AN: So this one shot was inspired by the request of my super secret fic requester. However, since it fit so well with the Nine Lives challenge entry, I thought that I'd just combine the two to do a challenge fic and write a one shot that "Cat Woman" might enjoy. LOL
It's got some "spoilers" if you're not caught up to date, but other than that I guess you could say it's really just sort of a vision of something that probably won't happen no the show, but maybe could in the future.
It's just for fun, at any rate. I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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I don't want to talk about it.
Daryl had heard at least ten different variations of the statement since he'd first laid eyes on her outside of Terminus and felt, like an overly sensory dream, her body wrapped in his arms once more.
Something had happened and it had changed Carol.
It hadn't changed her entirely. She was still the same person that she was before in all the ways that mattered, but Daryl could tell that there was a change there. There was a heaviness about her that he wished he could simply lift for her. He'd thought she might open up to him when they'd gone looking for Beth. He'd thought that he might, somehow, get her to finally talk about it, but that hadn't been the case at all. At least, they'd never gotten around to it thanks to the interruption of their unwelcomed guests.
And now?
Now they'd buried Beth. But Carol, by some streak of good fortune that she seemed to have on her side, was still there.
And Daryl was grateful for that. He was more grateful for that than he could have ever put into words—not that he tried very often to do such a thing.
Then they'd buried Tyreese.
And now Carol was even more reluctant to talk about whatever it was that had happened—whatever it was that had changed her. Daryl didn't have to be a scholar to know that, whatever it was that Carol didn't want to talk about, half the secret shared between two people had gone into the cold grave right along with the remains of their travelling companion.
Perhaps Carol didn't want to talk about it, or perhaps she couldn't. But that was only consciously. It was evident that, subconsciously, all that she wanted was to talk about it.
Now that they'd split into two houses, Carol had offered to take a room that was little more than an oversized broom closet, of sorts, for herself so that others, in her words, might be more comfortable. After all, everyone deserved a little comfort, now that it was afforded to them—except, maybe, Carol.
Still, the group had gone right along with it and they'd divided rooms among themselves, leaving her with the makeshift "room" that was barely large enough for her, with some assistance, to wedge an extra mattress into that the good people of Alexandria had provided them with.
It was only later that she'd explained to him, in hushed words and without any need for beautiful language, that she'd requested the private space—even if it wasn't the nicest for residing in—because it would allow them the privacy they needed for him to come and "visit" with her at night without the prying eyes and unnecessary comments from the other members of the group. It was, in short, similar to the arrangement that they'd had at the prison, and it had seemed to work to keep people from spending any extra energy they might have in annoying activities like the minding of their business.
And every night since they'd been there, Daryl had done his best to slip as quietly as he could from the living room—because he didn't need a bed and preferred to bunk at some distance from any mass of other people—up to the little closet and let himself inside.
Just as always before, they spent some nights exploring each other's bodies with quiet interest, so as to not alert anyone around them what might be happening in the enclosed space, but most nights they simply slept together—content to occupy the same space and lull themselves to sleep with the sound of each other sleeping. And every morning, as had always been the practice, Daryl's internal clock would warn him that it was time to go, just as it was warning Carol that she needed to be up and ready to greet the day—there was always something to be done—and he would join her for one last, quick kiss before he slipped out of the closet as quietly as he'd entered it.
But there were many nights when, Carol gone to sleep and Daryl left alone, he didn't listen to her soft and rhythmic breathing like he had most nights at the prison. Now, when she slept, she seemed caught up in some kind of eternal struggle—battling demons that he feared weren't even as easily dismissed as the flesh-eating, rotting, ambulatory corpses that had become a daily horror in their lives.
She'd had those kinds of dreams before. He remembered them from when he'd first begun to share her bed with her, after he returned to the prison from finding his brother. Back then, he would wake her and she would tell him about the dreams—the good ones about Sophia, the bad ones about Ed, the good ones where her imagination told her that they'd found Sophia safe and sound, the bad ones about Sophia when her imagination failed her—and then he, in turn, would tell her about his own nightmares. He'd shared with her, in these secret nights they stole together, more than he'd shared with anyone in his life.
So he'd naturally come to believe that they could tell one another everything.
But now?
