They quietly walk the worn path from camp to the deep spot in the little river nearby where they went to bathe on the warmer days.
Daryl stops at the edge of the water once they arrive at it, but Carol gets right on going until her filthy form is submerged in the liquid.
It's cold from the coming of night and she gasps as her skin draws tight against the sudden chill, but she doesn't regret a thing as the slow current begins to loosen the bits of flesh clinging to her.
"That's one way to do it," she hears Daryl chuckle from the bank as her head rises above the water again after she dunked it under.
She turns toward him, letting the water cool some of her temper.
"That child is a menace."
"What're you looking at me for?" he snaps defensively at the look she gives him with the words. "She ain't mine."
"Technically, legally and biologically, no, she isn't," Carol sighs, scrubbing at her skin as she tries to plot the best course for this much needed discussion. "But she doesn't have anyone else now and since you're the one that saved her, you're the one she looks to now."
"Jesus," he sat down on the ground with an expression of disgust on his face, "you're talking like her now."
Carol's hands still at that allegation and she looks at him with narrowing eyes.
"Hells bells, woman," he scrambles quickly back to his feet at the shower of water she sends toward him with a vicious swipe of her arm across the surface of the river, "acting like her too now."
"I am not," she begins to argue contrary to her actions as she removes a waterlogged shoe and hurls it in his direction, "anything like your demented little darling."
"Will you stop," he bats away the second shoe with an irritated look as he beats a hasty retreat to a nearby tree. "She is not mine."
"She is your responsibility," she wades to the shore to collect the bar of soap from where he dropped the supplies.
He says nothing in response to the charge and she begins to scrub herself, clothing and all, with the soap to work up a lather.
"She's been through a gauntlet and we've giving her all the leeway for it that we can afford to. It's time to get her past the grief and realizing that she has to be strong and grow up now."
"Hell," she turns to watch him slowly poke out from behind his tree then move to settle back on the bank, "that girl's more mature than I am most days."
Not about to touch on that notion with a ten foot pole, Carol just snorts out a laugh.
"She has her moments, but they're few and grower further between," she faces him with her arms widespread. "She's a human wrecking ball; leaving nothing but chaos in my path. Look at this!" she gestures at her ruined clothing and still bloody skin.
He looks, eyes skimming over her once then returning to her chest with a look that makes her suddenly away of her nipples hardened by the cold water. He licks his lips after a moment then looks away while scratching at the side of his neck and she shivers at nothing to do with the cold water.
"This is just the last straw for me dealing with her," she forces her mind to stay on point and crosses her arms across her chest.
"Then don't," he huffs, dropping his hand to slap against the ground. "She's not your problem."
"She is not a problem," she huffs back, giving him a wounded glance at the notion. "She's a traumatized child and she needs all the help she can get in this horrible place."
He groans and drops his head forward to rub at his forehead as if he's suddenly beset with a severe migraine.
"I was wrong," he sighs, "I understand Cassie better when she rants."
With her jaw dropping at that, Carol reacts in her current agitated state by whipping the shirt off her back to ball up and throw at his head.
It hits his up drawn knee with a feeble thwap then plops to the ground.
"What do you want from me?" he hurls the words at her along with the shirt after he swipes it up in an angry motion.
It hits her head and she sputters at the splash of sudsy wetness against her face.
Of course, she thinks with disdain as the shirt splats to the water and begins to float away, he never misses.
"It's not about what I want," she sighs and rubs at her own head as it begins to hurt from the strain of this topic. "It's about what Cassie needs."
"What she needs is that ass whoopin' you had planned before she turned tail and hid."
"How often does beating a child usually work?" she returns somberly, drawing attention to both their scars.
"We got out ok," he met her eyes then looked away. "Ain't saying we abuse the brat, just gotta knock some sense into her. Kid don't listen."
"She does," Carol points out, "to you."
He snorts then shakes his head in disagreement of that statement.
"Daryl Dixon, you are that girl's hero in every way that means anything in this world and she needs you now to step up and help her adjust," she stares at him, hands on hips as she tries to force the knowledge into his selectively thick skull.
"I-" his eyes sharpen and she knows the exact moment he realizes she's standing there; waist deep in water and arguing with him while completely topless.
It's pretty much the same moment that she realizes it herself.
Mortified and blushing more than she has since losing her virginity; she ducks down until the water is up to her chin and looks around frantically for her discarded shirt. She spots it well on its way down the river and nearly out of sight.
