"The hall remains,
It still contains
A pair of doors, a choice.
Behind one door,
A muffled roar,
Behind the other, a voice."
~ Frank R. Stockton
When you lose, and you lose, and you lose,Carol thinks, shifting a sideways glance towards Tyreese, who walks alongside her, a cooing Judith bobbling at his shoulders, his sweaty face calm and closed. When you lose so damned much. She forces the tears she has no right to cry back down her throat. Tears that belong to Lizzie. Mika. Karen and David. All of them. When you lose…
And though the mantra keeps pounding in her head in time with their crunching steps over the railroad ties, Carol can't help herself; she takes stock of what she hasn't lost: Judith; her life, at Tyreese's hand; companionship and maybe friendship from him, which she's not entirely sure she deserves. The hope that some of the others might be at the termination point of this seemingly ceaseless track: Rick, Carl, Glenn, Maggie, Daryl.
Thinking about Daryl right now feels like a pointless indulgence. What they had, or may have had, given the right amount of time and circumstances…well they hadn't, and they didn't. She's not the broken mess of a woman who was startled and touched by a beautiful white flower in a beer bottle. She's not the woman who collapsed in Rick's comforting arms after hearing Daryl abandoned the group for Merle. She's not even the battle-hardened but confident woman who playfully teased flirtation out of him, bit by boyish bit.
She feels pared down to essentials now, the final layer of who she used to be scrubbed away by this life. Somehow, she is less surprised than she should be at what is under the baby-fat layers of the scared, scarred, battered wife she used to be. After all, that woman, too, was used to loss, and blood, and battles. She was used to survival.
"Beer nuts and deer nuts," Tyreese's voice rumbles over her thoughts. "Got any other good bad jokes? I could use one or two right about now." He glances over at her, almost smiles. Gratitude swells in her chest and she reaches back towards another life, searching for something to offer him. She smiles suddenly, remembering one. This one a silly pun Sophia had brought home from school one day. Her smiles shrinks a little, but doesn't completely fall off her face.
"Okay, here's a really terrible one," she says to him. "This kid swallows some coins and his parents rush him to the hospital." She pauses, and he raises one eyebrow. "His grandmother calls a bit later to see how he's doing, and the nurse tells her 'No change yet'". She keeps her face still and solemn.
Tyreese snorts a little, startling Judith, who slaps his back. "That was truly terrible." His mouth twitches up a little in the corner though.
"It was one of Sophia's," she replies, shrugs, fights back tears. Her daughter is just one more thing she'll carry around with her forever. She smiles a little at him and he smiles back, the ghosts of so many little girls between them.
"I have one," he says. "It's bad, but good-bad, if you get me." She nods, adjusts her pack a little. "So, these two cows are grazing in a field next to each other, and one turns to the other and says, 'Do you ever worry about mad cow disease?' The other looks startled, shakes her head and says 'Why should I? I'm a helicopter!'"
She wrinkles her forehead and it hits her. She starts giggling. "That...that was really, really terrible. And not even good terrible!"
Tyreese looks mock-affronted, and at that precise moment, Judith reaches up a chubby hand, whacks him on the back of his head, crows loudly - something that sounds like "'Ribble!"
Both of the adults are so startled they burst out laughing. Every time Carol thinks she's caught her breath, she gets an eyeful of Judith, sucking on her fist, grinning around her wet hand. Tyreese, still chuckling himself, stops walking and reaches a hand out to steady her. Carol can hear her laughter turning from mirth to hysteria, but it feels impossible to stop. The giggles turn to guffaws that hurt her stomach, then to hiccups and are on the precipice of becoming belly-deep sobs. STOP.She bites down, hard, on her tongue, and the pain is sharp and clear and pulls her out of her spiral towards bone-deep sorrow.
She winces, spits out a mouthful of blood, which glistens on the metal tracks.
"Okay?" Tyreese's hand, still on her arm. His eyes, still on her face.
"Yup," she swipes one last time at her face, clearing it of those bodily fluids - blood, sweat, tears - humans are unable to keep inside. "Okay." They begin walking again, but get no more than a dozen steps forward when a voice rings out.
"Lookie-here," it's male, confident and cruel. "You all really need to learn how to keep yer voices down. Draw all kinds'a trouble in your direction, otherwise. The worst kind'a trouble."