched with every thrust, your body dragged upward by the force of his hips before slamming back down into the ruined floor beneath you. You didn’t care. You didn’t feel anything but him—thick, hot, buried to the hilt inside you, like he was trying to fuck you into memory, into reality, into existence.

He was gasping against your skin now, his breath pouring out in short, ragged bursts that seared across your collarbone like open flame, each one edged with something rawer than pain and more desperate than pleasure. His jaw was clenched so tightly it trembled against the curve of your throat, the sinew in his neck taut like a man trying to hold back a scream, like the sheer force of what he felt was something he had to trap behind his teeth just to keep from breaking apart entirely. His grip on your hips had turned punishing, almost brutal, his fingers digging so deep into your flesh it felt like he was trying to leave something permanent behind—not just a bruise, but a mark that said mine, still mine, always. He didn’t mean to hurt you. But he couldn’t stop. Not when the way you moved beneath him was undoing every stitch of restraint he’d tried so fucking hard to hold onto.

He looked down for just a second—just long enough to watch the place where your bodies met, slick and desperate and shuddering with every movement—and the sight alone nearly ruined him. That was you. That was him, buried inside you so deep he swore he could see himself poking from inside you and forming a bulf in your lower abdomen. Your legs locked tight around his waist, your body rising to meet his like you couldn’t bear even a moment of distance, and it shattered something in him, something hollow and hungry and feral. You looked unreal like that—eyes wet and wide, lips parted, the flush of you spreading down your chest as your back arched again beneath him. The shaft of light spilling through the hole in the ceiling cast a pale, holy glow across your skin, catching in the strands of glass tangled in your hair and turning your entire body into something celestial, like you were a vision brought back from the dead just for him to worship.

Then his hands slid up, one latching tight into yours, pinning it down hard beside your head. The other followed, his fingers threading between yours like a lifeline, like if he didn’t hold on he might float away completely. And all the while he kept fucking into you—harder, deeper—his eyes locked to your face with a terrifying sort of focus, like he was watching for signs of life, of love, of you, and couldn’t afford to miss a second of it.

You could feel him everywhere—stretching you open, filling you to the point of madness, the weight of him driving every inch of his cock so deep inside you it felt like he might split you in two. You swore you could feel it in your chest, in your spine, curling in your throat like a scream that couldn’t find a way out. Every thrust hit like a vow, like a promise sealed with skin and sweat and everything he couldn’t say out loud. Like he was stitching you back together with every goddamn movement.

And you let him. You wanted him to. Because every bruising, fevered stroke didn’t just remind you that you were alive—it reminded you that you were his.

He reached a hand down and lightly pressed on the small bulge that was forming every time he pushed in. “You feel that? Right there?” he rasped, barely above a whisper. “Still got ya, baby. Still here.”

The added pressure of his palm had your whole body trembling, not just from the pressure building at your core, but from the sheer impossibility of it all—him, here, real, alive, buried so deep inside you that your bones ached with the weight of it. Every thrust pulled a new sound from your throat, not just of pleasure, but of disbelief, of shattered grief curling into relief. The rhythm of his hips drove you toward the edge, but it wasn’t just ecstasy pooling hot and full in your belly—it was everything you’d buried to survive. Every scream you’d swallowed, every night you’d imagined him dead, every second you’d rehearsed how to live without him—it all surged forward at once, crashing up through your chest like a tidal wave.

He groaned into your skin, voice cracked open with the same unbearable ache you carried, every breath he took like he was drowning in you, like he couldn’t get close enough even now, couldn’t accept there was still space between your bodies no matter how deep he pushed.

And then something inside you snapped—not pain, not even climax, but a rupture of emotion that split you down the center. The first sob hit so softly it barely registered, just a breath stuttering against his neck, but the second followed quick and sharp, your face twisting into his shoulder as the flood broke loose. You were shaking beneath him, wracked with the force of it, tears sliding hot between your temples and his skin, gasping for air like you couldn’t tell where the sorrow ended and the joy began.

Daryl didn’t notice at first that you were crying. How could he, when every inch of his body was pressed against yours like a seal, like something sacred, like if he just kept moving—kept breathing you in and pushing himself deeper into your body—the nightmare might stay buried where it belonged. His face was buried in your neck, the heat of his breath scalding your throat in short, ragged bursts as his mouth moved blindly across your skin, dropping kisses that were more devotion than desire, lips parted in a prayer he didn’t know how to speak. His hips moved with a kind of desperation that had nothing to do with rhythm, nothing to do with pleasure, and everything to do with proof—the need to feel you around him, to fill the hollowed-out part of himself that had started dying the second he thought you were gone.

His hands were everywhere, cradling your head, skimming your ribs, dragging down your back with shaking fingers that gripped like he was afraid you’d dissolve if he didn’t hold you right. You felt like a lifeline beneath him, warm and alive and wrapped so tightly around his senses that the rest of the world ceased to exist. It wasn’t until your body began to tremble in a way that didn’t match the cadence of his thrusts—not pleasure, not urgency, but something softer and more broken—that he finally felt it.

Not the tight grip of your thighs or the drag of your nails down his back—no, it was the break in your moan, the way the sound caught mid-breath like a sob in disguise. It was the way your whole body trembled, not from the pleasure winding tighter inside you, but from something else—something more profound, lonelier.

