AN: This little "scene" is in response to the Tumblr prompt that wanted Caryl as a nanny/single parent AU.
As always, I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
"Rambunctious," Daryl said. "Uh—energetic? Active."
Carol sat across from the man at the table and chewed her lip to keep from laughing at his list of adjectives.
They'd only just met, and Carol already thought she saw something in him she liked. She wasn't going to tell him, but she'd already decided that she was taking the job. He needed a nanny and she needed the money that he was advertising to pay. No matter how much trouble the child was, Carol thought she could handle it.
"All children are active," Carol said. "Rambunctious sometimes."
He looked uncomfortable.
"Bad just sounds so damn...bad," Daryl said.
Carol smiled then and nodded her head slightly.
"Tell me about her," Carol said. "What's—what was her name again?"
Daryl cleared his throat.
"Jade," he said. "Jade—Jade."
He nodded more, each time he said his name, as though he was reminding himself that he knew his daughter's name.
"She's—how old?" Carol asked.
Daryl cleared his throat again.
"Five," Daryl said. "Well—she's gonna be five in...two months. Wants a damn four wheeler for her birthday. A four wheeler and she ain't but five."
He laughed to himself.
"And not one of them toy ones neither," he said. "She knows the difference. Makes sure I know that it ain't the toy she's asking for."
Carol smiled at that.
"Your wife?" Carol asked.
Daryl shook his head and gnawed his lip.
"Never had one," he said.
Carol raised her eyebrows at him. She didn't want to come out and ask how that worked, because it wasn't any of her business, but her curiosity was piqued.
"I see," was all that she said, because she didn't feel that decorum allowed her to ask what she wanted, but Daryl seemed to understand what was behind it because he sighed and fidgeted with his fingers a little. He scratched at his hair, rubbed his face, and then folded his hands on the table in front of him again to twiddle with those same fingers as he had been doing before.
"Izzy wasn't my wife," Daryl said. "She weren't my wife. She was—barely my girlfriend. I mean, we dated. Of course we did. But—it weren't like a long life kinda thing. She didn't want—me. She didn't want the kind of life I had—the kinda life I got. She was—she is—doing big things with her life, you know? Moved on. Moved outta here. Jade just weren't in her plans."
He stopped speaking then, scratched nervously at the back of his neck, and then shrugged and gestured with his hands, palms up, at Carol. That's all there was, he seemed to say. There was nothing more.
"Does she—does Jade know her?" Carol asked.
Daryl shook his head.
"Easier that way," he said. "Clean break. Not as messy. For her. For Izzy it isn't messy."
"For Jade it is?" Carol asked.
She stopped and swallowed. She didn't mean to get this far into depth on things. It wasn't really her business. The only way, really, that she could even justify her questions for herself was that she needed to know. If she was going to be a nanny to Jade—a little girl that she hadn't even met yet—she was going to need to know about her. She needed to know about her life. She needed to know what Jade knew and didn't know and what she was allowed to say.
She needed to know her past to understand her present, and to help shape her—in whatever way she was responsible for—for her future.
"Not yet," Daryl said. "But—it's bound to be complicated one day."
He sighed and shifted around uncomfortably in his chair.
"I'ma be real with you, because—you deserve that," Daryl said. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing raising no little girl. I really don't. I haven't even—been around little girls. I live with my brother. He don't know shit about little girls neither. Me and him? It's just us. Izzy was the longest relationship I ever had and we weren't even really, ya know, together when she was pregnant. I mean—I checked on her and shit, but she was done with me by then. Didn't even know Jade was on her way until Izzy calls me up and tells me like...like hey, you remember me? Well—I'm seven months pregnant and I gotta make me a decision, but I figured you might wanna, ya know, be in on it or something."
Carol sat back in her own chair. She ran her fingers around the sweating water glass and watched Daryl as he rattled on. He seemed, now that he'd been given permission to speak, to be confessing everything to her. He was unloading. He was getting it all out. She'd given him permission to get it all out. He'd been swallowing it all down for a long time, too long. He'd possibly been swallowing it down since Jade had been born, maybe even before.
Now he was getting it out and it was clear, on his face and even in his demeanor—his shoulders lifting slightly even as he spoke—that it was cathartic. It felt good to have permission to take the weight off.
Carol knew that feeling.
She didn't interrupt him.
"So...uh...I brung her home. It ain't much of a home—I mean you'll see it. Mighta seen it, I gave you the address. Mighta drove by?" He asked. When he raised his eyebrows at Carol in question, she shook her head quickly to let him know that she hadn't seen his home. Not yet. "Well—it ain't much, but I brung her home. And Merle and me? We done the best we could. Every day—that's what we do. We just—we don't know what we're doing—but we do the best we can."
Carol smiled at him.
"That's what we all do," she said. "Every day. The best we can. And—hopefully? Somewhere it stops being the best we can do and it—just turns into the best."
Daryl chuckled to himself.
"Yeah, well, I mean I work a lot and Merle does too. Jade's in kindergarten but—she ain't there all day, ya know? So I thought it might be a good idea if she had..."
