AN: This scene was the Tumblr prompt that wanted Rick and Carol meeting on the same park bench.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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The cold was what kept most people out of the park on Christmas Eve. This year it was particularly cold. Three days before, they'd had the first snow that they'd seen in at least five years. It was the first snow this close to Christmas that they'd seen in—well, Rick wasn't even certain if he'd even been alive the last time it had snowed anywhere near Christmas in Georgia. Maybe in some parts—but certainly not around there.
The snow hadn't stuck. It had lasted maybe half a day, in some places, but it had melted almost as quickly as it had fallen. It offered little more than a few mushy snowballs to any child that was desperate to play in it and he'd seen one or two sad snowmen in yards while he drove—none of them ever having been over a foot and half tall, even though now they were losing their height.
People had wanted the show to last until Christmas. They'd hoped for the white Christmas that songs celebrated. They hadn't gotten it, though. Christmas, this year, was just brown and dead and cold. It was like most of them in Georgia.
Still, the city had done a great job of decorating. Everything was lit up in lights and baubles hung from any item that held still long enough to be draped with the items. The tree in the park, the main highlight of Christmas in Hillsdale, was large and beautiful and glowing brightly.
The Christmas spirit was in the air, with or without the snow. But most people were staying in to avoid the cold.
Rick felt like it was every bit as cold in his home as it was outside, even if the cold was different. Outside the cold was natural. It felt like it belonged. It was the cold of the season and it promised to fade away to spring at some point. Inside his home? The cold was a different cold entirely. It was a cold that he couldn't chase away with fire or blankets. It was the cold of being lonely and alone.
Right now? One town over, in a little split-level house, his wife was probably putting together things for Christmas dinner the next day. His son was, no doubt, trying to get to bed many hours early to try to rush the arrival of Christmas Day. His best friend was probably downing spiked eggnog and making obnoxious jokes about reindeer and Santa Clause.
The catch was, his wife wasn't his any longer. His son was on a schedule with him. His life with Carl, now, was penciled in—and Lori held the pencil. His best friend? He'd won the motherlode. And the worst part was that Shane probably didn't even appreciate what he'd gotten.
Rick hadn't always appreciated it either. It was funny how losing things made you only realize how much you should have valued them when they belonged to you.
The cold outside was much more preferable to the cold inside. So Rick packed himself a large thermos of hot chocolate and a blanket and he headed for the park to look at the twinkling lights and enjoy the Christmas Carols that were supposed to be taking place thanks to a local church.
Finding a park, when he got there, was the easiest thing ever. There were, when he counted them, four cars parked around the fenced in area. Inside? He couldn't even find the people who might have parked their cars there.
Either his hour was wrong or he'd missed an announcement that the songs would be cancelled, because there certainly weren't any carols to be heard. Everything was silent. The lights, however, still twinkled and glittered in the dark so he continued on.
He was determined to enjoy the night. He'd take what he could get.
He spotted, on one of the benches, someone sitting. They were a darker black than the blackness of the night that surrounded them, but they were otherwise hidden from view. He walked straight toward them. Any company at all, even if they were silent toward him, would be more company than he had.
When he got to the bench, his eyes fairly adjusted to the dim light that the lights, which would be left to burn all night tonight, he saw that the person sitting on the bench was a woman. She was wearing a coat, dressed for the cold, but she was simply sitting there—very still—and staring toward the tree that was glowing.
"Front row seats," Rick offered.
The woman looked at him. She gave a light laugh to acknowledge his joke, and then she returned her gaze to the Christmas tree.
"May I?" Rick asked, gesturing toward the bench.
She looked at him again, looked at the bench, and then nodded.
"Of course," she said. "Merry Christmas."
Rick smiled to himself.
"Merry Christmas to you, too," he responded as he sat.
For just a moment, he didn't say anything else. He didn't do anything else. He just sat, immobile, like the woman and stared at the large tree. Finally, though, he felt overwhelmed with the urge to say something. He felt like he needed to communicate with someone—even if it was just a stranger in the park.
"The tree's beautiful this year," he said.
"Beautiful every year," she offered softly.
"You come out here every year?" He asked.
She hummed in the negative.
"Every year I feel like I can," she said. "But I don't make it every year."
"I haven't been out here in years," Rick said. "I drive by. I see the tree. But I haven't stopped in years."
The woman hummed.
"I was hoping there'd be carols," Rick said.
The woman looked at him a little oddly, and then she smirked before she turned her attention back to the tree.
"Just one," she said.
Rick was confused. He couldn't very well imagine that they'd organized the singing for just one carol. Either they'd come and done the whole set or they'd cancelled it and he'd missed the announcement, but he couldn't imagine all that organization going into it for just one carol.
"Just one?" He prompted, hoping she might explain.
She smiled to herself.
"They cancelled the music because of the cold," she said. "Didn't want the kids getting sick. But—I'm Carol. Carol McAlister."
Rick smiled to himself. She was Carol.
"Rick Grimes," he said.
"I know," she said.
Now Rick was even more confused. He hummed out his confusion this time and she turned to look at him. There was something of a smile on her face, but it didn't look too sincere.
"You used to come to my house," Carol said. "When I was married to my husband. You came—a few times. Ed Peletier?"