He pulled back just enough to see you, to really see you, and what he found nearly gutted him. Tears streaking your cheeks. Not loud. Not wild. Just steady, silent drops that shimmered in the weak shaft of light cutting through the ceiling, turning your face into something ethereal and wrecked and so fucking beautiful it made his chest ache. There was glass in your hair—tiny glints of it catching the light like stars—and he couldn’t tell if the shimmer on your lips was sweat or salt or both, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that you were crying, and he hadn’t even noticed. His heart punched against his ribs, and his body stilled completely, the rhythm faltering to nothing as his hands gentled in an instant, afraid he’d gone too far, afraid he’d gone too far and hurt you.

“Hey,” he rasped, the word cracked and broken at the edges, like it had clawed its way up from a place too deep to name. “Baby—”

His voice landed against your skin like an apology he hadn’t had time to shape, but already meant with everything he had. And the moment he stopped moving—just the second his hips stilled, just the breath between one heartbeat and the next—something in you snapped. The emptiness, that terrible hollowness where his rhythm had been, flooded your chest like a tidal wave, choking off your breath, making your arms seize tighter around him like maybe if you held on hard enough the cold couldn’t reach you.

Daryl didn’t need to see the tears to know. He felt it in your body—the sudden change in tension, the way your grip shifted from want to need, the tremble that started somewhere low in your spine and worked its way up into your chest, into the way your breath caught like it had hit barbed wire on the way out. He didn’t need to look at your face. He just knew. Because this was you. His wife. The only thing in this world he could read without a single word.

Still, he lifted his head, not out of confusion but out of guilt, because he should’ve felt it sooner. He should’ve known. And the second he saw you—hair splayed out beneath you in tangled strands, cheeks streaked with silent tears that neither of you had registered until just now, your mouth parted like you were trying to breathe through the weight of a hundred lifetimes—his chest fractured wide open. Not because he didn’t understand, but because he did. Because he knew this wasn’t fear. This was grief. This was the part of you that had stayed quiet all this time, the part you hadn’t let yourself feel, not until he was finally here, not until you could fall apart safely in the arms that were supposed to have held you through all of it.

He reached for you like he couldn’t do anything else—fingers threading through your hair, brushing it gently back from your damp cheeks, his touch reverent, delicate in the way only a man who’s loved you for years can manage. His eyes scanned your face, drinking you in, not searching for an answer but for reassurance—for some way to convince himself that he hadn’t failed you entirely, that you were still letting him in. And what he saw gutted him. Not because you were hurting, but because you hadn’t told him. Because you’d carried it alone, thinking he couldn’t bear it, when all he ever wanted was to be the one who did.

“Didn’t mean to—” he started, voice wrecked and hushed against your mouth, but you cut him off with a desperate, aching noise that said don’t you dare.

You pulled him tighter before he could say anything more, your arms locking around his shoulders like a tether that would snap if you didn’t keep it taut. “Don’t stop,” you breathed, the words fragile but clear. “Please, Daryl. I need this. I need you-” you were still crying, not hysterically so but crying nonetheless. And he knew exactly why. Of course he did. You didn’t have to ask him not to leave you. He knew you would’ve stopped him if it had been too much, and you knew without question he would’ve stopped himself if he’d thought it really hurt you.

The weight of what it meant to lose him. The cold, gnawing stretch of time you’d spent pretending that hollow space inside you was survivable. The unbearable relief of having him here again, real and solid and buried so deep inside you that the line between grief and grace blurred entirely. You weren’t crying because it hurt. You were crying because it mattered—because every part of you had cracked open under the pressure of loving someone so completely that living without them had nearly killed you, and this… this was how you came back to life.

He leaned in closer instead, forehead resting against yours, hand gently brushing the hair from your face as his thumb followed the path of a tear like it was holy.

His eyes were soft and wild all at once—wide and glistening, like he was looking at the most precious thing he’d ever nearly lost. And his voice, when it came, was low and rough and reverent, shaking with awe, not pity.

“Shhh,” he cooed, barely more than a breath. “I know, baby. I know.”

And maybe you didn’t say anything back. Maybe you couldn’t. But you didn’t need to. Because the sob that ripped through you as you dragged him impossibly closer—the way you held him, gasping and trembling and utterly unguarded—was the loudest kind of yes. And that was it.

That was the moment the last piece of him shattered. The sob cracked you open, but what followed wasn’t collapse—it was hunger. Not just for his body, but for the life threaded through it. For the rhythm of his pulse beneath your palm, for the ragged breath he exhaled against your mouth, for the sweat slicking your skin where it met his, sealing you together like glue and desperation.

The tenderness in his eyes cracked into something else—something darker, deeper. His jaw clenched not with restraint now, but with the effort of not fucking you through the floor. And when you lifted your hips, grinding into him with all the need that had been choking you silent for days, he finally gave in.

He kissed you so hard it hurt, mouth crashing into yours with a force that spoke louder than any words ever could, like he thought if he kissed you hard enough, it might stitch the splinters back together, might fuse soul to soul and silence the ache. One hand cupped your face, thumb brushing away a tear he couldn’t stop, while another fell right behind your thigh, gripping hard, dragging you up and into him again, no hesitation, no pause, just the fierce, undeniable need to be inside you, to move in time with your heartbeat, to bury himself in every place you ached.

