Which is a normal, even kind thing to say, and it forces Daryl to reorient himself a little. First physically-- he takes a step back, then to the side, grabs a kitchen chair and parks himself in it.
What makes him happy? He's never done the sort of things Glenn did for Maggie, and he's never gonna be able to. Happiness is not failing the fucking objective. More than that, though, between two people?
On their backs in the dirt, he watched an eclipse through Leah's fingers. Through a cemetery, he carried Beth on his shoulders. In a car, he had an entire argument about music with Michonne without ever saying a word aloud. In a deep wood, he gave Carol familiar flowers. In the darkness, he called Rick's name, and was answered back.
Daryl huffs a sigh, and sounds like nothing so much as an old dog. "You got any of that wine left?"
"Sure." It's in a cupboard now, up high where Hershel will neither notice or reach. She pulls it out, and two glasses along with it. Everything else can wait; they'll talk, the kids'll play, and the last couple of forks will get washed when they get washed.
She leaves the bottle on the table after she pours them each a few mouthfuls, then takes a seat across from him. Close enough to touch, far enough that it's clearly a conversation they're having here. This time, when she lifts her cup, she says, "To truth. Whatever it might be."
Daryl groans, just slightly, at her and himself and this goddamn stupid position he's put himself in, but he drinks all the same. No water this time. He's a mean drunk, but he doesn't intend to get drunk. Sometimes, if he just takes a little, it makes him feel like less of a dick. That'd be nice, right about now.
A deep breath. Just say it, goddammit. "You make me happy."
His eyes search the floorboards for something that isn't there and can't be found. He is simultaneously sure, absolutely, that she will and won't laugh.
She smiles - which might be just as bad as laughter, who knows - but it's a relieved sort of look, like he's said what she's thinking. Sure, he looks like he wants to disappear into the root cellar under them, but she's choosing to believe him when he says he's happy.
"You do, too." Their lives here have been happy, sharing the house. "Having you around...it's been good. For Hershel, and for me."
That it's been good for Hershel feels like the important thing. She doubts she could consider a relationship with anyone who hadn't already proven themselves with her son. That it's been good for her almost seems to go without saying. Daryl understands the weight of things without having to stop to measure them; he knows what she's had, as well as what she's lost, and he can gauge situations accordingly. So few of them are left from the prison now, let alone the farm, and the fact that he was there for both makes him capable of grasping everything the people around them miss.
There's gentleness in her voice as she asks, "That mean you want to try a relationship?"
They could keep living together, exactly the way they have, and they might still make each other happy. Or she could lean across the kitchen table and kiss him.
He's trying to work out what to say, how to say it. There are things worth nailing to the floor, with Maggie Rhee, who doesn't laugh at him when he does all the stupid shit he's bound to do. She just smiles, like he passed whatever test she was giving him, even though he suspects it wasn't really a test. Most people don't have the right answers in their head before they ask the question. It took him a long time to figure that out.
He wants to talk about what this means for Hershel, and what this means for Hilltop. He knows she means to go back eventually, and he'd like that just as well-- Hilltop is larger, wilder than Alexandria, and easier for him to understand. But who will watch over Jude and RJ and poor Lydia? Carol and Rosita and Aaron and all the handful of others he trusts completely, but the kids will feel abandoned, and maybe it's better if they live in a big house where they can run wild, and wouldn't that be nice-
Soft lips brush his. He flinches back on instinct, caught like an animal in a trap. For a moment, he's sure he's patently obvious to read-- he doesn't like to be touched, because he's a coward who can't ever quite predict where people's bodies are going to meet his. Except in a fight, and even that, he prefers to conduct from a distance.
He can't explain that, can't apologize for it, can't make it right, so he'll just have to ignore it, and hope she will, too.
"Wanna stay with you," he blurts out. "Wherever you go."
Maggie draws back immediately, her brows pulling together. In that moment, she can't read him at all, whether the issue's her or him or something else she doesn't know about. All she's got is that they'll probably both be better off in the future if she doesn't try touching him without making it clear she's going to.
