Starting Over.
She slips the pastel blue cardigan on over her buttoned-up white blouse, that oh so perfectly matches her light grey trousers, and adjusts her collar and lapels as she scrutinizes herself in the bedroom's full-body mirror. She stands up straight, confident (but not too much) with her cutest, most oblivious the-Heavens-know-how-I-survived-this-shit-so-long smile. The very same she has presented as she handed over her MG, acting all Goodness, would you look at that. I have no idea how I came to even hold this ugly thing; the very same she has put on during the interview with Deanna as she told her how much she missed cooking for her stupid, wonderful husband and how much she would love to do some community work for their humanity's new hope, Alexandria. That image of a meek, harmless, suburban soccer mom staring back at her from the mirror fits perfectly into this place, she figures.
The people of Alexandria don't need to know who Carol Peletier really is. To what the scared Plain Jane, she once had been has evolved into, nor what she had done throughout her becoming. If things get ugly, if Alexandria turns out to be another pit of psychopaths and all hell breaks loose once more, if Rick and the others find themselves in yet another death trap - she'll lurk in the shadows, underestimated and forgotten by their enemies, until she'll blow their white picket fences up with a firework. Hopefully, though, it wouldn't get that far. Michonne was right; they need this. All of them. Peace, safety, a home – or at least a solid break from all the apocalyptic insanity they pulled through. This is their chance. And for this chance she'd play every role she has to; the clueless den mother who could have never gotten her family out of Terminus alive, the blindfolded little innocent who could have never brought it over herself to put an end to Lizzie. Yes, she can pretend to be the obedient fantasy-come-true of a man who used to beat her senseless. She just has to shut it all down, lock it away for good and never feel it again to be the woman she needs to be to protect the family.
She adjusts her cardigan one last time, genuinely enjoying the luxury feeling and scent of being clean, before leaving the bedroom and her grim thoughts behind, traversing the sea of sleeping bags and mattresses in the huge living room and finally stepping out the front door and into the sunlight.
"Off to punch the clock and make the casseroles!", she sing-songs with self-mockery, as she encounters Daryl on the porch, who's fiddling with his crossbow that he refuses to give up. She's everything but surprised to find him here, while the rest of their group is out to explore the town or getting assigned to a job within the community, finding their spot to fit in. As far as she noticed, he hadn't left this place since they moved in yesterday. Wait, not quite true. He must have moved at some point. How else would he have gotten from sitting on the ground to sitting cross-legged on the porch's fence, right?
"What?" Daryl's voice is as low and raucous as ever while he keeps fumbling with his weapon. It's only when she elaborate that he looks up at her, perfectly unimpressed by her all-new and tame appearance and an unambiguous What-the-hell written all over his face.
"Make dinner for the older people. The ones who need a break, people who can't cook… Get to meet a lot of the neighbours that way…" she says almost factually, before her tone switches into something more Stepford Wife-ish. A true actress manqué, isn't she?
But all she gets in return is a snort that is stuck somewhere between spite and amusement, along with a bitingly cynical "A'right." He lowers his head again and adjusts the string.
For the blink of an eye she just looks at him. "Have you taken a shower, yet?" It's a rhetorical question, obviously. The long bangs, hiding a great deal of his dirty face, are just as sort-of greasy as they've been before and he hasn't even changed his clothes yet. Also, is that dried possum blood sticking to his hands? Keeping his focus on the crossbow in his hands he just nods once, making a small "Hmhm."
She narrows her eyes at him. It's a quaint mixture of timid awkwardness and childish stubbornness about him and it reminds her of a Daryl she thought he had grown out of. He probably just needs some more time. Or a good nudge with the boot. She'll think of something. Always does. "Take a shower. I'm gonna wash that vest. We need to keep up appearances, even you." With feathery steps she walks down the porch stairs, heading to her new job.
"I ain't startin' now", Daryl grumbles, following the slim woman's movements with searchingly narrowed eyes.
"I'm gonna hose you down in your sleep", she sing-songs blithely, heading up the lane already.
