A/N: Hey gang! In an effort to cure my writer's block, I produced this little one-shot. (I haven't forgotten about The Listening Walls... Just taking a break, is all.) Happy reading!
xxxx
Fire and Storm
She leaned forward on the bench, sitting just on the edge, hands stretched out to the flame. She didn't need the warmth, just yet. Rather, she liked feeling it against her palms, drying her skin and stretching it taut across her bones. She liked how it wasn't a constant heat, how it pulsed with oxygenated breaths.
Only a few feet from the fire, Judith unravelled a roll of waxed paper. She'd found the roll under the sink, deemed it to be useless, and took it into the backyard. Ripping off strips and arranging them in neat piles next to her spot in the grass.
"Watch that hair of yours, girl."
Judith raised her head in mid-tear and grinned wickedly.
"You callin' me a hot-head?"
Carol smiled. The girl was growing into Lori. Thin frame, all arms and legs. Brown hair. She liked to let it fall loose over her shoulders, where Carol was afraid a sudden gust would blow it into the open flame.
As a baby, Judith missed the worst of it all. The gatherings on the prison fences and the senseless, territorial violence. She may have been fortunate for all of that but still, the girl jumped at loud noises; didn't see anything amiss when a half-eaten corpse stumbled out of the brush. Gunfire and walkers, imprinted on her psyche, following her as she grew up.
They left the prison by choice. It had gotten too popular for its own good. People knew about it, and walkers followed. And so they – the core, the first ones there, and even some who'd come from Woodbury – left. For all its barbed wire and cinderblock walls, the prison had become too dangerous. The prospect of an open road, however unknown, was more reassuring than the inevitability of another prison stand.
They stayed on the move for a long time. Judith could barely walk, but they found ways. Carol remembered some evenings more than others, for the people who were missing from the previous day. If the rumours were true, bits and pieces of the country were finding tiny threads of progress to hold onto. And so, in a different place every week, Carol fell asleep to contrasting visions of a cured world and faces vanishing around the fire pit.
One afternoon, an early spring, the bits and pieces fell into place. Much-needed but always, always too late.
She remembered pressing the washcloth against Tyreese's temple, feeling his hot breath on her forearm, every exhalation a battle to keep the fever at bay. He whispered to her, to pass a message along to Sasha when she got back from a run. She remembered leaning closer to him, turning her ear to his lips. She squinted as he spoke, words drowning in his own delusions. And then she remembered the other voice. It came from behind her, through the transistor radio, crackling and spinning as it broke across the airwaves.
There'd been a vaccine. It couldn't fix the turned, but it brought almost complete immunity to the living. She remembered holding Tyreese's face towards hers as the first words came to both of them, talking of medicine and science and hope for civilization; things that had organically become taboo as they drew further and further away from the old world. She held him there, against her palm, waited, and then exhaled. He watched her with glassy eyes, dangling on the brink of consciousness, as she wiped the back of her hand across her cheek. Sounds jumbled together; he made his lips mirror the movement of hers. I'm sorry. He smiled, closed his eyes. Felt the darkness.
She was starting to feel her age. So was he. In a darkened corner of the yard, he sat and watched Carl as the boy – the man, in truth – swung the hatchet down onto log after log, tossing them onto the rapidly growing pile of firewood. They took turns, like they did in the last days at the prison. Carol swallowed hard and pulled her sleeves over her hands. Carl, the Ladykiller. That's what Daryl had called him when he first disappeared into the brush with a girl from another group. It was a name meant to embarrass but it also held a kernel of truth, one that Daryl was keenly aware of from the start. He muttered it once, loud enough for only Carol to hear, but somehow, within the week, everyone else had started using it too. Rick wouldn't have liked the name, she knew. Carol smiled to herself as Daryl pushed himself to his feet and took the hatchet out of Carl's hands, a strong slap on the back meant to relieve the young man of his duties.
Her eyes darted back and forth between the two figures chopping wood and the girl throwing strips of waxed paper into the flames, squealing with delight as the fire changed colours, and then went orange once more. Everyone else was inside, and she found it odd. They'd found a house, abandoned but liveable, in a town near the ocean. They didn't need fire for warmth, especially not in the summer, not since Glenn had gotten the generators in the basement up and running. But on some nights, the outdoors, for all the grief and vulnerability it had brought them, tempted Carol more than the relative comfort of indoors. The dead dwindled, and the living reverted to their old ways.
They were somewhere in New England. Massachusetts, maybe. Carol figured maybe one day Daryl could take her to Cape Cod, just so she could say she'd been.
