AN: LMBO at Dora the Explorer. I thought of that too when I was writing the last chapter. I had to sing the theme song in my head before I could continue writing. As with all names, I just yanked it out of the air and later I was like "Why did you do that to yourself?"
Also, I've finally dealt with my problem with Carl. The problem with Carl for me is that they've introduced a new possibly crazy Carl to the show, but it's not one that I feel like I can write because I don't have a feel for that Carl. That means that I'm solving the problem by making Carl kind of OC, I guess. I'm just going to build my own Carl.
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It was a quiet day in the neighborhood. Most everyone was inside. Dora and Frank were sitting on the porch in some rocking chairs that Dora had found at another house, just listening to the rain. Dora had thought she might never get to do that again, but here she was, just rocking and listening to the rain. Their house was across the street from the house that Maggie, Glenn, and Beth had chosen. She felt like a nosy neighbor because…well frankly because she was a nosy neighbor. She'd always enjoyed people watching and sometimes they gave her more than a show through the downstairs window.
Today, though, she watched them come out of their house, with Glenn carrying a large plastic container, and start down the street.
"What do you suppose their doing?" Dora asked Frank. Frank just grunted in response. Dora had been married to Frank for more than forty years. This was their normal type of interaction. Dora loved to talk. Frank was a man of few words. She always said it was fine because that meant that he didn't take up her time to talk.
She watched them go up the steps to the house that Daryl, Michonne, and Carol shared. Maggie knocked on the door and then a few minutes later they disappeared inside. They were going visiting.
Dora laughed to herself.
"They're going visiting, Frank." She said. "Can you imagine? Now we live in a place where people go visiting." Frank just grunted a response again. "I wonder what was in the box. What do you think could be in the box?" Dora asked it more to herself than to Frank, already certain he wasn't going to bother responding, which he didn't.
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"Mag!" Judith had squealed when they came into the living room.
"Hi Judith." Maggie said to her, picking her up. "What you got there?"
"Mine." Judith said, showing her the duck.
"Her speech is getting better." Maggie said. Carol was sitting on the floor cross legged. Daryl was lying on the couch with Hope on top of him, eating beef jerky. Michonne, who had opened the door for them came in and sat down by Daryl's legs.
Beth sat on the floor with Carol and Glenn put the box down and took one of the chairs. Maggie took the other that was in the living room.
"Her speech has gotten better, she's finally distinguishing between the two of us, but at least the name she chose for you is kind of cute." Michonne said. She reached in the bag of beef jerky that Daryl had and pulled out a piece.
"Yeah, I like Mag. Why, what does she call you now that you're not Ma anymore?" Maggie asked.
"Oh, I get to be Mush." Michonne said.
Daryl snickered. "Be careful you don't rip your teeth out with that jerky, Mush." Daryl said. "It's just one step away from being a belt."
"Then why do you keep eating it?" Michonne asked. She tried to bite the jerky but determined it was too tough for her tastes. She put the piece back in the bag.
"Hey, don't be puttin' pieces you drooled on back in there. That's rude." Daryl said.
"You're the only one who is eating the stuff, Daryl. Do you have a problem with my saliva?" Michonne asked.
"Good point." Daryl said.
"Ah the couple that fights over really old beef jerky is the couple that stays together." Maggie said.
"We wondered if you guys might want to play a game or something." Glenn said. "We brought a lot of choices."
"Why not?" Carol said. "Nothing with small parts, though. I don't feel like keeping after Judith because she wants to eat Monopoly houses or something."
"Well that certainly narrows the choices." Glenn said, digging through the box.
"We could play cards." Maggie said.
"We could play poker." Beth offered.
"Nope, not a chance." Glenn said. "I'm not playing poker ever with Michonne. Even if I knew she was playing with Jokers I'd fold every time just to be sure."
"I don't even know how to play poker." Michonne said.
"Doesn't matter." Glenn said. "You've got one hell of a poker face and I wouldn't want to take the chance. How about Uno?" He asked, digging it out of the box.
Everybody moved to get around the table except Daryl.
"You'll have to hand me my cards over here." Daryl said. "Hope's asleep and I ain't dealin' with her grumpy mood if I wake her up."
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Rick walked out on the porch to see if the rain had let up any. It hadn't. Across the street he could see two of the new people on their porch in rocking chairs. Rick hadn't gotten to know them yet. They seemed OK, though, just some old married couple.
