Present Day
"So which one of us you s'pose is Miss Daisy," Daryl inquired sarcastically to Rick, in reference to Michonne playing chauffer, at her own insistence, to the two of them sitting side by side in the back seat of the Grimes family car to offer the "brothers" an opportunity for some quality time to play catch-up.
"OH, OH, that is DEFINITELY Rick," Michonne answered for them between bemused chuckles as she animatedly beat her fists on the steering wheel for effect.
Daryl couldn't help but bust out laughing in response to the genuinely wounded look on Rick's face.
"Wait a minute, are you trying to imply that I'M the stubborn one," Rick said as he adjusted himself until he was able to stare her in the eyes through use of the rearview mirror. "After I just spent two nights sleeping on the couch because you were mad that I ate the last brownie."
"Oh, no you don't! First of all, the contest of who is the better Miss Daisy is between the two of you, so don't go dragging me into this. Second- that wasn't just, 'the last brownie,' that was MY brownie. It's not like we have this perpetual pan of brownies sitting around on the counter on any given day. Daryl, listen to this shit OK, and tell me you would not have done the same. So Maggie comes to visit from Hilltop with two pans of freshly baked brownies. Now, we're not talking about ones that came from some old, dusty box of Betty Crocker mix now. These were the most amazing looking fudgy brownies, with this velvety chocolate icing and tons of chopped walnuts on top. By the time we divided them up between everyone, a two inch square was all one person got a piece. I wasn't feeling well so I wasn't ready to eat mine right away."
"It sat on the counter for THREE DAYS, and every time I offered it to you, you turned it down."
"Yeah, because I was throwing up non-stop for THREE DAYS."
"THREE DAYS," Rick repeated, this time turning his attention to Daryl. Shrugging his shoulders, he appealed his reasoning to his best bud, "It was going to go stale."
"You coulda put it in the freezer or somethin', just sayin'" Daryl replied matter-of-factly, leaving Rick with a dumbfounded look.
"THANK YOU, Daryl," Michonne exclaimed with satisfaction as she reached behind her with a closed fist, beckoning for a fist bump.
"I thought you were supposed to be my best friend, my brother" Rick said as he strained to conjure up fake tears and shot Daryl a look of mock disappointment.
"Hey, you took the woman's brownie. You're lucky she didn't put an arrow in your punk ass like I woulda done."
Michonne was now bent over the steering wheel, struggling with keeping her eyes on the road as she howled with laughter. Daryl, although considerably less animated than Michonne, began chuckling so hard both in reaction to her hysterics and Rick's look of utter disbelief that tears began to stream from the outer corners of his eyes and down his cheeks. Even minutes after the laughter had subsided, including a bit from Rick himself, the tears continued to come. He suspected the cause was that he was finally able to let go of several months of pent-up stress as the hell that had plagued his family over the course of the last few years finally seemed to be a thing of the past. At least for now. There was still no room for getting comfortable, or being naive enough to believe that they were invincible, or that they would never have to face another threat, but for the first time in a long time, he did finally believe that there was hope. If it wasn't for the help of a heck of a lot of good people in his quest to find Carol, he may never have found her at all. Heck, he might not have even made it out alive. Carol would never have found Riverview, and if she hadn't been taken to Riverview then she probably would have suffered exactly the same fate as Lori, aside from the fact that their son would not be so lucky as Judith. While he had been caught up in this little reverie of what- if's, Rick managed to sneak in the question that he had managed to successfully evade up until this point.
"So, come on man, tell us what's going on with Carol."
Thankfully, by his estimation it would be less than an hour before they would reach Riverview. Between distracting them with questions about life in Alexandria after he left and taking humorous jabs at Rick, more than half the journey had passed without him having to say a word about her. However, he was well aware that he was not the only one who loved her and worried sick over her safety and well-being since her disappearance, and that some sort of explanation for her extended family was long overdue.
"It was just like I told you. She didn't abandon us, bro."
Of course nobody had thought that from the start. When Carol had initially gone missing, everyone suspected the Saviors were to blame, and Daryl had made himself the ringleader of that belief, even though he had pretty much alienated himself from her since the day that Alexander was conceived and she almost died, and therefore their son right along with her although unbeknownst at the time, when he had irresposibly let down his guard. Not that he regretted making love to her for a second; that was a tricky thought to have to process considering the gift they had both been blessed with as a result, nevermind the fact that she was also both his best friend AND the love of his life. He failed her because he should have been smart enough to know that he didn't have the privelege of "laying down on the job," afterwards, so to speak. Somebody had to always be on guard, and he should have been strong enough for the both of them to step up and man the perimeter himself. Naturally, Carol put equal blame on herself, pointing out after-the-fact that it could have just as easily been him who had been put in death's hands on her conscience. The pair of them had been so overridden by their own personal versions of guilt that they'd barely spoken a decent word to each other for the two months or so that followed before she disappeared. Nevertheless, the thought never occurred to him that she had taken off because of his treatment of her, even though he was pretty sure the very last word he had grunted at her before she disappeared was "bitch." They were both playing the same hand, but while wearing two very different poker faces. His way of protecting her was to push her away by acting like a dickhead and pretending not to give a damn, while hers was simply giving him the cold shoulder and remaining non-reactive to the occasional barks he threw her way. The Carol he knew and loved always called him on his bullshit and was perefctly capable of tearing down any temporary wall he might try to hide behind. The fact that she was letting him get away with it was his way of identifying that this was just a little game that they both needed to continue to play to get through this war alive.
"Well if Negan didn't have her, what in the world happened?"
That was the same question he had asked himself repeatedly when he discovered he had been wrong. A thousand different scenarios had crossed his mind before he even dared to consider that she simply walked away. Her weapons had disappeared along with her, so it wasn't like some one had infiltrated Hilltop, where they just happened to be stationed at the time while preparing for the next attack, and snatched her up in the middle of the night. It was the general consensus at the time that she she had gone out on some rogue mission of her own and the Saviors captured her. He had continued to believe this even after Dwight had tried to warn him during his captivity that Negan, to the best of his knowledge, was lying about having Carol since not a single Savior he had interacted with aside from Negan himself could confirm that claim to be true. When the Saviors were defeated and she was still nowehere to be found, he considered she might have been taken out by a sniper right outside the Saviors compound, or perhaps by an unfortunate encounter with a walker, but she would never walk away. Not like this. Not when everyone she loved, her family, needed her more than ever. She would take a bullet to protect every single one of them...except for the one case where taking a bullet would cost two lives for the price of one.
Daryl couldn't share this much with Rick, not yet. Instead, he conjured up an all-encompassing response that was one hundred percent both true and accurate, any which way you sliced it. "She did what she had to do to protect her family."
