Note: My previous chapter on Friday got goofed up. If you read it that day, you might have been reading an earlier chapter from the same story. So if you were confused as to why Sophia was still lost...well, you had good reason to be. Please take a look at Chapter 13 to make sure you read the right thing. Sorry!

This is the final chapter, y'all. Notes at the end.

Tipping the Scales

For a month, they'd been struggling to survive on the road. As the weather kept getting colder, Carol had serious doubts about whether they'd be able to make it through the winter like this. They moved constantly, seeking supplies: food, gasoline, weapons, blankets, clothing, medicine. Many of the places they found anymore had already been picked over by other survivors, so they were all constantly cold and hungry. She'd been surprised, though, by Rick's leadership. She still didn't trust him, but so far he'd been clever enough to keep them all alive.

Despite their miserable situation, and no matter how tired or hungry they were, Daryl had been taking a little time each day to start teaching Carol the skills she needed to live in this world. He was a surprisingly patient teacher, and she tried hard to focus and absorb everything, though she knew she was embarrassingly slow.

He gave her the basics of how to handle the knife he'd given her, including how to keep it sharp. After she got more comfortable with it, he'd even gone so far as to knock over a walker and pin it down so she could learn how to kill one. She'd had to try a couple of times before finally sinking the blade into its skull. It took a lot more force than she expected, and the blade was more easily deflected off the bone than she realized. The eyes, ears, and temple were more vulnerable, so she learned to aim for those.

No one from her old life would have recognized her as she beamed proudly up at Daryl with walker gore spattered on her face and hands.

After that, he started teaching her about guns. She learned how to break down and clean every weapon they had and how to handle them safely. They didn't have enough ammo to allow her to practice shooting with them all yet, but after a fairly prosperous raid of a run-down apartment complex, Daryl gave her a gun of her own – a little .38 special that fit comfortably in her hand. She was able to fire off a few rounds to get a feel for it, but she wasn't really able to work on her aim. She considered it as being more for emergencies that the knife couldn't handle.

With each day that passed, Carol's confidence grew. She liked learning these things, and she loved learning them from Daryl. After so long with Ed, it was nice to learn from someone who didn't shout, didn't patronize her, and didn't ridicule her for making mistakes. Sure, he was cranky, but they all were after so many tired, hungry weeks. Since he was working so hard to help her in addition to keeping the group safe and fed, she did her best to make sure he was well taken care of, too. She made sure he ate and even slipped extra food on his plate when she could. She kept his clothes as clean and repaired as she could. And she tried to give him as much space as possible, since living so close to so many people was clearly taking its toll on him.

Their group stumbled across a farmhouse in a field that was an absolute godsend in Carol's mind. The house was secluded enough that it hadn't yet been ransacked. The owners had apparently evacuated when things got ugly, and everything was still closed up tight. There were fences, which they knew wouldn't keep out a herd, but it kept stray walkers back. There was a well for fresh water, a fireplace for heat, and in the basement there was a pantry that contained more food than they'd seen in one place since before the Turn. Rick decided they would stay for a few days to rest up and get fed before they continued on to look for a more permanent home. While they were desperately in need of rest and shelter, the place was eerily similar enough to the Greene farm that no one wanted to stay too long.

Since they were staying put, Daryl was able to spend some time hunting. The first day he brought back a small doe, and that night the group was in relatively high spirits with full bellies and warm toes. The next day, since the immediate pressure to feed the group was off, he took Carol with him to start teaching her a bit about finding food in the woods.

She'd already mastered setting simple snares, and now he was showing her how to set a fancier version. The concept was simple enough, but she was apparently slow to pick up the finer details.

"No, 'f you do it like that, it won't work. Trigger's gotta be stable enough to stay put until somethin' runs through."

So she drove the stake in deeper with a rock and bent the sapling down again to reset the trigger.

"Better. Now the noose," he directed her. "Nope. It's gotta be lower, right on the trail. No, like this." He reached out to adjust her placement, gripping the wire noose with his hand over hers.

The touch was innocent and shouldn't have been anything at all, but when his hand closed over hers, they both froze in place, neither of them moving or daring to look at each other. Her skin tingled where he touched her, sending echoing prickles over her scalp. Heat rose in her cheeks, and her heart rate soared. The moment rapidly shifted toward awkward as the silence between them stretched.

She swallowed and opted for a light-hearted tease. "Why, Daryl Dixon! Are you trying to hold my hand?"

His eyes snapped up to hers, mortification evident in his expression.

She batted her eyelashes ridiculously. "Because all you had to do was ask."

For an instant, he looked so flustered she almost felt bad for teasing him. He flushed bright red and quickly drew his hand back. "You gonna set this snare or what?" he grumbled with a scowl.

Smothering a smile, she went back to work on the snare, eventually setting it to his satisfaction.

Their snares had added a few rabbits to their evening meal. After supper, the group was sitting by the fireplace, talking quietly when Maggie appeared from the kitchen where she'd been cleaning up after their meal.

"Look what I found!" she sang out, sloshing a mostly full bottle of whiskey side to side.

"Maggie, the last thing we need is for half the group not to have their wits about them if something were to happen," Hershel chided her.