She didn't want to talk about it. And he wasn't going to push her to talk about it, but that also meant that he felt there was a good deal that he couldn't talk about with her. After all, if they couldn't share anymore then what good was it giving his secrets away and putting words to things that made him uncomfortable when she was basically saying that he couldn't be trusted to hear the same from him?
He could wait her out. After all, he had just as much practice in life keeping to himself as she did. He could do it well.
For the time being, he would simply continue, as he had been, to come to the broom closet bedroom like a nightly guest and bed down there silently—enjoying whatever she offered him of herself—and he would wait.
Because, when she was ready to talk, and she was ready to release the demons that were keeping her from sleeping peacefully at night, he wanted to be well within reach to be the one to help her chase them away.
While he'd been walking around the house, though, shaking his head at the pictures that remained of smiling faces that had somehow disappeared from this "safe" place and left behind only images of themselves burned on photo paper, he'd noticed that in one of the rooms, tacked among a good deal of clutter on a top shelf that held objects long forgotten and essentially useless to them all, there hung a novelty dream catcher.
He'd pulled down the ridiculous string, feather, and bead ensemble and examined it. It wasn't really even a well-made dream catcher. It was the kind that you could pick up at any hokey street side store when you were even miles away from the nearest "Native American Amusement Location".
Still—if there was any truth at all to the theory that they did something, anything at all, to cleanse the mind in any way of bad dreams, it was worth the time it would take to thumb tack it to the wall of a broom closet bedroom.
So Daryl took the novelty item, sure that no one would miss it, and he took the thumb tack too that had been holding it near the shelf of useless items. He carried it with him, tack and all, stuck deep in his pocket—no doubt miring its substantial novelty "beauty"—until night had fallen and everyone had been tucked down to sleep.
And then he carried it with him as he crept quietly up to the tight little bedroom, tapped lightly at the door, and let himself inside the space where Carol was already curled up on the mattress, a small lamp burning on the floor in the corner, practically in her face because there was nowhere else for it to go.
As soon as the door was closed behind him, Daryl pulled out the dream catcher, attempted to fluff its pathetic feathers and give it some shape that was slightly reminiscent of what it once had been—or what it was supposed to have been—and then he pulled off his boots and stepped onto the mattress, walking across it without ceremony.
"What are you doing?" Carol hissed in the semi-darkness, her whole body bobbing up and down because of his footfalls on the mattress.
He didn't respond immediately. He picked a spot, centered on the wall above the mattress, between where their two heads would lay when he was properly in his "place" in the bed, and he pressed the thumb tack into the imitation leather strap to hang the sad little dream catcher in place.
"What's that?" Carol asked, rolling to find out for herself what he was doing since he hadn't bothered to respond to her verbally.
"Dream catcher," Daryl responded, straightening the thing a little. He might have ribbed her for not knowing what it was, but really he wasn't sure that too many people, in its current condition, would know what it was.
"What are you doing?" Carol asked.
"I don't know," he said, deciding this he could rib her for, at least a little. "Looks like I'm hanging it up to me, what do it look like to you?"
She made a noise at him, but it still amused him.
"Why?" She asked, as he sat down on the bed and leaned his back against the very same wall where he'd just hung the dream catcher.
"Say they make people have good dreams," Daryl said. "Or if not make 'em have good dreams, makes it so they don't have the bad."
"Are you having bad dreams?" Carol asked, her voice changing tone a little from before.
Daryl chewed his lip a moment in contemplation. It would be next to impossible to believe that Carol wasn't aware of the dreams that were plaguing her more nights than they weren't. They were so vivid to her that she moved around in her sleep, physically trying to escape them, and Daryl stayed awake because it would have been impossible to sleep next to her. On the best of nights the most he could do to offer any kind of comfort was to rest a hand on her, and sometimes it seemed to calm her while other times it did nothing.
But maybe, it was a case of I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. Maybe Carol wasn't going to just hand over her secrets to him this time. Maybe he had to show his cards first.
The worst that could happen, honestly, was that she left him spilling his guts and then responding blankly that "she didn't want to talk about it" when he prompted her to do the same in return.
"Yeah," he ceded finally. "Yeah…I have."
Carol shifted around, suddenly apparently filled with interest, and she sat up. She settled with her back against the wall next to him and looked at him for a moment. He stared back at her, waiting for her to direct him—to tell him what to do. It was never him who began these conversations.
"Well?" She asked. "You wanna talk about it? Tell me…what it is?"