And when he thrust again—harder this time, rough and deep and aching—it wasn’t just sex. It was obliteration. It was grief and rage and love and resurrection, all tangled into the rhythm of two people who’d already lost each other once and would rather burn than let it happen again. Every thrust was a scream. Every kiss a promise. And everything else—the fire, the cult, the pain, the memory of your bodies being dragged away—burned away into nothing. Just heat. Just skin. Just the two of you, wrecking each other back to life.

He growled against your skin—not a sound of anger, but of helpless, full-bodied surrender—and pushed deeper, harder, rougher, until your body bowed beneath him and your cry echoed around the barren gas station. His hands weren’t gentle now. They were frantic, anchoring your thighs apart like he couldn’t bear the idea of you ever slipping from him again. His palms slid beneath your ass, lifting you to meet him thrust for thrust, pace turning punishing, almost cruel—but never careless. Never thoughtless.

The pace grew sharper. Harsher. Like the tenderness had done its job and now there was only need, coursing through both of you like blood that had been frozen too long and finally remembered how to burn. His hands slid beneath your thighs, dragging them higher, pressing you open until your hips tilted just right, until every thrust hit the place that made your breath catch and your hands claw at his back without mercy.

You could feel it in your chest—the thunder of your heart matching the rhythm of his body driving into yours, so hard now it bordered on brutal, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t violence. It was release. It was the kind of desperation that lived in marrow, the kind that only surfaced when someone had thought they’d lost you forever and just got you back in the flesh, panting and crying beneath them like salvation.

The cracked ceiling above bled silver light onto your bodies, cutting through the dust in shafts that caught in your hair, tangled in sweat-slick strands. It painted your skin in molten highlights and shadows, turning you into something unholy, something divine. Daryl looked down and stopped breathing for a second. Your hair was spread like wildfire against the broken linoleum, glass glinting in the strands like stars scattered across the wreckage, and your eyes—glassy and wide, brimming with tears and heat and disbelief—fixed on him like he was the only thing that still made sense.

His gaze dropped to where your bodies met, where you took all of him again and again, where slick and need coated his length and your thighs and the floor beneath. He watched himself disappear into you, over and over, and something in his throat cracked open around a sound that wasn’t quite a groan, wasn’t quite a whimper, but something ruinous in between. His jaw clenched, but not to restrain himself—no, this time it was to hold back the tears that stung the corners of his eyes, the way his lip quivered when he looked at your face and saw nothing but home.

You tightened around him, a gasp catching in your throat, and your back arched again, like your whole body was trying to drag him deeper. He followed instinct, chest pressed flush to yours, forearms braced on either side of your head as he rolled his hips deeper, rougher, unforgiving now. He was panting into your mouth, groaning softly every time you clenched around him like your body was trying to keep him, claim him, never let him go again.

“Jesus,” he breathed, but it wasn’t a curse. It was reverence. It was awe. It was the sound of a man who had already died once and was being brought back to life by the way your hands gripped his shoulders and your heels dug into the small of his back and your cries sounded like they’d been buried for days and had finally clawed their way out.

It was obliteration in the truest sense—the complete undoing of everything that had come before. The silence. The fire. The nights spent thinking he was gone. The image of your own blood on concrete. The image of his body, still and crumpled, playing behind your eyelids like a curse.

Gone.

All of it burned away under the weight of him inside you—under the pressure of his breath ghosting over your mouth, of his fingers tangled in your hair, of his body colliding with yours in the kind of rhythm that came not from want but need. His hips snapped with purpose, not just to make you feel but to remind you that you were alive, that you had made it, that this was real and you were still here, and so was he, and you weren’t going to lose each other again. Not like that. Not ever.

You clung to him like he was gravity, like he was the only thing anchoring you to this plane of existence. And maybe he was. Maybe this wasn’t the world anymore—maybe it was something else, something made entirely of heat and skin and breath and sweat, something holy in its destruction.

Every thrust carved his name into your bones.

Every kiss spilled another vow you didn’t have the words to speak.

And everything else—the Creed, the fire, the bruises on your wrists, the ashes you’d swallowed trying to survive a world that wanted you gone—all of it melted into the background until there was only this. Only now. Only him, burying himself so deep inside you it felt like resurrection, like the act of being loved by him in this body, in this ruined, wounded flesh, was the only miracle you had ever believed in.

He wasn’t fucking you.

He was wrecking you back to life.

It didn’t take long—how could it, when every thrust, every breath, every word from his lips had been cracking open the shell you’d built around yourself like a second skin. The pleasure wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t even welcome at first. It surged through you with such sharp contrast to the numbness you’d carried for days that your whole body rejected it on instinct, muscles locking, shoulders bunching, jaw clenched in defiance against something that felt far too good to be real.

You grunted, half in warning, half in protest, the sound raw and confused as if your body didn’t quite know whether it was trying to escape or surrender. You squirmed beneath him, hips shifting as if to pull away, a hand pressing against his shoulder in panic, not because you didn’t want him, but because it was too much—too fast, too bright, too alive. The heat building in your belly was unbearable, a wildfire on nerves that hadn’t felt anything in too long, and the thought of letting it take you terrified you more than the emptiness ever had.