The easy comfort after they'd killed the boar, sitting beside him with her hand in his, feels a long way off.
"You can," she says, sitting back in her chair, and picks up her cup. She needs something to do with her hands, just for a moment or two, while she tries to figure out what the hell she's doing with the rest of herself. "I wouldn't stop you from it."
Something isn't connecting, and she's not sure she can put it into words clearer than she's already tried for. As a general rule, she's plainspoken; all her energy for coyness was burned out of her years ago. But right about now, she feels like she's being nowhere close to clear enough.
It was easier with Leah, who never ever talked to him about what she felt except for the first time and the last. It was also harder, because he had to guess all the damn time. The weight of expectation is off him, if he could just string a goddamn sentence together.
All the things he wanted to say before the kiss have evaporated. He can't remember what they were, can't focus them in his mind. It's just stupid shit getting in the way of the very obvious fact that Maggie is retreating into herself. He knows what that looks like. It lives on the same street as disappointment, and he can't bear that.
Dog trots over to sit between them, and he wonders- should he tell her about Leah? The thought is so wickedly painful it almost seems like the right idea. But petting Dog's head, having something to do with his hands and his eyes and everything that isn't just worrying and staring and worrying more... it helps. He tries again.
"Didn't do nothing wrong," he murmurs. "Surprised me, is all."
He has to just pray she won't laugh.
"I ain't never gonna be him," he says, and before cold silence turns his words into an insult- "You know that. I just... gotta say it."
He'll carry Glenn's death until he dies, being the man responsible for it. Something of that grows poison in him, the thought that he'd ever try to take his place. He isn't, and he needs to make that clear to himself as much as Maggie.
"I know that," she agrees. And she knows he needs to say as much, too, if only because Glenn's memory casts a long shadow over them both. He was a friend to Daryl, one of their group in a way that's bound by sweat and blood. Her hands have settled around her cup, one finger tapping the surface. It's the only outflow of nerves she'll allow herself.
"After Negan killed him," and though it comes out relatively easily, the shadow that crosses her face suggests it takes effort, "I thought that was it. I wasn't interested in anything except remembering Glenn and raising our boy. Had to, uh -" a self-conscious little laugh, looking down at her wine - "tell a few guys as much. They got the message, though."
But that was then. That was people who hadn't spent years fighting and getting injured and living - despite all odds - with her. Communities she'd visited, some she'd even lived at, but where she hadn't belonged the way she does here, in this kitchen.
"I did a lot of thinking before I came to you." She doesn't pray, exactly, but she imagines conversations with Glenn, murmurs her half out loud sometimes, and it feels similar. "I don't want you to try and be Glenn. I don't think you could if you wanted to - and that's not an insult, Daryl, I couldn't do it, either. But I think if he could have an opinion on this...I think he'd want us to be happy. To remember him, and love that memory, but - to go on living."
He nods, slowly, and finds he can drink the wine with ease. He'd planned on taking it fast, in nervous gulps, but speaking frank-- franker than they had before-- has calmed him somewhat. The terror buzzing in his ribs is still there, but lessened.
Careful, careful, like handling a spooked horse, he reaches for Maggie's hand. His is clumsy, ill-proportioned, callused and inked, over her fine fingered beauty. "Know you wouldn't do nothing that- that'd go against him." He's thought about this as well, though perhaps with less romantic designs. "He'd want you looked after... though I think he'd know you wouldn't need it."
But, oh, to make things easier for Maggie Rhee. It seems like the noblest thing Daryl could do with his life, just to lighten her load a little. He can make her smile; he's proven that. He wants to see that again and again, every day if he can help it.
"S'what I meant. Staying with you. But..." It means the world to me when you laugh. "S'more than that. Ain't got the words for it."
And if she's going to be happy with him, she'll need to make her peace with the fact that he's a frequent failure at coherent articulation of desire.
Their hands close around each other, resting on the table; Daryl's touch says what he can't, his rough skin warm and affectionate. Ain't got the words for it, he says, but he can still communicate what she needs to know.