There it was. Did he want to talk about it? Because she hadn't yet, but maybe he did. But he'd bite.
He shrugged, not sure where to begin. The best thing, maybe, about talking to Carol was that she seemed to have no expectation for him. She seemed not to be bothered if he didn't say things "just right," as long as he said them just right for himself.
"We get here," he said, choosing somewhere to start. "We get here and…it doesn't feel quite right, you know? Lotta people didn't make it here. They're talking about me doing runs. Talking about…roles…taking roles…jobs here. Like I'm some kinda hero or some shit."
He waited a moment for Carol to say something, but she didn't. He gnawed his lip and continued.
"The dreams ain't nothing except what they were," he admitted. "Just…come back, that's all. Looked and looked for Sophia. Was so damn sure I was gonna find her, ya know? Just one more day. One more…mile. That…ledge over there or that road…but…"
He stopped and shrugged and Carol nodded her head slightly at him, her features changing a little. He saw her drop her eyes toward the bed for a moment before she brought them back in his direction.
"Yeah," she said, "I know."
She did know. She knew all about what happened with Sophia. She knew all about how hard he'd looked for her and how important it had been to him to find the girl. It had felt, almost, like finding her would somehow right so much wrong in the world, even if it really wouldn't have changed much in the grand scheme of things. When she'd come out of that barn? When he'd known it was all over as surely as Carol had known it? His first feeling had been disappointment. It had been like being slammed in the chest by a wrecking ball. His second feeling was that—if he couldn't save Sophia—he could at least protect Carol.
And he'd failed her a number of times on that, but she didn't seem to hold it against him.
"Same dreams," Daryl said. "But this time? She's in 'em too, ya know? Trying just as hard to save her. Gonna—find her some damn where. Get mad at myself for gettin' mad at her. I end up yellin' at her. Just…yellin'. Shoulda stayed back when I told ya. Gone where the hell I told ya. Shoulda not been so stupid. Just keep thinking that if I'da done something different? She'da come outta that hospital—but alive. We were that close. She…if I'da seen it coming. I coulda stopped it. They're the same dreams, but…different."
Carol looked at him, pained expression, and nodded her head slightly.
"Beth," she said softly.
"You told me I gotta feel it," Daryl said. "But I don't wanna feel it. Because…when I feel it? I feel me, just bein' a fuck up. Just…fucking it up."
Carol shook her head at him.
"Noooo," she said, dragging the word out longer than it had to be, the tail end of it coming out airy. "No…you didn't. Not with Sophia and not with Beth. You didn't…it just…"
She broke off.
"This world just…doesn't make any sense anymore," Carol said. "They used to say the strong survived. Now…I just think maybe it's the…"
But she broke off. Because she didn't want to put a label on it. To put a label on it would be to clump them all together, everyone who was still there, and there was nothing that you could say that could span them all and wrap them tightly in a neat little package together.
Daryl swallowed.
"When—I thought you were dead. When—I thought you…weren't ever coming back," Daryl admitted. "I told Beth I thought that the good didn't make it in this world. This ain't a world for good people."
Carol lowered her eyes a moment.
"Maybe you were right," Carol said. "Or—almost right. You're a good man. If you weren't? You wouldn't have bad dreams about Sophia…or about Beth."
Daryl shook his head at her.
"I might not have been all wrong," he said. "But—I knew I weren't all right when I saw you outside…"
He broke off and chuckled to himself, not because it was funny but simply because, even now, the image of her appearing behind him—a footfall that he knew by sound—still made him feel strangely lighter.
"I knew I weren't all right when I saw you there. Covered over in mud. The good do make it," Daryl said. "Just—maybe just the lucky ones."
Carol dropped her eyes again and Daryl fought back the urge to reach and catch her face in his hand. He knew, too well, what it meant when she couldn't look at him. But he wanted her to have a moment to struggle with whatever it was that she was struggling with at the moment because he wanted it to lead her to share with him the rest. He wanted to know about her dreams as well.
She started to shake her head at him, but she didn't say anything.
"Tell me," Daryl said. "It doesn't matter what it is. It ain't never gonna matter. Just—tell me. Please?"
She continued to shake her head for a moment and then he realized that she was fighting tears. She moved quickly, more ashamed of the salty drops of liquid now than she'd ever seemed of them before, and fumbled around in her bag. He watched her as she came up with tissues, pulled from a cellophane packet of some kind, and she blew her nose and mopped at her face before discarding them on the floor.