Rick's stomach flipped at the mention of the familiar name. There were some names around town that he knew for good reasons. Ed Peletier had never been one of them. For as long as Rick could remember, or at least as long as he'd been working on the police force there, Ed Peletier had been known for disturbances. It seemed like wherever the man went, trouble was bound to follow. Drunk and disorderly was common. Public disturbance was another he was often linked to.
Domestic abuse, though, was what had really earned him a reputation. Domestic abuse. He was a wife beater of the worst kind.
Rick had been called, more than once, to escort his wife from the property—and very often with the assistance of an EMT.
Ed Peletier he knew well, but he would've never realized that he was sitting next to the man's wife. The light was dim, and that made it hard to recognize her, but the real reason was that she looked nothing like the bruised and battered woman that he'd seen before. He'd never seen her that she wasn't crying or protesting. He'd never seen her that she wasn't bruised and bloody. He'd never heard her voice that it wasn't apologizing to him for the inconvenience of having to come and save her life once more and take the man away to jail.
A man that, now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen or heard from in quite some time.
"You finally left him?" Rick asked. Immediately he hated how that had come out. She didn't seem to take offense to it.
"Left him. Divorced him. Got a job. Got a house. Found good people I didn't even know about," Carol said.
Rick smiled to himself. At least the story had a happy ending. So many of them that he'd seen hadn't turned out that well.
"Ed?" Rick asked.
"Gone," she said. "Moved. You'll understand if I say that I didn't care to know where."
Rick hummed and nodded.
"Yeah," he said, barely putting sound to the word.
"Didn't you have a..." Rick started.
"Daughter?" Carol asked. He nodded and she mirrored it. "Still do," she said. "She's at her cousin's house right now. Not—not her real cousin, but family is what you make it, right? She wanted to go with them to this play they were going to see. I didn't want to go. So—when I leave? I'll pick her up. Santa has to come tonight, after all."
Rick smiled to himself.
"I guess my son gets the bike this year," Rick said. "Maybe something else. I don't even know. I know what I got him—but not the rest of it."
Carol looked at him and made a humming sound of her own.
"Divorced," he said. "My wife remarried."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Carol said.
Rick almost laughed to himself because she sounded sincere. Her story of a failed marriage was, truthfully, a thousand times worse than his. She'd almost given her life in an effort to make her marriage work before she'd thrown in the towel. He and Lori? They'd given up so long ago, over things that probably neither of them could even remember, that their marriage had practically disintegrated from not being cared for. That's why it had been no effort at all for Shane to come in and sweep away whatever ties remained.
"Don't be," Rick said. "It happens."
He saw Carol shiver, slightly, and Rick reached in the small bag he'd brought and came out with the blanket. Without even asking if she wanted it, he unfolded it and put it around her shoulders. She looked at it like she was surprised to see it appear there and then she shook her head and tried to return it to him.
"Now you're going to be cold," she said.
"I'll live," he said.
"So will I!" She responded.
But still, he refused to take it back. So she smiled at him.
"At least share?" She offered. "It's big enough, really. There's more than enough room to cover both of us and the bench—and you'll still have to hold the edges up to keep it from falling in the dirt."
Rick accepted that and helped to unfold the blanket a little more. He slid just a little closer to her—close enough he could feel the warmth from her body as the blanket trapped it—and wrapped himself in the blanket too.
He reached for the hot chocolate, twisted the lid off, and filled the cup of the Thermos with the warm drink. He tried to hand it to her and she refused. He insisted.
"I'll drink out the Thermos," he said. "There's more than I should have if I want to sleep tonight."
She accepted after a little more prodding and thanked him.
For a moment, then, they returned to studying the tree that twinkled near them.
"I come out here every year that I can," she said with a sigh after the silence seemed to have gotten to her. "I come—looking for something."
"Looking for what?" Rick asked.
Carol shrugged.
"I don't even know," she said. She laughed to herself. "Isn't that funny? I come—searching it out, and I don't even know what it is. It just seems...it feels like...if I'm going to find it? Whatever it is? This would be the place. It just seems like the right place to find whatever it is that I'm looking for. The right time. It's so beautiful. So peaceful. Whatever it is? It's got to be here—if it's anywhere at all."
"Have you found it yet?" Rick asked.
"How do you know if you've found it if you don't know what you're looking for?" Carol asked.
It was a good question and Rick pondered it for a moment before he ventured to answer it.
"Maybe, since you don't know what you're looking for? Since you just—have a feeling that you need to find it? Maybe you'll just know when you've found it," Rick offered. "You won't feel like you have to look for it because you'll have it."
Carol smiled. She looked at Rick and smiled more sincerely, her nose crinkling with the genuine approval of his answer.
"I like that," she said. "So I guess—that answers that. I haven't found it yet. But—maybe one day."
Rick chuckled to himself.
"I came out here looking for something too," he said.
Carol hummed.
"Found it," Rick said. "Surprisingly enough."
"First try," Carol said. "You're lucky."
Rick chuckled to himself.
"What were you looking for?" Carol asked.
Rick thought about it a moment.
"Two things, really," Rick said. "And—I managed to find them all in one. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was looking for some company. Someone to make me not feel so sorry for myself. And—I was looking for a Christmas Carol. I guess—I found both."