AN: So this "scene" is from the prompt that wanted Carol and Daryl as childhood best friends. I took a lot of liberties with this one and changed some of the "show" aspects to back story as well. However, it was just what I wanted to write and how I wanted to show them as childhood best friends.
I own nothing from the show.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl's memory was good for some things and not so great for others. He remembered exactly what his father looked like angry, but he could never bring to mind what the man might have looked like otherwise. He didn't believe, for a moment, that he'd never been anything but angry, but Daryl couldn't call up that particular vision to memory.
His father must have had at least some redeeming qualities, even if they passed before Daryl was born, or he never would've married Daryl's mother. That's what Daryl told himself. Maybe it wasn't so much that he wouldn't have married her, but she never would've married him. There had to be something that made her marry the man. There had to be something that made her love him. There had to be something that made her stay.
Because she stayed. She stayed for a lifetime in less years than it took for most to build a lifetime. She stayed like a post set firmly in concrete—not even hurricane winds from the storm that Daryl remembered his old man to be could move her.
Daryl's memory could draw up his brother's face in many different expressions—not just as it was now. He could recall the way that he looked when he left the last time. The last time before he came back to stay. The last time before there were no more goings-away to be done by Merle because he accepted there was nothing more for him and the next going away might very well see him doing twenty to life in a state institution.
And Daryl could recall the way that his mother looked at so many different times in his life.
For the moment, snatching her image out of "storage" in his mind and bringing it right to his mental vision tugged at something deep inside of him. But he indulged it anyhow. The pain was, as he'd heard it called before, bittersweet and he needed the sweetness more than he loathed the bitterness.
The ache, though painful just the same, was an ache he wanted. It was an ache he needed.
So he drew up her face in detail, just behind his eyes. He focused on it. Line by line. The flecks of color in her eyes—green specks that kept those eyes from being solid blue, the reason that he had never decided if he found green or blue eyes more beautiful—the streaks of silver that colored her hair long before they should have, though he hadn't realized how prematurely they'd appeared when he was still a boy that barely understood such things as aging. At the time? He'd somewhat believed that all "old" people were simply born that way. They didn't become old, they were simply set to be that. Only he and Merle grew older. Only the people he went to school with grew up. They celebrated their birthdays to mark the passage of time—but those set in old age from the start? They didn't celebrate.
That's why he'd never known, as a boy, what his mother's birthday was. That's why there had never been a cake. It's why there had never been a card and not a flower the first.
That, and his old man wouldn't have given her such things so she might as well have not wanted them.
The image that most clearly came to mind for Daryl of his mother—the image that most often he drew up when he went about trying to do such a thing—was of that time long ago when he was caught on the cusp between being a boy and a man. Merle was gone—again. Where, exactly, Daryl couldn't quite recall. It didn't matter. In the grand scheme of things? It just didn't matter. The old man was gone too. At the time of the memory? He'd been gone for less than two days. He'd blown out of there like a hurricane. They were waiting him to blow back in again with just as much force.
That's what he always did. The only change, and those times were rare, were the few times that he came back broken. He practically crawled back. Tired and dropped from the artificial energy he'd found in some bottle somewhere. Those times? Few and far between as they were, he came back a shadow of himself. He came back with false apologies on his lips. But a few days of rest, a new friend found in a bottle, and he was up again—not so much on his feet as off his rocker—and he would do his worst once more, apologies and contrition forgotten, and he would blow right back out again.
Merle left. The old man left. She stayed. She always stayed.
That day, Daryl recalled her face because she'd turned it to him just as he'd come in the door, the wooden door slapping loudly against its frame, and she'd smiled. In front of her, on the table, had been the bottle and a glass with half melted ice. She'd been drinking down some comfort. She'd smiled at him—always beautiful—and she'd waved him over to her. He'd come, settled at the table next to her, and she'd sat for a moment with her face in her hands and stared at the wall like she'd forgotten he was there.
Another drink poured, something wiped from her eye, and she'd remembered Daryl's presence, smiling at him again.
He remembered the strangest things about that day. The smell of late summer. The sound of it. Late summer, after all, had a smell and a sound in Georgia. Just the long and lonely hum of the cicadas rising up could remind him, in an instant, of that hot day.
Carol had been waiting just outside, in the yard, to see if Daryl could get a quarter to go with hers and they'd go split some ice cream together. That's why he'd come in the house in the first place—just to get a quarter to go with Carol's so they could split some ice cream.
