A lot is crammed into this chapter. But I love it and I hope you do, too! As always with this story, this chapter flew out of me.

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Chapter Twenty-five. Snow.

Every morning, Eli woke up and one of the first things he saw was a garden gnome that his mama had brought back for him. She said that his Uncle Glenn, who he had never met but who would have adored him – both of his parents said – first gave it to her and now, she was giving it to him. And daddy had placed it on the windowsill next to Eli's bed so it watched over him as he slept.

The room was gray and he knew that it was morning. He could hear mama and daddy moving quietly around the house and the stove had been fed more wood, notching the room's temperature up to toasty. Eli sat up and turned towards the window behind his bed, sitting up on his knees. The night before at dinner, daddy had said that it smelled like snow in the air and as he always was, he had been right and during the night as they slept, a blanket of snow had fallen and it was still falling, covering the ground and adding inches.

Mulligan had said it was going to be a bad winter.

His window faced out over the garden and the rest of the large fenced in yard. The snow was smooth and undisturbed except one single path had already been shoveled from the cabin's back door to the barn, which let Eli know that Anna was already awake and had seen to the animals. She was probably still out there. She refused anyone else to help her and nearly barred them all from the barn. Mama said that Anna was grieving over Mulligan and they just had to give her time.

Eli pulled himself out of his bed and first went to the side of the tree-house where they had a curtain hanging from the ceiling and it closed around a metal tub where they bathed themselves in the winter; a long process of heating the water on the stove and carrying the pails to the tub, but some baths were better than none. Also, there was a bucket to pee in, which Eli did now.

He heard the soft murmur of his parents as he left the bucket and hurried around the tree house, coming upon both parents – Beth at the stove and Daryl sitting at the table that he had built into a nook.

"Good morning, sweetie," Beth smiled at him and bent down, kissing him on the head. "Anna brought us eggs and milk. Are you hungry for breakfast?" She asked.

"Yep!" He replied eagerly and went to stand in front of the stove in an effort to get himself a bit more warm now that he was away from the thick quilts covering his bed. He looked to Daryl as Daryl ate his own breakfast. "How much snow we get?"

Daryl waited until he finished chewing his mouthful of eggs. "Figure about eight inches and 's still fallin'. Might get a foot before the day is done." He paused to sip his milk and then looked to Beth. "Gonna have to get up on the roof and shovel it off. Don't want that much snow pilin' up there."

"I'll help!" Eli volunteered.

"Nope. You have to help me in here today," Beth immediately denied him and Eli frowned. She never let him crawl onto the roof.

"Doing what?" Eli asked, looking up at her suspiciously.

"If your mama needs your help, you're gonna help her," Daryl said.

Eli went to sit down on the bench seat across from Daryl and Beth came, setting a plate of two fried eggs and a slice of mulberry and pepper bread down in front of him. A moment later, she then returned with a cup of chocolate milk. A big breakfast to carry him through until they ate dinner that evening.

Eli tilted his head up towards her and gave her a grin. "Thank you, mama."

Beth smiled and kissed him on the head before sitting down beside him, eating her own bread and drinking her own milk. He slid over to give her more room, sitting closer to the window and as he ate, he looked out, watching the falling snow and listening to the murmur of his parents' voices as they talked with one another. Through the bare trees, a little bit away, he saw a walker not moving. Just standing there. The walkers never seemed to move in the winter and if they did, they did very slowly. His daddy said that when he taught him how to take down walkers, his lessons would begin in the winter so the walkers were easier to handle.

"How come you never let me go up on the roof and help with the snow?" Eli then asked suddenly, turning his head to look back to his parents.

"Cause you're five," Daryl answered him and pushed his plate with the one remaining egg towards Beth. She hadn't made any for herself that morning, just wanting some of the bread, but Daryl didn't like the idea of her just eating bread. "And you still fall over when you're runnin' away too fast from Aiden. I'm gonna wanna wait until you're at least another year older."

Eli frowned. "I don't fall over."

Daryl smirked at that around the rim of his cup. "Yeah, you do. Like a drunk," he teased and Beth smiled as she ate the egg, scooping the yolk with the bit of bread.

"I have to give you a haircut today," Beth informed Eli, reaching a hand out and brushing some of his longish dark brown hair back from his forehead.

Eli frowned. "Do you gotta?" He asked.

"Yes, I have to," she corrected him. "And then, we're going to have your lessons and then, you're going to help me make us some dinner tonight."

Eli didn't argue. Although he would much rather go up on the roof and help daddy shovel, he knew that there was no way that was going to happen. Not today and not when his mama had already said he had lessons.

"Why is Anna so sad?" He then asked, abruptly changing the subject in that way that only little kids could seem to do because they didn't know yet what tact was.