He shrugged.
"A woman around? I don't know—teach her woman stuff or just—stuff I don't know nothing about?" He added.
Carol nodded. She made a conscious effort to smile at him again. She felt like he needed it. He needed the gentle encouragement of it.
"What happened with the others?" Carol asked.
Daryl looked at her in question and hummed.
"The others?" Carol asked. "You said there were others...other nannies?"
Realization struck him and he nodded.
"What happened with them?" Carol asked.
He shook his head.
"Didn't last long," he said. "Guess—they had expectations for Jade. They wanted her to be—something. Something I ain't knowed how to make her, I guess. She weren't—they was lookin' for Jade to be like—a princess? Princess Jade with the damn—whatever princess girls do."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"And—Jade might be a princess, but it's more like some kinda princess of some pirate ship or of some tribe or something. She's some kinda—warrior princess. She ain't no pink and glitter, diamonds and all kinda girl," Daryl said.
He laughed to himself and then his face changed. He looked almost embarrassed.
"Guess—I just didn't know how to make her that," he added.
Carol swallowed. Behind the smile she was wearing for his benefit was a lump forming in her throat like a tumor. She couldn't get it to go away. She couldn't swallow it down.
She was sitting across the table from a man who had raised—apparently with only the assistance of some brother he mentioned who probably was very much like himself—a little girl from the day that she'd come home from the hospital. Even though Carol didn't know the little girl? She got the feeling that she couldn't be that terrible. She might be, just as Daryl had said, not the kind of little girl that most people expected—but she couldn't be terrible. A no-nonsense kind of father like Daryl? He wouldn't have allowed her to be too terrible.
And still, this man sitting across from her who had raised his daughter without assistance, was the kind of man that wore so much regret and so much sorrow on his face over the fact that he hadn't raised his daughter to be what other people thought she should be.
His biggest let down to his child, as far as Carol could see it at the moment, was that he hadn't raised her to be what society thought she should be—not that she hadn't been loved and cared for, or that she hadn't been given what she needed. His regret was that she hadn't been given the chance to be a princess—at least, not the kind of princess that people thought she should be.
And the lump? It came in Carol's throat because she would have, at one point in her life when the man mattered to her, given anything she had to have her own daughter's father care for her even one fraction of the way that the man—embarrassed by his shortcomings—felt for his daughter.
Carol choked down the lump the best that she could.
"There's still time," she said.
He raised his eyebrows at her and hummed at her to ask her to continue.
"There's still time," she repeated. "To make Jade a princess. If she wants to be one. And—it's OK, if she doesn't want to be one either. There's still time—she'll decide."
"You OK?" Daryl asked.
Carol wiped at her eyes and realized that they were leaking slightly. She cleaned it up and shook her head, forcing the smile at him.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just—I think it's very sweet. Your relationship with Jade. I'm looking forward to meeting her."
Daryl made a sound, a partial laugh in his throat, and a wider smile than before appeared on his lips.
"You really want the job?" He said. "Because—I'm letting you know, right now...she's got a lotta energy. Talks a mile a minute and then sometimes you can't get her to say boo. She don't—she ain't—she just don't sit down good. Tries to listen, she does. But she ain't good at it. Always—one step ahead of herself. If you don't wanna do that—I ain't gonna think no less of you. You thought, like the others did, you was gonna come and take care of a little girl. I understand if you didn't sign up for no little Dixon kid."
Carol laughed to herself at his attempts to give her an out on the job.
She stood up from her chair. She offered her hand to him. He looked at it, looked at her, and then got to his feet. He took her hand and shook it, honestly, and then he shook his head.
"I hope you have a good day," he said, a little sullenly.
Carol smiled and shook her head.
"I think you misunderstand," she said. "I need a job in the worst sort of way. I have a daughter too. I've got to put food on the table. I've got to—pay the rent. This? It'll allow me to be with her too, my daughter, when she's out of school. I hope—well—I hope we're shaking on this because I've got a job. And you're going to take me over to the park now? Like we agreed? So I can meet—the mighty huntress Jade?"
Daryl smiled, more sincerely, and then the smile faded. He dropped his eyes to the ground, looked away from Carol for a moment, and nodded his head. He seemed to be chewing his lip nervously, and then he looked back at her.
"She's a good kid," Daryl assured her. "Just—she's just Jade, ya know? She's just—herself."
Carol smiled and nodded.
"I know," she said. "I've got one myself. You'll meet her too. She's Sophia. She's nine. And—she's just herself. They all are. That's what makes it—interesting."
Daryl chuckled.
"Well—Carol—looks like you got yourself a job," Daryl said. "Come on—if I know 'em at all, Merle's got her out there at the big pirate ship. Trick is—gettin' there before she makes some poor kid wet his pants and walk the plank."
Carol laughed at the joke and followed Daryl away from the little café area toward the park, sixty feet away, where a good number of children were at play. It was a park she'd brought Sophia to more than once.
And as she walked, she wondered if it was a joke at all that Daryl had told.
But, either way, she had a job now, and she had a pretty good idea that she was up for the challenge.