AN: If you enjoyed this story, then please read the AN at the back. I hope you like it and have fun reading it!

Carrots or Peas? by Peppered Pearl

"Carrots or peas? "

"What? "

Carol took a deep breath and clenched her fingers tighter around the cans in her hand. Why had she even brought those with her?

"There's stew for dinner. You want carrots or peas with it?"

The man behind the bars of the locked cell raised one cynical eyebrow. He was leaning against the far wall, arms crossed in front of his brawny chest. The concrete behind him was stained with dark splatters of old, dried blood with bits and pieces of… something sticking to it (probably brain matter, though, if Carol was truthful with herself).

("Pick one", Rick had said.

His eyes had been cold as stone, the only thing more sarcastic than the tone of his voice being the wide sweep of his arm at the surrounding cells at the ground floor of their block.

But Merle had only sauntered into the one nearest, the one with the most blood on its walls, shit-eating grin on his face, three guns trained at his back and the wheezing of his brother's breath, who had collapsed against a wall, in the background.)

"The hell ya get stew from?"

"Daryl caught a deer this morning", was her clipped answer.

It had been directly outside of the fences, a good distance away from the few walkers still clinging to it, grazing at whatever plant had been tempting enough to lure it out of the relative safety of the woods and into the proximity of such monsters.

Carl had spotted it, a tiny, meager thing, and Daryl had hurried after it, heaving it back inside, arrow clenched between his teeth, the heavy limp he had brought back from Woodbury visibly slowing him down.

They were lucky for it, because Rick didn't allow any of them outside the fences anymore, be it for hunting or otherwise, not now that they waited for this Governor to come knocking at their proverbial front door at any minute.

Something dark flittered over Merle's face at the mention of his brother's name.

"So. Carrots or peas?" She held the cans up in consecutive order.

A muscle in Merle's jaw ticked.

"Neither", he growled.

Carol pinched her lips and squared her shoulders. Be that way.

"Fine. Go hungry, then. There's only a little stew for everyone." They had quite a few mouths to feed, suddenly.

She turned her back on the cell. Relief washed through her. He scared her. She didn't like it, but he made her guts twist.

"Awwwe, c'mon now, gal! Wait!"

Carol turned back around unwillingly. Merle had pushed himself of the wall and came, once again sauntering, towards the bars. Grin back in place, crinkles around his eyes. He placed his forearms on the bars, looking down at her from beneath lowered eyelids. The clang of the metal of his right arm made Carol want to jump, but she forced herself to stay still, not swallow, and raised a questioning eyebrow at him. His grin got even wider.

Like a skull, she thought. His narrow face with the hollow cheeks and the cropped hair reminded her of a skull.

"Why care in the first place?", Merle drawled, eyes flickering down to the cans clenched so tightly in her hands she swore she could feel her knuckles turning white.

Carol stared at him.

Because Daryl hasn't given up on you, yet, she thought. And it's killing him that everybody else has.

Carol heard their low murmuring voices as she approached them, but she couldn't understand a word of what was being said.

They had gone back to raid the cafeteria, bringing all the provisions from there into their cell block, stowing them away into one of the empty cells. While they had been at it, they had also carried over some of the tables that had still been useable. Most of those had been in bits and pieces from being used to barricade the doors, sometime back when the outbreak had begun. Others' tabletops had been smeared with what was undeniable the last traces of impromptu operations or something like that. Best not think about it too closely.

The three tables they had been able to salvage from the mess had been placed at the far end of the block, overshadowed by Daryl's perch. They used them for eating, mostly. But they also seemed to function as some kind of meeting point to confernce for Rick and Daryl, who had spent a lot of time there lately, talking in hushed voices.

When they heard Carol walking towards them, both men looked up. Their faces were drawn, lips pressed into tight lines. The heavy tension that had reigned over the group in these last days (waiting, just waiting for them to come) was visible in their hard eyes, the worry lines, and Rick's defensive stance. She came to stand just a few steps in front of them.

