Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1:This is another of the half-finished fics I have found collecting dust in my word documents since the season four finale. This is a response fill for the USS Caryl's 2nd fanfiction/fanart Challenge on tumblr - as requested by a delightful-chimichanga.
Warnings: Meant to fit in some point during the winter when Team Prison were going from house to house - so sometime in between the season two finale and the season three premier. This is meant to show how Carol and Daryl's relationship could have evolved over the course of the season 2-3 hiatus, through Carol's eyes. It is a psychological themed piece that does a lot of focusing on how one adapts to living during the 'end of the world' and all the baggage that comes along with it. *Contains: adult language, adult content, emotional baggage, dealing with the loss of a child, allusions to non-canon character suicide, light religious references and some vague season three spoilers.
Our Story is a Broken one (but we're holdin' our ground)
Chapter One
Sometime during mid-November, just before the first real bout of winter weather hit, they came across a house in a secluded part of the Everglades. It was about two hundred clicks outside of Douglasville and miles from the nearest highway. In other words, it seemed like their kind of perfect.
Normally, people who lived this far into the sticks were the reclusive type, the kind who'd be more likely to greet you with the barrel of a shotgun than a smile. But, if the size of the property was any indication, whoever owned it had been wealthy, private but wealthy.
Wasn't there an old saying about that? That wealth excuses oddness? Strange bedfellows or-
She couldn't remember.
Glenn had been the one who'd found it. He'd been comparing a city map to a local one, shaking them out across the counter of a burned out convenience store on the outskirts of town, when he'd stumbled upon the discrepancy. They'd been hoping for a school or a factory, something large, safe and easily defendable. But when the others heard the words: private, mansion and secluded, the decision to go take a look was practically unanimous.
They needed this to work, even if it was only for a day or two. They'd been on the road too long. Everyone was on edge, hungry and not sleeping. They were all feeling it - the strain. Like a rusty length of cable tightened to the breaking point, each and every one of them was ready to snap.
She needed time. She needed to be alone.
She needed space to think and reorganize her thoughts.
She needed – well – she needed more than to just be needed.
The dynamics of the world had shifted, and now, when the dust had settled, she found herself on the outside looking in. The others were adapting. Even Hershel and Beth had come to terms with it. Now, it was her turn. She needed to figure out where she fit in the grand scheme of things.
She angled her head, listening as the treads of Hershel's old truck hissed across the uneven blacktop. The dry Georgian brush whipped past, fluttering, as a gust of wind rattled the metal undercarriage. She shivered, rubbing at the gooseflesh pimpling across her arms as Rick rolled the window down another half an inch. A muscle tightened in her cheek, but she said nothing.
Beth's head lolled, resting on her shoulder as she napped, too exhausted to be self-conscious as her legs parted, splayed across her sister's lap as she snuggled close. She clamped down on a frustrated sigh. She didn't know what she needed. Only that she did. And that if she didn't get it, Rick wasn't going to be the only one to lay down his version of the law.
She needed this to be over.
It took a while to find the right road, but sometime around noon they made a sharp right onto what looked, for all intents and purposes, like an old service road. It'd raised a few eyebrows, but the expression on Rick's face had been enough to make the others hold their tongues.
A lot had changed since the farm. And not all of it for the better.
But even she couldn't deny the small sigh of relief when they passed an elegant, iron-wrought mailbox and the dirt road was quickly replaced with that of leaf-strewn blacktop and a neat line of trash bins waiting for pick-up. Finally.
She leaned forward in her seat as they coasted up to the gates, watching from the backseat as Daryl and Glenn wrestled with the hinges. It didn't take long after that, before the main house – stately and sprawling – gradually came into view.
The place certainly painted a pretty picture. She'd give it that. It reminded her of the state gardens she and her mother had visited as a girl – drowning under a dense layer of overgrown brush and decaying flower petals - but striking nonetheless.