Daryl was quiet and stared down at the table, suddenly finding it to be the most fascinating thing he had ever seen, and Beth gave Eli a small, gentle smile, reaching out and brushing his hair back again.

He admitted that he didn't get death. He had never known someone who had died before. All he knew was that Mulligan went down the mountain and he didn't come back up and Eli felt frustration because he just didn't get it. His body was there, but there wasn't anything else to it. Where did he go? His mama told him about heaven and she told him all about God and read from the Bible and Eli liked the stories. He just didn't get it.

"She misses Mulligan," Beth told him and it wasn't the first time she had. "When we got here, before you were born, we were all tired and a little scared and we didn't know what was going to happen. But Mulligan opened his home up to us and took us in and didn't want us to leave. And Anna was young and Mulligan wanted to help her not be scared anymore. He showed her how to take care of the animals and it became the thing they shared." Beth paused and Eli saw her swallow. "She misses him so much and is feeling a little lost without him in the barn with her."

"But you said that we'll all see Mulligan again someday," Eli pointed out to her.

Beth smiled faintly at that and put her arm around his shoulders, pulling him tightly and securely into her warm side. "And we will. But even knowing that doesn't always help the pain go away."

"'s important, Eli, that you learn everything me and your mama teach you," Daryl finally spoke up, his voice a little rough and he paused to clear it. "Mulligan taught Anna how to take care of the animals. She knows how to help 'em give birth and how to milk 'em and she knows how to shear the sheep so we can spin their wool for Rosita. 's all really important stuff."

Eli listened and nodded. He was always jealous of how much Anna knew and could do with the animals.

"And when I teach you 'bout huntin' and your mama teaches you 'bout plants, 's important you remember all of it," Daryl said, looking at his son with a serious look.

Eli nodded again. "I'll remember."

Daryl seemed to want to say something else and he exhaled a soft sigh. "This is how you and you kids survive, Eli. Your mama and me, and Aaron, and Spencer and Rosita, we're not gonna be around forever."

"Where are you going to be?" Eli frowned as he asked the question.

Daryl looked to Beth for help and Beth squeezed her arm around Eli's shoulders.

"Someday, we're going to die, too, and you kids will have to carry this place on," she said as gently as she could and she hated when Eli's eyes started to glisten. "Not today," she then added and put her lips to his hair, resting them there. "Not today," she repeated in a whisper against his head.

She lifted her eyes and looked to Daryl and he looked at her. It wasn't a conversation that neither had really wanted to have, but it was one they couldn't not have with him. It was something kids had to learn early on in this life. This world was not a kind one and as much as Beth wished Eli could have the childhood she had, making Rice Krispie treats in the kitchen and running barefoot through the fields without a care in the world, she knew that that would never happen. Kids had to be strong and brave and tough. They all had to be, or else, they wouldn't survive.

Anna had told them once, when she was younger than she was now, that she had read about the Pilgrims in a history book they had gotten her and they reminded her of what they were. Doing and making everything they had by their own hands – just like the Pilgrims did when they came here to start completely over.

Pilgrims were probably scared when they got over here and looked at this strange new world, but – as Anna pointed out to them – Pilgrims were tough. They had laughed at that, but they had all agreed. They were Pilgrims and Pilgrims were brave and tough. Maybe in honor of the Pilgrims, Daryl would be able to hunt them down a wild turkey. Beth wished – not for the first time – she knew what day it was.

Eli let out a sniffle and then he lifted his eyes, looking back and forth between his parents. "I wanna help daddy on the roof with the snow," he then said, in the best firm tone he could muster.

Daryl and Beth looked at him and then looked at one another – having a conversation and just speaking with their eyes as they have done countless times before. Daryl, sometimes, would try to remember how they had gotten so good at doing this with one another. It was obviously after the prison and when they had been on their own – just the two of them – for so long, but Daryl could never remember the first time they had ever attempted it and had succeeded.

Together, silently, they came to a decision.

Beth squeezed her arms around Eli's shoulders. "You wear as many layers as you can," she told him. "I'll put your mittens and scarf near the stove until you put them on so they're toasty warm for you."

Eli smiled at that.

"You get enough to eat?" Daryl asked him.

"Yep!" He asked, his excitement already growing at just the idea of being able to help his daddy shovel snow off the roof.

"Go and get dressed then," Daryl said and Eli practically climbed over Beth to leave the table and run back towards his bed on the other side of the tree house.

Beth and Daryl continued sitting and looking at one another. Without a word, he stood up and Beth slid over on the bench seat to make room for him as he sat down next to her. One of his arms went around her shoulders and the other hand went to rest on her flat stomach.