But Daryl didn’t flinch. He didn’t still or jolt or scramble to change what he was doing, didn’t retreat like he thought he’d broken you. He just stayed with you—deep and steady, deliberate and devastatingly tender, each thrust measured not for his own release but for yours, for your healing, for your ability to breathe through it without shattering into dust. His hips rocked into you like clockwork, the same rhythm he’d set from the beginning, grounded and sure, like his body already knew exactly what yours needed before your mind could even catch up.

Your hand fisted in his shoulder, your mouth fell open against his cheek, and when the pressure inside you tipped too far—when it swelled too fast to contain—you broke. Not into bliss. Not into pleasure. Into panic.

“I can’t,” you sobbed, voice so high and wrecked it barely resembled yours, your legs trembling around his waist, your spine arching clean off the ground as your hands scrambled over his back like you didn’t know whether to cling to him or push him away. “I c-can’t, I can’t—Daryl, I—”

You didn’t finish the sentence. It cracked and burned in your throat, dissolved into another wave of sobbing so deep it shook your whole frame.

But he didn’t pull out. He didn’t stop.

His arm slid beneath your lower back, cradling you close, and his other hand came to your belly, wide and calloused and warm as it pressed gently down—right where the swell of him was buried inside you, right where your body clenched around him like it couldn’t bear to lose the fullness, the heat, the truth of him.

“Right here,” he whispered, not with urgency, not with lust, but with the kind of reverent softness that made your eyes squeeze shut. “You feel that, baby? That’s me. I’m right here.”

The pressure of his palm, the heat of him, the sound of his voice—it grounded you more than anything else possibly could. You whimpered, breath catching as your muscles locked again, your body trying to brace against the tidal wave building too fast to hold back.

“I don’t know how—” you choked, the words jagged, trembling. “I don’t know if I can—”

“Yes, you do, you can,” he breathed, and his lips found your cheek, your jaw, your temple, moving in time with the careful snap of his hips, deep and unrelenting, never breaking rhythm. “Let me help you, baby. Don’t fight it. Just stay with me.”

You could feel how close he was. Every muscle in his body was trembling with restraint. His jaw was clenched so tight it ticked beneath your fingertips, his breath coming in sharp, ragged bursts against your skin. But still, he didn’t rush. He didn’t give in. He held you steady while you unraveled.

“Look at me,” he whispered, and his voice cracked right down the middle, wrecked and reverent. He brushed the sweaty hair from your face with a hand that trembled more than he wanted it to. “Just let me do all the work, alright? Doin’ so good for me, all ya gotta do is let go for me baby, I’m right here.”

Your eyes fluttered open, blurred and wet and shining like glass, and the moment they locked with his, it happened.

The sob that broke out of you was pure surrender—an unfiltered, primal sound that ripped from your throat like it had been caged for days, maybe weeks. And when it finally came—when your body gave in and your climax hit—it was seismic, a rupture that began low in your gut and tore its way through every nerve ending you’d spent too long numbing. It bent you back like a bow, spine arching clean off the filthy gas station floor, mouth falling open around a cry so guttural it didn’t sound human, didn’t sound like you at all, except for the way Daryl’s name punched through it like an invocation.

Your legs locked tight around his waist, shaking uncontrollably, the tension in your thighs quivering against his ribs as if your body couldn’t tell whether it was coming apart or trying to hold onto him for dear life. Your nails dragged across his shoulders in frantic, clawing lines, your fingers curling into the ridges of muscle like you were anchoring yourself to the only solid thing left in the world. And he took it—every tremor, every sob, every ragged cry—with a steadiness that bordered on sacred. Not passive. Not detached. He was there. With you. For you. Every inch of him moving with the singular purpose of carrying you through the storm you’d been bracing against for far too long.

His hips rolled with quiet force, deep and slow and relentless, each thrust dragging a fresh cry from your throat, timed perfectly with the way his hands tightened on your hips, thumbs pressing bruises into the curve of your pelvis as if marking the moment into your flesh. His breath came in sharp, shallow bursts against your jaw, heat and want tangled with the desperate restraint in his chest, but his voice—God, his voice stayed low, rough, reverent.

“That’s it,” he murmured, his lips brushing your temple, his nose pressed to your hairline, inhaling you like a man who had been starving. “You’re alright, baby. Just let it happen. There you go.”

One hand slid up your back to cradle your spine, the other dropping low to splay across your abdomen, grounding you where your body was threatening to levitate, thumb dragging slow, soothing circles just above where he was buried inside you. Every movement was deliberate, controlled, measured out like he knew exactly how much you could take, like he could feel every shockwave crashing through your body and was trying to absorb some of the impact himself.

He watched you like he always did in these moments—not just looking, but drinking you in, memorising the way your head tipped back, the way your mouth opened on a cry that broke halfway through, the way your eyes fluttered and flooded like something holy had split you wide open. It wasn’t just the way your body gripped his or the flush that lit up your chest and throat—it was everything. The rawness. The surrender. The way your soul seemed to burn through your skin when you fell apart for him.

“Fuck, baby,” he whispered, breathless now, like the sight of you had knocked it from his lungs. “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful like this. Always are.”

And still he didn’t let go, just pressed kisses to your jaw, your neck. Still, he didn’t chase his own pleasure, as much as he was dying to do so, didn’t speed up, didn’t falter. He held you steady through it, hips dragging the last waves of it from your body as your limbs trembled and your breath hitched, as if he was the only tether you had to the world and he’d sooner break than let you float away.

