Notes: 1) To those of you who've already read up to here, I tacked on a bit to chapter 3 and you'll kind of need to duck back and read it since it just worked better to put it there rather than start this chapter with it. 2) I am of the conclusion that I have Cassie muses and these muses are just weird. I blame said muses and cold medicine for the content of this chapter. 3) In continuation of note 2, let it be known that I know nothing about hunting or field dressing wild boar...this is all Cassie. I'm just along for the ride like Carol, watching with that kind of Yeeeeeeech face while the girl does her thing. I have no idea why these details seemed essential to the chapter, but here we go...


Frustration put anyone in a bad mood, so the others quickly pick up on the fact that Carol needed some alone time when she snaps at anyone who tries to make small talk.

She focuses her energy on washing the tougher pieces of laundry that none of them wanted to tackle because Walker gore was repulsive to pick off fabric and the blood impossible to get out. It takes the whole of the morning to repeatedly scrub the garments on the old-fashioned washing board and wring them of water. Her shoulder is a dull ache compared to the burn of her muscles from the exertion, but she feels better for having accomplished something with the time.

Andrea is just stalking into the camp when Carol carries the heavy laundry basket into camp to begin hanging the wash. She doesn't see Cassie and nearly drops the clothes in her horror at seeing blood spatter on the other woman.

Before she can voice her first thought, the girl comes into sight and Carol feels relief like a kick in the chest.

Cassie strolls into the camp dragging a black carcass behind her, the deliberate nonchalance of her stride telling the mother in Carol that the girl had done something.

As Carol watches, Andrea turns to glare at the carcass before turning to stomp to her tent, showing them all her grass-strained backside.

Cassie is all smiles as she comes to a stop before Carol.

"Hope you didn't wear Daryl out too much," she grins, dropping her kill proudly between them on the ground. "Gonna need his help with this fucker."

"Language," Carol chides for what feels to be the hundredth time.

She looks at the matted hairs of the feral pig at her feet and can't help her nose turning up a bit at the idea of eating the thing.

"They're not bad," Cassie says, seeing the expression. "It's a little older than is ideal, but I wouldn't have bothered bringing it back if it were too rank to eat."

"Let's string it up."

Carol sets the laundry down with a nod to Lori for the other woman to hang it. She returns to help the girl drag the boar to the gambrel Daryl had built on the edge of the camp for the cleaning of his larger game kills.

He had tried to be respectful of the squeamish members of the group by setting up the wooden rigging out of plain view, but still near enough that they could be sure no predators came after the hanging carcass. Carol had helped him with a few deer and had gotten over most of her nausea at the process of gutting and skinning game.

She lowers the hanger then kneels on the ground with Cassie while they each latch a hind hoof of the animal to the beam.

As she pulls the rope to raise the carcass from the ground, she watches Cassie's eyes narrowing as they survey the camp.

"Why am I thinking things did not go as planned this morning?"

"Probably," Carol says as she ties the rope to a nearby tree to anchor the hanging animal, "for the same reason I am thinking that you had a little more fun with your hunt than you should have."

Cassie snorts out a laugh and grins at being called on it.

"She's such a drama queen," the girl says, knowing exactly what Carol had been getting at. "'AHH. It's a wild boar!'" she begins to mockingly reenact the supposed events of the hunt. "'AHH! It's chasing me! EEEE! I might break a nail running from this snorting little beast. OH MY GAWD who keeps putting roots on these damned trees for me to trip over?'"

Carol lost it at the girl's wildly flailing limbs with that last line, laughing until she cried at the mental picture she had of Andrea being chased through the woods by the raging pig until the other woman tripped and fell.

"It's not like I let it hurt her or anything," Cassie was defending through Carol guffaws. "He was only snorting her when I took the shot. You'd think she'd be used to keeping some blood on her after all this, but it was like WHOA when she got hit with the splatter. You should've seen the way she freaked and scrambled away from the body. I would've gotten a gazillion hits on YouTube with that."

The girl fell quiet after that, the serious kind of silence that almost instantly ended Carol's amusement with concern.

"I miss YouTube," Carol had only a passing knowledge of the website the girl mourned, but it was enough to see the girl mourning. "I can't imagine that there isn't someone Tweeting in this world. That I may never reblog a Supernatural Wincest picspam again."

To Carol, it's all gibberish and she flounders for some consoling remark as Cassie turns to her with wide, wounded and watering eyes.

"Do you think we'll ever get back online?"

Carol clears her throat and scrambles internally for a response in the spot the question and stare put her on.

"I'm sure Glenn would have some great ideas on that topic," she finally ventures.

As a distracter, it somehow manages to work and Carol exhales in relief as Cassie's hyper young mind takes off with the new direction.