"You look ridiculous!" She can hear him yell after her, after a barely noticeable pause, and she mildly shakes her head at her own dumb smirk.
Carol's little journey through the not even eerily utopian lanes of Alexandria leads her to something that looks like it's been a better hostel, back in the day. She can hear children playing in one of the neighboring gardens, oddly underlining the idyll that is burgeoning in front of her: Wooden benches have been placed in front of the building, sheltered by white pavilions someone had planted greeneries on - they look like a fairytale version of the wooden terraces their group had built back in the Prison. A lot of elderly people are sitting there, protected from the sun and swarmed by a hand full of younger men and women, carrying dishes or books. Behind those pavilions towers a rather modern, three-story building, whose damaged panorama windows are in the process of being semi-professionally restored and reveal parts of a clean canteen on the first and shelves of perhaps a small library on the third floor. A variety of well-nourished, small, soft and crooked silhouettes walks past them in irregular intervals, suggesting the harmonic in and out of a social hub. None of these people look like they could possibly stand a chance against anything that is waiting outside the walls of Alexandria. It's a surreal sight, really. And exactly the reason why she has to be as cautious as she is about their stay here. Because even if these people aren't a threat to them, with all their naïveté and newly founded apple- pie-lifestyle – Carol couldn't allow her family or herself to become like this, as well. To get weak. Not again. And so she spends the day mingling, introducing herself as the little sunshine who shares cookie recipes with the elderly, slowly becoming invisible once more.
The sun's setting as she ascends the stairs to the front porch. Snippets of chatter, the noises of a vivid family dinner and the over-all feel of lightheartedness are seeping through the closed door to welcome her before she even touches the door knob. A genuine smile curves her lips as she enters. Everyone's there, occupying the sofas, sleeping bags and mattresses they had gathered in the living room, talking about their day or enjoying each other's company. Michonne and Carl are debating over a stack of comic books the boy must have brought from some neighboring kids. Maggie and Glenn are sharing a sofa with Tara sitting on a huge pillow in front of them, Noah right beside her. Carol picks out it's something about a run they went on, while she greets Rick with a nod. He's feeding Judith, while the rest of their group has gathered around a dining table, enjoying a proper meal for the first time in months. The scent of fried meat and roast potato lingers in the air and rounds the atmosphere of a comfortably crowded home. But she can't let herself feel it. She can't have this kind of comfort creeping in underneath her skin, clouding her judgment of their situation.
"You should eat something, as well. Maggie made dinner for all of us, there's plenty left in the kitchen", Rick pulls her out of her thoughts, starting to calculate her and the groups' current position once again.
She smiles mildly at him. "Thanks, but I've had enough food pushed in my face for one day. It was insane." She chuckles, shaking her head at the memory of today's encounters. "I'll save it for later."
"I doubt there'll be a later for this bacon!" Abraham exclaims in-between bites, causing a wave of general amusement rippling through the room.
"Ah, I'll take the risk" Carol smiles back at him.
"Your loss, lady." And these were the last considerate words the redhead spoke before shoveling another giant spoon of beans into his mouth.
Carol sinks down on her mattress, crossing her legs as her gaze wanders through the room one last time – and lingers on Daryl. He's sitting on the windowsill, secluded from the rest of the group and staring outside, restlessly observing the street and neighboring gardens. He chews on something that looks like either beef jerky or roasted possum – hard to tell against the twilight of the setting sun. What the deep-golden light he is bathed in does reveal, however, is that it really still is the only thing he has been bathing in for quite some time now. She sighs inaudibly and turns to pull out a book from underneath her pillow. The cover reads Gone Girl and she has discovered it to be quite a refreshing alternative to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, she used to read to the children. It also helps not to glare Daryl to death while he's slipping back into his caged-animal-routine. She's also well aware that playing the guard dog for them all night and day is the healthier part of it. Because she knows him. They've never had that sappy moment of Show-me-your-scars-and-I'll-show-you-mine-and-we'll-compeed-who-had-it-worse-it's-gonna-be-rad; there's never been a need for that. From the very beginning, they've just looked at each other and knew. It must be some sort of odd phenomenon about tortured souls gravitating towards each other – which, she realizes, is just as sappy.
