a_littlefaith | [December 25]

She's made special arrangements with the shelter to pick up the kitten on Christmas morning. They've been very nice to her this whole time, helping her every single time she shows up at the shelter, letting her hold kittens, letting her pet them and play with them until she settles on a little female kitten, black with big yellow eyes. She's sweet and she's vocal, meowing loudly every time Beth comes in to see her, and she's sure Daryl is going to love her.

So bit by bit, she's bought the necessary supplies for having a kitten. In the closet of the bedroom she barely uses anymore she's hidden a litter box and litter, food and bowls, a little scratching post, some toys. And a cat carrier with a soft blanket and a t-shirt of Daryl's that she snagged from the hamper earlier in the week because she'd read somewhere that giving the kitten something that smells like their new owner is a good way to introduce them and help then bond.

She's set an alarm, but she doesn't need it. She wakes up long before the sun rises, then forces herself to lie in bed for ten more minutes, making sure Daryl is asleep before she slips out from under the covers. Even though she doesn't want to wake him, she can't help but brush a soft kiss against his cheek after she's dressed. She leaves the apartment carefully and quietly, then walks to the shelter, the empty carrier in her hand.

When she gets back home less than half an hour later, the little black kitten is curled in a corner of her carrier and Daryl is still asleep. She grins, creeping back into the room, then sets the carrier very gently on the edge of the bed and opens the door.

It takes a few minutes, but eventually the kitten creeps out, treading lightly on the sheets and Beth has to muffle her laughter against her hand as she slides back into the bed beside Daryl, fully dressed this time. The kitten hesitates, then treads across Daryl's chest, walking straight toward his face.

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She smiles then and tilts her head so she can see him. "It works." It's important that he know that. They haven't talked about it very much, but he's said enough that she knows he might feel like he doesn't know what he's doing or that he's not doing things properly and she wants him to know he is. Or maybe not that he's doing things properly, whatever that means, but that she knows. She feels it. When he makes little gestures, when he does things for her, when he smiles at her in just the right way, she knows.

"I know how you feel. I knew before you said it. And all I need is exactly what you do already. Just you bein' here, that's enough." It's enough that she knows, that she feels how much he loves her. And she trusts him more than she trusts just about anyone and that's important to her, too. She knows she can come home and if she needs him, if she really needs him, he'll do his best to be there for her.

"You keep sayin' that." For once he's not protesting, not making a vague attempt at argument. Yes, she keeps saying it, and every time she does he believes it a little more. He begins to grasp how it might be so. He even wants to hear it, is learning how to hear it, and when he does it doesn't make him shy away, overwhelmed and unable to respond at all.

That's not what it's about anymore. She tells him that, and he sort of believes it, but it also doesn't really matter. Not in the end. Not to what he does. He knows she knows how he feels.

But all of it still has to go somewhere.

"Still gonna keep showin' you."

"I don't mean that I... that I know everything or that I know better'n you, I just mean... it works. The things you do, they work." Even when they've fought in the past, the fact that he's stayed there with her, the fact that he's been willing to fight instead of just walking away, that all means something. He tries for her and she'd have to be a real jerk not to notice that. Even before when she'd slip her hand into his, he wouldn't shake her off, he wouldn't tell her to stop. He tries and she's so lucky.

"You can do that," she says with a smile. "I'm not gonna stop you." And she can do it, too. She can hope that even a fraction of what she does for him makes him understand how she feels about him.

"And I'm gonna do the same, because sometimes the words... it's just not all of it, y'know?" And she can't tell him that she's been writing things down, figuring out how to work the feelings into music, how to turn them into songs because that's the way they feel most right. She can't admit that, not when everything she's started is only half finished.

"Yeah, I know." For a while he hadn't been sure. He's used to assuming that everyone else finds words much easier than he does, and maybe they do, a lot of them, and her especially - she always seems to know what needs to be said, even if he's bad at hearing it for one reason or another. But with some things... Yes, they're just too big for the words.