This what it'd be: something quiet and tired, a relationship that fills in the gaps between hard work and the oblivion of sleep. But something honest, for all that. Something born of knowing someone years, working closely with them, sharing losses along with joys - coming to them world-weary and knowing they are, too, and that they'll understand.
"All right," she says, in a quiet voice, and she looks down at their hands. These long summer days take forever to end, but this one's starting to, the shadows outside catching up to their kitchen. It's been long enough that she'll have to keep an ear to the stairs, in case the kids get bored. "You think if I kissed you again, you'd kiss back this time?"
"Uh-" The question is a surprise, but a small one. Why she'd want to kiss him, he can't know; why anyone would is a mystery only balanced by the fact that precious few ever have. But the idea no longer feels shameful, or catches that fluttering terror of being touched when he wasn't expecting it. "I- yeah, uh."
And he can say none of that.
He takes her hand, instead, and burnishes the knuckles with his own kiss, dry and light and brief. Yes, because words never work out.
She smiles, letting him pull her hand close for an answer. It's as good as a yes, a gesture sweeter than she might have expected from Daryl, and it's enough so that she's about to stand up and make good on the offer to kiss him again.
And just as her hand drops again - there comes thunder, as six feet pound down the stairs like all three of these kids were born in a barn. (A barn'd probably have been a step up, at least in Judith's case.) "Mom!" Hershel's calling, and "Aunt Maggie!" from Judith simultaneously. RJ's quiet, following along behind them.
Maggie straightens up a little, picking up her cup like that's the entire reason her hand's up there in the first place.
"Can Jude and RJ sleep over? Please?"
"Didn't they sleep over last week?" she asks, as easily as if they'd been discussing the weather down here the whole evening. It's a relief to realize she still knows how to sneak around when she needs to, because this is nowhere even close to 'Hershel needs to know' territory yet.
"Yeah, but that was a week ago."
"Maybe," and this, she doesn't dare look away toward Daryl as she says it, "you should ask if you can sleep over with them. If y'all get permission, you can, but we're not having anyone extra over here tonight."
That, apparently, is all the encouragement the three of them need; they're tearing away again, this time toward the door in search of permission, and Maggie's draining her glass of wine in a single go.
And Daryl has always been quick with his reactions; the first sound of footfall has him straight-backed in his chair, facing away from the kitchen door the kids inevitably crash through. Their childish patter is enough to make him smile, enough to dim the embarrassment running through him like a live wire. He takes a breath. Maybe this can work, if he can face children like a normal human being after being something else entirely in Maggie's hands.
Daryl looks back, watching the kids go, watching them be kids. Completely alien children to his experience: normal, happy, excitable, even.
There's a smile in his voice when he speaks, "handled that quick."
When the door slams shut behind them - put the three of them together, and they're a little hurricane of energy, even without Gracie there to complete the group - she breathes out. "Yeah, well, I got a few years' practice."
And she won't say no to a night off, if Carol's up for keeping an eye on Hershel for the night.
"I'm not going to keep you a secret forever," she adds, finally letting herself look over his way. He should probably hear this much before they get too much further. "But I'm not...this isn't something Hershel needs to hear about yet. Not unless we decide we're in it for the long haul."
At the moment, that feels inevitable - Maggie's not sure she remembers how to want something casual - but there's no point trapping Daryl into anything he doesn't like the sound of. If he's ever had a relationship, she doesn't know about it; she's not about to ask him to make promises when it's possible neither of them know if he can keep them.
"Take your lead on that." He likes kids, likes talking to them, teaching them, seeing them happy. He has no idea how to step into the official parent role, and doesn't want to. "If the kid's angry with me-" A sigh. He doesn't want this, but- "wanna make this easy on him."
"If he is, I'll handle it." That's not something she's putting on Daryl, especially not at this point. However kind he's been about welcoming them both into his townhouse, Hershel's her son. She'll figure out how to explain things when the time comes.
God, she hopes so, anyway.