Rick couldn't imagine that there would be too many old married couples in the future. Life didn't work out that way anymore. His certainly hadn't worked out that way. He thought that the other couples were foolish because it seemed like they really believed it that it might. Glenn and Maggie pretended that they'd be together forever and Daryl even talked about growing old with Michonne. He didn't really know if the other two young ones, Josh and Brenda, were like that because they spent so little time with the rest of the group.
Rick certainly didn't think about the prospect of growing old with someone. They all had an expiration date and no matter how much their current situation seemed ideal, it really wasn't. There would have to be runs, and they lost people on runs. Other groups could pass by and some of them might not even be as harmless as Earl, especially if they saw the life they were building here and decided they wanted it for themselves, and not in the manner of the people across the street who had just asked to stay. Eventually they would have to move on, and they ran the risk of losing people then.
It seemed like no one wanted to face that reality anymore, though. Now they'd all turned to Daryl as their leader. Some sort of mythical hero that was going to keep them from coming to harm.
Rick didn't really care that Daryl was trying to take charge now. At least no one was looking at him all hours of the day now, waiting for him to save them. Daryl still believed they could be saved, so they looked to him to save them. Rick was fairly certain that it wasn't a situation they could be saved from, essentially they were just buying time.
Rick wasn't getting close to Rachel. He didn't love her, she was just something to do. She helped pass the time on days like this when there was nothing else to be done. He had enough to worry about with Carl and trying to buy Carl as much time as possible. He didn't need to be worried about someone else that he'd eventually lose.
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Dora saw Rick walking around the porch. Over the past few days everyone had been opening up to her a bit more, and she'd even gotten Michonne to say a few things to her by asking questions about Hope. Rick, however seemed like a pretty closed off individual, and it wasn't just with her. It seemed like he was like that with everyone. He didn't engage in a lot of group interaction like the others did. He didn't even seem to interact with his little family.
The son, Carl, was a young teenager. He seemed to take after his father, not interacting very much with the group, but Dora wondered how much of that was influence from Rick. She had offered him some comic books that she found while she was helping to clean out a house, and he had seemed happy with those. She was sure not having his mother around was difficult, and it didn't look like the woman that lived with Rick was very interested in being a mother figure. Maybe that's what had happened with the baby, whom Dora still considered Carol's baby.
Dora decided she would try to keep finding little things for Carl. Maybe he needed a grandmother, and she would like to have another grandson, even if he was considerably older than hers would be.
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"So what do you think of the new people?" Maggie asked, trying to decide which card to put down.
"I like Dora." Carol said. "She's chatty, and she's a lot of help with the work around here."
"What about Frank?" Maggie asked.
"I don't know." Carol said. "I mean he doesn't talk much."
"I don't think that means anything bad about him." Michonne said. "He's just not a talker, and I doubt he was much of a talker before any of this happened."
"The boys are cute." Beth said.
"Yeah, I saw you making goo goo eyes at them." Maggie said, smiling. "Be careful you don't start some kind of war."
"I didn't think about that." Carol said. "There are two of them. Maybe you should talk to Sasha and see if she's interested in them. You could civilly decide between you which one you were going to take."
"Yeah." Michonne said, glancing up from her cards…she was taking the game very seriously and had won the last two. "You might want to talk to Sasha. She's mentioned that older one more than a couple of times going for water. The dirty blonde one, Jimmy? Apparently he's got very nice eyes. I can tell you, women can get pretty catty when they've set their sights on someone and you get in the way. I once had someone throw a plate of food on me because of something like that."
Carol laughed, remembering the day she'd intentionally dropped food in Michonne's lap after finding out about her and Daryl. It seemed like it was light years away.
"You know, now that you mention it, I did that one time. I was interested in this completely clueless guy. I never did make a move, because I thought that eventually he'd come around, but then this other woman came in and she just yanked the rug right out from under my feet. I knew I couldn't really do anything to her, but I did see her eating at a table once right after I found out about it, and I made sure to at least pretend to spill food on her."
"See?" Michonne said. "Women can be catty."
"Why do I get the feelin' y'all yackin' 'bout me?" Daryl said.
"I'll ask Sasha if she's interested. I like Junior better anyway." Beth said. "I wonder what his real name is."
"Mmm, just remember, I'm keeping my eye on you." Maggie said.
"And before you think you're going on any kind of date, this Junior fellow is going to have to come over and let us get introduced to him. We don't even know his family or what kind of people they are." Glenn added.