The group has been sitting together like that for two hours and 34 minutes – it's oddly satisfying to have a bunch of functioning clocks around – before the first people laid down to sleep. Maggie and Glenn have retreated to the kitchen, producing the very domestic sound of cluttering dishes and cutlery getting washed. It's far from being the annoying kind of background noise and definitely not what is keeping the grey-haired woman awake. It's something else entirely. A something that is probably disemboweling rodents on the porch, right now, while side-eying each and every shadow. Carol sits up with an exasperated breath, glancing over at the front door as she took a moment to solidify her plan of attack. She gets up and carefully steps through the sea of sleeping friends to the front door, opens it as carefully as possible not to make any unnecessary noise and closes it behind her just the same.
"Hey." Daryl's leaning over the porch fence, supporting himself on his lower arms. His crossbow is laying to his right and ready to be fired at any given chance. Daryl's eyes, however, are glued to the woman joining him. "You still look ridiculous."
Carol leans her hip against the fence and crosses her arms as she smirks at him, completely unfazed. "And you still haven't showered."
He snorts again. "Yah, you keep that charade up all ya want. But I ain't jumpin' through no hoops. For no one." He speaks the last three words with such a throat-slashing contempt that Carol could be dumb, deaf and blind and still wouldn't be able not to see that Daryl's issue with this place is way deeper than just an infantile tantrum due to foreign terrain. Additionally to the basic apprehension that Deanna could be just another Governor in disguise, that they're all sharing, Daryl has been forced to adjust to his abusers ever since he was a kid. Be it to his parents or to Merle, who has kept whipping him through his entire adult life, messing him into a person he loathed, someone who had no place in the world before the pandemic. But with social hierarchies and his entire family gone, he has finally been free to grow into a man he could be proud of; not just the lone-wolf hunter, but a council member young boys have been looking up to, and the closest thing they could get to a guardian angel. Damn that vest for reinforcing the image. Now, though, they were brought back to the closest thing to civilization she has seen in the last three years, a flourishing, structured community with, again, no place for Daryl Dixon so far. It represented everything he has learnt to despise. That sure digs a few things up again.
She slackens her pose to reach out for him and stroke the hair out of his face. "I get it." Her hand slides down to his cheek as their eyes lock and she can feel her facial features soften like they always do, when they have one of their several moments of mute and mutual understanding. And then she smiles, almost apologetically, giving him a pat. "But you reek."
Daryl's frown and the different stages of bewilderment, as well as his attempts to hide it, are priceless but Carol isn't even remotely done with him yet. She lays her hand on his shoulder as she walks past him and down the stairs and she would bet the small movement she perceives at the edge of her visual field, is him unobtrusively smelling at himself.
"Where're ya goin'?" She can hear him picking up his crossbow to follow her before she sees it, turning to walk around the corner of the house. It's a lot darker there, but the street lights were reaching far enough for them not to need a flashlight. Their distinguished wildlife experiences are doing the rest.
"Nowhere. I just need to get this done before I go to bed." She manages to sound even graver than she had been aiming for.
"What? We're going on a run or somethin'?" Daryl asks somewhere close behind her, but that's when Carol reaches the big, dark-green garden hose that, conveniently, every suburban villa comes with. Daryl's steps have stopped. "No."
With a few practiced swings, she uncoils the thing. "You're not asleep and all. But it'll do."
"Ya kiddin', right?"
She opens the faucet. "Sorry, Pookie." She gives him her best pixie smirk, then unlocks the nozzle. The spurt is not exactly forceful, but still strong enough to reach about six or seven feet, and Daryl is fast enough to easily dodge the first hit. "Don't ya fuckin' dare."
"Language, Mr. Dixon!" she warns him like the indignant den mother she's playing and shortens the distance between them with two swift steps, holding her thumb in the spurt to spray the water – and darn, it was cold! Well, no take backs at this point!