"You feelin' a'right?" He asked her quietly.

She gave him a smile and a nod and covered his hand with hers. "With Eli, I felt like throwing up all of the time, but it usually just hit me in the afternoon. This time… there's nothing. But I don't want to get too comfortable. I read morning sickness can happen in the second or even the third trimester."

Daryl didn't say anything to that. He just looked down at their hands.

"You think we're idiots?" She asked him in a much softer tone.

Daryl smirked a little, lifting his eyes, looking into hers. "I think the Queen Anne's Lace ain't doin' what we need it to."

She smiled faintly and he saw the slightest trace of fear in her eyes and he held her as tightly against his side as he could, his lips resting against her temple.

"It'll be fine," he murmured against her skin and Beth nodded as she usually did when he said those words because one thing was always true between them.

She trusted him.

"Hey. You guys up?"

Daryl gave Beth's head one more kiss and then went to the can he had built into the wall, the one that was connected on a piece of string down to the other can that they had built into the cabin; their own version of a telephone.

"Yeah, we're up," Daryl answered Aaron. "You headin' up on the roof?"

"Spencer and I are heading up there now. Aiden was teasing Bee and telling her that the roof was going to fall on our heads. She's been crying all morning," Aaron said.

And now that Aaron mentioned it, Daryl could hear the little girl wailing in the background and Rosita trying to calm her down again.

No matter if the world ended or not, the job of big brothers remained tormenting their little brothers and sisters. Daryl wondered how Eli would be as a big brother.

…

Beth spent her day inside, cooking and listening to the scraping of the shovels on the roof above her head. She was nervous about Eli being up there, but after she and Daryl had had "the talk" with him this morning, they couldn't very well tell him that he couldn't after telling him that he had to be strong and brave. It was something he had to learn. When it snowed too much, the weight of the snow might hurt their roofs and they had to get ahead of the snowfall.

They came in sometime late that morning and Beth made them hot cups of honey tea and they both stood by the wood-burning stove, drinking and warming themselves. Their hats, gloves and scarves were damp with melting snow and Beth didn't let them go outside again until they were dry and warm again. The last thing any of them needed was one of them getting sick.

"What's for dinner, mama?" Eli asked as he eyed the heavy pot on top of the stove.

"Mushroom and scallion soup," Beth answered as she went over the inventory on their shelves in their tree house and writing the numbers down in her journal. Tomorrow, she would do inventory in the cabin and in the root cellar. As Mulligan had predicted, winter was already bad and it had already begun.

She hoped that they had stored and prepared enough to get them all through it.

"Eli!"

Eli hurried to the window and saw that Aiden was in the yard, sinking down in the snow and rolling a large snow ball around.

"Gonna make a snowman! Come on!" Aiden called up to him.

"Tell 'im to stop yellin'," Daryl frowned. "His voice is echoin' across this entire mountain and he knows better."

Eli pushed his cup onto the counter and donned his scarf, hat and mittens as quickly as he could before throwing open the door in the floor and starting to climb down.

"Aiden, stop yelling!" Eli yelled at him.

Beth giggled as Daryl muttered something and closed the door after him before too much of the cold could blow in. Daryl poured himself another cup of the hot water from the kettle and Beth handed him the jar of honey. He leaned against the counter next to Beth and watched as she counted and wrote and then counted some more and he sipped his drink, feeling the honey slide down his throat, warming him up from the inside out.

"You nervous?" He asked her suddenly; quietly.

"No," Beth answered honestly and finished counting the jars of mushrooms and writing down the figure before lifting her eyes to him. "Are you?" She then asked.

Daryl shrugged. "Always nervous when it comes to you. Eli didn' exactly make givin' birth to 'im easy."

"No," Beth agreed. "But we all made it. God got us through that one and He already has a plan for this labor. Just have to trust Him that he'll keep us all safe."

Daryl wanted to snort at that, but he wisely stayed quiet. One of the things he loved most about Beth – and the list was too damn long to go through all of them – but one of those things was her faith. Even after everything that had happened and everything they had gone through, Beth still went on believing in God. It had wavered a couple of times over the year, but at the end of the day, she still prayed and read the Bible and she believed like Hershel had believed.

Daryl didn't have that. Never had and he never would. But because Beth believed in God so strongly, Daryl found himself a little bit more open to the possibility of some big guy being upstairs. He had asked Beth once – one night when they were both tucked into bed – that if there was a God, why did he let all of this happen.

"I think," she answered, tucking her hands beneath her cheek as she laid on her side, facing him. "It was like Noah and the flood. This was God's way of starting everything over. He didn't like what people were doing and he wanted to teach us a lesson," she said. "And He gave men free will a long time ago. What we do, all of the decisions we make to deal with this new world of His, is up to us."