Your body writhed, overstimulated and undone, tears mixing with sweat as you whimpered into his neck, barely able to hold your own weight. But he held it for you—held all of it. One hand slid between your shoulder blades, keeping your chest to his like he was shielding you from gravity itself, while the other pressed low against your belly, grounding you, pinning you in place with a gentle pressure right above where he filled you with his dick.

He whispered through it, lips brushing your jaw, your ear, the hinge of your throat. His hands stayed on you—one grounding your hip, the other still gently pressing into your abdomen like an anchor.

“‘That's it,” he whispered, lips against your ear, breath warm and wrecked and trembling. “Just feel it, baby. You’re doin’ so good. I got you.”

Even as his own body trembled, even as his jaw clenched and his back arched and his breath hitched in his chest like a man barely holding back, he stayed with you. For you. Because he knew what this was. Knew this wasn’t just about getting off—it was about being held. Being found. Being alive.

You couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but feel—every inch of your body lit up and trembling, a live wire sparking beneath his hands, his hips, his mouth. It was too much. Too much sensation, too much emotion, too much of him after so long without. You were raw from it, undone, and still he moved with that same aching reverence, each thrust anchoring you deeper into the moment like he knew you were slipping from the edges of it. You were tragically oblivious to another orgasm approaching like you like a semi.

The orgasm that hit you didn’t just unravel you—it erased you. Your vision flared white, then dimmed, sounds muffled and distant, as if someone had dunked your head beneath warm water and held you there. The gas station vanished. The cold tile floor. The sting of your fingernails clawing down his back. All of it blurred into light and heat and the pounding of your own pulse as your body arched violently, legs locking around his waist before falling slack beneath you.

You didn’t faint, not exactly. But you went somewhere—somewhere too bright and too quiet to be real. Your arms dropped from around his neck. Your head lolled back. Your body sagged like every nerve had been cut loose at once.

And Daryl felt it instantly.

His movements faltered, breath catching in his throat as he blinked down at you, eyes wide with sudden, gut-punching concern. “Hey,” he gasped, rough and shaking as his hand cupped your cheek, thumb sweeping across your clammy skin. “Hey, baby—hey, c’mon, stay with me, just look at me. What's goin' on?”

His voice cracked around the edges like a fault line splitting wide, that old rasp wrecked with worry. He shifted instinctively, one strong arm sliding beneath your back to cradle you close, supporting your weight like your bones had melted clean away—and they had. You were limp, pliant in his hands, your chest fluttering beneath his like a bird caught in the palm of a trembling hand.

Your lips parted on a soft, breathless sigh, lashes fluttering like you were trying to open your eyes, to come back to him.

His hand didn’t stop moving. Fingers threaded through your damp hair, brushing it back from your forehead with almost reverent care. “That’s it,” he murmured, voice low and raw with emotion. “You with me? Yeah? You’re alright, baby, I gotcha. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

His voice was wrecked. Wrecked and full of awe. Because even with his heart hammering in panic, even with his arms trembling around your body, he still couldn’t stop staring—couldn’t stop drinking you in, the way your skin glowed in the fractured light pouring through the broken ceiling above. Glass glittered in your hair like stars scattered in ink, your lashes damp with tears, mouth slack and lips swollen from his.

But he still hadn’t stopped. His hips still moved, slow and deep, instinct overriding thought. Relief washed over him; You were here. With him. You’d let go. And you were beautiful in it.

Your mouth moved—soft, slack, whispering nonsense or maybe his name—and your eyes finally opened, still dazed, still lost in the haze of aftershock. He watched the awareness bloom slowly across your face like sunlight creeping over the edge of a cliff. You were breathless. Glowing. Tears streaked your cheeks, but they didn’t come from pain.

He kissed your forehead, lips warm and firm against your skin, grounding you to him. “There she is,” he whispered. “Told ya I’d get you back.”

And you didn’t say anything—not at first. You just smiled, dazed and tearstained and impossibly soft, before wrapping your arms around his neck and pressing your face into the crook of his shoulder like you were trying to fuse your bodies together completely.

And all he could do was hold you, breathe you in, and keep moving—slow and steady and full of everything he hadn’t been able to say.

You barely got the words out—breathy and slurred, more sensation than speech—but they shattered something inside him all the same. “Inside,” you gasped, voice catching in your throat, your eyes locking with his like you were offering him salvation. “Please, Daryl—inside, I want it, I need—”

And that was it. That was it.

His body jerked like you’d pulled a trigger, the last thread of restraint snapping clean in two. He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask if you were sure, didn’t second-guess—because he knew. Knew you, knew this, knew how long it had been building, how right it felt. His hips snapped forward hard, burying himself to the hilt as a guttural sound tore out of him—half-growl, half-moan, all surrender.

His brain short-circuited around the edges, every nerve ending hijacked by the heat of your body around him, the way you clung, trembling and gasping, like you needed this just as much. He chased that feeling down with everything he had, like coming inside you wasn’t just release—it was proof. It was ownership. It was home.

His body seized like something sacred had split open inside him, every muscle going taut beneath your hands, his breath catching hard in his chest as he drove himself as deep as he could go and stayed there. One last thrust, a stuttering grind of his hips that pressed you flush together, and then he was spilling into you—hot, thick, and endless—like his body had been holding back too much for too long and now it was all pouring out, every drop proof he was still here, still yours. His mouth dropped to your shoulder as a guttural moan ripped free from his throat, wrecked and helpless, the kind of sound that only came from a man giving everything. His hands were shaking where they gripped your waist, where they held you still, where they cradled the place your bodies met like he could feel the way he was filling you, the way you clenched and fluttered around him like you were trying to pull him in deeper, keep him there forever.

