AN: Here we go. This tumblr prompt wanted Carol and Rick in a long distance relationship. I'm not really sure this fits the bill, but it's what I came up with.
As always, I own nothing from Walking Dead.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Rick had been gone almost three months. While Carol welcomed the money he was getting while away on this job, and while she welcomed the raise that the added training promised to give him when he returned, she was starting to tire of the arrangement.
It had started innocently enough—take the job in Texas for a month, get the training he needed, and then he'd be back. From there? It had been take the job in Michigan for five months, get the training he needed and then he'd be back. After that? Maybe it had been Ohio or Idaho. By now? Carol thought she needed a map to fill with thumb tacks to track the whereabouts of her husband. She already had, after all, a calendar to mark the days until his return.
The problem, really, was that the return never actually came.
He'd come back to Georgia full of promises that it was all done. He'd finished some course or another, completed something, and leveled up.
Whatever it was he was doing? Carol didn't follow it that closely. Rick's job was his job. It was up to him to know what he was doing and to handle what needed to be done. It wasn't that Carol didn't care, it was that—at least in the beginning—he'd treated his position at the prison as though he were a top secret government official. Every question she'd asked about it had been met with some kind of uncomfortable shifting about and he'd skirted any answer that might even sound like an answer.
So when he'd started to do one thing or another to change his position, however slightly or greatly, Carol had simply stopped asking the questions that made him uncomfortable. Now? When they talked about their jobs together? It was simply on a wish to share basis. If someone had something they wanted to say about their profession, they said it. If they didn't? Then they simply changed the subject and talked about one of their other interests.
But, these days, their interests felt like they were dwindling.
Carol felt like she had barely seen Rick in the past two and a half years. When she did see him, it was short lived. It was a burst of excitement with each return. He was finally home. They could finally be together. They had the rest of their lives laid out in front of them.
The first day or so was always the same. They remained, locked in their home, making love with every free moment that they had. Then? The children necessarily came first. Michonne was great about keeping Sophia when she knew Rick would be returning, just to give them a little time together, but Sophia had to come eventually. Rick would make arrangements for Carl and Judith to visit—though Carol and Lori were acquainted well enough now that Carol kept them on the weekends in place of their absent father—and then they would spend a number of days trying to cater to the children.
If the children were on vacation then they would take a family vacation. If they were in school, they'd try to design "afternoon vacations".
Then there were the repairs that had to be handled around the house—the ones that Carol couldn't handle on her own and Rick would protest if she should try to hire someone to handle them because he was the man of the house and would take care of things. There were all the "little things" that needed to be handled around town—appointments that had been put off, trips to this bank or that bank, some meeting or another that seemed to have sprung up and been pushed to the side.
And when all that was done? It seemed they only had a few days to settle into their routine, grow comfortable and secure, and then Rick would get some news from work that there was something else he could do to make things "better". There was something else he could do to "get ahead". All he had to do was relocate once more, for some temporary amount of time. And then he'd be off again and Carol would be left behind, alone, once more because it never made sense to truly uproot their lives to go wherever the temporary post was.
This time? He'd been gone three months, and he was set to arrive somewhere within the hour, but Carol didn't feel the same enthusiasm to greet him as she'd felt before. This time? She hadn't read his messages with the same excitement as he'd marked each stop on his way home. She hadn't returned them, either, with more than the simple response that she was glad that he was making it safely and he should pull over if he were to grow too tired.
She was afraid that something was changing. No. She knew that something was changing. She was afraid of what that meant.
She hated to be alone. She'd told him that when they'd started dating. She'd reiterated it when they married. She hated to be alone. She always had. She expected, once they were married at least, that it would mean that she wouldn't be alone anymore.
Instead? It had made her more alone than she'd ever been before. She felt more alone now than she'd felt when she'd actually been single and alone after her first husband's death.
She was more aware of being alone because she wasn't supposed to be alone. She was supposed to be with her husband, but he was gone so often, and for so long, that she'd very nearly forgotten what he looked like.
As soon as he got home, coming through the side door as he always did, with the same duffel bag that he always carried back and forth—at least he'd learned to travel lightly from all of this—and another bag with gifts and other items he'd bring to woo her, Carol almost threw herself at him.
But this time? It wasn't for the reason that he anticipated.
"We need to talk," she said, following him through their house as he carried the bag to the bedroom to put it down.
"We will," he said. He chuckled to himself. "Can't I put my bag down first? Before you start in on me with whatever it is that's been bothering you all day?"
Carol fell silent. Surely he would know that something had changed. He knew her well enough, even if he never saw her, to know that there was an unexplained change to her messaging pattern.
"What is it that you need to talk about that's so urgent?" Rick asked after he'd put the bag down and gone to the bathroom. Carol had seen him in every stage of undress imaginable, but still she stood outside the bathroom door and waited while he relieved himself and washed his hands.
"How long until you leave again?" Carol asked.
Rick emerged from the bathroom.
"I'm home," he responded blankly. "I'm done."
"I'm not talking about that," Carol said. "How long until you leave again? How long until the next job or the next offer or whatever it is that you're going to? How long are you here before you uproot everything again?"
Rick walked over and fumbled around in the extra bag of things that he'd brought with him, presumably looking for a gift of some sort to see if that would buy her pleasantness for the evening. Carol snatched the bag out of his hand, surprising herself with the act, and tossed it at the bed.
"How long before you go again?" She asked, this time with his full attention.