Her bar of soap is floating toward a similar fate and she looks at her empty hands in surprise before giving chase to the precious and increasingly rare commodity.
She rushes after it with a combination of swimming and running until she's able to swipe the dissolving bar from the water with a triumphant shout. She turns toward the bank to share her achievement with Daryl and finds the current to have carried her several yards from where she had started and she catches movement in the woods along the river, coming toward her.
It takes her a minute to realize the movement is too rapid to be Walkers and Daryl breaks into the open to relax the rest of her instinctual fears of the damned things that hid in these woods.
He sees her treading water, but no longer going with the flow of the river and moves to the edge of the bank to glare down at her.
"You don't ever just bolt on me like that again," he snaps with an honest to God wag of his finger in her direction as he slings his armed crossbow over his shoulder to rest against his back.
"I got the soap," she offers feebly with a wave of the hand holding the evidence of her excuse.
"I outta show you what happens when you drop that shit in a prison shower," he huffs. "You finished now?"
He looks like he's not going to give her any choice of answering no and opting to stay in the water, but she grins with the knowledge that his position on the bank is too high for her to climb to with there being nothing for her to actually climb to get to him and there being no way for him to scoop her out without falling in in the process.
"I still feel that stuff all over me; clinging and oozing and practically crawling," she confesses with a shiver of revulsion and sudden cold as a breeze cuts through the area. "I'm not getting out of here until this soap," she looks as said soap, "or this skin," she looks at said skin and bites back a grin when he looks at that as well, "is all gone," she concludes.
He glares around them; listens intently for several minutes then expels a resigned sigh.
"Fine, but get your ass back up where you were," he orders before moving to stalk back into the woods with the clear intent of returning to his previous perch on the bank to await her return to where he could keep an eye on her.
Moving against the current makes her trip back much slower and difficult that the float down river. The weight of the gently flowing water pushed at her legs with surprising resistance at every step she took.
Her pants are an unnecessary hindrance considering the unlikelihood of her ever wanting to wear them again after this day even if they weren't forever stained with blood; so she rolls to her back for a moment to unfasten the capris and shove them past her hips. Once she has them lowered she begins a backstroke upriver, using the kicks to free her legs from the tangle of wet material to help propel her along against the current.
There's something decadent and taboo for her to be swimming along in the nude with the fading sunlight peering down on her like a pervert through the canopy of trees. She thinks of Daryl seeing her; watching her like this and smiles, flipping to swim with a little more force toward where he waited.
As soon as she spots him on the bank; watching the water for her return, she drops her feet back to the riverbed and resumes the struggle to walk against the current until she's back where she'd started.
He doesn't question her delay in getting back after having seen the effort it takes her cross that short distance.
The area is quiet; but peacefully so with only the sounds of the river to be heard around them.
She realizes that they are finally; completely and utterly alone.
She remembers the last time they had been in this spot together; their positions reversed with him in the water and her trying to get up the nerve to join him before he'd caught Cassie spying on him and Carol had had to hide in the trees so he wouldn't think; know that she had been there watching too.
"Daryl," she says, thinking of what she'd wanted them to have done then had the girl not been present; what they can do now with the teenager safely locked by her own actions in the Winnebago back at camp.
He acknowledges her prompt with a jerk of his chin to indicate he was listening for the rest of it, his eyes moving briefly over her flesh above the waterline before he looked away; out of respect she hopes and is touched by the possible chivalry.
"I was sprawled in that stuff for so long it feels like the blood is sinking into me," she turns her back to him and casts a coy glance over her shoulder, making a play to test the chivalrous theory. "Can you scrub my back for me? I have to know that it's all washed away," she isn't lying in that sentiment, her skin truly did crawl at the thought of any trace of that corpse lingering on her.
She faces forward again and holds her breath to wait for his response.
She's on the verge of losing consciousness from oxygen deprivation to the brain by the time she finally feels the ripples of him finally entering the water behind her. She tries to breathe normally again like she hasn't been holding it in like an adolescent only to have the rhythm disrupted again when he suddenly places his left hand on her shoulder and extends his right arm forward to hold out his hand, palm up and waiting.
"Soap," he prompts when she fails to immediately deposit the bar in his waiting hand.
She fumbles with the slick item in transferring it to his grasp and watches it splat into the river. His hand tightens on her shoulder as he bends quickly forward to grab the soap before it can float away again.
He scoops the item up from the water and straightens slowly to stand upright again at her back. His hold on her shoulder doesn't ease, if anything, it grows tighter.