"Oh, please", he murmurs cynically and drops his crossbow as she's chasing him with his back against the porch fence, trying to get a hold of him with her hose-free hand. She only catches the hem of his leather vest though, but it's enough to keep him in place at least long enough to have the water shower down his neck as he's trying to writhe out of the thing. "God. Fuckin'. Damn it." He grunts between clenched teeth and stumbles as he suddenly slips free. Carol throws his soaked vest over the veranda and sends a few more shots of water after him. He brings a distance of two steps between them, just enough not to get force-showered again immediately, and shivers once in his now soaked clothes. Of course, Carol got her fair share as well, but in comparison it's pretty much nothing and if that's the price she has to pay for fooling around with him, then she was more than willing to pay it.
Daryl spreads his arms once and lets them fall to his sides with a wet clap. "The hell?!" Besides all the highly entertaining bewilderment on his face, there is a tiny smirk hiding in the left corner of his mouth as he speaks.
"C'mon, Daryl! This is fun."
"Yah?" He raises his voice a little, but said tiny smirk and the honey-thick sarcasm dripping from that one syllable are enough to convince her that he at least wouldn't snap her neck. "Let's see 'bout that!" Before he even finishes his sentence he dashes towards her, triggering the strange instinct to hose him again as if that could buy her some more seconds to run. But the cold water doesn't bother him anymore, now that he's soaked already, and as she realizes that she turns to dodge whatever kind of counterattack he was up to. Or so she tries. In the middle of her move, however, a violent pull in her arms forces her to swirl around, a surprised gasp on her lips, and bump her nose up against Daryl's chest who's trying to catch her fall with one hand while still holding the part of the hose he has been yanking at in the other.
"And now what?" she smirks at him as she straightens up, deliberately ignoring herself watering their feet, right now.
"Ah, dunno. Actually, thought ya'd be smart enough to just let go" he states dryly.
"Oh well" she shrugs her shoulders. "Wanna make out in the rain, then?" she teases, pursing her lips, which gets her his prominent semi-annoyed, semi-disbelieving expression - before she bluntly raises the hose between their faces.
He grunts, turning his head away and simultaneously covers the nozzle with his hand. "Pfft, stop." He briefly pulls a face, wrestling a little with her until he manages to wield the garden hose out of her hands. He turns the nozzle closed again, then lackadaisically throws the thing against the porch, where it hits the fence with a wooden thud.
Carol's gaze follows the flying object and moves on to take in the appearances of Rick, Michonne and Glenn standing on the porch with lowered knives, simply blinking at them. Carol can't help it and chuckles briefly at their dumbfounded faces. From the corner of her eye, she perceives Daryl covering his eyes with one hand, disguising his embarrassment by wiping the water of his face.
"What. The. Hell are you two doing?" The former sheriff is trying not too hard to hide his amusement. Same goes for Michonne who's straight out laughing. Only Glenn seems slightly unsympathetic about it: "Wow. We just heard… noises; we thought something happened!" He shakes his head, but in the end, he can't suppress a low chuckle either.
"It did. The lawn's ruined, can't ya tell?" Daryl retorts cynically and with a more tongue-in-cheek than hostile note as he walks over to them, shouldering his abandoned crossbow.
"Okay, guys, that's all really funny. But can we just skip to the part, where I'm sound asleep again?" Their samurai smirks as Daryl edges his way through them without another word. They all turn to follow him inside, only Rick pausing at the door sill to look back at her. "You're coming?"
"Yeah, in a few. I'll just clean this up a bit" Carol promises somewhat apologetically.
Rick gives her a nod and steps inside, leaving her alone to coil up the garden hose again. She's starting to freeze in her soaked blouse sticking to her cold, wet skin – despite that warm, cozy feeling inside, it was only fun while it lasted – and so she hurries to get back up the porch, picks up Daryl's forgotten vest and scurries inside.
She's still cold, even after changing into something dry and looks really forward to snuggle up in her sleeping back, placed upon an actual mattress and maybe even covered with an additional blanket. Hah, the vanity! But before that, she passes by the bathroom, a pile of dark, but clean clothes in her arms and listens for the rushing and splashing of an actively used shower. Check.