In her mind, it had been easy for Daryl to replace Ed, but so hard for other children to replace Sophia. Even Carl and Judith. She loved them like she'd loved her own daughter, but they remained alongside her, never taking her place. She remembered it perfectly; her girl's face, smiling and laughing with Carl and the other kids. Crying as she slid down the muddy bank and into the forest. Ed was a collection of emotions, an impressionist watercolour painted in dark blues and browns. She swallowed hard. Maybe Sophia and Carl would have gotten together, by now.
A noise came from the tool shed, out of earshot for Daryl and Carl, and not of interest to Judith. Carol jerked her head in the direction of the gates that led to the driveway. Still closed and locked. With a sigh, she stood, knees cracking and back aching, and headed towards the shed. She felt Daryl's eyes on her, always on her, as she went. They followed her until she disappeared from his view.
A rusted pitchfork had fallen from its corner perch, set into motion when one of the other men had clumsily placed a shovel nearby earlier in the day.
She quietly set the latch on the shed door once more, and when she turned back to the yard she found it abandoned, save for a lone figure huddled by the flame, forearms resting on the knees of his tattered jeans.
Daryl blinked quickly when the gentle breeze changed directions, tiny particles of wood and ash blowing onto his face. From behind him, Carol approached with soft footfalls. She eased onto the bench beside him, a grimace on her face as she massaged her lower back.
"We're getting old, Daryl."
He skirted a glance over to her, lingering on her face. Two miniature fireplaces reflected in her eyes.
"Age is just a number."
He poked at the fire with a branch from a weed maple, cut down earlier in the day by some young upstart set on proving his worth. Carol felt a smile playing on her lips. She'd heard that line before.
There'd been a group of fresh-faced adults, stumbled upon the prison in the middle of the night. It was summertime. Carol remembered their youthful skin glistening in the moonlight as they shook the fences with a desperation that only drew more walkers towards them.
And there'd been a woman, maybe five years older than Beth, drawn to Daryl. The leather jacket, the motorcycle. The dirty looks and the heart of gold. Daryl never brought it up, but Carol liked to tease. She called him a modern-day James Dean. Daryl pretended he didn't know who that was.
She remembered the woman sauntering up to Daryl while he was on watch one night, propositioning him. Using that same line, as if age was the only factor in Daryl's preference for women. Daryl had a way of economizing his words. He used and reused, and he never forgot. He'd seen Carol from across the yard that night and knew she'd heard. Knew she'd remember.
Carol had to bite her lower lip, the memory threatening to escape into a laugh. Without hesitation she reached out and took his hand, rested her head on his shoulder. It was soft and smooth. No tension in his neck, no flinching at her touch.
Their fire at the quarry was too high. It burst above the rocks, illuminated her face, and Sophia's. And Ed's, beaten to a pulp. She wanted to be happy, seeing Ed get a taste of his own medicine, but she wasn't. The blood and the bruises had belonged to her, once, too. She pulled the offending log out of the flames.
Even through the leather, Carol could feel his warmth, pressed up against her side. She inched closer to him on the bench. He gripped her hand tighter but didn't look down.
When she was child, Carol had a record of traditional Celtic songs. She knew all the words, but she never sang them out loud. She liked hearing the notes play softly off Beth's tongue, a gentle, rolling current. On some nights, if she blinked hard enough, she could see the young woman's blonde locks blowing up from the flames, could hear her rich voice carry across the yard in grey wisps. She sung to them, now, through ash and cinders.
"Do you ever think –" Carol paused, inhaled deeply. A popping sound came from the fire, sparks flying onto their shoes.
"Do you ever think this mess will all come back again? And we'll have to start over?"
She didn't have to look up to know that his brow was furrowed, forehead creases growing deeper every day. Survival was a relatively simple mindset. Nothing to lose but life, nothing to gain but more time. They had gotten past all of that, but no one had forgotten that the fever could rear its ugly head just as easily as the first time.
Another man might have reacted softly, gently. A sugar-coated "don't worry, everything will turn out all right." But after all the years, sharing a tent, a blanket, a bed. A bowl, a glass, a fork. Her past, her body, her mind. That wasn't the man she'd chosen, the one she wanted. The one she'd been thrown together with, into the tumult, into the maelstrom.
Daryl cleared his throat, brought his free hand to his mouth and chewed on his thumbnail. He was, indeed, a creature of habit.
"I think about it every day."
Carol nodded into his shoulder. When the wind changed directions once more, she closed her eyes to the smoke. A cold front passed through and they huddled closer, two individuals drawn to the warmth of the flame, flickering and turning in the dark.
It is the calm after the storm, when the air is clean and the waves lap gently against the shore. The years of death slowly receding in the distance. And broken branches litter the street, and the wind flutters what's left in the trees. The leaves shake off their burden to dry slowly in the sun. And the earth is soft from the beating, drinks it all in. And the grass welcomes it. Grows.