So they can be in this together, just like they've always been since this first began - figuring it out together. Fumbling through it. So far that's worked pretty well. So far it's almost been like a kind of harmony, albeit a strange one.

Their kind of harmony.

"Wouldn't want 'em to be," he muses, in a fit of abstract thinking. "Wouldn't want it to be that small."

"Yeah," she agrees, grinning at him. That's it exactly and that's part of what she likes. She wants these feelings to be too big for her to find the right words for them, she wants to know they're the kind of feelings that defy definition, the reasons why people write poetry and songs in some kind of vain attempt to capture what it is. But she's here now, she's in it, and she can't think of a single song she's ever heard that actually captures this. Maybe it isn't possible, but she knows that will never stop people from trying.

It certainly won't stop her.

"I think maybe... maybe not really bein' able to find all the right words, maybe that's part of how you know," she says, more thoughtful than anything. "Like how people say they just know when they love someone. I asked Maggie once and she said she just knew. My dad said the same thing. There's nothin' else you can say, just that you know."

He nods. He knows that. Gets it, in a way he might not have ever believed - and then again maybe it's not so surprising. He's always felt things deeply, trusted those feelings even when people were trying to tear them down. Not necessarily that they were always going to lead him true, or into good places, but that when something deep told him something important he should listen.

Like in the funeral home. Watching her. Trying to figure her out. Trying to figure out himself, what was happening inside him. The way he was changing, the way she changed him a little more every time she looked at him. Spoke to him.

"Even if you don't know what it is it when it happens?"

"Yeah, even then. 'Cause you know somethin' happened. Didn't you?" She certainly had. Maybe she hadn't known what to call it when they'd been sitting on the porch, drinking moonshine and trading stories, but she'd felt a flicker of something there, something she couldn't name. And maybe she hadn't known what it was in the funeral home that first night when he'd watched her play piano, but the flicker had been stronger then, a fluttering of something under her ribs, a little notice that he was looking at her. Always looking at her. She'd felt his gaze and she'd known something.

And then the night she'd come here. Oh. She couldn't name it, not even then, but the flicker turned flutter had turned into a beating drum against her chest that night.

"I did. Maybe I didn't know what, but I knew it was somethin' and I knew it wasn't how things used to be. I knew somethin' was gonna change." She just hadn't known it was going to take her seven months to figure it out.

"Ain't just one thing." There was never just one moment. Not really. It had taken a long time - he wishes he could tell her, could explain it, how it felt to be changed like that from the inside out and to go from being frightened of it to welcoming it. How in her way, she had been relentless.

Except he can tell her, a little. He said it was hard for him and she knows and doesn't blame him for it, but maybe it's easier now.

"You were singin' in the prison yard that first night," he murmurs. "You and Maggie. It was like... For a minute everythin' was different. Listenin' to you. Maybe it started then."

She nods at that, too. He's right. It had never been just one thing or one moment. There are the ones she remembers, building upon the others which had been built upon flashes of feelings she'd barely acknowledged when they happened. The way he is with Judith, how much he'd cared about her well-being right from the start, how determined he'd been. The way he'd trusted Beth to take care of people. Really trusted her.

But then he says maybe it started then, in the prison yard, way back then, and the smile that bursts onto her face is both pleased and a little bewildered. That night stands out clear in her memory, feeling a little shy and a little embarrassed, but wanting just to make her daddy happy.

She doesn't know what to say to that, really, so she just presses herself against Daryl's side and hides her face against his arm.

Gotcha, he thinks, a warm wave of pleasure washing over him, and a small amount of satisfaction, because finally he's said something that, he senses, has done a little bit to her what she regularly does to him with what she says. Filled her up to the point where words don't feel like they entirely work, where he almost wants to hide in her until he can handle things again. Hide in her and feel broken open but safe.

He doesn't know if that's quite what this is, but he likes the thought that maybe he's made her feel even sort of that way.

"My girl," he whispers against her temple, and it's one of those times where the words are actually easy. "I love you so much."

[December 25]

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