She knocks vigorously and receives a gnarled "Wha'?" from the other side of the door.
"I fetched you some clothes. Mind if I come in?"
"Door's open."
She presses down the door handle and enters and the humid, warm air in the room is bliss to her cold skin. The crossbow is leaning against the wall underneath the window and right next to it lays the pile of Daryl's apocalypse-tested rags. The archer himself is well-hidden behind the steamy glass of the shower cabinet and Carol only gets a brief look at his blurry silhouette as she places the clothes she's chosen for him on the toilet lid. "I also washed your vest. It's drying on the banister." She turns around - arms crossed - to observe the profile of his silhouette, his slow, almost hesitant movements to cleanse himself.
"Ya didn't have to" he doesn't sound ungrateful, just like someone who's uncomfortable with being cared about.
"I know. I wanted to." She pauses, squinting at him. "I also wanted to say sorry. I didn't mean to humiliate you in front of the others."
"Nah, ya didn't. I get it." He turns slightly and it seems like he's gazing over at her through the glass.
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other and nods. "Okay." She can't help it, she just doesn't sound as convinced as she wants to be.
Daryl moves and shoves the door segment of the cabinet open, slightly leaning out of it, so that he isn't fully exposing himself but still enabling them to look each other in the face. "I ain't givin' up, Carol. Still tryin'."
She exhales with a smile creeping into her features, before she bows her head with a fit of light laughter.
"Somethin' funny?" His voice has gained a serious note of irritation and it somewhat stings in her chest that he thinks, even if only for a second, she could ever make fun of him (them) for trying.
She quickly shakes her head and looks back up at him, that smile of relief never leaving her lips. "No, nothing." She releases her arms and steps up to him until they're only inches apart and she cups his face with both of her hands to gently shove his dripping hair back and out of his face. "It's just good to see you look like a person again."
He huffs half-heartedly, briefly turning his head away, chewing on the inside of his cheek, before he returns his gaze to her face. Her hands rest at the back of his neck, sucking up the warmth of the water and his skin. His eyes dart down and up her features and she observes him struggling with himself a little while longer, before he finally shifts and sheepishly moves half an inch or so closer to her face. She picks up on it and gets on the tips of her toes, just as he decides to lean in a little further and as a result their faces just bump against each other. Awkward chuckling and head-lowering follows but neither of them backs off and before she knows it, Daryl leans in again to press the quickest smooch in the history of quick smooches on the right corner of her mouth. She's surprised enough to drop back on her heels. She smiles, blinks, sees him biting his lower lip and cups his cheeks once more, before he can decide to shy away again. She pulls him down, making him tumble half a step out of the shower and presses an actual kiss on his lips. It's a velvety one and he returns it ever so carefully. It's clumsy and beautiful, with him being naked and soaked and her in her way too neat floral blouse and them both getting continuously sprinkled by the shower in Daryl's back. Oh. Right.
She breaks the kiss, having her thumb stroke above his cheek. "You, ah, should probably finish your shower, now. I'm afraid we've wasted enough water for one day" she smirks jokingly conscious-stricken and steps back to leave.
Daryl moves to nod, but it turns into a frown instead. "Hey, who's we?" he asks sarcastically – after all, the hose war as well as his prolonged shower are on her and her alone!
Carol stops in the bathroom's door frame and smiles back at him, somewhat knowingly. "Let's keep trying this, too. Okay?"
He grunts approvingly, nods for real, and quickly closes the shower cabinet's door segment, almost simultaneously with her closing the bathroom door.
Okay. Swell. Her clothes are all damp again, now. Only this time, it's actually warming her up on the inside and out.
/END
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
author's note:
Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead, only the dorkiness within this fic. No money has, is or will be earned with this.
Also, a HUGE thank you to my friend Zoraya Windwalker for beta-reading the shit out of this!
It's my first piece of fiction in years so I just hope you guys enjoyed it at least a little. I mean, c'mon, we all pictured something like this after that porch scene -wink-
Anywho, all faves and reviews and general thoughts are highly appreciated -presents to you the box below-