Thanks for all the love I've gotten, it means so very much to me. Also updated today was A Melody, A Memory Or Just One Picture, Roxanne (which is now finished), and Spotlight on the Lake and a new one shot Stay For A While. Not to mention, a brand new fic has been posted. It's called A New Day but it's Carol/Merle. Marol is my new obsession, but I'll never abandon Caryl.
I'm on tumblr too (as I have mentioned before), peletierscarol (which will auto-direct you to my custom url). Please feel free to follow me and talk to me there. One can never have too many friends.
Happy reading and Caryl on!
Tyreese didn't tell Carol anything of what Daryl had said two days ago, in fact he had told her that he didn't say anything that was important – which was technically true. All Daryl Dixon had done was gotten Tyreese angry enough to the point where he had actually tried to strangle the man. He was right about his friend refusing to talk to someone like him too. In fact neither of them talked to anyone else, not even when they sent a woman in there to talk to them. It seemed that Daryl was sticking true to his word; it was Carol or no one.
He was growing more and more frustrated with all of this. He need to keep his town safe and he needed to keep his family safe but he couldn't do that if he didn't know where these other assholes were at. He knew they were out there, just waiting for the right moment to attack. He felt like he was back in Woodbury just before the first attack on the prison. He felt like he was just waiting for it to happen. They had more people doing patrols now and they all had guns and were given the shoot on sight order, but Tyreese wondered how many of them could actually shoot a person on sight. He hoped people would be able to do it, because the last thing he wanted to see was another war.
Tyreese planned on going out with a group of men this weekend and making an attempt to see if they could find the group that Daryl and Joe belonged to. The group he was taking with him had two former cops and a former Marine, so he was sure they wouldn't have any issue shooting men that would try to hurt the people in their town – hurt their families. He knew he should be out there right now looking for them, but he had a job to do as much as everyone else did and he needed to do that before he went off and left everyone to fend for themselves.
"Think he'll talk today?" Carol asked as she poured him a small glass of water. Tyreese turned his head to look up at her and he shrugged before he set down the book he'd been reading to take his mind off of it. He picked up the bowl of scrambled eggs Carol had made him for breakfast and a fork to start eating. Powdered eggs tasted like shit, but it was better than not eating at all. They'd found a small farm that had several alive chickens and were nursing them back to health. Maybe once the chickens were healthy and laying eggs, they could have some real food.
"Probably not. Might as well try again. Hunger's gotta be killing both of 'em."
"We can't just starve them, Tyreese." Carol reminded him as she moved to sit across from him to eat her own powdered eggs.
"I know that, Carol. Give it another day before I offer up some food for them to eat." He said between bites. Carol looked up at him over her plate and considered how she could word this while she chewed. Once she swallowed and took a sip of her water.
"Maybe I should try talking to them. Joe talked to me before and Daryl..." She trailed off, looking up at Tyreese. He stayed silent while they finished their breakfast together then he spoke.
"No." He said. Carol looked over at him from her spot at the sink while she cleaned out the dishes.
"Excuse me? No? You do know I'm not actually your wife, right?" She asked with a slight tease in her voice. Tyreese snorted and lifted his head up to look at her.
He thought back to his conversation with Daryl that first day and shrugged before he spoke, standing to his feet. Tyreese walked his plate and cup over to Carol and set them in the sink. She looked up at her friend, staring at him in thought before he spoke. "You ain't my wife, but I'm going to keep protecting you like you are." He said honestly. A smile formed on Carol's soft face and she turned so her body was completely facing him.
"We both know I don't need protection."
"From those two, yeah ya do. Joe said he'd come back for ya, Carol. And that ain't Daryl. That ain't the man you loved." Carol opened her mouth to tell Tyreese that she knew all of these things and that she could handle both of them but the truth was she didn't know if she could handle them.
She didn't know if she could handle the anger she felt towards Joe and the things he had said to her – that he would end up saying to her. She didn't know if she could handle Daryl like this. Carol didn't know if she was going to be able to handle having him in the same town as her while pretending to be Tyreese's wife.
"I know." Carol said softly and she leaned up to kiss Tyreese's cheek softly. "Have a good day. Will you put this notice up? I'm going to do the survival class that we missed on Wednesday today." Carol said as she handed him a large poster she had made. Tyreese took it from her and nodded.
"Remember, I'm heading out tomorrow to go Marauder Hunting." Tyreese said ala Elmer Fudd. Carol couldn't help the giggle that left her lips and she bid Tyreese another good day before he left. After cleaning up her breakfast with Tyreese, Carol head upstairs to get Judith up for the day.
Tyreese left the house and went up to their bulletin board to hang up the notice for Carol's class. He had been worried about Carol the last few days but it seemed that she was okay with everything that happened. She wasn't breaking apart or breaking down like he'd been worried she'd do. After hanging up the poster, Tyreese went up to the jail. He knew it was pointless to go talk to these men, but he had to try. Maybe today would be the day that either of them gave in.
Before going down to the basement, Tyreese stopped by Michael's office to have a conversation with him but he frowned when he saw he wasn't there. Maybe he wasn't awake yet. Tyreese turned away from the office and he went downstairs to the cells. Nothing good ever came from talking to Joe, except being called a ton of racial slurs. He never got anywhere with Daryl either but it seemed better to sit there and try to talk to someone he once knew than to sit around get called the N-word for an hour.
Tyreese took a chair into the cell and slammed it down on the ground to wake Daryl, grinning when he shot up from the cot. He looked up at Tyreese and snorted.
"Ya still gonna try to get me to tell ya shit, huh?" He grunted.
