Daryl awakens to the sound of grinding. The sun streams through the dusty lace curtains, and a kettle hums above the freshly lit fire.

Carol sits in the arm chair cranking the black iron lever of some handheld contraption. "Good morning, sleepy head. You were sleeping like the dead."

"Dead don't sleep."

"Well like a baby then."

That's because an hour after he finally fell asleep, the horses whinnied and the bells jangled, and he had to go out and kill two walkers and reset the barwire. Then he couldn't get back to sleep until near morning. Carol slept through it all, in a gentle, drunken snore. "Hell ya doin'?" he asks.

"Grinding coffee beans." She nods to the French press on the coffee table.

"Kingdom's got coffee beans?"

"We grow a few."

"Damn. All we got is that instant shit with a twenty-year shelf life."

"Well, you're in for a treat."

He stands and steps into his boots. "How's yer head?"

"It'll be fine after I have some coffee. Why? Was I pretty drunk last night?"

He huff-laughs as he picks up his crossbow. .

"Did I say anything embarrassing?"

"Nah," he lies. "Goin' out to take a piss." He checks on the horses while he's out there, and when he comes back, Carol is pouring coffee out of the French press into two tin camp cups.

He mumbles a thanks when she hands him one, and it is a treat. He thinks it must be the best damn coffee he's ever had, though it probably isn't. This world makes the once ordinary precious.

Carol pats the couch cushion beside herself, which he supposes means he's supposed to sit, so he does. The steam curls up and around her nose as she lowers her cup after a sip. "My head does hurt."

"Need to hydrate. Coffee ain't gonna do it."

"I drank a bunch of water when I woke up. Now I need caffeine." She sips again.

Daryl sets his cup down for a moment, draws his roadmap of Virginia out of his backpack, and smooths it out on the coffee table before picking up the cup again. "We're hereabouts." He smacks his finger down on the town of Dumfries. "'N Jamestown," he runs his finger in a diagonal line south and slightly east, "'S here." While he sips, he puts his thumb and forefinger and inch apart and swivels to measure the distance. "Be three or four days." He's a little disappointed when he says it aloud. When they first set out, he was hoping this trip would be closer to three weeks total. He didn't want it to run into June, but he didn't want it to be over so soon either.

Carol leans forward to look at the map. "My great grandfather George Aaron Mercer, the son of the man whose name I found in that ledger, is buried in Staunton. I kind of wanted to check out his hometown and see his grave. I guess that's too far out of the way west of Jamestown, though, isn't it?"

Daryl measures a path with his fingers. "Add another four days each way." Which would mean twelve days together, before this journey is done. "But ya don't have to be back 'til mid-May, right?"

"No. But what about you? Do you mind?"

"Nah. 'S fine by me." He studies the map, but he can feel that she's studying his face.

"I'm really glad you agreed to come on this trip with me," she says. "It means a lot."

"Ain't got nothin' better to do."

"Yeah. You do. You have a town to hunt for. A bike to tinker with. A little boy to help raise. But you chose this. I appreciate it."

Daryl folds the map. He doesn't look at her. "Like spendin' time with ya."

He can feel, rather than see, her smile. "You do?"

He murmurs something indecipherable and shoves the map back into his backpack.

"I've missed this," she admits. "You and me. On the road. Like Thelma and Louise."

Thelma and Louise? He must look some kind of something at that remark, because she says, "Bad comparison. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid?"

"Nah. They had a third wheel." Sundance's girl. Etta, if he remembers the movie right.

Carol takes a sip of her coffee. "Bonnie and Clyde?"

"Who we gonna rob?"

"More like what are we going to loot. There has to be something good between here and there." She sips quietly for a minute and says, "I really am glad you're doing this with me, Daryl. I've missed you."

Daryl finishes off his coffee in silence. He rarely visited the Kingdom when she was married, because he thought she'd moved on from him, that she was trying to forget the dark past they'd plowed through together at the quarry and the farm, in the prison and in Alexandria, and on the road in between. He thought she wanted to forget all the bodies they'd buried together.

He started coming more often after Ezekiel was dead, at first just to check up on her, to make sure she was handling the loss. But after a while, he wasn't coming to check up on her anymore. He was coming because he couldn't help coming, because he needed to see her.