The room was spinning gently, like the world had tipped sideways and finally decided to stay that way. You weren’t sure if it was the high or the way your body felt so thoroughly used, so utterly wrecked in the best way imaginable—but something in your chest cracked open, and all that came out was laughter.

It started quiet—just a shaky exhale and a grin pulling at your cheeks, still flushed and wet with tears—but it grew fast, breathless and bright and disbelieving. You curled your hand over your face as the sound bubbled out of you, unstoppable, giddy, the kind of laugh that only ever comes after near-death and resurrection.

“Shit,” you wheezed, blinking through the haze, your chest rising and falling like you’d run a marathon. “I blacked out. I actually blacked out—what the hell—”

Daryl was still buried inside you, breathing just as hard, sweat-damp curls sticking to his forehead. But when he looked down and saw you—your eyes all crinkled, your mouth open in that ridiculous, beautiful laugh—something in his face softened so completely it almost broke you again.

He let out a low, breathless huff that was halfway to a chuckle. “Jesus,” he muttered, brushing your hair off your face with the back of his hand, eyes wide with mock offense and real relief. “You really had me goin’ there, woman. One second you’re clawin’ me to death, next second you go limp like a damn ragdoll. Thought I broke you.”

You snorted, still grinning like a lunatic. “You did. In the best way, though. Next time maybe ease up on the death-by-dicking. I saw heaven, hell and my Grandma.”

He let out a quiet huff, low and breathless, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, and dragged a hand across his face like he still couldn’t believe you were real—alive, warm, mouthy as ever. His fingers brushed through your hair, tucking a damp strand behind your ear with more care than you’d seen in days. “She say hi for me?” he muttered, voice rough with something too raw to name, but the corner of his mouth twitched, just barely, betraying the grin he was trying not to let slip.

You grinned, already stretching like a cat beneath him, arms sliding up to loop around his neck with the kind of lazy confidence that only came from being thoroughly worshipped. “She did, actually,” you hummed, brushing your lips against his jaw as your fingers tangled in the ends of his hair. “Said if you keep that up, she might just pull some strings to keep you around a little longer.” You felt him laugh against your throat, low and rough, and the way his body relaxed into yours made your stomach flip all over again. Then his mouth found yours, soft at first—just a kiss, just the promise of one—but it deepened quick, and suddenly you weren’t so sure this was over.

The kiss hadn’t really ended. It had just slowed, softened, thinned into something weightless—like the last glow of a fire smoldering low. His hands roamed lazily beneath your shirt, his hips shifting in the smallest, slowest rhythm, like the world outside of you didn’t exist. But your mouth kept going, even as your body melted into his, nerves still buzzing with leftover aftershock.

“I should probably be panicking,” you mumbled against his jaw, your lips brushing the stubble as you spoke. “Marshal’s gonna notice I’m gone. Someone’s bound to start asking questions. If they find my boot prints outside—”

He made a quiet sound in his throat, a distracted exhale that ghosted across your collarbone as his fingers finally found the clasp of your bra. You felt him working it one-handed, slow and clumsy in that way he always was when he was too preoccupied to focus. But you just kept spiraling

“Marshal’s probably noticed by now,” you murmured, voice half-slurred with exhaustion and overstimulation, one hand absently trailing over Daryl’s shoulder. “Bet he’s halfway to setting the damn woods on fire lookin’ for me. Gonna be a whole thing when I show up without an escort and smelling like—”

You paused, blinking hard as Daryl’s mouth closed around your nipple.

“—like redneck,” you finished on a gasp, brows furrowing, breath catching sharply in your throat.

Daryl didn’t say anything at your jab, not with his tongue circling lazy and warm, not with the way his hands were working behind your back, clumsy in that single-minded way that meant all his brain cells had migrated south. The clasp of your bra finally gave, and you felt him exhale against your chest, low and almost reverent, like unwrapping the last damn Christmas present in the world.

“Anyway,” you managed, though your voice wobbled. “We’ll probably need to slip back before sunrise, or else he’s gonna send a whole—oh, fuck, Daryl—send a whole damn—”

He sucked harder, just enough to make your spine twitch and your train of thought derail entirely. A soft whimper slipped out before you could catch it, and he pulled back just far enough to catch your expression with a crooked smirk tugging at his mouth.

“You finished?” he asked, voice gravel and amusement as one hand slid down to your hip, fingers splayed.

“Almost,” you muttered, chest heaving, eyes hazy but determined. “I was just sayin’ if he finds out I’m gone, he’ll—”

He dipped again without warning, tongue dragging slow over your other nipple, and your words crumbled with a breathy choke. His hands were everywhere—palming, teasing, pressing you down like he could memorize you by touch alone. Because he had.

You sucked in a shaky breath, fingers tangling in his hair. “Okay. Alright. Maybe that can wait a minute—”

“Damn right it can,” he murmured against your chest. And then, because you were still making tiny half-attempts to talk, even now, even with his mouth full of you, he pulled back just enough to give you that look—that exasperated, fond, completely ruined expression—and muttered, “Shut up, woman.”

