A/N: One more part and we'll be done. Read and review pretty please!
Carol leaned in and wrapped her arms around his neck. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought she might as well make the most of the situation, and she was afraid this could be the only kiss to ever take place.
Daryl was completely focused on her, and she couldn't complain. She opened her eyes to take a good look at him, and he said against her lips:
"Shut your eyes, I feel like I'm making out with an owl."
She giggled against his mouth before moving her head into the crook of his neck, trying to catch her breath.
"How often do you make out with owls?" She asked.
"Why do you think I go out so often at night on my own?" He quipped and she laughed freely.
This was a side of him she knew existed, because it had come up a bunch of times when they were around one another, but to experience it fully was a delight. She breathed in, trying to forget about everything else for a minute or two, as he kissed her neck, and she slowly, but firmly pushed him away. She could see the surprise and conflict in his eyes, but they were two steps away from her bed, and she had a feeling that if she didn't put the brakes on this situation, things would happen very fast. The problem was that they hadn't talked, he hadn't heard or maybe listened to what she had to say because she was still struggling for words to make it understandable. A romp in the sack, though assured to be a delight would only complicate further a messy situation.
She looked at him, biting her lip, as her hand rested on his chest, and slowly let go of him, before managing to go around him and be back outside the boat. It was a different world. Inside, intimacy was not the only thing they would think of, but it was definitely there, just a breath away. One move could be the start of something new. Outside, the real world was waiting, with its dangers and its schemes.
He followed her outside, and she took pride in seeing that he looked short-breathed, meaning it had mattered to him and touched him as much as it had meant something for her. She was slowly coming to terms with the fact that, contrarily to everything Ed had said, other guys could want her, and maybe, love her. Ed had always made it sound like he was doing her a favor, and the rational part of her mind knew it was part of his abusive ways, but the rest of her had taken those words for granted.
She went to sit near the railing, the boat slowly rocking on the water, and she waited for him to take a place. He chose to stay up, and she wasn't surprised.
"Have you ever woken up one morning and realized that you actually missed the bastard who used to beat you?" She asked, not sure where to start, but knowing certain things had to be said.
"I have," He said, looking at the horizon, and she was struck once more by the many ways in which they understood each when the others didn't.
"It's not that I miss Ed, per se, I would like to believe that if he came back like "tada I'm alive", I would beat him into a bloody pulp in retribution for what he would do to me when he was alive. However, sometimes, and I ain't proud of it, sometimes I miss the life I had before, before the apocalypse started, before it was about surviving."
"You were already surviving when you were with Ed," Daryl said. "You were surviving for Sophia, and holding on to hope of something better for your little girl."
She felt tears, and was shocked by how quickly they had pooled in her eyes, triggered by merely a sentence. Then again, this was him, Daryl, and he probably knew more about her and the way she had lived than she gave him credit for.
"Is that why you left?" He finally asked, and she realized she had been waiting for this question for what felt like forever.
"I don't know," she said, trying to deal with the realizations as they came to her, while trying to give him an answer. "I really don't know. I know that if you had asked me ten minutes before I exited the zone, or ten minutes after I had, my answer would have been precise. Hell, if you had asked me yesterday morning, before Carl barged back into my life, my answer would have been as set in stone. I left to protect you all."
This made him sit down, as he stared at her with a perplexed expression.
"I saw the tapes, the audition you guys made before entering Alexandria. You never lied. You danced around the truth sometimes, but you never lied. I did. I lied through my teeth, talked about how much I missed Ed, and maybe I wasn't really lying, but I made myself look like a good wife."
"Ed was the shitty husband," he said.
"And your father was the shitty parent. Doesn't mean we don't feel things we shouldn't feel or that we didn't love them. I just lied on the tape, and pretended to be clueless about surviving. At first, it made sense, I wanted to be able to go around and to be inoffensive in everybody's eyes. However, you all started blending in, and you had that ability, because you hadn't lied, you had just played with the truth here and there, and the more we worked for it, the more Alexandria looked like a place you could all have a future in."
"We, not you. We."