She was doubtful of her welcome, but she quashed the urge to walk away again in the face of their weary silence. Crossing her arms, Carol mirrored Rick's posture and refused to leave.

Rick eyed her for a moment, then he gave her a curt nod, unwound his arms and took long strides past her with a strained look on his face and mind obviously already elsewhere. He knew she wasn't here for him.

"Hey Rick!" she called after him nonetheless, on a whim. He stopped and turned his head slightly, showing her part of his profile.

"Judith's awake", she said softly. Go spend some time with your daughter, allow yourself some rest, was what she really meant.

She knew he'd understood her when he gave her another small nod and she imagined she could see the corner of his mouth curl in the slightest indication of a smile.

Rick's footsteps reverberated in the great room as the man took the stairs up to the next level. Almost everybody was outside, trying to escape the despondent atmosphere hovering between the thick, bleak walls of the prison. Merely Beth had stayed behind to take care of the baby. There was only silence coming from Merle's cell. Carol was glad for it.

She turned back around towards Daryl. He sat on the edge of one of the tables, one leg drawn up onto it. His chin rested on his knee, one arm wrapped around his leg, grabbing onto the ankle. His other hand played absentmindedly with one of his knifes, letting the hilt dangle loosely between his fingertips and letting it swing back and forth, back and forth.

He was watching her, waiting, expressionless. (Not really, though, because carefulness was an expression, too.)

Carol smiled a soft smile at him.

(Once Glenn had shut the cell door with an unnecessary loud clang and Merle was out of sight, Daryl had slid down the wall with a muffled groan, one hand pressed to his side, the other to his hip.

For an endless moment, everybody had stared at him, their tongues shriveling in their mouths, not knowing what to say, how to handle this whole fucked up situation.

Then Judith had begun to cry, scream, awakened by the sound of the cell door, still hanging in the air as a deep hum that could be more felt than heard.

Everybody had been called back into action, and someone had stepped forward to help Daryl up, but he'd just slapped the offered hands away. He'd looked at the group through narrowed eyes and heaved himself up off the ground, breaths short and shallow.

"Leave m'be!" he'd rasped. "All o' you fuckin' people, jus' leave me be."

Carol had stared down at him from the second landing, fighting the tightening in her throat and the quivering of her lips. She had been feeling so, so relieved and now that'd felt like such a foolish thing to do.)

That had been the morning two days ago. Since then, Daryl had avoided them all like the plague, apart from Rick, and had only let Hershel near him to let the man treat his wounds. Bullet wound, stab wound. That's what she'd heard, at least.

They had all respected him and kept their distance.

Now Carol'd decided she couldn't do that anymore.

And she'd thought hard about what to say, had laid the words out in her head (in the form of Sophia's colorful alphabet fridge magnets, as she had done for years). They evaded her now, all of them. And his eyes had already returned to the knife between his fingers already.

"I was sure I had lost you", she murmured.

He didn't say anything. His only answer laid in the way the blade suddenly stopped swinging, the narrow, curving tip pointing straight at the concrete floor. Her words hung in the air between them for a short moment (she could see the exact moment he realized what kind of conversation this was going to be), then he grabbed the hilt tightly in his palm and embedded the blade into the tabletop with a swift motion of his arm. He slid to his feet, turned around and reached for his crossbow that had been lying on the table next to him.

I don't have time for this now, the stiff set of his shoulders and back seemed to say. Leave it be.

Desolate, Carol followed his movements with her eyes. This was definitely not the way she had wanted it to go.

"Tell me how I can help you! I want-"

"Hell, woman, I ain't needin' your help!" he grunted, irritated, strapping the bow over his shoulder.

"Yes, but I thought maybe you'd want it!"

Carol bored the tips of her fingers into her upper arms, feeling her heart seemingly run ten miles a minute. Blinking rapidly against the burn of her tears. She was always close to being a bubbling mess these days.

