Author's note: Hello, everybody! This is my fill for the USS Caryl fanfiction/fan art prompt challenge. Being First Mate, I'm not actually competing, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do a fill in support!

"A 10 years trope (a cure is found)"

Disclaimer: The Walking Dead and its characters belong to Kirkman and AMC, not a poor college student like myself.

Daryl watched dawn break through the window. Red and yellow hues danced along the wall as the new day got its start. He liked this time of day. The whole house stood still while he watched the sunrise from the comfort of the bed. For a few short minutes, he had the peace and quiet he often longed for.

As the light finished filling the room, the sheets began to rustle and a petite body pressed against his back. Lips pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades. "Morning," Carol mumbled against his skin, sliding an arm around to rest on his stomach. When he didn't answer, her hand began trailing from his stomach to more southern territory. With a chuckle, he snatched it in his own and brought it back to the safe zone.

"Might wanna rethink that," he called out, voice still gruff from sleep. "'Less ya want Judy to come bustin' in here in the middle of it."

She returned his laugh, her hand leaving him completely as she flopped onto her back. He followed her, rolling onto his other side to face her. Her hair, still short after all this time, stood wild and on end. She stared over at him with half-lidded eyes. "That's right. I almost forgot."

Today, they celebrated the start of Judy's tenth spring. Ten years had passed since that fateful day back at the prison. Ten years since Judy was born, since Lori died. Five since a scientist up north found a cure.

Overhead, a thud sounded, signaling someone else out of bed. Carol grinned, and Daryl answered her with a smirk of his own. They both lay there, listening, waiting on the inevitable. The footsteps ran the length of the room above them, coming to a stop just before the sound of a dresser drawer being opened. Moments later, the same footsteps came thundering down the stairs. Their bedroom door flew open, and he barely had time to register an already dressed Judith before she made a beeline for the bed, dark curls flying behind her. She gave a running leap, landing herself right between them.

Then he had a face full of dark hair, and his shoulders were being forcibly shaken. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" she shrieked. "Daryl, get up! It's my birthday!"

He couldn't help himself as the laughter bubbled up in his throat, spilling over as he wrestled through the curls, grabbing for the hands at his shoulders. When he managed to secure them, she retaliated, shoving him over and flopping herself onto his torso. His laughter turned to a grunt at the weight of her.

"Ya don't know it's your birthday. We don't know when your birthday is, kid." he teased.

Judy glared from above him, not amused in the least. "Well today is the day we pretend is my birthday! So get your lazy ass up!"

Carol, who had been grinning from beside them the entire time, suddenly turned stern. "Watch your language, Judith Grimes!"

Daryl sat up, dumping the girl into his lap. "Yeah," he winked. "Watch your fuckin' language, Asskicker."

She exploded into peals of laughter, amplified by him launching forward to tickle her under the arms. She swatted at him, pleading between gasping breaths. "Daryl! Stop! We...have to...get...ready to leave!"

He relented, slouching back onto his elbows to let her breathe. She smacked at his chest halfheartedly before rolling off his lap to lay between them again. Carol reached out a hand to brush the hair from the girl's face.

"Seriously, Daryl! We gotta go!"

"Cool it, Judy," he groaned, throwing his feet over the side of the bed. "Ain't like the fish are goin' anywhere."

Every spring since that first one, on the day chosen to celebrate Judith's birth, they'd do something just the two of them in the morning. Since she turned three, she'd been the one to dictate exactly how they'd spend those first few hours. This year, she wanted to learn how to fish.

He'd only been fishing a couple dozen times in his life, always preferring the woods over the water, but he knew enough to teach her. Merle had been the first one to take him out to the creek with a fishing pole when he was twelve, and the only person he'd fished with since. Some of the few really good memories of his brother were on the bank of that creek, sitting in lawn chairs and drinking beer from the cooler. Merle only ever fished when he was sober and in a damn good mood.

"You two have fun this morning," Carol smiled softly, brushing another lock of hair from Judy's face. "I'll be here baking a cake."

The little girl's face lit up.

"With strawberries on top?"

Carol nodded, grin spreading across her features once more. "Saved that last bag in the freezer just for you."

With a groan, Daryl stood, popping the joints in his back as he righted himself. "If we're goin' fishin', ya best go ready the gear. I've gotta get dressed." He snorted as Judy flew off the bed just as fast as she'd jumped on, racing out the door toward the backyard and the shed.

"The two of you are something else," Carol teased from the bed as he moved to the dresser, rifling through it for some cargo pants. "She's got you wrapped, Daryl."

He scoffed, shucking his sleep pants and pulling on a tan pair he'd dug from the drawer. After a moment of deliberation, he snagged a blue flannel from the top of another stack. "She ain't got me anymore wrapped than she does anybody else 'round here," he shot back, butting up the last button. "You an' everyone else would bend over backwards for the kid."

"You know," she piped up, looking him up and down. "You could just get short sleeves. You don't have to cut your sleeves off anymore."

