AN: So this one was a little bit of a combination of some Tumblr prompts. I don't know how great it is, but it's something for entertainment value.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"You can't just walk in here and say that," Carol declared loudly enough that the sound rang around the room and made her own eardrums ache. "You can't. You have to...to take it back."
She was aware, the moment she said it, of how ridiculous and juvenile her demand sounded. But it was the best that she could do. At a time when Daryl seemed to be finding the ability to use words—something that so often seemed to fail him—Carol found that she could hardly get anything out.
He was standing with his back to her now—staring out the window but probably seeing nothing.
"Doesn't matter if I take it back," Daryl responded. "Still said it. Don't make it any less true."
Carol swallowed and it stuck in her throat. She'd left Alexandria to get away from everyone. Daryl too. Not because she didn't love him, but because she loved him too much. Her love drove her to want to protect. It drove her to be willing to do anything—and she truly meant anything—to take care of those that she loved. But her guilt, from the things that she had to do, was going to eat her alive.
"You have—to take it back," Carol said, her voice catching. "Because—I can't."
From where he was standing, Carol could see Daryl's posture change slightly as he tensed following her words. His emotions were radiating off of him now, but anger was the one that seemed to come through the strongest. He'd always been like this, though, even since the rock quarry outside Atlanta. When Daryl had more emotions than he knew what to do with, anger always seemed to be the one that won out.
"Because of him?" Daryl asked, still not turning around. "Is it because of him? Because of Tobin?" Daryl turned around then and faced Carol. She could see the anger on his features as surely as she'd seen it in the tensing of his shoulder muscles. "Did you even know what his fucking name was?" Daryl asked. "I wondered the whole time what you were doing with him. But—if it made you happy?"
Carol's chest felt tight. She couldn't get away from him. She couldn't escape the conversation—run from it like she'd tried to run from everything else—because she wasn't healed. She couldn't leave the bed without assistance. Her leg still didn't tolerate, well, hobbling around on it and she couldn't support herself on crutches thanks to the injured arm that plagued the same side of her body. She was trapped. Daryl had her as an audience for as long as he wanted.
"Didn't make you too damn happy," Daryl said, mumbling the words out more than the others that he'd said since he'd come into the bedroom with such a fierceness that Carol wasn't sure what he was planning to do to her. "You still left. Just disappear? Walk out and don't tell anyone where you were going? Not him? Not...me?"
"That was the point of leaving," Carol said. "Not to tell anyone that I was doing it. I left a note."
"You left a note," Daryl said. "You left him a damn note. Not one word to me. Not any of the damn rest of us. Just left a note." Carol sucked in a breath and waited. Her interaction with him, at this moment, was unnecessary. Daryl had, apparently, spent the whole trip from Hilltop to the Kingdom thinking about all these things—and they were all circling around in his mind—until he wasn't going to rest until he'd covered everything he had to say. "Rick had no right," Daryl said. "When he put you out there? He had no damn right to do it. I was gonna come after you. Make him tell me where he left you—but I ran outta time. The Governor came. You know the rest. But he had no right, Carol. Not to put you out like that."
"Maybe he had every right," Carol said. "Maybe he could see it before I could. I'm dangerous."
"You're not dangerous!" Daryl said quickly.
"I don't want to be," Carol said with equal speed. "I don't. I don't want to be. But I am. Because—if I have to do it? To protect—to protect someone I love? I'll do it. And that can be dangerous. Because—what if it's someone I love against someone I love?" Carol sighed. Her body hurt. Her heart hurt. She was tired and it was a type of tired that she wasn't sure she remembered ever having felt before. "I can't do it anymore, Daryl. I had to leave. I'm—not all right. And I can't do it anymore."
"So you don't do it anymore..." Daryl said, less force behind those words than some of his others. "Not all of it. You don't have to do all of it."
"That's why I was with Tobin," Carol said. "In the beginning? He was nice. He was there and he was nice. And I didn't love him at all. I barely even cared about him. He was just there and nice and he wanted to believe that I could be—someone I'm just not anymore. Someone I wanted to be. Someone who baked cookies and didn't—take time out from making dinner to slaughter people in the streets."
Daryl crossed the room and got closer to her. He stood there, scraping his lip across his teeth, troubling a piece of skin that was left over from a particularly bad chapping.
