AN: Here we go. This little "scene" was brought about by the Tumblr prompt that wanted Caryl literally bumping into each other. I hope you like what I've done with it. There's a possibility for more in the future, but at the moment this is just a "scene"/oneshot.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl kept closing his eyes hard and reopening them. They were burning. They practically ached he was so tired. He probably should've called Merle to pick him up or asked someone to drive him home, but his pride didn't want him to do that. If he'd been drinking? He wouldn't have had a problem accepting a ride, but it felt different to simply say that he'd put in too many hours trying to work two jobs and now—having been up far more hours than he'd slept—he was practically dying on a fifteen mile drive home.
He could do this. He'd done it every night. Tonight? Tonight he'd sleep. He'd lined up his "off" days so that he'd have two full days to just not worry about a thing. All he had to do right now was make it home.
What he hadn't counted on, though, was that his burning eyes weren't the only "symptom" of too many days "on" and not enough time "off". His reflexes, too, were just a little too slow.
So when the car pulled out in front him—far too slowly—on the bumpy dirt road, Daryl didn't hit the brake in time. At least, he didn't hit it in time to stop and avoid hitting the car entirely.
Daryl hit the car in the rear fender and was slung about in the cab of the truck with the impact even as he brought the truck to a complete stop. As soon as he fully realized what had happened, his first instinct was to simply put the truck in park and turn it off. His second was to begin to curse to himself about what had just happened as he pieced it all together.
Then he opened the truck door and unbuckled his seatbelt so that he could get out, still muttering the words under his breath.
He walked to the front of the truck to look at the damage quickly. His headlights were still on. He hadn't killed those. He couldn't. It was pitch black on these back roads and without the headlights he wouldn't be able to see his hand in front of his face.
"What the hell?!" He spat when the door to the car opened. The driver wasn't out yet, but Daryl was fairly certain that they weren't hurt. The impact hadn't really been too great. It was a bump up, that was all. It wasn't major. His truck was scratched at best—though their fender was a little bit worse for the wear. "What's your damn problem? You fuckin' blind?!"
Daryl tried to calm himself.
He wasn't even all that pissed off. At least, he normally wouldn't be all that pissed off. Accidents happen and really no harm was done. He wasn't going to bother getting his hunk of junk truck fixed and he didn't figure that they were going to demand any money from him for their car because any reasonable person would know that the whole damn thing had been their fault.
He was really only pissed because he was so tired that he could barely stand it and this stood a good chance of making him get home a lot later than he really intended to get home, depending on how this person wanted to handle to things.
When the car door swung open, and the first leg of the driver appeared, Daryl immediately knew that the person at fault here was a woman—a woman with nice legs. She got out of the car fairly quickly, speaking almost hysterically about her sorrow over the whole incident. She didn't even turn to look at Daryl for a moment. She kept her head ducked—a head covered by a mop of curly red hair—and she immediately opened the back door.
It was only then that Daryl heard sounds coming from inside and he realized that she wasn't alone in the car. There was a kid in there because the kid was screaming.
"Shit," Daryl spat. "Shit—I hit some damn body with a kid! Lady you weren't paying attention. What were you thinking? You damn near come to a stop across the whole road!"
"I'm sorry!" She screamed, her voice coming out almost animalistic as it trailed out of the back of the car where she was half inside the vehicle and tending the child. A moment later, she came wiggling her way backward, out of the back seat, and she straightened up with the child in her arms. The little girl was still sniffling.
Daryl stepped toward them and the woman backed up as though she were going to take off, running if she had to, with the small child.
"I'm sorry," Daryl said, immediately checking himself. "I'm sorry—you're shook up too, and I'm sorry."
She looked at him then. It was the first time she looked at him dead on.
"Jesus..." he muttered, the word escaping him before he ever meant for it to.
Even in the darkness, the black eye was evident. Half her face, almost, was black. There was clearly blood at the corner of her mouth and a smear of it was caught between her lip and her nose. Another smear was streaked across her forehead.
"Jesus," Daryl repeated, stepping toward her.
The child, at first glance, was fine other than the fact that she was scared and fussing, holding tight to the woman that Daryl assumed to be her mother. She was probably three at best.