"Oh, Daddy, there ain't enough here for anyone to get drunk off of. And goodness knows we could use a little stress relief." As usual, she bulldozed her way over her father's objections and started handing out pink plastic polka-dotted cups to whoever wanted them, adding a splash of whiskey to each one.

Lori, Carl, Hershel, and Beth unsurprisingly declined to drink. But she gave cups to everyone else, including Glenn, despite T-Dog's warning to her about his inability to handle his liquor. The only other person not drinking was Rick, who had refused to join them and was now on the porch on watch. After sharing it out, Maggie sat back with Glenn to enjoy her drink. Carol smiled as she watched them, hoping poor Glenn would make better choices tonight than he had that night at the CDC.

She swirled the whiskey in her little pink cup. Even before she was married she hadn't been much of a drinker, and it'd been nearly two decades since she'd had any hard liquor. She took a sip and made a face as it burned its way down her throat, pooling warm in her belly. The little bit of drinking she had done in the past hadn't been heavy on the whiskey, but that didn't discourage her from sipping her way through it now.

As it often did on the rare nights where they had decent shelter, conversation turned nostalgic with most of them sharing stories about their lives before the world ended. As usual, Carol curled up in her armchair and just listened, not having much she wanted to share about her life except the parts including Sophia, and she wasn't ready to talk about her just yet. Tonight they'd somehow got to talking about disastrous holiday dinners, and Carl nearly bubbled over in his excitement to relate the story of the exploding deep fried turkey from three Christmases ago. Lori blushed, her expression pained as Carl launched into sound effects and wide descriptive gestures. Maggie found it particularly funny and couldn't seem to stop giggling. Beth sneaked the whiskey bottle out of her reach and passed it over to the other drinkers to polish off.

Carol's second cup wasn't as hard to get down as the first, and she found herself laughing aloud as T-Dog defended himself against Glenn and Beth's protestations that there was no such thing as a turducken. Hershel finally took T's side before they believed him.

Still smiling broadly as T-Dog described chasing the dog that had stolen his grandmother's turducken, Carol glanced over to where Daryl leaned back against the side of the couch at the edge of their little gathering. Daryl talked about his past even less than she did. He had his pink polka-dot cup in hand, his blue eyes bright from the whiskey, and his mouth curled into what passed for a smile for him as he listened to T-Dog's story.

As if he could feel her eyes on him, he turned to meet her gaze. He didn't flinch or scowl or look away. She ended up breaking eye contact first as she grew flustered by the directness of his stare. She avoided looking at him for the rest of the evening.

A few at a time, folks eventually went off to get some sleep. Carol was drowsy after her third cup of whiskey, but too warm and comfortable curled up by the fire to move. She rested her head against the chair back and closed her eyes, the soothing murmur of voices around her gradually quieting until there were just a few people left, but she wasn't aware of what they said anymore.

She woke with a bit of a crick in her neck and a swimming head. The fire had burned down considerably, but someone had draped an old quilt over her. Everyone had apparently gone off to bed except for her. And Daryl. He was sprawled out on the couch across from her, snoring softly. She uncoiled herself slowly from the chair, stretching out all the kinks.

Picking up the quilt, she stood and crossed to the couch, looking down at Daryl as he slept. It wasn't often that she was awake when he wasn't – she had no idea how he managed to function with so little rest. She smiled and carefully draped the quilt over him, though she knew he would be fine without it. The whiskey in her blood allowed her to satisfy the urge to reach out and brush the hair off his forehead. With his face relaxed in sleep, he looked so young.

When she turned to go find a more comfortable bed, his hand snaked out from under the quilt and caught her wrist. Startled, she looked back to see him peering up at her from half-lidded eyes.

"You leavin'?" he mumbled.

She smiled down at him and whispered, "I'm just going to bed."

Blinking sleepily, he drawled, "S'matter? You don' wanna sleep with me?"

Her whole body flushed hot, and she gaped at him, too stunned to make any words come out. After a moment, he closed his eyes again and released her wrist. A slow, smug smile spread over his lips.

Huffing to hide her embarrassment, she crossed her arms over her chest and growled, "Not if you're going to be a smart ass."

"So you do wanna sleep with me then." He sounded far too pleased with himself.

"Oh, be serious!"

His eyes opened again and met hers, no trace of sleepiness in them this time. "I'm always serious."

Flushing again, she muttered, "Stop."

Before he could harass her any more, she made her escape to the room she'd been sharing with Lori and Carl, but she couldn't sleep when she got there. It was the whiskey. Her spinning mind and the heat in her cheeks were from too much whiskey. Surely the unexpected teasing from Daryl was a result of too much alcohol as well, since he would never have been so brash if he were sober. He'd never teased her like that before. She paused to consider that. If he weren't comfortable around her, all the alcohol in the world wouldn't change that. Settling back under her blanket, she basked in the realization. It had sneaked up on her - happened while she wasn't looking. Despite their rough start, she and Daryl had somehow become friends.

My goal with this story was to follow the two of them as they navigated the minefield of the early course of their relationship. At the end of this chapter they've pushed past the precariousness of those earlier interactions and taken their first steps toward the easy, teasy level of comfort with each other that they showed at the beginning of Season 3, thus tipping the scales.

I hope you enjoyed the story – thank you for reading! And extra thanks with hugs to those who reviewed. Feedback is always treasured.