"Then you be who the hell you wanna be," Daryl said. "You do what—whatever the hell it is you wanna do."
"It doesn't work like that," Carol said. She shook her head at him. "I can't go back to Alexandria. I can't be there with everyone. Especially not now. They're going to want revenge for what happened, Daryl. I want revenge for Glenn. And the only way to get that? Is to kill. And it never ends."
"So you sit this one out," Daryl said. "You're going to have to anyway. You need time to heal. We both do."
"And then the healing's done and it starts again!" Carol said, her voice coming out louder than she'd even expected. "I can't do this anymore! I don't want to! Can't you understand that? That's why I left! That's why I didn't want anyone to find me!"
Daryl's face screwed up slightly at having been yelled at. He turned his back on her again and paced back toward the window.
Morgan had sent for him. He'd sent for him and for Rick and for whoever else was outside, right now, talking to Ezekiel. Ezekiel had told Carol that she was welcomed to stay at the Kingdom—his home—for as long as she'd like. She was welcome to make it her home after her injuries had healed. She might have considered it, too, but now that everyone knew she was there, she wasn't sure that she could stay. The pressure to return would be too great.
That's why they'd come now. To ask her to return. The group was broken. It was fractured. Negan had killed Glenn and there were whispers of war. They wanted her to return.
And Daryl?
He'd come into her room, after she'd refused Rick's somewhat official request to return, and he'd declared that if she wouldn't go back with Rick, she'd go back with him. She had to. After all, he'd said in a tone that would forever be burned into her mind, he loved her. And he needed her to go back with him now that he could finally say the words.
It was too much.
"Why him?" Daryl asked.
"What?" Carol asked, her frustration ebbing a little.
"Why him?" Daryl asked. "Why Tobin? I was there. I think—I been pretty nice to you. I love you. I said it. Never said it to nobody before. So—why him?"
Carol laughed to herself.
"Because you weren't always there," Carol said. "It didn't feel like you were always there. And—you just decided you love me."
Daryl turned around.
"Bullshit," he said bluntly. Carol opened her mouth to him, but she didn't say anything before he continued. "That's bullshit. I've loved you since..." He stopped.
"Go ahead," Carol pressed.
He gnawed at his lip.
"I've known I love you since I come back and they told me you were dead," Daryl said. "Before that. Since I held your ass in the damn dirt so you wouldn't get killed because you were dumb with grief over Sophia. I'da done anything...anything to make it so it weren't her that come outta that barn. Nearly killed myself just to find her and I done it for you."
"Then why didn't you say anything?" Carol asked.
Daryl shook his head gently.
"I loved you too," Carol said. "I think even longer than that."
"You never said nothing neither," Daryl said. "So."
He left it like it was a perfectly reasonable and complete argument. He left it like Carol was supposed to understand everything that it meant. And, oddly enough, she thought she did. The slight quiver in his voice. The expression on his face. All of those things finished what his mouth didn't say.
She'd never said anything because she didn't think she should. She wasn't sure she could. And she feared the devastation of finding out that her feelings weren't returned. It was easier to accept what they had and imagine that there was nothing more there than it was to open her mouth and erase all doubt.
She and Daryl really weren't that different—not in a lot of ways.
"He don't love you," Daryl said. He shook his head at Carol. She didn't have to ask him, either, who he was talking about.
"I know he doesn't," Carol said. "He thinks he does. But—it's only puppy love. He's in love with the image of who he thinks I am. Who he thinks I could be to him. It's not me that he's in love with." She sucked in a breath. "But it may not be me that you're in love with either. I've changed so much that—I'm not even sure who I am sometimes."
Daryl nodded his head.
"It's you," he said. "Always was. You think I ain't seen the change? Since day one? You think I haven't noticed it. But it don't matter. You're you. That's all that matters."
Carol swallowed hard. She shook her head at him.
"I don't even know who I am anymore," she said.
"I do," Daryl responded.
Carol laughed to herself.
"Can you tell me?" She asked.
He nodded.
"Yeah, but you gotta come back," Daryl said. "Give me time to—tell you."
Carol sighed again and shook her head.
"I told you, Daryl," Carol said. "I can't do that. I can't come back. I just can't. And if you try to make me? If anyone tries to make me? I'll leave again. I meant what I said to Morgan. I'm not going back."