She couldn't help but grin as she peered out the window. It looked like something out of one of those old-fashioned Southern romances her gran used to read in the summer. On those evenings where it was still too hot to do anything more than pour yourself a cold drink before you dove head long into a whole other kind of heat.
The excitement was almost tangible; the belief that this place could be something more, something special seemed poised on the tip of everyone's tongues. And for once, reality certainly didn't disappoint. The house was set on a gentle hill, surrounded by orchards and what she was sure had been well-kept wilderness. Even the private, forested drive had the look of once being manicured.
The air was sweet, flavorful, infused with the tartness of apple and the musk of long rotted fruit. It was well past the end of picking season, but she held out hope that there would be a least a handful of decent ones they could salvage.
They hadn't had fresh anything since the farm.
She'd rolled down her window as they'd passed through an open arbor – crawling with tart-seedling grapes she could practically taste on her tongue. She breathed it in as Carl and Beth chattered excitedly. In the driver's seat, Rick's hand tightened around the wheel, following Daryl's lead as the younger Dixon remained on point, leather vest billowing in the late autumn breeze as Hershel, Lori, Glenn and Maggie made up the rear.
So far, so good.
No one talked about the fact that Lori and Rick didn't travel together anymore. Or that Lori slept in her tent alone more often than not. It wasn't something they discussed. Not in so many words. But they all felt it, the tension. And it had only gotten worse when Lori had started to show.
Carl didn't understand, growing angry and defiant – mirroring the emotions of his father as the days inched past. She didn't envy the situation they'd found themselves in, but she tried her best to help them all through it, hoping, perhaps when enough time had passed, that the three of them would be able to find some common ground, some forgiveness.
But unfortunately, as of right now, that didn't seem very likely.
These days she was convinced that the anger, no, the rage, was the only thing that kept Rick going. A lot of things had changed since the farm, and honestly there were times when the man's stare scared her, going vacant and cold as the other's treated him with kid gloves. She knew she wasn't the only one waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the next wrong turn, the next empty gas tank, the next loss.
The feeling was palpable and ugly. And it only made her miss Dale and Andrea all the more. They'd lost something integral in abandoning the farm, a piece of themselves that they'd tried to convince each other they were better off without - stronger, harder. But in truth it'd only made them that much more brittle, more liable to break then bend.
One thing, if anything, was clear. They couldn't go on this way.
From the outset, it was supposed to have been a simple raid. Maybe a night's stay if they were lucky. But unbeknownst to them, they were already on the cusp of what she was sure the media would've called one of the worst storms on record. Winter was starting early this year. So, by the time it occurred to them to move on, they were left with no other choice but to hunker down and ride it out.
They hadn't been ready for it. Not for the snow or the bitter cold. Perhaps they should have, but they weren't. Up until now there hadn't been time for anything else, they'd been living from day to day, meal to meal, hour to hour. It had been especially hard on Hershel and his girls. They weren't used to the feeling of empty bellies and days on the move. They weren't used to sleeping in their cars. They weren't used to being told that they couldn't talk too loud, that going on a supply run was too much of a risk or that they were grounded for the next few days because one of the gas tanks was running on empty. They weren't used to never feeling safe.
But, perhaps their luck was changing for the better, because as it turned out, they couldn't have asked for a better place to hole up.
It shouldn't have been any different from the dozens of homes they'd raided since the farm. In truth, they'd survived thus far by going house to house, strip mall to strip mall. Always one step ahead of the herds and the weather. Always moving. Always looking for that perfect possible future Rick still had his heart set on finding.
But from the moment she'd walked through those thick, cherry-oak doors, trailing cautiously behind Maggie - her pistol raised and at the ready, she knew it wasn't going to be that easy.
For the first time in a long time, she'd balked in the foyer.
Hell, she'd done more than just balk, she'd stalled.
Because this time it was different.
A/N #1: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – The next chapter should be up in a few days.