Rick looked away from her and then he looked back at her. He had an expression on his face that said he wanted to be angry. He was frustrated or annoyed, and he wanted to be angry with her. But he couldn't be because, even though he didn't want to admit it? Carol knew that he knew what he was doing was wrong. It was too much.
Rick held her eyes this time. He always did that when he wanted to get a point across—or when he wanted her to believe something, even if it wasn't fully the truth.
"I'm home," he said. "I'm home. There's nothing else."
Carol swallowed.
"That's what you said the first time. And the second. And the—you've said it every time, Rick. And every time that I—that I start to believe it? You're gone again. I've seen you less than I haven't since we got married," Carol said.
Rick didn't respond right away. Carol didn't say anything either. She waited him out. When he finally spoke, she wasn't exactly expecting where he went.
"You told me that you were fine with it," he said. "You told me. When we talked about it? You told me that you were fine with it. You said that the distance didn't matter. You said that it wouldn't matter. And now? You're telling me that it does matter? How am I supposed to deal with that?"
Carol hadn't known what would happen tonight. She wasn't sure how it would go when she confronted Rick. Of course, she should've suspected that any confrontation wouldn't exactly go well, but she hadn't even thought that far ahead. Now it was clear that there was going to be more to this than she'd originally thought about.
She moved and sat down on the edge of her bed—their bed.
"I was fine with you going away the first time," Carol said. "I was fine with the distance because it was temporary. That's what we talked about. That's what we—decided on. The terms weren't ever discussed again. After that? You just—went the moment you got something new. We never discussed it again. It was just—you'd tell me you got something new and then I'd watch you pack. And every time was the last time. But—when's the real last time, Rick? Because I'm alone. And I hate being alone. But it seems like it's all I really do these days."
Rick stepped so that he was directly in front of her.
"Are you giving me an ultimatum?" Rick asked. Carol didn't respond because she honestly didn't have an answer to that. She hadn't thought about it that way. She hadn't thought it all out. All she'd thought about was getting her feelings heard. Rick shifted his weight. "Are you—cheating on me? Because I've heard the whole—a woman has needs—speech before."
Carol laughed to herself. She shook her head.
"I'm not Lori," she said. "And—I'm not cheating. If anyone were cheating? I might think it was you, Rick. You're the one that doesn't have time for me. It's not the other way around. I'm here—in your home—any time you decide to call."
Silence fell between them for a moment.
"I'm doing this for you," Rick said.
Carol laughed to herself again, some less than pleasant memories of her first husband flooding back to her. He hadn't always been the kindest man in the world. Rick knew about it. What Rick didn't know was that—even if he never put his hands on her—there were some similarities between himself and her first husband.
"Everyone's always doing everything for me," Carol said.
"I'm doing it for the money," Rick said.
"That might be closer to the truth," Carol offered.
"You like the money," Rick said. "You like the money and the security that the money brings. We can't have that level of financial security without the money, Carol. That's how it works. I'm working to get you the money that you need to feel secure."
Carol couldn't help but laugh ironically again. She stood, then, and Rick stepped back to allow her the room to do so. She wasn't as tall as he was, but she preferred to be as close to the same height as she possibly could be.
"I like the money," Carol admitted. "And—a hefty bank account? It does make me feel secure. You're right about that. But—we've been doing well for a while. The extra raises? They're starting not to be that impressive. I like having that security, but...it doesn't mean much if I don't have the security of having you around. Rick—I'd rather have you here than have an extra raise tacked onto your paycheck."
She sighed.
"Your kids would rather have you around," she said.
"Leave the kids out of this," Rick said quickly.
Carol shook her head at him.
"I can't," she said. "I can't leave them out of this because they're growing up without you. You spend a few days with them every few months, but you don't know them, Rick. They're getting away from you."
She swallowed.
"And, if you care? I'm getting away from you," Carol said.
Rick turned away from her for at least a full moment before he looked back.
"Everything gets away from me," he said.
The anger. It was always there. The hurt. He'd been done wrong before. He lived in constant fear of it happening again. He rarely said it out loud, but silently he accused Carol of a multitude of sins, none of which was she guilty.
"Lori got away from you," Carol said. "She left you. But the rest of us? The rest of—all of this? It's up to you, Rick. It's time for you to take that responsibility. If this gets away from you? It's because you let it. It's because—you left it."
He walked off. It was better that way. That's what he always did when he was overwhelmed with something and needed time to process. He walked away. But Carol knew, by now, that he walked away because he needed to handle something he was going through and he didn't want to run the risk of acting outside of himself and handling it with his fists—the way her first husband might have.
So Carol busied herself. While he took care of what he needed to take care of, she sorted the items in his bag. She put away the clean, put the dirty in the hamper, and put aside his uniform items to press. She went through the extra bag and lined up the roughly wrapped presents for him to dole out as he saw fit to whomever they may be destined.
And when he returned, he only had one thing to say to Carol. He walked in, caught her by the shoulders, and squared her off in front of him so that she would have no choice but to look at him.
"I'm staying," he said. "I'm not going anywhere. Not anymore. But—you don't go anywhere either."
Carol swallowed and nodded.
"I haven't," she said. "And I want. I was just—hoping you'd decide to stay. And that you'd mean it this time."
Rick nodded.
"I mean it," he said. "For better or worse? This time? I'm home for good."
Carol had no choice to believe him, just like all the times before. She felt, though, that something had changed this time. She hoped she was right.