Daryl stared at her a moment and then he nodded his head slowly. The nod picked up enthusiasm, and then he walked away—like he was leaving the room. Carol sunk back into her pillow and stared up at the ceiling.
Maybe that's all there was to say about it. After all this time, she could tell Daryl that she loved him—something she'd felt for longer than she was comfortable with, honestly—and he could tell her that he loved her. Maybe it was something that might have worked for them, at some point in the past, but it wasn't going to work now. Now things were too far out of control. They were too far gone. And Carol and Daryl, both, were too far apart. They could love each other, but their worlds just didn't allow for anything more than that.
Carol couldn't go and Daryl had to go.
And she loved him enough that she was going to let him go.
Daryl left the room without a goodbye. Carol wasn't sure that she even expected one, though. He was angry. He was hurt—both physically and emotionally. And now? He probably felt rejected. A tearful, heartfelt goodbye was never really Daryl's style, but it certainly wouldn't be under these circumstances.
And maybe it was really just better that way.
Carol closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. She tried to imagine what her life was supposed to be like now. What it could possibly be like here at the Kingdom. She tried to imagine that she might, somehow, get the chance to start again—the chance to at least feel like she could start again.
She tried to imagine what it would feel like not to suffer from the almost constant ache inside her that drowned out the pain that even the healing wounds caused her.
She kept her eyes closed when she heard the sound of the bedroom door open again. More than likely, it was Morgan. He'd come to try to talk to her. Maybe he'd come to try to convince her to go back with them. Maybe he'd just come to say goodbye because he was going back with them.
And maybe he'd go away if she didn't acknowledge his presence.
Immediately, though, Carol knew it wasn't Morgan from the sound of the boots on the floor. She opened her eyes and lifted her head again, just as Daryl was coming around the side of the bed. He put a knapsack on the floor and then he turned around to face her. He walked over, without saying a word, and reached behind her head. He started to rearrange the pillows that had gotten bunched there.
"What are you doing?" Carol asked.
"Your neck's gonna get sore doing that," Daryl said, matter-of-factly. "Sit up or lie down, but you can't go hanging somewhere in between."
"They're leaving soon," Carol said. "You have to go with them."
"You said you can't go back," Daryl said. "So—looks like we're staying here. Nice place."
"You have to go back," Carol repeated.
"Make my own decisions," Daryl said.
"They're your family," Carol said.
"You are too," Daryl said. "And if I gotta choose? We'll stay here. Sit this one out. I can't fight. Not until my shoulder heals. I can't even shoot my damn bow. You can't fight. We'll stay here. Later—if you change your mind."
"I'm not going to change my mind," Carol said quickly.
"Then we stay here," Daryl said.
"Why would you do that?" Carol asked.
"I told you," Daryl said. "I love you. Lost you a half-dozen times before. Not losing you again. So we stay here or—we go wherever you were headed. But you're stuck with me."
"What about everyone else?" Carol asked.
"They know where we are," Daryl said. "But—time to let them deal with their own problems. Did you—want me to send a message back? For Tobin?"
Carol shook her head at him.
"I think he already got the message," Carol said. "And if he didn't? You aren't coming back either. I think—he will."
Daryl sat down on the edge of the bed and when Carol tried to move over to give him room, he rested his hand on the blanket above her stomach to still her efforts.
"What message is that?" He asked, glancing away from her a moment before he brought his eyes back to meet hers.
"That I've made my decision," Carol said. "That—I'm not coming back. And—that I love you."
Daryl nodded his head.
"Yeah," he said. "Just—wanted to hear you say it again."
Carol smiled softly at him.
"Stay with me," she said, taking his hand in hers, "and you'll hear me say it again. I promise."
"Love you too," Daryl said quietly, his voice barely giving sound to the words.
He leaned toward her, hesitated a moment, and then he kissed her. She might have expected it to be something much more passionate—more than the simple and soft peck on the lips that he offered—but she'd always kind of assumed that Daryl might not have much more than that to offer at first. It was fine, though. The kiss said all that it needed to say. The knapsack in the corner said even more.
They were staying in the Kingdom. They were sitting out this "round" of the war that might unfold around them and would contribute, instead, in other ways to their new community.
They had time for the rest.