And she dipped her hand, once more, into the bag and came out with a clean tissue. But then she paused and dipped her hand back again, this time coming out with a silver wrapped square that glimmered slightly in the darkness.
She looked at it and then tossed it into Daryl's lap. He had no idea what it was until he picked it up and examined it. It was a bar of chocolate—or at least part of one.
He chuckled to himself because it seemed so ridiculously out of place at the moment and hand in hand with her tears.
"What?" He asked.
"It's chocolate," she said, her voice breathy. "What does it look like to you?" She added, a hint of teasing to mirror what he'd done to her earlier.
"You're just…hoarding chocolate?" Daryl asked.
Carol shrugged.
"I can't eat it," she said. "It's—I wish you would eat it. Or throw it out. It's like—blood chocolate, Daryl."
He furrowed his brows at her in question.
"Don't tell me you don't wanna talk about it," Daryl said. "Talk."
She shook her head again, but it wasn't as sincere as before. He waited her out a moment and then she did finally begin to speak.
"I killed her," Carol said.
Daryl swallowed.
"I know about Karen," he said. "And David. And—Carol...I can't say it was the only thing to do. But…it was the best…was the best you could do."
This conversation they had had before, although only briefly and only enough for him to let her know that Rick had told him what she'd done—and that he wasn't harboring any bad feelings about her or about what had happened. He didn't like the idea of it any more than he knew that she did, but just like he'd told Rick. It was her. She'd killed them because it was the best for the group. It was the best for them to end their suffering. It wasn't her acting the way that Rick thought, at first. It wasn't some act of cold hearted murder.
But Carol continued the shaking of her head.
"No…no…no…" she muttered, the words spilling out. "No…Daryl…"
He didn't know what it was, but it was clear that whatever was going through her mind at the moment was one of the main sources of the nightmares because it appeared she was struggling with one right now, despite the presence of the tacky dream catcher tacked to the wall behind them, and he responded the only way that he knew how. He reached and pulled her to him, against him, and he simply sat there, waiting it out with her…hoping that one day he knew how someone was supposed to react when someone else cried like she sunk into doing, no longer hiding or apologizing for the tears that came.
"Lizzie," she said quietly. So quietly, in fact, that Daryl almost didn't hear her.
"What?" He asked.
"Lizzie," she said. "I—Daryl I shot her. I had to. She…killed Mikka. She was going to kill Judith. She would have…she'd have killed everyone. Daryl…she thought the Walkers were human. She though—they were still human! We'd come back…and we'd be…we'd be us. And she would have killed everyone. She would have killed Judith…just like she killed Mikka. I killed her, Daryl…"
Daryl rubbed her back because he didn't have words for the moment. He listened, horrified, as she told him the story of what had happened. He was horrified for what she'd done. He was horrified for what she'd had to do. And, all at once, he was angry at the world for being a place where a child like Lizzie could go mad like that. And he was mad because it was a place where a child like Mikka died at the hands of someone she trusted because of their madness. And he was angry that it was a world where a woman like Carol—a mother like Carol—had to kill a child to save another while Tyreese had let her do it.
Because, as horrible as it was, Daryl knew that he would have never let her do it. If it had to be done? Which he had no doubt that it did have to be done or she'd never have gone through with it, he would have insisted on being the one to do it.
She didn't have to do it. She didn't have to see those things. She'd seen enough already.
His anger, though, wasn't going to change a thing now. It wouldn't change one single thing. So there was no need in even frightening her with it. There was no need in even adding it to her plate.
So he simply said the only thing that he knew to say in the moment.
"You shouldn't have had to it…you never should have had to do it…" he repeated over and over like a litany.
And when she'd cried it out, his words seemed to have done something for her because she looked at him with a look of something like relief on her face.
"You're not…you don't think I'm a monster?" She asked.
He chuckled then for the humor of it.
He might have thought, once or twice, that she was an angel, but he'd never thought she was a monster.
"You ain't a monster. Do what the hell we gotta do, right?" Daryl said.
She nodded slightly at him and went back for more tissues to mop her face.
And Daryl didn't want to push her to say anything more. She was talking about it now. She was open and she realized that, just like he'd promised her before, he wasn't going to turn into the very thing she feared she was. He wasn't going to turn into some monster who would shame her and harm her—emotionally or physically—for the hardships that the world had given her in plenty.