It never occurred to him that she needed to see him, too.

Carol stands and begins packing up for the road. He follows her in silence outside and unwinds the barbwire perimeter and stores the twine away. After they mount their horses, and she lifts the reins, he mumbles, "Missed ya, too."

Then he clicks to his horse, spurs it with his heel, and rides ahead.

[*]

That evening they enter a nameless town. No doubt it had a name once, but they can't make it out on the bullet-riddled, time-blackened entry sign; they can only make out the words beneath the town's name: Population 1,382. The walker population, however, appears to be zero.

"Looks like folks got the hell out of Dodge when it started," Daryl says as his horse walks with a gentle clomping down the crumbling asphalt of a ghostly street.

"Which could mean they left without looting everything," Carol suggests.

"Guess we'll find out."

They break into an elementary school first, one of only three schools in town, and find medicines in the nurse's office. They've found that they can push expirations dates for several years on some things. Daryl tosses a rattling bottle of Advil to Carol and orders, "Take four, 'cause they's only gonna half work."

She does.

They find the middle school next and hit that nurse's office, too, by, which time they've filled half a saddle bag with bottles of pills, gauze, rubbing alcohol, tape, and other medical supplies. They're feeling confident when they locate the high school, but they learn that's where many of the townspeople went. It was probably converted to a shelter at the start, because it now teems with walkers that throw themselves against the inside windows and doors, rattling against their confines, hungry and desperate but unable to get out.

The couple presses on while it's still daylight and run the horses hard to find a decent camp before sunset. A few miles up a windy hill just outside of the town, they come across a "bed and breakfast" on a vineyard. The exterior of the once all-white Spanish colonial structure has grayed over the years, but inside, the lobby is still impressive, with marbled floors, antique furniture, and an ornate chandler hanging from the high ceiling. It also has only a thin layer of dust, which makes them think someone's lived here within the last year or two.

They leave the horses drinking from pans of water in the lobby while they clear the place. They end killing six walkers and corralling the bodies in a single room at the far end of the place to confine the stench. A family must have hunkered down here, maybe from the start, but within the last year or two, one or more died and turned and killed the rest. The kitchen has been entirely picked over. The tasting room is full of empty wine bottles, and the snacks have been largely cleared out from bookshelves and corner stands, but a few unopened bottles of wine remain. They line up twenty on the tasting counter and also salvage six unopened snack bags of in-the-shell pistachios. There are a few hard sausages in unopened plastic, too, but they can't risk those, as they can see splotches of green in the brown.

Carol looks over the line of wine bottles. "These will fill two whole saddle bags. We can't take them all. Between the liquor and the medical supplies and these, we'll barely have any room left."

"So? Whenever we gotta make room, just drink a bottle."

"I suppose we should drink one tonight, then." She puts her finger on top of the third from the left. "How about a red blend? Or would you prefer a Pinot Noir?"

"All the same to me. Long as I get a buzz."

"Well I doubt that's going to happen on half a bottle. At least not for you."

While Daryl rummages behind the tasting bar for a corkscrew and opens the wine, Carol wipes out some dusty glasses. Then, while he struggles with the cork, Carol lights the fireplace in the brown brick hearth before a black leather couch, plops down, and says, "Oh, wow. This is so comfortable! Come see."

He hands her a glass of wine, and she takes a careful sip before it spills over. "You know," she says as he sits down next to her and a little wine sloshes over the rim of his glass and onto his fingers, "you're only supposed to pour five ounces. Not fill the glass all the way to the top." She laughs at the annoyed look he gives her and raises her glass. "Salud."

"Cheers." He clinks her glass and takes a big sip of his. "Ain't half bad." He licks the spilled wine off his fingers one by one. He stops when he notices her staring at his lips. She must think it's a disgusting habit of his, but she doesn't look disgusted. She's smiling a little.

"What do you taste?" Carol raises an eyebrow. "Cherry?"

Based on the suggestive way she says that, she must be trying to make some kind of sexual joke, something to do with popping a cherry, but he doesn't quite get what she's aiming for. He laughs not because the joke is funny, but because she's so damn cute trying to make it. "Stahp."

"Well, I taste cherry. And hints of black currant."

"Yeah?"

"No," she admits. "I don't even know what black currant is. It just said hints of black currant on the bottle."