"No, you. You guys could. I threatened to tie a boy who was younger than my Sophia to a tree outside the zone, and to leave him out to be eaten by walkers. I told him I would kill his mother too if he told anyone he had seen me grab some guns from the armory. That's not good. Olivia noticed the guns were missing, and she started asking questions, and I'm pretty sure she had a list of a couple of possible culprits, and my name would have been on top of that list. If she only talked to Sam... When I realized she was gunning for me, so to speak, I had to think. I had lied through my teeth, and pretended to be someone I was absolutely not. I had threatened a kid. I had stolen weapons. You guys were all doing so well, you had Aaron and Eric, and our people were starting to really become Alexandrians, and I couldn't bear the thought of us getting evicted because of my scheming. I couldn't bear the thought that Carl and Judith could be denied a moment of reprieve because of my lies. I thought about it, thoroughly, and it seemed like there was only one thing to do. I packed my things, and left. I planted the guns in one of the cars, in order to make it look like Aiden had stolen them. With me gone, and probably forgotten ten minutes after the door had hit my ass, Olivia would never think twice if the guns were found with Aiden's crew. You guys would be safe, and the lies I had told would never matter anymore. I was protecting you."
He looked like he didn't agree but she wasn't done, words kept coming and she found herself talking and talking.
"It was my reasoning, a small sacrifice for your lives. Who cared about the soccer mom who made cookies from applesauce? The cookies would missed more sorely than the cook. And my clan would be able to keep on living, to make their way and to probably become the leaders of the zone, something you could all turn into a safe haven, if only for a moment. I packed and left. I thought about going far away, but that was where you would look for me, so I decided to stay close. You don't go looking for people right outside your door when you think they have gone on the other side of the country."
It had fueled her, and helped her leave even when her heart had been breaking: she had been taking care of her people, after she had unknowingly put them at risk by trying to make sure they were safe. All she had to do was remove herself from the equation, and the suspicions Olivia entertained toward her would disappear.
"I was invisible anyway," she said.
"Not to us. Never to me. You were and always are the first person I look for whenever I come back from wherever. Even after you were gone, when I'd come back in the zone, and made my way to the house, I looked for you everywhere. A pink hippo could have been dancing in the streets and I wouldn't have seen it, because it's you I wanted to see."
"You need to ask Deanna for the camera they have, to take pictures of Judith, and her pink hippo. You also need to make sure Carl's so-called friends get in trouble for leaving him behind. They need to learn their lesson," she said, feeling anger at the thought of the boy dying because the others were cowards who had only played at being at war, but had never been in combat.
"You'll make sure they get what they deserve when you come back."
When she'd come back. There was no uncertainty in his words. Hadn't he heard how she had threatened Jessie's kid, how she had endangered them all? She had been a rabid dog, and she had needed to disappear so that people would not think that the rest of the clan had been infected by her madness...
"It's not that simple..."
"Only if you don't want it to be," Daryl said. "Come back with me, and we'll deal with what happened. The guns were planted on the right person if you ask me, and we could pretend you had PTSD and had lied on the tape without thinking you were lying. We can fix it all."
It sounded so much like "we could have it all", and she wanted to believe it was true.
"I don't know if I can do it," she said, terrified by how true it was.
He looked at her, in silence, and she could almost hear the words of encouragement, the ones he would never say out loud, or maybe only on this boat when there was nobody around to spy on them.
"Alexandria, the zone... It's as close to civilization as we've ever been. I don't know if I can live in a civilized world anymore."
"You tried to run before, when we were at the church. You didn't think you could live with us anymore, and I know it has to do with the girls. You did what you had to do. Tyreese would never have let you do what you did if it wasn't the right thing to do."
"He couldn't do it... He couldn't fight anymore after I did what I had to do," she whispered, knots in her stomach, and tears trying to find an escape.
She tried to push it all back, to remain in control of her emotions, and her body, but something had broken inside her, and she found herself weeping silently, trying to look at the sea so as not to let him see what was going on. It was useless, and he came next to her, unsure what to do. He slowly put his arms around her, and the way he never flinched when she told him about the flowers and Mika and Lizzie, it was the last stroke. Weeping became ugly crying, and it just wouldn't stop. She spoke of the girls' death, of being the only one who knew what she had done and why she had done it after Tyreese had died, and how heavy a burden it was.