"And, uh -" The hesitation's less for her own sake and more for Daryl's. He's already ended up someplace miles away from his comfort zone. "If Hershel's out of our hair tonight, that doesn't mean we have to do anything different than always. I'm not expecting anything."
Daryl leans back slowly, hands awkward in his lap. He never knows what to do with them when they're not holding something.
"You spooked me," he grumbles, "I ain't your prom date."
He hopes he says it with humor, but sometimes things come out more bitter than he intends. Really, he's a grown man, so the world keeps telling him; it no longer sours his pride when people forget, but it is notable. Maggie, at least, is doing it out of some concession to his will, some kind of respect he doesn't quite understand.
A long sigh. Just say it- "Don't always like being touched. Just... need a warning, sometimes."
He's never had to say that aloud before. It leaves him feeling... lighter, unexpectedly.
The way she's smiling, she finds it funny. Daryl's right: he's a grown man, more than capable of making his own decisions and speaking up for himself. He's someone who seems happiest with a leader to follow, but she's seen him question things, when he thinks it necessary. If he's not happy with something, he can say so.
Still, she'd rather lay things out, where she can. She's too damned tired to deal with crossed wires.
"I can do that," Maggie tells him, regarding him with a sort of warm curiosity. She could probably make it sexy, even. The roots of a request like that are undoubtedly ugly - something to let him tell in his own time - but the results don't have to be. "You want me to start right now?"
"Uh-" He hesitates; it's his nature, with anything close and personal near another person. But a stop-start doesn't mean a start. He nods his head, momentarily bashful, before catching her eye. "S'your party."
And thank God for that. He wouldn't know how to make a first move-- if he did, hell, they wouldn't be having this conversation at all.
"In that case," she says, fixing him with a look that doesn't waver, "if it turns out the kid's gone for the night and you're interested in having sex, we can."
A rule, in love and war: Never call Maggie Rhee's bluff.
(It's hard not to think of that pharmacy, of Glenn and his box of condoms. Easier to think of it and set the memory aside for the moment. Everything that was true then, somehow, is true now, too: she's lonely, and the field of options is a narrow one. Who else understands everything that's brought them to this point? No one she's interested in screwing.)
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What makes him happy? He's never done the sort of things Glenn did for Maggie, and he's never gonna be able to. Happiness is not failing the fucking objective. More than that, though, between two people?
On their backs in the dirt, he watched an eclipse through Leah's fingers. Through a cemetery, he carried Beth on his shoulders. In a car, he had an entire argument about music with Michonne without ever saying a word aloud. In a deep wood, he gave Carol familiar flowers. In the darkness, he called Rick's name, and was answered back.
Daryl huffs a sigh, and sounds like nothing so much as an old dog. "You got any of that wine left?"
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She leaves the bottle on the table after she pours them each a few mouthfuls, then takes a seat across from him. Close enough to touch, far enough that it's clearly a conversation they're having here. This time, when she lifts her cup, she says, "To truth. Whatever it might be."
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A deep breath. Just say it, goddammit. "You make me happy."
His eyes search the floorboards for something that isn't there and can't be found. He is simultaneously sure, absolutely, that she will and won't laugh.
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"You do, too." Their lives here have been happy, sharing the house. "Having you around...it's been good. For Hershel, and for me."
That it's been good for Hershel feels like the important thing. She doubts she could consider a relationship with anyone who hadn't already proven themselves with her son. That it's been good for her almost seems to go without saying. Daryl understands the weight of things without having to stop to measure them; he knows what she's had, as well as what she's lost, and he can gauge situations accordingly. So few of them are left from the prison now, let alone the farm, and the fact that he was there for both makes him capable of grasping everything the people around them miss.
There's gentleness in her voice as she asks, "That mean you want to try a relationship?"
They could keep living together, exactly the way they have, and they might still make each other happy. Or she could lean across the kitchen table and kiss him.