He remembered the evidence of his father's anger on her face. He wasn't wearing, that day, any fresh marks of his own because she'd stopped him. When she could? She stopped him. She always had. And for her efforts, she'd more often worn the marks on her face than she hadn't, but she was still beautiful.
Always beautiful. Forever beautiful. Even today, when he'd seen her this morning, so very different than that late summer day, she'd been beautiful.
"You're a good boy," she said softly. "My sweet boy."
She laughed to herself.
"The sweet one," she said. She shook her head slightly. "Merle? He'll catch up, but he's got a whole lotta Dixon in him. More than you. You? You gotta lot more'n just the Dixon in you. You're a good boy—my sweet boy."
She stopped as suddenly as she'd started, seemed amused at her own slightly intoxicated rambling, and then she started up, switching her gears only slightly.
"Gonna be a good man, too, one day," she said. "Good man. Don't let the world change you? Don't let—the world make you somethin' that you ain't gotta be?"
"Yes ma'am," he'd responded, not knowing how else to respond. He didn't know what kind of man he'd be—it was frightening at the time to think of even being a man—and he feared being just the same as his old man. After all, that's what Merle had said they were destined to be. They might as well get used to it.
"You find you some sweet girl," she said. "Some sweet girl. You make her your wife. You make her—mother to your kids. Raise 'em up right? Don't you lay your hands on them. Not on your wife and not on your kids. Ya hear? Don't'cha lay your hands on them in nothin' but love."
Daryl remembered nodding to that. Maybe he'd responded with another stock response of "yes ma'am". Maybe he'd simply remained quiet. She'd drank down the rest of the drink in the glass, shook the ice around so that I clattered against the edges of the glass, and refilled it. There was no telling how many she'd had. There was no telling how many more she'd have before he found her—late that evening perhaps—sleeping soundly. Sleeping the sleep of those who had drank more comfort than they could handle.
But even through that, she stayed. So he never asked if she was going anywhere. It never occurred to him that she might. Honestly? Until the very moment he'd heard she was gone, he'd believed her incapable of leaving.
When that drink was done, sure that Carol might be melting into a puddle outside and just out of view of the porch door, Daryl had finally pressed for the quarter and braced for a speech about money—the kind his old man was a fan of handing out.
But she'd simply smiled at him. She'd gotten up from the table, walked toward the fridge with some slightly off balance steps that swayed her small frame, and she'd reached up and pulled down a canister he thought held band aids, cast off nails, and other such trinkets—but from it she pulled a small change purse.
And from the small change purse? She'd pulled a dollar. It might as well have been a million at the moment, and she'd offered it to Daryl.
"Your Daddy don't know this is here," she said, shaking her head at Daryl. "And you ain't gonna tell him, is you?"
Daryl had shook his head right back at her, barely able to contain himself just to hold the quantity of money. He'd offered change, just as he'd always done when he was sent out with more money than he needed, but she'd shook her head to that.
"Take that young gal out," his mother said. "Treat her like you ought to. Like the sweet man you gonna be. Buy her ice cream. Share a soda. Get her candy for the week and some for yourself too. Your Daddy don't know that money's there. It isn't his to worry about. It's just between us. Between me and you."
And Daryl had thanked her before he'd given her a hug. Even at that age his arms would wrap all the way around her small frame, and he'd burst out the door that he'd come through just before, hearing it clap shut behind him and bounce.
From the door, she'd called out to Carol. Just "Carol Ann," nothing special, and Carol had waved at her from the ground at the corner of the porch steps where she'd stood, red-faced and perspiring, to wait on Daryl. Daryl had waved at her too and she'd waved back before she'd gone back to the liquid comfort that waited for her.
It was the clearest memory that he had of his mother—it played behind his eyes with the same clear image as something on a television screen. But it wasn't the only memory that he had of her. Not even close.
Many years later? She'd still been beautiful. And many years later? Her face had lost the bloom of youth that it had back then—a youth he'd almost wholly ignored at the time because he could only compare it to his own youth—but it had also lost the angry marks of the man whose face he only remembered twisted in rage and unpleasantness.
This morning? When he'd gone to say goodbye? She'd looked peaceful. She'd looked beautiful, as always. She'd looked like she was sleeping—the same as she had when he'd gotten home that hot summer day and covered her with a blanket—except this time it hadn't been the bottle she'd found comfort in. She hadn't searched for comfort there in a long time.
Daryl rocked on his feet, hot and tired and aching to leave as the long line of people slowly started past them in procession. To his left stood his brother and to Merle's left rested his mother.