"How do you do that?" Daryl had asked her. "How after everything?"

And he didn't need to make himself clearer because Beth knew what he was asking.

She lifted a hand to his cheek and he nearly closed his eyes at her gentle touch. Beth had, long ago, erased what had happened to him in his childhood with his old man, but sometimes, still, she would touch him and he'd still have to take a second to get used to something so gentle and kind.

"Believing in something makes me feel better," she responded in a near-whisper.

Daryl looked at her now as she counted containers of different clovers and grasses.

It wasn't as if Eli had been planned, but when Beth found out she was pregnant, after the initial shock wore off, he accepted it because it just felt like, to him, that it was one of those things that was just going to happen. This baby though, when Beth told him that she was late and she could feel that she was pregnant, he hadn't known what to say to her. He couldn't pretend to be happy about it because he wasn't. They never planned on a second. Never even talked about it. It was just one of those things that was understood between them that Eli would be their one and only.

It wasn't like he could blame anyone though. He loved his wife and had sex with her and Queen Anne's Lace wasn't foolproof. Hell, even back in the day, condoms hadn't been one-hundred percent guaranteed to keep a guy from knocking a girl up. Maybe there was someone in charge of all of this who had some plan and decided that him and Beth having a second baby was part of that plan.

Beth set her pencil down and stepped over to him, standing in front of him, her arms sliding around his waist. Even being aside for a few minutes now, there was still a cool draft clinging to his coat and it made her shiver a little. Daryl put his cup down on the counter behind him and rubbed her upper arms with his hands.

"We have to do something with Anna," Beth said quietly and Daryl blinked at her for a moment because that wasn't exactly what he was expecting her to say. Beth smiled faintly at his confusion, but it faded after a moment. "She has all of us, yes, and the kids, but… she's starting to reach that age. She might want to be around other people her age. Boys her age."

Daryl's brow furrowed at that. "She say somethin' to you 'bout it?"

"Not in so many words," Beth admitted and she got such a sad look in her eyes then, Daryl felt his arms drop down to her hips and his fingers curled into her skin, holding on because he knew he wasn't going to like what she said next. "She talked to me that she might want to leave."

He was right.

"She can't leave," Daryl said immediately. "Where she gonna go? She say she was leavin'? Girl's only fourteen or fifteen. She can't jus' leave the mountain 'cause she's feelin' like she needs a boyfriend."

He felt anger and panic all at the same time.

Anna couldn't leave. She was just a kid. Alright, a teenager and kids grew up way too fast nowadays, so he supposed he could begrudgingly admit that she was practically an adult now, but still. She was just a kid. All of theirs. She was six when she was found by Rosita, Spencer and Aaron and they brought her back to Beth and Daryl and they had lived together since. They had all had a hand in raising her and damn it, she needed them as much as they needed her. Not just for the animals, but she was a part of their family and losing Mulligan was bad enough. They couldn't have Anna be gone from the family, too. Daryl would tie her down if he had to if it meant she wasn't able to leave them.

"Don't say anything to her about it yet," Beth said, squeezing her arms around his waist. "Please, Daryl. She confided in me and I wasn't supposed to tell you. If she does leave, it won't be until spring anyway."

Daryl was quiet for a moment, all of this still rolling around in his head. "No," he said with a shake of his head. "I'm sorry, Beth, but no. I ain't gonna pretend like I don't know. I'm gonna talk with her."

"Daryl…" Beth began to protest, but she stopped before saying anything further because she knew that look in her husband's eye. When he got that look in his eye, there was no arguing with him or trying to talk him out of something once his mind was made up.

She knew she shouldn't have mentioned anything at all, but he was worried about the baby already and she had wanted to get his mind off of it. She knew she probably should have chosen a much different subject, but it was too late now to take it back.

Hearing giggling, they both looked to the window and out in the yard, he saw Eli, Aiden and now Bee, all bundled up warmly and all working on building a snowman, laughing as they played and caught falling snowflakes on their tongues. Just kids being kids even in the middle of this whole mess of a world.

It made Beth smile and it almost made Daryl smile, too.

But then Daryl saw the barn beyond them and one of the doors opened and Anna stepped out, one of the goats following after her, nudging her backside. She smiled and bent down, saying something to the animal that made it bleep in return and she laughed before kissing its head affectionately.

Daryl didn't care. Beth could look at him with those big eyes of hers all she wanted. It wasn't going to change his mind. He was going to talk to Anna and tell her how stupid she was being for even thinking about leaving their mountain. He was a dad – her dad – and he wasn't going to just let her leave without a fight.

…

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