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He wants to talk about what this means for Hershel, and what this means for Hilltop. He knows she means to go back eventually, and he'd like that just as well-- Hilltop is larger, wilder than Alexandria, and easier for him to understand. But who will watch over Jude and RJ and poor Lydia? Carol and Rosita and Aaron and all the handful of others he trusts completely, but the kids will feel abandoned, and maybe it's better if they live in a big house where they can run wild, and wouldn't that be nice-
Soft lips brush his. He flinches back on instinct, caught like an animal in a trap. For a moment, he's sure he's patently obvious to read-- he doesn't like to be touched, because he's a coward who can't ever quite predict where people's bodies are going to meet his. Except in a fight, and even that, he prefers to conduct from a distance.
He can't explain that, can't apologize for it, can't make it right, so he'll just have to ignore it, and hope she will, too.
"Wanna stay with you," he blurts out. "Wherever you go."
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The easy comfort after they'd killed the boar, sitting beside him with her hand in his, feels a long way off.
"You can," she says, sitting back in her chair, and picks up her cup. She needs something to do with her hands, just for a moment or two, while she tries to figure out what the hell she's doing with the rest of herself. "I wouldn't stop you from it."
Something isn't connecting, and she's not sure she can put it into words clearer than she's already tried for. As a general rule, she's plainspoken; all her energy for coyness was burned out of her years ago. But right about now, she feels like she's being nowhere close to clear enough.
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All the things he wanted to say before the kiss have evaporated. He can't remember what they were, can't focus them in his mind. It's just stupid shit getting in the way of the very obvious fact that Maggie is retreating into herself. He knows what that looks like. It lives on the same street as disappointment, and he can't bear that.
Dog trots over to sit between them, and he wonders- should he tell her about Leah? The thought is so wickedly painful it almost seems like the right idea. But petting Dog's head, having something to do with his hands and his eyes and everything that isn't just worrying and staring and worrying more... it helps. He tries again.
"Didn't do nothing wrong," he murmurs. "Surprised me, is all."
He has to just pray she won't laugh.
"I ain't never gonna be him," he says, and before cold silence turns his words into an insult- "You know that. I just... gotta say it."
He'll carry Glenn's death until he dies, being the man responsible for it. Something of that grows poison in him, the thought that he'd ever try to take his place. He isn't, and he needs to make that clear to himself as much as Maggie.
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"After Negan killed him," and though it comes out relatively easily, the shadow that crosses her face suggests it takes effort, "I thought that was it. I wasn't interested in anything except remembering Glenn and raising our boy. Had to, uh -" a self-conscious little laugh, looking down at her wine - "tell a few guys as much. They got the message, though."
But that was then. That was people who hadn't spent years fighting and getting injured and living - despite all odds - with her. Communities she'd visited, some she'd even lived at, but where she hadn't belonged the way she does here, in this kitchen.
"I did a lot of thinking before I came to you." She doesn't pray, exactly, but she imagines conversations with Glenn, murmurs her half out loud sometimes, and it feels similar. "I don't want you to try and be Glenn. I don't think you could if you wanted to - and that's not an insult, Daryl, I couldn't do it, either. But I think if he could have an opinion on this...I think he'd want us to be happy. To remember him, and love that memory, but - to go on living."
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Careful, careful, like handling a spooked horse, he reaches for Maggie's hand. His is clumsy, ill-proportioned, callused and inked, over her fine fingered beauty. "Know you wouldn't do nothing that- that'd go against him." He's thought about this as well, though perhaps with less romantic designs. "He'd want you looked after... though I think he'd know you wouldn't need it."
But, oh, to make things easier for Maggie Rhee. It seems like the noblest thing Daryl could do with his life, just to lighten her load a little. He can make her smile; he's proven that. He wants to see that again and again, every day if he can help it.
"S'what I meant. Staying with you. But..." It means the world to me when you laugh. "S'more than that. Ain't got the words for it."
And if she's going to be happy with him, she'll need to make her peace with the fact that he's a frequent failure at coherent articulation of desire.