"You OK?" Daryl asked, forgetting entirely whose fault the accident was. "You—didn't have your seatbelt on? 'Cause I didn't hit you that hard—couldn'ta hit you that hard. I weren't moving twenty five miles an hour the whole time since I got in this truck. This road? The damn potholes? You'd shake yourself to death going faster than that."
He was stammering out his explanation—his defense—because he didn't know what else to do. The woman looked like she'd taken a few good blows to the head. He didn't even know if the steering wheel or the windshield was to blame, but she was beat up and she was beat up good.
"I didn't hit you that hard," Daryl said, now trying to explain it away to himself as much as he was saying it to the woman.
She stared at him. She just stood there, beside her car, cooing every now and again at the girl that seemed to be calming down, and stared at him.
She had the overall appearance of a caged animal at the moment—or of a cornered one. And she looked like she might still be considering taking off to run down the dark, dirt road. Daryl swallowed.
This was not what the hell he had in mind for tonight. This was not at all what the hell he had in mind.
He held his hands up at her in a show of surrender.
"Are you alright?" He asked, as softly as he could, deciding to go for a different approach. She continued to stare for a moment. "Your baby—she OK?"
And all of a sudden, and entirely without warning, the woman broke down into a choking sob. It was almost animalistic itself. Daryl almost felt like he wouldn't have identified it as crying so much as it was half a cry and half a scream.
And that stirred up the child which, in turn, stirred the mother up more.
But as quickly as it started, it subsided. She got it under control. She turned it on an off like a faucet.
"I don't know—I don't know—I don't know," she stammered out with the last waves of the strange battle cry against life.
Daryl stepped forward. Now, without even meaning to do it, he realized that he'd started making the same kind of shushing and calming noises that he used when approaching any animal that he wasn't sure could entirely be trusted. He'd never, not once, used that sound with a woman. But his overtired brain, apparently, thought it was perfect for this situation.
He reached his arms out toward her.
"Let me see her," he said, waving his fingers at the woman to pass the child over. She didn't look like she wanted to do that and she didn't look like she intended to do that. "Lemme see her," Daryl said. "I ain't gonna hurt her and I sure as hell ain't gonna keep her. Just gonna—make sure she's OK?"
The woman passed the little girl over and, surprisingly, the child didn't fuss too much about it, though she did look toward her mother and keep her eyes mostly glued on her. A moment of checking her over and Daryl was sure that the little girl was fine. She was maybe a little shook up, but she was fine.
"She's OK," Daryl said. "You're OK, aren't you sweetheart?"
The little girl looked at him with big eyes, but then she looked back to her mother.
And now? The woman in front of Daryl didn't look nearly as wild as she had before. She looked calmer. Her stance had changed. Her whole demeanor had changed. Now, though, Daryl had a new fear. She looked—if more relaxed—maybe like she was heading for "too relaxed" and he feared that she'd been running on something like adrenaline. If she had? She may very well be at risk for going down and going down soon.
"Are you OK?" He asked.
She nodded and swiped at her face with the back of her hand. The blood from her lip was still fresh and still lightly flowing. When she rubbed her hand across it, it spread to put another smear across her face.
"I'm fine," she said. "I'm—OK. I'm fine. I had my seatbelt on. I—I brought this with me."
Now Daryl was even more struck than before.
"What happened?" He asked.
She shook her head. She wasn't going to tell him. Of course, it wasn't any of his business, but his brother had always told him he was too nosy for his own good.
"What's your name?" Daryl asked.
"What's yours?" The woman asked.
Daryl realized he hadn't even introduced himself.
"Daryl," he said. "Daryl Dixon. What's yours?"
"Carol," she said. She didn't offer him a last name. At the moment, he wasn't sure if she wanted to give it. He wasn't going to press until he needed to.
"This is?" He asked, gesturing toward the little girl that had settled against him entirely and was possibly on her way back to sleep—probably what she'd been doing when the accident had happened.
"Sophia," Carol said. She stumbled forward now, not too sure on her feet, and looked at the back of her car. She didn't say anything about it. She didn't even look particularly concerned. If it hadn't been for the condition of her face—and his suspicion that had something to do with it and maybe even had something to do with her poor driving—he might have suggested she was drunk.
Carol looked back at him.
"Are you sure—she's OK?" Carol asked.