You were still wrapped around him, your legs draped loose over his hips, your skin sticky and warm against the floor, and the air between you almost too full to breathe in. His mouth hovered at your chest, his breath hot where it fanned across damp skin, but it was the weight of him inside you that still anchored everything—that made your pulse slow down, your mind quiet, your soul crawl back into your body like it finally had a reason to stay.

Just the smallest shift of his hips, subtle and deep and slow enough to make your spine curve like a bowstring, your whole body sighing around the feeling. It wasn’t urgent this time. There was no clawing, no chaos, just the rhythm of trust, of comfort, of him easing the two of you back into motion like he didn’t want to scare the moment off.

You moved with him, your hips rising to meet each shallow thrust, the slick, slow drag of him filling you again and again like the echo of something sacred. His hands cradled your waist like you were something breakable, like he was terrified of pushing too far too fast, but he still kept going, steady and sure, his forehead dropping to your collarbone, his lips dragging blindly across your skin as he whispered something soft you couldn’t quite hear.

Your body responded before your mind did—back arching, thighs tightening around him, the stretch and pull of every movement settling low and molten in your belly. You pressed your cheek to his hair, your fingers carding gently through the strands at his nape, and for a moment, you just existed there—entwined, slow-moving, breathing each other in like the rest of the world had burned away.

He exhaled against your neck, rough and trembling. “Still with me?” he mumbled, voice hoarse, hands curling under your back as he rocked into you again, a fraction deeper this time.

You smiled, hazy and dazed and unbothered by anything but him. “Barely. But I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

And neither was he.

Not when the way you moved beneath him made his breath catch, not when your warmth pulled at him like gravity, not when the sound of your voice—wrecked and playful and still full of life—was enough to make his knees weak. His hips rolled again, just a little faster, his eyes finally lifting to catch yours.

And God, that look—you felt it more than saw it. Like you were the only thing that had ever mattered.

Neither of you had moved far—not really. Your legs were still loosely draped over his hips, heels resting against the backs of his thighs, your arms wrapped around him like you were trying to memorize the shape of him all over again. Daryl’s hands were splayed wide against your ribs, fingertips tracing absent circles just beneath your breasts, but the real connection—the one that neither of you dared speak for fear of breaking it—was deeper than that. He was still inside you, buried to the hilt, the fullness of him grounding you more completely than anything else in the world could.

And then, slowly—so slowly you almost didn’t register it at first—he started to move back and forth.

Not thrusting. Not fucking. Just a slow, rhythmic grind of his hips against yours, a smooth roll that had you sliding together like waves on a tide, every movement unhurried and devastating in its simplicity. The friction was low and steady, a deep ache blooming between your hips as your slick bodies rocked together, the drag of him thick and warm and maddening in the most patient, reverent way. It was less about building toward anything and more about staying here—right here—suspended in the aftermath, wrapped around each other like nothing else could touch you.

You mirrored him instinctively, your hips tilting up into every careful grind, your arms tightening around his back, mouth brushing along the curve of his shoulder. Your skin clung to his, sweat-slicked and flushed, every nerve ending burning in the low light. And God, it was slow—almost torturous in its tenderness, like your bodies had decided they weren’t ready to let go yet, not even an inch, not even now.

Daryl’s breath stuttered against your throat, warm and shaky and uneven. His forehead rested against yours, and he was watching you, eyes flickering from your parted lips to the way your brow pinched and then eased with every roll of his hips. You felt like a live wire beneath him, pulled so tight you might snap, but you didn’t want to stop—not when every slow grind of his body against yours felt like a prayer being answered.

He cupped the back of your neck with one calloused hand, his thumb stroking behind your ear as his other hand slipped lower, fingers curling around your thigh to coax it higher, opening you up further, pressing you closer. He wasn’t chasing anything. He was holding you in it—this sacred, suspended moment where you didn’t need to speak to understand, didn’t need to move fast to feel everything all at once.

And still, he moved—steady, slow, unwavering—his hips grinding into yours with a reverence that bordered on worship. Your foreheads touched, your breath tangled, your bodies rocked in that quiet, unbreakable rhythm, and you both knew without needing to say it: even after everything, even after the blood and fire and silence, this—this right here—was still yours.

Your hands rose to his face, fingers skimming over the bruises that marred his cheekbones, tracing the cut below his eye with a featherlight stroke. His jaw twitched under your touch, a sharp breath caught in his throat—but he didn’t pull away. He leaned into it, like he needed to feel your fingers more than he needed to breathe.

You kissed him then—not frantic, but deep and shaking, your lips dragging over his as your body rocked beneath him. He was still hard inside you, filling every inch, the stretch still sweet and hot. Every thrust sent a slow ripple through your belly, your walls clenching weakly, tender and swollen from everything you’d just given.

When your hips shifted, chasing him, your breath hitched. You weren’t done. You didn’t want it to end. Not yet. Not when the ache between your legs felt like proof you were alive. Not when the slick sound of your bodies still meeting filled the space like a heartbeat.

His hand slid up your thigh, curling around the back of your knee as he adjusted the angle, driving just a little deeper, enough to make you whimper softly against his mouth.

And when you clenched around him, head tipped back with a broken noise caught in your throat, he kissed the salt from your cheeks and kept moving—slow and deep and endless, like the only thing holding him together anymore was the way your body still wanted his.