"A child killer can never truly come back to civilization, and you shouldn't want one to." She said.
He didn't speak, only held her close, tight, as if he was afraid she would run away again, and maybe he had been right. She hadn't just tried to protect them by fleeing, she had fled.
Everything became a blur, and she blacked out.
She came to much later on, and realized she was in her bed, as nothing could be as uncomfortable as the bunk bed in the cabin, and her back screamed in pain. Every muscle in her was in pain, and she remembered crying maniacally, and holding on tight to Daryl, probably hurting him though he never made a sound, as grief had decided that it was time for her to stop ignoring it. She remembered her hands and arms clenched around herself, as she had tried to keep herself together, like she could force herself to get a grip by physically keep herself together. She remembered that he had held her through it all, and she remembered the sound of his voice against her ear, soothing her, trying to get her to let go, though the words he had spoken were a blur. She only remembered his tone, and the way it had made her feel. Pain was okay. Pain needed to be processed, and she had kept it bottled in for way too long. Her whole body was proof of that, as everything hurt and felt like she would turn to dust any seconds now having abused her real strength.
She looked around but couldn't see him in the cabin, so she forced herself up, and slowly made her way outside.
He was on the deck, scrutinizing the horizon, his crossbow ready to fire, every sense alert. It reminded her of the way he used to sleep on the porch of the house, to keep them all safe, she realized.
"Hey," she whispered and he turned to see her.
There was pain in his eyes, and it made her want to weep again: he had no choice but to feel and share her pain, that was who he was, and she loved him for that. He needed to process what she had said, and understand some of the things she had exposed.
She came to sit next to him and said:
"Sorry."
"Not allowed. You don't get to be sorry for being human. Otherwise I want a free pass too, and you know you don't want to give me one."
She shook her head, too weak to make a witty comeback.
"I would have taken us back to the boat shelter, but I didn't know how to operate this thing," he said.
"It's okay, we should be safe."
Drained, she put her head on his shoulder, and was just about to fall asleep again. She felt him stir and she opened her eyes, as he pointed to something on the shore.
"Jolene," She said, with a sad smile, as she spotted the wolf.
It was looking at them they could tell, and it was standing still. Carol wondered if the wolf was trying to convey something.
"Jolene," she said again, just a whisper.
"Trust you to get a wolf as a pet," he said hoarsely, and she giggled.
"Jolene is no pet."
"Jolene is basically you, in wolf shape."
She wanted to say that he was wrong but there was something in the way the wolf looked at her, like it knew her, knew what she was feeling... Jolene was no pet, Jolene was so much more than that. Carol couldn't prove it, but from the first day she had crossed paths with the wolf, she had felt like they shared the burden of having lost their cubs. It was something in the way they had connected right away, two wild animals, who with a shared glance had recognized one of their own.
"Jolene's cubs were eaten by walkers," she said.
"Did she tell you that?" He asked.
"I can tell. When we met, we exchanged the secret handshake, or paw shake."
It was supposed to be funny, but it made them both sad.
Jolene looked at them another time, then ran away to protect itself for the night.
Daryl put an arm around Carol's shoulders, and she stayed there, on the deck with him, until the sun came up and they could drive the boat back to the shelter. They went to bed in silence after it was done, and were both sound asleep in no time no matter how terrible the mattress was.
TWDTWDTWD
When they woke up again, it took her some time to remember where she was and who was with her. You got used to being alone so fast. She remembered the multiple realizations that she had had the day before and there was an ache in her body, like she had run a marathon. She looked at him, and marveled at the expression of peace that adorned his features. She remembered when she barely knew him, at the very beginning, and when he would say things about being Zen. She wondered if he ever really knew what Zen was, because it was the first time he looked like he had it down to an art.
She wanted to kiss him. Nothing new here. She felt something poking against her side, something that would get her killed if she ever dared refer to it as "Little Daryl". She knew he wanted her, the kiss the day before had been a testament to that, but she still wondered if it was a male instinctive response or if even in his sleep, he was aware that she was there.