"He's so cool," Cassie gushes, bending position blue tarp over the ground below the boar then to yank the hunting knife from her boot. "He's totally like Ellis with that ball cap, don't you think? It's funny," the girl muses while grasping the hilt of the knife in both hands, raising it over her head then plunging it into the animal's groin and slashing downward to cut the underbelly open. "Everyone was always bitching about the violence of video games, but how kickass would Glenn or I really be now if we hadn't logged all those hours playing Left 4 Dead? It's like freaky appropriate that Left 4 Dead 2 was the last video game I beat."

Carol wants to argue against some of the things this young girl had seen in her life, but she cannot argue the benefit as Cassie is able to so effortlessly gut the feral pig.

"Go get me a container for this," Cassie orders before she prepares to delve into the main cavity to make sure all internal organs have fallen from the kill.

She takes off, gratefully, to avoid watching that. She had gotten to where she could watch Daryl dig around inside a deer, but there was something vastly disturbing about seeing a girl as young as Cassie do it. She rummages in the RV for a few of the larger Tupperware containers, not sure what all Cassie intended to keep. She grabs a towel, tucking it along with the containers under her arm before grabbing a gallon jug of water and a bar of soap.

Carol returns to find the girl squatting over the tarp, flicking aside bits of debris with the tip of her knife until she found the organ she sought.

Cassie gives her a brief glance, nodding her approval at the containers and disregarding the other items Carol had. The girl gives up the idle flicking to dig her hands into the pile on retrieve a piece of something from the bloody mess. She studies it closely, turning and flipping it in her hands until she's seen every possible inch and angle.

"Damn, I'm good," she boasts with a grin that Carol returns weakly. "Look at it. Not one nick."

"What is it?" she asks, merely glancing at the organ as it dripped blood to the ground.

"Dinner," Cassie beams and reaches for the smaller container Carol held. "Fry it up with some onions and it's better than any other liver you'll have had."

While Carol debates the merits of turning to veganism, Cassie seals the alleged liver up and then sets the container aside to begin folding the tarp over the other innards. She jerks her head in a fashion all to similar to Daryl's and Carol quietly moves to follow the girl into the woods to dispose of the discards safely away from camp.

"So," Cassie asks as they pick their way through the brush, "what went wrong? You didn't come on too strong, did you?"

Carol's step falters at that. She knows the topic that the kid's mind has jumped to and the idea that Cassie might be about to advise anyone on coming on too strongly was laughable.

"What?" Cassie stops to whip her an incredulous glance. "You know how jumpy he is. Blink at him the wrong way and he'll swear you're giving him cooties or something."

"I know that," Carol says pointedly.

"You think I didn't? Honey, when you're young you've gotta push past all that malarkey," the girl resumes their trek. "Only time you can get away with bulldozing before they start calling you a bitch for doing it."

The wisdom is only a little unexpected, but Carol still doesn't see the girl as worthy of giving advice on the ways of man and woman.

"I haven't seen that working so much for you," she counters softly.

"That's because the seed's only been planted," Cassie grins at some inner secret and says no more on that particular note. "Now for an old lady like you," she switches tack with no reaction to the evil eye Carol flashes her at the wording. "You've got to be careful. Always going to be some grown woman flashing herself for him, so that gets old."

"Excuse me?" she scowls, not having any clue which part of the statement offends her most.

"He's a man, all grown and strong and cute and capable. It's hot. Women are always drawn to that kind of thing for security and companionship and all that boring old people stuff," Cassie elaborates, not stopping her forward motion into the woods as Carol tries to keep up and take in this 'knowledge' from the child. "Young things like me, we're too short term for all that. Sure, I still look at him and think, 'Ooooh, what scruffy haired ginger babies we'll make,' but that's way in the background because I am so not ready for kids. But hot sweaty monkey sex? Who isn't ready for that once puberty hits?"

Carol walks straight into the tree without having any idea how it had managed to grow in her path like it was.

Cassie cackles.

"I know," the girl waves a hand as Carol begins to open her mouth, "I'm too young, he's too old, a-whooped-de-dooped-de-do. Just saying, men like the whole Lolita thing because we're more likely to do it, like it and move on to try it with someone else. The younger you are the more you experiment. World's an oyster and all that jazz. It's not till a woman starts getting old, like twenty," Carol scoffs at that, "that the thinking goes all wonky for a one-man, one-future kind of deal. And that scares a fella."

"And you know this from…"

"I watched daytime TV. Oprah, Dr. Phil. All My Children."

"Erica Kane really isn't an appropriate role model-"

"I'll say. That old hag was soooooo boring. Colby was awesome, even if they did have to go and make her a blonde."

Carol rubs her forehead, feeling a headache building as she wonders how a conversation like this even begins.

"My parents used to do that a lot, too," Carol looks up at the solemnly quiet tone and the girl gives her a lopsided grin. "Grown-ups have never understood my brilliance. Anyhoo," the girl shrugs off whatever thought she had had and resumes her cocky stride. "I'm done waiting for details. I'm not letting you mack on my man without getting it back vicariously through you."