"Carol," he husks very carefully against the back of her head, "where are your pants?"
She casts a glance downriver and sees the garment in question bobbing along the current as her shirt had done.
"And how exactly did they get there?" he asks, having followed her gaze to see the answer to his first question.
"I took them off," she replies, not really knowing if she felt like a child being interrogated or more like an adult patiently addressing the curious demands of a child. Either scenario is just wrong in her head given she wants them to be rolling around together on the bank like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr tangled in the surf in From Here To Eternity. "You're not wearing yours either," she accuses at the feel of his bare legs against her own.
"Doesn't make sense to get everything wet," he explains like it's really necessary, "I've still got my shorts on."
He presses his forehead against the nape of her neck as he drags the bar of soap up her thigh while his fingers skim over her bare flesh from knee to waist.
"Where are your panties?"
She feels the press of hardened flesh against her backside and smiles as satisfaction spreads at the success of her plan to lure him in to frolic.
"Guess they got tangled in the pants," she turns in his hold with a careless shrug. "You know how hard it is to get out of wet clothing."
She looks briefly into his eyes then drops her gaze to the fingers of her hand beneath the water as she skim across the elasticized waistband of his boxers.
"It feels pretty liberating to be completely naked in here," she confesses.
"Temptress," he chokes out before skittering back then spinning her back around. "What happened to your having to get this crud off your back?"
His hands begin to move briskly over her back from the nape of her neck to the dip of her spine as her torso curves below the surface of the water.
"Anything to get your hands on me," she sighs at his hands on her even with the simple intent to clean her.
"I'm trying to be good here, woman," he drawls against the back of her head as her words still the motion of his hands on her body.
"What kind of good?" she turns toward him again to challenge. "And why they hell should we behave if you're defining that as us not going further than this?"
She wraps her hand around the back of his neck and pulls his mouth down to hers for a quick, sloppy kiss.
"You've been through so much lately -" he attempts when they separate for breath.
"That's right, Daryl," she looks determinedly into his eyes, "I've been through it. Give me something good to get on with."
He resists her for a moment then his eyes close and his lips move quietly as if he's uttering a prayer before he crushes his mouth to hers and wraps her tightly in his arms. The buoyancy of the water helps her lift her legs to wrap around his waist with him only staggering for a moment to brace and balance himself with her added wait to fully support.
All she can think is that they're finally going to do it and she thinks for a moment that she's said the thought aloud before it sinks in that Daryl's lips are still on hers and the words; a variation of her thought had been spoken by a familiar young male voice nearby.
"Are they really going to do it right there in the water?"
She can tell that the words have sunk into Daryl's fogged brain at the same moment as his body goes still and his head slowly lifts from hers.
"Carl?" he barks out.
Her eyes detect movement on a rock outcropping a few feet up river and she slowly unwinds her legs from Daryl's waist.
"CASSANDRA!" she prepares to turn in confrontational stance to face the bane of her existence with her hands upon her hips, but Daryl stops her with a quick, hard grip to keep her pressed against his chest.
"Don't stop you try and stop me," she glares at him for the delay, "we agreed she has it coming."
"Actually," he has the nerve to point out, "I said she should get that ass whoopin' and you seemed to think she could be magically made sane with a few words from me. But that's not-"
"Fine," she tries to twist free of his grasp, "so I agree with you now. Let me go so I can-"
"You're aked-nay," he hisses in her ear with his hands fighting her every attempt to break away.
The pig Latin is something she'll laugh about later, she's sure, if she ever comes out of the hole she determines in that moment that she must find to crawl into.
At this point they can both hear the kids scampering away with whatever glimmer of sense that hadn't been in existence between them before their bright idea to track them down at the river.
Carol draws in a slow breath at the sound of their running feet gets further away.
"Can I get dressed now and then go kill her?" she tips her head back to ask.
"No," he drops a quick kiss to her lips before releasing her to splash to the bank, "you were right. The girl's my responsibility," he begins to angrily thrust limbs into his clothing while Carol moves to dress and argue with whatever he says next, "I get to kill her."
Carol doesn't feel a need to argue with that as they rush to cover themselves as much as decency demands before they grab up their things to hurry along the path back to camp without even bothering to put on their shoes.
A/N: I've been on a tear with this series today and have what will be the last 2 chapters waiting a few quick tweaks before I upload them to complete the series. Gotta get to bed for work in the morning, though, so those tweaks have to wait a few days.