She started to get up but a strong arm grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back in.
"Where are you going?" He asked.
She had so many witty comebacks on the tip of her tongue but he was just too charming when in protective mode even thought he was barely awake.
"To use the bathroom."
"You have a bathroom?"
"It's that door in front of us. I need to check the tank to see if there's water for a shower."
"Just don't put back your soccer mom attire when you're done."
"Please. I burnt those clothes when I gave up that persona."
He loosened his grip and she went into the small room. Ten minutes later, she was trying to find the courage to come out and face him. What he now knew... She could barely fathom what he had to think of her.
Since waiting around gave her no relief so she finished adjusting her clothes then came out.
He was sitting on the bunk, rubbing his eyes, looking like a sleepy child.
She wanted to jump his bones then and there.
"Your bed is really shitty," he said. "I've had better sleep on the front porch of the house."
"I was going to steal a new mattress, for the future," she said, getting closer.
"It would be useless, since you're coming back."
She sighed.
"Daryl..."
"I'll rephrase that. You can come back, or I can move in. Your choice."
"Move in?" She repeated, blinded by the thought. "Do you even know how to fish?"
"Nope," he said with a smile, stretching on the bed, and she was once again very much aware of things she wanted to do to him. "You'll fish. I'll be a kept man, for a change."
She had a feeling he was lying and knew how to fish, but he was doing things to her brain and she could only do her best not to let him forget what they were discussing.
"You would never leave Lil Ass Kicker without her brutish uncle," she said.
"Neither would you."
"I did, once," she said, thinking back to how hard it had been to leave them all behind, how painful it had been to kiss Judith goodbye and assume it would be the last time she would see her.
"Your choice babe. We go back, or we steal a new mattress, or a bigger boat."
He was trying to keep things light, and she loved him for it.
"I guess we will have to go back then."
"I thought so," he said, before looking at her extremely seriously. "Though, Carol, don't run away again. If you want to, or feel the need to, yell, and tell me, or don't tell me and just tell me we're going away for some time. You and I, we're..."
She came closer to him and put her hands around his face, as he looked up to her.
"Mates?' She offered. "Not as in the English slang, but as wolves who have mates? If I am like my friendly wolf, you have to admit, you are like one too. And you're putting me in charge. Wolves are a matriarchal society. The females decide and the males obey."
There was a brief look in his eyes, that screamed "command me to fuck you", but he forced himself to get back to the point.
"Yes. We're a thing, together, mates. We run in the same pack and all."
"I think you're overusing the metaphor," she said with a shy smile, glad to hear him acknowledge their bond.
"I wasn't aware it was a metaphor at all. We've wolves. The other are wolves too, except Eugene, who is some sort of pervy platypus..."
She laughed and he slid his arms around her waist.
"If you feel like things are too much, that civilization is getting to you, that you need to deal with some shits, do not leave me behind. You know I will only follow like the whipped boy you turned me into. So spare us both some agony, and make me tag along."
He looked so fragile, and she felt like she would melt any moment now.
"I promise," she said, moved by the commitment he was expressing even though he knew what she had done and the sins she had to atone for.
"Good. Good. We'll make it work, at the zone. Our people want you back, more than they want I don't know, electricity back. We'll make it work, as a team. They'll understand. The Alexandrians... Some of them are already filling paperwork to become pack members of our clan so..." he said, wanting her to feel like she could come back, and she should come back.
She nodded, though she felt anxiety at the thought of making a comeback. She was about to offer him breakfast when he tickled her side and said:
"Wanna fuck? Before we leave this boat, we should totally fuck in this awkward bed. People will assume we did it anyway," he said, pulling her closer and winking.
"Oh my God, the romance is already gone!" She pretended to lament before letting him pull her in bed with him.
If everybody would assumed they had, surely they couldn't disappoint.
"I love you," he said gruffly.
"I love you too".
Then he proceeded to make her forget all about words, and the world, kissing her like she could leave again tomorrow, giving her one very positive memory of this shitty bunk.