Daryl heard the condolences and some fond memories of his mother, all spoken in soft voices like they might disturb her, as they went to Merle first. Then it was his turn to extend a hand, half-listen to what they had to say, and thank them for coming—even if he didn't care if any of them had come at all.
But this was what he had to do. And he would do his duty, as a good son, to his mother. He had never willingly embarrassed her before, and he wasn't going start now, just in case she might know.
Daryl did his duty and he thanked everyone that came, but he focused neither on their faces nor on the words that they offered him. What they had to say mattered little to him. How could it?
She'd always stayed, through everything, and now she was gone.
The only time he really noticed even a single soul in the line was when he heard a voice that—changed and deepened only slightly since he'd heard it last—simultaneously snatched him into the present and dragged him into the past.
She shook Merle's hand, a half-smile on her face as though she wasn't sure what was appropriate in such a situation, and she offered some words to him the same as everyone else had. And then she looked at Daryl, stepping forward the step and a half it took for her to reach him. She stopped a moment, after putting her hand in his, and stared at him.
He hadn't seen her since she'd left town twelve years before. He hadn't heard from her since she'd started dating Ed Peletier. Rumor had it that Ed didn't care for her speaking to another soul—not even her best friend—and especially not if that soul happened to belong to the body of a man.
Daryl swallowed.
"I'm so sorry about your Mama," Carol said.
Daryl swallowed again and nodded.
"She was—a good woman," Carol said. "A sweet woman."
The words struck Daryl—maybe from the memory he'd been replaying in his mind to get him through the day so far—and he nodded again, brow furrowed slightly as he fought back a wave of his own emotion.
Carol smiled a little more sincerely than she had with Merle.
"It's good to see you," she said. "I hate—I hate it's under such circumstances. I always meant to get back here. I meant to visit Miss Louise, when Mama told me they put her in—when her mind—well—I meant to visit, but..."
Daryl nodded and spoke to save her from herself.
"It's OK," Daryl said. "She—uh—she always loved you. Always—worried about you. In the end? She didn't know if you come or you didn't."
Carol swallowed.
"It's so good to see you," Carol said. "I just wish—circumstances..."
Daryl nodded.
"I know," he said. "Been a while."
"Too long," Carol said.
Daryl nodded his agreement to that too, starting to feel a little like a bobblehead version of himself. He cleared his throat.
"Maybe we could catch up some time? See each other again? Before such circumstances," Daryl said.
Carol smiled and nodded.
"I'd like that," she said. "I just—moved back to town. I've got the time. Maybe we could...talk about your Mama? Or anything, really. Catch up on old times? It might be nice to have someone to—remember with?"
Daryl said that he'd like that, and Carol glanced over her shoulder at the line that was backing up. She looked back at Daryl and shook his hand again, though hers had never actually left his.
"I should be going, but look for me? I'm Carol McAlister, but—it's Mama's old line until I get my own place?"
"McAlister?" Daryl asked.
"Again," Carol said. But she didn't offer an explanation and Daryl didn't ask for one. It wasn't the time or the place. There were other things that he had to do today. There were other tasks he had to perform.
He was almost reluctant to let her pull her hand loose from his, but he did. She moved on and he turned back to shake the hand of the next person in line and to let their meaningless words fall on his temporarily deaf ears.
In a fit of superstition or silly belief, Daryl wondered for a moment if his Mama might have had something to do with this. Wherever she was now, whatever she was doing, maybe she'd had something to do with this.
Because even once her mind had gone? She'd remembered a few things—and one thing she'd remembered, right up until the end, was that Carol Ann was a sweet girl.
She was just right for a sweet boy-made-a-man.
Daryl smiled to himself.
The idea of it had always been something that had given her comfort, in those final days, when she sought her comfort in places outside a bottle. She'd found comfort in the thought that her boys—her sweet Daryl and her settled Merle—would find happiness. That they'd be a different kind of Dixon.
She'd found comfort in the men that they'd become and the men that she believed they'd become—so unlike their old man even if each of them carried a skunk streak of him that they fought into submission. She'd found a comfort, there at the end, that had showed on her face—even this morning.
And in that? Daryl found comfort.
And he found, in the most unlikely of places and in the most unexpected of moments, some hope for the future.
Likely just one last gift from his Mama, every bit as special as a crumpled dollar bill that would buy two scoops of ice cream, one soda, a bag of dime candy—and a sweet kiss from a sweet girl right onto the cheek of a sweet boy. A different kind of Dixon.