Daryl moved his face enough to know the girl was settled, but not enough to bother her.
"Fine as wine," he commented. "Ain't her I'm worried about right now."
Carol didn't respond to that. Instead she looked at the car again. This time something registered on her face, but it wasn't really that she was horrified by the accident. She just looked tired.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. I don't know where I am. One light is out on the car—I could barely see. I was just..."
She stopped, shook her head, and then faltered on her feet a little from the action. She steadied herself.
"I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. I wasn't—paying attention. I was—distracted. I'm sorry."
"Distracted by whatever happened to your face?" Daryl asked.
Carol brushed her fingertips at her lip where some of the blood was. She looked at her fingertips, rubbed them together, and then looked back at the car without responding to Daryl's inquiry about her injuries.
"I don't have insurance," she said. "I've got—a little money. But—I'm sorry. I don't have insurance. The tags on this car are—expired."
She seemed, at this moment, like a candle whose wick was running out. She was starting to sputter a little and Daryl was concerned.
"You seen a doctor?" He asked.
She just looked at him.
"Get in the truck," Daryl said.
She furrowed her brow. Now she looked like an animal again, but it was clear from her efforts to look about, that she was trying to figure out how to get the child back from him. He interrupted her before she could get too deep in her concern.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," he said. "But—you don't need to drive. Not with her in the car. I'ma put both of you in the truck, OK? Push the car over to the side of the road—you can get it in the morning?"
She started to shake her head. Daryl was tired. He was too tired for this. He was too tired for the accident. He was too tired for the toddler. He was too tired for the woman who may or may not be wild and might be on the run from the police.
But he couldn't get in the truck and drive off. He just couldn't. Everything inside of him told him that, even if he didn't know why, he had to help this woman.
"I promise you," he said. "You gonna be safe. She's gonna be safe. I'm an asshole, but I ain't the kind that snatches women and kids up off the road. You don't gotta believe me—but you'll kill yourself if you get behind the wheel of that damn car again. You'll kill her too. I'm just trying to save her life. Yours by extension if I can."
Carol shifted her weight.
"I'm taking a chance right now too," Daryl said. "How do I know you ain't some kinda axe murderer? How do I know that you didn't kill this girl's parents and take her? You ain't on the run from the police?"
"I'm not an axe murderer," Carol said.
Daryl smiled to himself.
"Guess we're both gonna have to trust each other, then, ain't we?" He said.
She looked at him. She looked at her daughter—or at least he assumed the child was—that was asleep in his arms.
"She trusts me," Daryl pointed out.
Carol straightened herself up.
"Get in the truck if you can," Daryl said. "I'll pass her to ya. I'm too damn tired to figure it out tonight—but we'll figure this shit out in the morning."
Carol started to argue, but then she stopped. She turned and reached back into the back of the car and Daryl tried not to look at her ass while she was bent over doing something there. When she stood up, she pulled two small bags with her.
She stumbled past him, still seemingly on unsure legs, and he followed her. He took her bags and she let them go. He tossed them into the back of the truck and opened the driver's side door.
"Slide across?" He asked. She got in with one arm assistance from Daryl, who apologized for accidentally grabbing her ass in the process of giving her a boost, and slid across the bench seat. He passed the sleeping girl to her.
"Her seat," Carol said.
"She'll be fine for the two miles we gotta go," Daryl said. He chuckled to himself. "Until you stopped in front of my ass? I ain't been in a wreck for at least ten damn years."
She seemed satisfied, or either she was too tired to argue, and she leaned her head against the window of the truck—possibly smudging it with blood—while Daryl set about putting the little car in neutral and pushing it out of the road the best that he could. A quick look at the vehicle didn't tell him anything except that it was dirty and empty. He took the keys out for good measure, got the seat out of the back and the car—since it seemed the only thing worth anything in the car—and put that in the back of the truck.
Then he got in the truck, cranked it, and started home. Once he nudged the woman gently, waking her from her sleep in case she might have a concussion, but the rest of the time he stayed silent and focused on puttering along down the road and figuring out what he was supposed to do with her. He wasn't, now, nearly as tired as he had been.
And Merle was going to have a field day when he told him that he'd brought home a woman for the first time—all he had to do was hit her with his damn truck first.