But he picked up the chocolate square, resting in his lap, and curiosity overtook him.
"Carol?" He asked, barely croaking out her name.
She made a humming noise, still cleaning up the mess that her tears had made of her face. He held the chocolate up and raised an eyebrow at her, all that was necessary for the question to be asked.
And when she moved the tissue away from her face, the frown she was wearing deepened again.
"Sam," she said.
"Sam?" He asked.
Sam wasn't dead. The boy was alive and well. He played in the streets every day and he followed Carol around at any of the "dinners" that Alexandria had hosted because he knew well that she always came with treats.
Truthfully, Daryl kind of liked the kid because he thought—and maybe he thought wrong—that she got some chance from him to "mother" a little. She got from him some type of adoration and love that maybe she needed. The boy would, after all, wrap his arms around her in a hug of appreciation for whatever she gave him and he thought, more than once, that he'd seen a glimmer of a smile on her face when he did.
But looks could be deceiving perhaps.
"What'd Sam do to you?" Daryl asked, wondering what a ten year old boy could do to her.
She shook her head at him once more.
"Was what I did to him," Carol said.
Daryl hummed to provoke her to keep talking.
Her frown was still there, but she didn't seem to be inclined to cry over whatever it was.
"Do you remember…that night I went to get the guns? Out of storage?" Carol asked.
Daryl hummed. He did remember it.
"I stole that chocolate too, while I was there," Carol said. "I—I thought I'd make more cookies. Just—for us. For our group…just something special? But—while I was there, Sam showed up. He saw me getting the guns. He wanted to know what I'd done. He wanted more cookies."
Daryl simply nodded that he was listening. There was nothing for him to say until he knew what the rest of the story was.
"I told him that he couldn't tell anyone," Carol said. "We didn't know—still don't—what might happen here. We don't know what…or who…we might end up dealing with. I knew that if he told…they'd knew we had the guns. They'd…find out…about me. They might kick us out and we need this place. We need it. So I told him that he couldn't tell. And that, if he did? One night…he'd go to bed and, when he woke up? He'd be outside the fences, tied to a tree. And he'd scream and then the monsters…the monsters would come and they'd eat him alive. Daryl—I just wanted him not to tell. If something happens? If we're protecting people? He could be protected. But if he tells?"
Daryl almost laughed. He almost laughed because he could imagine, as a ten year old boy, that Sam must have been pissing his pants to hear such a tale.
"I told him if he didn't tell…he'd get cookies. Lots and lots of cookies," Carol said.
Daryl very nearly bit a hole through his lip trying not to laugh in this most serious of moments.
"I really am a monster," Carol declared.
"The fuckin' Cookie Monster, maybe," Daryl said. "Kid gets cookies for not bein' a rat. That's a better deal than what he'da got growin' up like I did. You don't rat, you keep your teeth. You do rat…well…"
He let some of the laugh out then.
"You ain't no damn monster," he commented. "Kid loves your cookies. Probab'ly don't sleep…but loves your cookies."
Seeing the look on her face, Daryl reached and rubbed his fingers quickly across her cheek to her jaw line. He shook his head at her.
"You ain't no monster," he said. "Do what we gotta do. But I know you—believe me or don't. I know you. And you ain't never hurt a soul—grown or kid—that you didn't have to. You ain't gonna up and start now."
The only way that he knew to erase the frown from her face was to lean forward and catch her lips in a kiss, which she returned even if halfheartedly. When he pulled back, much of the frown was gone, but her eyes showed clearly that she was exhausted simply from spilling everything that she'd spilled so far.
He was sure that, now that it was out in the open, they would revisit this more often—all of it, but tonight wasn't the night for going any farther into it.
He unwrapped the chocolate and broke the square in half that was there. He offered her half of it and when she shook her head, he offered it to her again.
"Go ahead," he said. "Eat it. You'll get more. This…"
He broke off and shook his head, snickering at his own thoughts.
"This we eat in honor of Sam," he said.
"You're terrible," Carol muttered, but he did notice that she took the chocolate.
"And tomorrow," Daryl said. "You're takin' that damn dream catcher off the wall and makin' a present of it. Don't think there'll be no more bad dreams here…but ole Sam might be needin' it."