“I can’t lose you,” he said, the words shaped more by breath than voice. “I won’t.”

Your lips parted, but nothing came. You were too full of him. Too hollowed out by everything else.

His brow furrowed as his hand cupped your jaw, holding you still like he needed you to hear it right. “I kept thinkin’… if I had to go back to her without you—” His voice broke on the word her, just barely. “If I had to look Dani in the eye and tell her her mama was gone, that I couldn’t protect you…”

He trailed off, shaking his head like the thought itself was poison.

“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t -'

You felt his words more than you heard them—each one a tremor against your skin, his chest tight beneath your palm, his voice cracked and breaking open in the dark. He wasn’t crying. Not exactly. But you could feel the weight of it, all the same. The terror he hadn’t voiced, the guilt he’d been choking on for days. It pressed into the curve of your spine like a second heartbeat, like if you didn’t speak now, he might drown in it.

So you found his face with both hands, thumbs brushing over the dirt and blood at his temples, his jaw, his stubble. You tilted his head until his eyes met yours, and even then, he tried to look away. But you wouldn’t let him.

“No,” you whispered, your voice thick but steady. “You won’t have to do that. You won’t have to say those words.”

He stared at you, jaw tight, breath uneven, like he was waiting to be told it was just a lie. Just another dream that would vanish in smoke.

But you didn’t flinch.

“Dani’s still gonna have her mama,” you said softly, but with more strength than you expected. “And her daddy. Both of us. She’s gonna see us walk through those gates, hand in hand, same as we left.”

Daryl closed his eyes. His throat worked around something unspoken, and when he opened them again, there was water gathered at the corners—blinking stubbornly against it, jaw clenched like it might hold the rest of him together.

You kissed him then. Not frantic, not hungry. Just the press of lips meant to anchor, to promise, to stay.

“And you’re not gonna lose me,” you said against his mouth. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

He nodded, a silent, fractured motion, and wrapped himself around you like he didn’t quite trust the world not to take you again. And maybe you didn’t either. But that didn’t matter. Because in that moment, in the hush of the abandoned station with only the creak of the wind outside and the cooling sweat between your skin, the only thing either of you believed in was this.

You didn’t know if that was true—but it sounded like hope. And you needed something to believe in.

You moved together like nothing else existed. Not the wind battering the broken walls. Not the cult that tore you apart. Not the blood, not the smoke, not the wreckage that clung to your skin and memory like rot. Only this. Only the desperate push and pull of two bodies relearning each other by touch alone, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat.

The rhythm you found wasn’t rushed, wasn’t desperate like before—it was slow, reverent, a quiet conversation of hips and breath and the slick, aching slide of him still buried deep inside you. Each slow grind sent a ripple through your spine, a soft hum low in your belly, and you clung to him—not from fear this time, not from the ghost of grief clawing behind your ribs, but simply because you could. Because he was here and he was yours, and the weight of his body felt like home pressing into all the right places.

Your hands threaded through his hair, keeping his forehead pressed to yours, and for a long, swaying moment, it felt like the whole world was just skin and breath and the slow, coiling heat curling between your hips. He whispered something then—something low and hoarse and sweet against your mouth, something like “that’s it, baby,” and “feel so good round me,” and “mine, always,”—and it unravelled something in you that hadn’t dared come forward the first time. You felt it start in your chest, in the centre of your ribs, a warmth that spread like sunlight beneath your skin, melting every last bit of tension from your body.

You didn’t flinch from it. You didn’t fight it this time.

Instead, you let yourself fall into it—let your body arch to meet him, your breath break against his jaw, your thighs tighten around his waist as the pleasure rose steady and deep. Your orgasm bloomed slow, like a flower opening in time with his hips, and when it crested, it felt like the kind of surrender that didn’t tear, didn’t burn. Just opened. Welcomed. Wrapped around you like a blanket you’d been missing your whole life.

Your fingers dug into his shoulders as your voice broke, not loud or wild, just soft and reverent, a choked whisper of his name carried on a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding. And Daryl held you through it—his hand pressed firm against your lower belly again, his other curled beneath your head, his body grinding into yours with a rhythm that said he never wanted to stop feeling you like this, never wanted to be anywhere else. He kissed you through it, mouth warm and open and grounding, whispering your name between every breathless praise.

“Atta girl,” he murmured, voice frayed and trembling, eyes locked on your face as you came undone beneath him. “Shit, baby, I’m-”

And then he stilled, breath catching sharp in his throat, hips jerking once—twice—and he buried himself as deep as he could go, letting out a sound like he’d been holding it in for years.You locked your legs around him, hips lifting instinctively to draw him as deep as he could go, needing to feel every throb, every shudder, every last drop of him fill you up. His forehead dropped to yours again, his whole body shaking against you as he spilled into you, breathless and broken and so profoundly there it made your chest ache with how much you loved him.

You both stayed like that, trembling and tangled and far too full of each other to move, the world outside forgotten. Your fingers threaded into his hair, your nails dragging down the damp line of his spine, holding him there, inside you, where he belonged. You could feel it all—his pulse through his cock, the tremor in his thighs, the helpless twitch of his muscles as he emptied himself into you again, slower this time, but no less complete.

Wel... things can nly get worse from here.

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Taglist:miss0giarra, jovialcatduck, brianna-merlim

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