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He can still smell her bubblegum shampoo, still hear her pearly laughs as she splashed water onto him or flicked foam at his nose. Can still remember how soft but threadbare her old and beloved pink crocodile plushie was as he hugged and kissed them both goodnight, leaving her Power Rangers nightlight on as he slipped out into the hallway. She'd loved pink, like most girls that age he supposed, but she had secretly confided to him that she thought the Blue Ranger was coolest and that she sometimes wanted the same black dress with purple skulls on that one of her classmates had proudly displayed at her birthday party.
Fairies and unicorns were awesome, that was a given, but she'd spent a lot of time with him when he'd worked on his bike or the old pickup, earning her the nickname 'Little Greasemonkey' amongst his buddies. He'd loved that she wasn't exactly like every other little girl around them, that she was tough and intelligent and with that little spitfire soul his mother had had before she'd passed away in lungcancer. She liked cars as much as she liked her mermaid Barbies, and when Ted from the class above had stolen her glitter pens she'd punched him in the nose so hard he'd started bleeding.
He remembered that, remembered being called to school but being too damn proud of his baby girl to do more than give her a reprimanding stare while the principal looked expectantly at him. He'd taken her to Gem's Icecream Bar after that, it had been their little secret, giggling with sticky fingers and icecream around their mouths. But of course Sheila had figured it out immediately, his clever lady. She'd glared and made him eat every last bit of food she'd scooped up on his plate despite his groans, but later she'd laughed proudly with him when he told her what their daughter had done.
But the thing he remembered the most was the way she'd looked him steadily in the eyes one evening and told him quite seriously: 'I love you dad. I'm not just saying that 'cause I have to.' She'd been so serious tears had begun to slip from her eyes, and he'd held her close and told her that he knew, and that he meant it too, more than she could ever know. Later he found out that they'd watched a movie at school where one of the characters had kept saying 'I love you' but turned out to have been lying or some shit. He was angry at the school for a while but realised that sheltering his baby girl from reality wouldn't be possible forever, and it had the added upside of their little family never leaving each other, even to go to bed, without saying 'I love you, and I mean it.'
He'd said it when he'd left to pick up Merle that fateful day when all went to shit. No matter what had happened after that, no matter the horrors he'd been faced with in his own home, his sanctuary, at least he had that. They hadn't been mad at each other, hadn't left anything unsaid. They had spoken their love out loud as the very last words they said to each other, and he clung to that like he clung to the wrinkled picture in his wallet.
And even as the picture faded and with that his memory of what colour her eyes had been -it was brown, right? Big, brown doe eyes like her mother?- and her voice in his head turned tinny and unreal in most of his distorted memories, he at least had those few precious moments cradled close to his heart as he picked up his weathered crossbow and continued to plow his way through walking corpses that he very much did not think of as once living beings.
It was kill or be killed. No time for regrets. No time for fond memories.
Aching 'I love you's were best spoken at the end and beginning of every day, sheltering memories in dreams, even if nobody was there to hear it. After all, you never know when your last words will have been spoken, and Daryl wanted to be sure that the day he died he'd said it as if no time had passed. As if he'd died right there with them.
As if this whole nightmare had been just -a nightmare.