Carol laughed at him when the subject came up the first time. The world is caught in a layer of frost outside, and the group is sheltered in one of the few homes not overrun and able to keep its warmth. The rest of the group is asleep in the rooms upstairs while the two of them take the couch and the floor with their own few blankets.

She's folding her few clean clothes away in that little habit of hers, her thin hands smoothing out what wrinkles will be settled. There's dirt and dust under her fingernails, even after all the time she'd spent absently scraping it away during their last meal. There's also a tiny cut on the top of her right hand; a scrape gained from their last retreat that he wishes he could cover with a band-aid.

"I'm tellin' you, I ain't good with any kids," he gripes on the floor, stretching out with the extra pillow she'd found for him in the attic. A grunt escapes him when his back cracks loudly and relief buzzes up his spine.

"Since when have you gotten close enough to try?" She smiles at him from above. Curled around her long pillow, her face is slightly shadowed from this angle, the blue of her eyes dark but open in her expression.

He squints up at her, blinking slowly as tiredness seeps into his skin and puts weights on his eyelids. "Haven't," he concedes. "But when it comes, I ain't touchin' it." The man tries to sound resolute, but when Carol only laughs again, obviously not believing him, he can't keep his lips from twitching. He bites at his thumb, worrying at the skin of it before abruptly turning his back her her and clenching his eyes shut. "All right, all right, stop your laughin'. Get some fucking sleep."

When all goes quiet except for their breathing in the tiny living room, he relaxes into the blankets, body long used to nights on hard surfaces and quickly beginning to fall into slumber, and that's when he feels her gentle fingers brushing only once through his hair. He's in that place of - dare he even think it - contentment when her words drift softly to his ears.

"You'll love that baby," her words are firm, as if there would never be a doubt, and Daryl doesn't know if she think he's still sleep or not. He files what her words do to him into the folder titled with her name. "And you'll do your best for it because that's how good you are inside. You won't hesitate."

She's so tiny in his arms, now. A squirmy little bundle of warmth and chubby limbs and squinting, closed eyes. Dark hair already on her head, and her skin so perfect and smooth. Covered in dust and dirt, he is afraid of staining her skin in the way everyone else sheltered here is.

But when she's cuddled close to the leather of his vest and her little lips are wrapped and suckling at the bottle's nipple, he doesn't find it in himself to give a damn. All he can do is let his lips tilt up, a chuckle gather in his throat, his eyes to soften. He teases her in a voice that he'd never in his goddamned life thought he'd make, calls her ass-kicker and goes silent when those he misses are mentioned. They're all dirty and greasy and smell pretty fucking rank, and in time this little one'll be just as smudged but she'll survive one day at a time.

None of them'll have it otherwise, he knows. They all love this kid, all care for it, and if she's a little dirty in the meantime, with a little bit of dust on her cheek but otherwise spotless, then so be it. He certainly won't let that get in the way of things.

And it turns out that Carol was right after all. He didn't falter, not even once.