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This what it'd be: something quiet and tired, a relationship that fills in the gaps between hard work and the oblivion of sleep. But something honest, for all that. Something born of knowing someone years, working closely with them, sharing losses along with joys - coming to them world-weary and knowing they are, too, and that they'll understand.
"All right," she says, in a quiet voice, and she looks down at their hands. These long summer days take forever to end, but this one's starting to, the shadows outside catching up to their kitchen. It's been long enough that she'll have to keep an ear to the stairs, in case the kids get bored. "You think if I kissed you again, you'd kiss back this time?"
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And he can say none of that.
He takes her hand, instead, and burnishes the knuckles with his own kiss, dry and light and brief. Yes, because words never work out.
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And just as her hand drops again - there comes thunder, as six feet pound down the stairs like all three of these kids were born in a barn. (A barn'd probably have been a step up, at least in Judith's case.) "Mom!" Hershel's calling, and "Aunt Maggie!" from Judith simultaneously. RJ's quiet, following along behind them.
Maggie straightens up a little, picking up her cup like that's the entire reason her hand's up there in the first place.
"Can Jude and RJ sleep over? Please?"
"Didn't they sleep over last week?" she asks, as easily as if they'd been discussing the weather down here the whole evening. It's a relief to realize she still knows how to sneak around when she needs to, because this is nowhere even close to 'Hershel needs to know' territory yet.
"Yeah, but that was a week ago."
"Maybe," and this, she doesn't dare look away toward Daryl as she says it, "you should ask if you can sleep over with them. If y'all get permission, you can, but we're not having anyone extra over here tonight."
That, apparently, is all the encouragement the three of them need; they're tearing away again, this time toward the door in search of permission, and Maggie's draining her glass of wine in a single go.
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Daryl looks back, watching the kids go, watching them be kids. Completely alien children to his experience: normal, happy, excitable, even.
There's a smile in his voice when he speaks, "handled that quick."
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And she won't say no to a night off, if Carol's up for keeping an eye on Hershel for the night.
"I'm not going to keep you a secret forever," she adds, finally letting herself look over his way. He should probably hear this much before they get too much further. "But I'm not...this isn't something Hershel needs to hear about yet. Not unless we decide we're in it for the long haul."
At the moment, that feels inevitable - Maggie's not sure she remembers how to want something casual - but there's no point trapping Daryl into anything he doesn't like the sound of. If he's ever had a relationship, she doesn't know about it; she's not about to ask him to make promises when it's possible neither of them know if he can keep them.
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God, she hopes so, anyway.
"And, uh -" The hesitation's less for her own sake and more for Daryl's. He's already ended up someplace miles away from his comfort zone. "If Hershel's out of our hair tonight, that doesn't mean we have to do anything different than always. I'm not expecting anything."
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"You spooked me," he grumbles, "I ain't your prom date."
He hopes he says it with humor, but sometimes things come out more bitter than he intends. Really, he's a grown man, so the world keeps telling him; it no longer sours his pride when people forget, but it is notable. Maggie, at least, is doing it out of some concession to his will, some kind of respect he doesn't quite understand.
A long sigh. Just say it- "Don't always like being touched. Just... need a warning, sometimes."
He's never had to say that aloud before. It leaves him feeling... lighter, unexpectedly.
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Still, she'd rather lay things out, where she can. She's too damned tired to deal with crossed wires.
"I can do that," Maggie tells him, regarding him with a sort of warm curiosity. She could probably make it sexy, even. The roots of a request like that are undoubtedly ugly - something to let him tell in his own time - but the results don't have to be. "You want me to start right now?"
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And thank God for that. He wouldn't know how to make a first move-- if he did, hell, they wouldn't be having this conversation at all.
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A rule, in love and war: Never call Maggie Rhee's bluff.
(It's hard not to think of that pharmacy, of Glenn and his box of condoms. Easier to think of it and set the memory aside for the moment. Everything that was true then, somehow, is true now, too: she's lonely, and the field of options is a narrow one. Who else understands everything that's brought them to this point? No one she's interested in screwing.)