"'S a berry. 'S black. Looks kinda like a blueberry. Ain't native to the U.S.. 'S bullshit. Ain't no hints of black currant 'n here. I taste tobacco."

"Well, that makes sense. It is Virginia." After she sips, she says, "We should probably have more than wine for dinner."

"Want me to hunt?"

"No, it's dark already." The tasting room is lit only by the fireplace, which paints Carol's face in soft shadows. "You're tired. Let's just eat some of those pistachios we found. And a little of the deer jerky you brought."

They're content with their light meal. Daryl goes to get the bottle and stands to refill Carol's now empty glass, again to the brim. Carol smiles and puts her stocking feet up on the coffee table, beside a decorative, golden bird cage full of wine corks.

Daryl doesn't bother to refill his glass. He just takes a swig straight from the bottle instead. Still holding the bottle, he plops down next to her and kicks the bird cage off the table with his foot. It clatters to the ground and rolls before the hearth. He settles his feet next to hers. His socks are filthy, he realizes, and there's a hole in the left one. Maybe he should check the dressers in the rooms in the morning for a clean pair.

"You ever wonder," she asks after she sips, "if we had just roamed like this after the farm, just gone from town to town…never settled at the prison…if we would have lost fewer people?"

"Dunno."

"I suppose we might have starved to death by now, if we hadn't been able to build and garden and store things up for the winter. And back then, there were more bad gangs on the road. We might have been killed by now. And I never would have met Henry."

Henry? That's the first person who comes to her mind? "Or yer husband."

Carol swirls her glass. Dark red ripples break out over the surface of the wine. "I might not have cared about that, if…" She stops and takes a sip.

"If what?"

"If you and I hadn't grown apart like we did," she murmurs. His brain is whirring to process the meaning of those words when she continues, "Those good days at the prison, they were some of the happiest days of my life. But if we hadn't settled there, I'd never have killed Karen and David. Rick never would have banished me. Maybe you wouldn't have been so broken up by losing Beth. Maybe Glenn and Maggie would be raising Hershel, instead of the Hilltop raising him. Maybe, if we'd just gone on wandering after the farm, and none of that had happened, maybe you and I would have…"

Would have what?

"Then again," she continues, not completing her thought, "I wouldn't have met Jerry or Nabila or so many other really good people."

Would have what?"

"You wouldn't have become such good friends with Aaron and Tara. Michonne and Rick never would have gotten together, and there would be no RJ at all. I guess we can't second guess ourselves, can we?"

Would have what?

"This is really good." She takes another sip. "Is my tongue black?" She stretches is out and flattens it downward.

He has a sudden, animalistic urge to lean over and suck her tongue, an urge so powerful it rattles him. He looks away. "Purple."

She doesn't say anything else while she quietly finishes her wine, and neither does he. But when she puts her empty glass on the table, she leans her head on his shoulder. "The fire's so pretty. I guess I get my romantic B&B after all. Though it's more like a castle."

"Mhmhm." He finishes the last of the wine in the bottle, using his left hand to drink since she's leaning on his right shoulder. He doesn't want to lean forward to set the empty bottle on the coffee table and knock her head off his shoulder in the process, so he just tosses it over the arm of the couch. It cracks on the hardwood floor.

Carol closes her eyes. "You know, this is good practice for you."

"Hmh?"

"Taking a girl to a winery. It's good practice if you ever do go on a date."

"Ain't goin' on any dates."

"You wouldn't be so bad at it. You poured the wine and made supper and everything."

"Pfft." Made supper. He didn't even kill supper.

He thinks she's fallen asleep when she asks, "Am I making your arm fall asleep?"

"'S fine."

"You can put it around me if that's more comfortable."

So he does, and she takes her feet from the coffee table, half turns, and curls up on the couch against his side. She falls asleep just like that.

Daryl listens to the sound of her gentle breathing, the crackling of the fire, and the horses huffing softly in the lobby beyond the tasting room. He sits there with his arm around her until the fire fades to embers, thinking – Would have what?

When the room has grown nearly black, with only a red-orange glow coming from the bottom of the last of the wood, he carefully eases himself out from under her, lowers her head onto a throw pillow, and drapes an unzipped sleeping bag over her. Then he makes his own bed on the floor, not far away.