For a second Daryl's eyes flew up to hers and she could clearly see the surprise in them. Then he snorted and made to stride past her with wide, fast steps.

Carol clenched her jaw. The tears she had been fighting back so hard were now threatened to be spilled by anger.

"Fine! Whatever. You wanna be a coward, run away! I don't care!"

Daryl stopped short at the sound of her high-pitched, angry words this time, not even an arms-length away. Were he to make one step to the right, they would almost stand back-to-back.

He made a sound as if he wanted to say something, a muted, choked-off word she couldn't understand, then he only raised his arm and clasped her bony shoulder in his hand. He didn't look at her.

Carol stared mutely at the abandoned tables in front of her, at the grayish but still golden shaft of sunlight falling from one of the high windows. It reflected from the glinting, shiny blade of the knife still stuck in the wood, just outside of the perch's shadows.

Daryl's hand was heavy and warm. It was one of those hot, stifling days, so Carol only wore a tank top with thin spaghetti straps. Their skin was sticky and damp and stuck together.

The hand tightened its grip softly and then slid up and around her neck, fingers curling into the edges of her hair and thumb coming to rest beneath her ear. Carol stood still as a statue, kept on staring straight ahead. But her heart seemed to pick up even more speed and her breath had started to hitch and stutter and she knew he could hear it.

Emotions rose in her like old friends. Emotions she had harbored and nurtured over the months gone by, for a long time against better knowledge and then with more and more hope, because it had made hard, long, cold winter nights with an empty churning stomach easier to live through.

She registered the way the rough, chapped skin of his thumb felt against the soft skin beneath her ear as it ghosted over the spot there, one, two, three times, rasping, a soft, pleasant pressure. For a moment it felt so intense, she wanted to rip her head away from the sensory overload.

Then, with a final squeeze, his hand fell away completely and Carol heard the thuds of his boots against the floor as he walked away. The rattling of his keys, the clang of the door behind him, the sound of metal hitting concrete as he threw the keys back through the bars for Rick to pick up. The sound of another door, then he was gone.

Carol was left behind, vaguely asking herself if she actually had achieved anything right now. Her arms fell loosely to her sides. The skin of her neck felt flushed and tingly, the spot beneath her ear burned. She felt a knot forming in her chest. And when tears made the grey-golden picture in front of her swim, she raised her hand to her mouth and clenched her eyes tightly shut.

She had done so well these past few days, not giving into the urge to cry, not shedding a single tear, she'd be damned if she started now.

Just a few hours later the same day, Carol stood in front of Merle's cell and still hadn't answered his question, and Merle hadn't stopped staring down at her. His grin slipped as his eyes became more and more scrutinizing.

Carol blinked.

"Ya phased out there fo'a minute, gal. What's the matter?"

He had started tapping the metal of his right arm against the bars in a rhythmic pace. It made a high, unnerving sound.

Cut that out, Carol wanted to say. Instead she raised the cans in her hands one last time.

"Carrots or peas, Merle? I'm not asking again."

Silence.

Then the grin returned full force.

"Peas."

AN: This is the first fic I've written in many, many years. I didn't think I'd ever return to writing fanfiction. All the more you would do me a great favour in reviewing and telling me what to think!

If you take the time to review, there are two things that are very important to me and that I would be overjoyed to hear your opinion about:

1. English isn't my first language. What I know I've learned in school that I only just now finished. I've reread this story a lot of times and I hope I've found all grammar/spelling mistakes, but more importantly: What do you think about the expression in general, and Merle's and Daryl's accent?

2. There's nothing I love more than in-character fics, and I strive to write them myself. To what degree do you think I succeeded in that?

Lastly, for now this is an oneshot, but I've got a second chapter in mind. Would you be interested in reading that?

Thank you for having read my story, I really hope you liked it!