He eyed her carefully for a heartbeat before heading to the door. "Don't pretend ya don't like it," he threw over his shoulder, giving her a wink before striding out into the hall.

Carl and Rick had already made themselves at home around the kitchen counter, likely woken up by the same force of nature that had attacked him earlier. The younger of the Grimes men, taller then Daryl now at twenty-three, passed him a cup of coffee. "You're going to need this, the mood she's in this morning."

The men shared a laugh, and he had just enough time to gulp down the coffee before hurricane Judith came whirling through the kitchen, fishing poles in hand. With a nod to her father and brother, they were out the front door. The local fishing hole was just a mile or so up the road, not far at all. Then again, Government Settlement 131 wasn't but 10 square miles anyway.

The cure came about five years ago, according to word of mouth, but it took time to spread. A new government launched up north shortly thereafter, but it took two years before a settlement popped up miles from the prison. It would be three years that summer since the group walked through the gates of 131 and were ushered straight for the vaccine. It had been so surreal, he'd wondered at the time if maybe he was hallucinating. He never thought he'd see the day, but there hadn't been a walker spotted in eighteen months.

"Hey, Daryl?" Judy asked a while later, sitting next to him on the bank. She had her fishing pole in one hand while she picked at a blade of grass with the other. It was the first she'd spoke since they'd settled in.

"Yeah, kid?"

He turned to look at her, catching her gaze. She tilted her head to the side, squinting at him. Sometimes when she did that, if the light hit her just right, it was like looking at Lori Grimes again. "How come everyone gets so excited for my birthday? We never celebrate anyone's birthday but mine."

The question made him pause, as many of hers often did. The kid had a way of seeing straight through the bullshit and into the heart of everything. His mind took him back to the day Andrew set off the alarms in the prison. Two of their own died that day, at the time they'd thought it was three, and a piece of Rick died too. That haunted look clouded Carl's eyes, and hadn't left since. In all their time together, they'd never been so low.

"Because you were never supposed to survive, Judy."

Any other kid, those word would have startled them. Judy? She just tilted her head a little more to the side, waiting for him to continue.

"You were a baby in the apocalypse, kid. No mama there to feed ya, no vaccinations – ya should've died within a week." He paused, looked back out over the water. "But ya didn't. Ya grew up, learned to walk, to talk. Even after all those nights you spent cryin' an' hungry, ya made it. That's important."

Comfortable silence stretched between them for a moment, the only sound the trickle of water over rocks. Then she broke it, serious as ever. "So daddy's not shitting me when he says I'm a miracle?"

He chuckled.

"No, he ain't shittin' ya. I don't call ya Asskicker for nothin'."

They returned somewhere around noon, neither of them bearing any fish. Even so, Judy wasted no time running off to tell her brother and daddy all about fishing. Daryl took his time setting the gear back in the shed before popping in the back door. He found Carol at the sink scrubbing dishes, her front covered in flour.

"How'd it go?" she asked, throwing him a smile.

He shrugged, taking a quick inventory of the room. Nobody in sight, and he could hear Judy rambling upstairs. Wiping his hands on the leg of his pants, he stepped up behind her, fingers finding her waist. "Didn't catch a damn thing, but Asskicker didn't seem to mind."

Just as he moved to bury his face in her neck, she nudged him away with her hip. "I've got a cake to ice and a dinner to start before everyone gets here." At his pout, she gave him a wink. "Later," she promised.

With a huff, he released his hold on her, moving instead to throw a lunch together for himself and the birthday girl. They ate on the front porch, giving Carol the space she needed in the kitchen. They were still there, Daryl telling her the story of his Chupacabra for the thousandth time, when Hershel came limping up the steps. The rest of the guests slowly trickled in, until the tiny house was so full you could hardly find a place to stand.

He ate dinner on the steps - the only spare seat in the house - with Carol pressed against his side, her own plate in her lap. Together they watched as the party continued around them. Hershel sat on the sofa between Beth and her new husband Scotty, making small talk about how it was looking for the crops this year. Rick and Carl stood eating by the mantle, near mirror images of each other. Judy and Mason, Glenn and Maggie's rugrat, were over by the fireplace, demanding Michonne show them some moves with an invisible katana.

A few stainless steel cafeteria tables and cold concrete floors and they could have been back at the prison, slurping down some hot mystery cereal. Instead, they were in house number 17 in Government Settlement 131, eating a large, balanced meal. His crossbow sat tucked safely inside the bedroom closet, where it had been for months now. No buck knife was strapped to his waist. None of them were looking over their shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So they brought out a cake, sang Judy a song from a world long dead. They ate, drank, and were merry goddammit.

"Ten years, Daryl," Carol said softly as he slid into bed beside her that night. "We made it."

"We made it," he agreed, pressing up against her.

His hands slid under her pajama top, across the soft skin of her stomach. She turned in his arms, grinning at him in the moonlight. Her fingers reached up to card through his hair, pushing the strands back from his face before pressing her lips to his. Tomorrow, the sun would rise on a new decade, on a new world. A world without walkers. Tonight, he'd finish celebrating with the woman the apocalypse brought him.