Even being unfamiliar with the lingo the child used, Carol finds something vastly wrong with that idea and shakes her head in confusion.

"Nothing happened," she finally answers.

Cassie grinds to a stop and looks at her sharply.

"You are interested in him, right? I mean, everyone's said what an asshole your husband was and all that and the whole battered thing is so wrong and guys who do that deserve to be eaten to death by a zombie hoard, but you are still into guys, right?"

"Yes," Carol snaps, blushing at the implication that her tastes would have changed so drastically with recent events. "I am very much interested in him."

"Then what the fuck?" Cassie asks, rolling her eyes when Carol gives her a speaking glance at the profanity. "I set the perfect scene for some touchy feely if not an all out roll in the bushes and I came back to you doing laundry and Daryl off….where? Doing what?"

"I don't know," Carol sighs. "We were just about to get to the real touchy feely when Rick interrupted us and Daryl kind of took off."

"You have got to be sh…kidding me," Cassie utters in disbelief, cleaning the thought up under Carol's warning glare.

"No, he just got his bow and left and I-"

"No, not that, I'm sure he's off killing something to work off his frustration," she waves a bloody hand in dismissal. "I mean," she raises that hand toward Carol flips up the index finger while leaving the others folded into a fist, "one; what do you mean Rick interrupted. Two," her middle finger springs up to emphasize the second point, "what exactly did Rick interrupt."

"One," Carol says, reaching out to fold the middle finger back down, "I mean, Rick came running at that shotgun blast and he broke us up before we could do anything, just as I'm sure you planned."

"Dude, I've given you a clear field," Cassie protests the allegation with genuine, wide-eyed disbelief. "Rick had absolutely nothing to do with my plans. I was thinking the two of you would finally go at it like bunny rabbits without me hovering. Which I so would have stayed to watch if Andrea hadn't had to be a pest….I wouldn't have watched everything," the girl defends when Carol eyes her in horror at the idea. "Just the getting naked. Daryl's getting naked," she emphasized. "No offense."

Carol can only blink at the child as she processes the chatter.

Cassie huffs out a sigh and turns back to the path, moving just a bit further into the woods before finding a spot she deemed safe enough to leave the scraps. She unfurls the tarp and lets the viscera fall to the ground before she gives the canvas a few shakes to try getting everything off it. When a few bits cling stubbornly to the tarp, she grumbles and picks them off with her fingers.

"Why is this stuff always so hard to get off?" she asks, flicking at the bit of guts that now seemed stuck to her flesh. "And it gets frickin' everywhere. Daryl said there was this one time, after he'd fought off like a whole gang of Walkers and he found a severed finger that had somehow gotten in his underwear. That's why he always double-checks his belt now, to make sure it's cinched super tight. 'Nothin' getting in my pants again,' he said."

They share a grin at the idea of the man fussing over something like that before the threat of a zombie attack.

After a moment, Cassie gives up trying to dislodge the gore on her fingers by flicking it away and she wipes her hands on her pants, making Carol sigh at the thought of all the clothing she had just worked so hard to get clean of such messes.

"So," Cassie prods as they head back to camp, "two?"

"Two," Carol thinks of what Rick had and hadn't interrupted earlier, "is none of your business."

She ruffles the girl's hair and smiles at Cassie's evil-eyed glare, enjoying the opportunity to be the annoying one for a change.

"Just when I was starting to think you could be cool," Cassie pouts and stomps past her.

She laughs at the reaction and follows at a mellow pace, never having tried or cared to be cool in her life.

When she gets back to the gambrel, she finds the girl beginning the process of skinning the boar with a little more enthusiasm than Carol felt the chore warranted.

She feels no desire to linger for the task and bends to pick up the liver and unused containers, knowing it would take some time before the meat was ready to cut and put into anything for transport to the campfire and preparation for cooking.

"Make sure you wash up," she instructs, gesturing toward the jug of water, towel and soap set on the ground nearby.

"Why?" Cassie asks, frowning in genuine confusion. "It's just animal bits."

There was something so Daryl in that retort that Carol shakes her head and thinks that she had maybe waited too long before interceding in the amount of time the girl spent with the hunter.

"Just do it, you little heathen," she orders with a grin before turning to go back to camp.

"Yes, mother," the girl replies, joking and sarcastic with the words.

Carol feels the endearment like an arrow to the heart and turns to stare at the child as Cassie goes back to skinning her kill.

Feeling like a foolish old woman, Carol presses a hand to her chest and blinks away tears before forcing herself to continue on to the RV. She puts the unused container away and sets the liver on the table with the other things that were being collected for the evening meal she or Dale would ultimately cook.

Those simple tasks are completed in seconds and she looks around the vehicle for something else she can focus her energy on.

Her eyes find only space that she has already cleaned and organized countless times and without anything else to do, she sits at the table, puts her head down and begins to cry.