Daryl Dixon was exhausted and he was starving, but he wasn't gonna say shit to Tyreese. Not about the group he was with, not about the things he'd done, not about the things he hadn't done, not about losing Beth, not about losing Carol. He wasn't going to talk to Tyreese, he was only going to talk to Carol. But as the days went on, he was sure that Tyreese was doing everything in his power to make sure that didn't happen.
"Ain't gotta say anything. Some of the guys and I are going to go hunting tomorrow morning. Hunting for your friends. And we ain't gonna stop until we kill every single one of them." Daryl looked over at him and he snorted. No way that he was going to be able to kill all the men in his group; no matter how many people he brought with him. "You and Joe should have picked another place to try to rob, shouldn't ya?"
"Nice houses. Taken care of. Seemed like a good haul." He leaned his head back against the thin pillow on the cot, looking up at the ceiling. "Might have gone better if we choose a different house."
"Not likely. My wife has trained every woman here so they can defend themselves against the living as much as the dead." Tyreese purposely called Carol his wife instead of saying her name, knowing it rattled Daryl. If he was rattled, he might give something up. Tyreese would just have to keep working at him. He had to break sometime.
Daryl eyed him for a second when he called Carol his wife and he looked back up at the ceiling. Thoughts of Carol and Tyreese living happily ever after had been on his mind the last few days and it made him feel nothing but anger. He didn't give a shit if they hadn't seen each other in five years, she was his woman. He hadn't touched another woman in the five years he'd been apart from her, even though he most definitely had several opportunities. Unlike the men he was with, Daryl found no pleasure in having sex – willing or unwilling – with random women.
"See, my wife, as I know you remember, knows what men like you and your little group can do to women. She's made damn sure that these women know that no woman should have to suffer at the hands of man."
Daryl stilled for a second, his breath stopping as Tyreese spoke. The man across the little room didn't know shit about him or his group. He didn't know shit about the things he did with them or the things that he didn't. He just assumed that Daryl was exactly like Joe – or hell that he was exactly like Carol's first husband. He clenched his fists and grunted in his direction.
"I ain't ever laid my hand on a woman." He gave away without meaning to.
Tyreese smirked at the information that Daryl gave away and he leaned back in the chair. He knew that rattling him would work, even in the slightest. Daryl tightened again and he looked away from Tyreese.
"Good to see you still have whatever morals you had. Means you understand why I'm going to kill every single member in your group. You and Joe put my family in danger and what kind of man would I be if I let you get away with that?" Tyreese said, standing to his feet. "And if you think that whatever you used to have with my wife is going to stop me from killing you if I need to, you're damn wrong."
Of course Tyreese wouldn't be able to kill Daryl. The man used to be his friend, they used to fight together and go on runs together to keep their old family safe. And Tyreese knew that the man Daryl Dixon used to be was there, somewhere hidden under five years of traveling with Joe and his group. Carol had told him about when they first met, Daryl was a real ass but then the best of him came out. That man would just have to be found again. Tyreese started to leave the room, leaving Daryl with his last line when Daryl spoke.
"Hows yer wife?" He asked, looking up at Tyreese.
When Tyreese looked back at Daryl, he swore he saw a glimpse of the man that had bent over backwards to keep the group safe, to keep Carol safe. He swore he saw a glimpse of the man that had loved her, had done everything he could to keep her safe when they were together. He realized that Carol was his weakness and was always going to be his weakness. The realization didn't make him feel any better about the situation they were all in.
"Fine." He nodded at Daryl, grabbed the back of the chair and began to take it towards the door. Tyreese stopped at the door and opened it up, standing in the doorway for a second. He decided once more to push his buttons, turning his head to look back at Daryl. "And definitely doesn't have to think about you at night."
"Are you feeling alright, Ms. Carol?" A voice asked from behind her. Carol turned around and smiled at one of the young girls in her survival class. The girls name was Rose and she reminded Carol a lot of Sophia and Mika. She was nice and didn't have a mean bone in her body, but she was one of the best in her class. She took everything Carol said to heart. "We've all heard about what happened, impossible to keep a secret in this town." Carol chuckled and she leaned against the table.
"Fine. I'm fine." She said, once for Rose and once for herself. Truth was, Carol was anything but fine. She was falling apart at the seems, knowing that Daryl was so close but it wasn't the Daryl she loved. If anything, this man was probably the man he would have been if Merle had been able to stick around. Carol's heart ached for the man she loved and for what they had but she had to get over it. That Daryl was gone and she was married to Tyreese in the eyes of these people.
Tyreese was good to her, took care of her.
She couldn't throw that away for someone she didn't know anymore. Carol wasn't fine but she was a good actress and could convince everyone in her little town that she was. The one person who would be able to tell that she wasn't fine no matter how many times she said she was was sitting in a makeshift cell in an old house.
Rose nodded, though she wasn't sure if Carol was actually alright or if she was just saying so. She didn't want to press her and she moved to take her familiar seat in the front row.
Slowly, her students for the class started to pile in. The students were both boys and girls, kids and teenagers and even some adults that didn't know some of the things that she was teaching. Hell, she didn't know a lot of these things until she was taught them. She thought briefly about how Daryl taught her how to track, how to hunt and survive in the woods, how to skin and cook an animal. When she thought about the times she spent with him, she couldn't help but smile even if the memories ached. Carol hadn't thought about Daryl Dixon this much in years.
When the room was full, Carol cleared her throat and sat up on a stool. She looked our at the sea of people looking at her and let out a long breath. "Today, we're gonna talk about what to do if someone breaks into your house..."
