AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. I'm not sure why it is, but I've had a lot of trouble just finding my swing with this story. I'm going to keep working at it, though, from the notes that I have and I'm hoping that it'll kick in here soon!

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl found Carol in the house that they'd been moving things out of all day, the house where Alice and Melodye had been staying in since they'd arrived and where they typically gathered for meals, and he put Cayden down on the floor near her, trying to balance him on his feet while the baby kept bending his knees until he finally put him down completely.

Cayden crawled toward her and she reached to pick him up.

"Don't touch him," Daryl said quickly. "He's gotta walk to ya if he wants ya ta pick him up. Maddie's had him an' she's got him walkin' around."

Carol looked at him, slightly confused.

"What are you talking about?" Carol asked.

"He can walk," Daryl said. "She had him walking. She said the problem was that he gets picked up too early. We ain't doin' it right."

Daryl walked back over and collected his son up again, putting distance between him and Carol, and put the boy back down again, this time hovering him until Cayden finally accepted his fate that he was going to be placed on his feet.

Repeating this action three or four times finally resulted in a few steps from Cayden, followed immediately by him dropping to the floor and crying pitifully for Carol. She stood up from the chair she'd been sitting in while Alice and Melodye had been cooking at the stove they finally had working with the panels they'd installed.

"See? He can walk," Daryl commented. "Ain't nothin' wrong with him. He's just gotta not be picked up so damn much an' he'll get the hang of it."

Carol looked odd. He would have said she was mad, but it wasn't entirely the expression that she made when she was mad about something. She forced a smile that looked absolutely artificial and nodded her head.

"That's great," she said. "I'm really glad that he can walk…and I'm glad that…that…she figured out why he hasn't been walking."

Daryl cast a quick glance in the direction of the two women that were watching them, both of them wearing expressions that made it look more like they were studying something they weren't sure of than anything else.

And Carol turned and started out of the house with Cayden crawling after and continuing his miserable whining.

"Where you goin'?" Daryl barked at her when she pulled the door open. The only response he got, though, was Carol holding her hand up just before she slipped out of the house and pulled the door closed behind her leaving Cayden reaching the door a moment later to enact his tragic death scene against it. A scene which, ironically or not, led him to stand with his hands on the door for a moment before dropping back down to his bottom and then to lying flat on his back and crying at the ceiling.

Daryl turned back to the other two women in the space.

"Don't tell me you ain't got shit ta say," he said to Alice. "You always got shit ta say…so how about you dig down an' find some of it an' tell me what the hell that was?"

Alice stuttered out some noises that he couldn't turn into intelligible words and then she shrugged. Melodye, articulate as she could be at times, had nothing more to offer him in the way of explanation at the moment.

Alice moved then and scooped up Cayden off the floor, cooing at him while he tried in his baby babble to explain to her as clearly as he could what the hell was wrong with him. The only word that Daryl could make out of it was "Mama" and Cayden reached for the door.

"I'll go after her," Alice said. "Just…you just stay here. I'm on it."

Daryl shrugged and made a sweeping movement with his hand to show Alice that if she felt like going after Carol was something she should do at the moment, he wasn't going to stop her.

When Alice stepped out of the house, Melodye called Daryl over toward the area where she was cooking and he took the seat that Carol had vacated.

"I could venture to guess what might be wrong with her," Melodye offered. "But I could be wrong."

Daryl chuckled to himself at the softer spoken one of the braniac couple, as he tended refer to them in his own mind.

"Any damn thing you think is sure ta be better than what I could come up with," he said with a sigh.

"She's…she just had a miscarriage," Melodye offered. Daryl nodded. He knew that. What he didn't know was exactly how long that was supposed to stop the life that they had. "She's emotionally fragile right now. And Cayden is her son. Maybe she feels threatened by another woman stepping into that safe zone that she has."

Daryl knew that Melodye was smart, but sometimes he didn't think that she made much sense at all.

"Ain't nobody in her space," Daryl said. "Except maybe Alice now. She's got a helluva way a' gettin' in people's space."

Melodye started to say something else, but then she stopped and shook her head.

"Don't worry about it," Melodye said. "Alice'll talk to her and then she'll talk to me. We'll let you know if it's a you thing. It might not have anything to do with you at all, Daryl. This might just be a Carol thing."

Daryl laughed.

"That's somethin' we ain't seen a lot of," he said. "Seems I'm pretty much always the one that's causin' problems when it comes to Carol."

"Maybe not," Melodye offered. "You want to help me? I could use a hand if you can maybe get someone for me? Imogene or Milagros?"

Daryl nodded and got up so that he could go out of the house and scare up some of the people who needed to help Melodye with preparing a meal large enough to feed their entire group.

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Carol heard Alice coming, or rather, she heard Cayden coming. He was doing nothing to guard any kind of decorum surrounding silence.

Carol pulled her feet up into the couch with her and braced herself for her son who sounded beside himself and for the interaction that she would be forced to have with whoever was bringing him.

When Alice came in the door she was quiet at first. She closed the door behind her and walked directly over, depositing Cayden into Carol's lap.

"You forgot something," Alice said. She sat down on the other end of the couch with a sigh and Carol rubbed Cayden's back as he scrubbed his face on her chest and grabbed at her, reminding her that she needed to nip the ends off his little fingernails.

Carol shifted around and got Cayden ready to eat, what he was really upset about she was sure, but he surprised her by refusing at first. She cuddled him a few minutes and let him play with her face in bouts between that and rubbing his face against her, and then he finally decided that he would eat as long as she was still offering him the option.

And Alice was still staring at her.

"Are you going to say something? Or are you just watching me?" Carol asked.

"I like your tits," Alice said blankly.

Carol nodded her head at the commonplace comment and kept her attention focused on Cayden.

"Do you want to tell me what the hell's going on with you? Or did you want me to try to figure it out for myself?" Alice asked.

Carol sighed. She knew that Alice was going to ask eventually, or try to drag it out of her one way or another, it was just a matter of time.

"What do you want me to tell you?" Carol asked. "That I don't know myself?"

"Do you want me to get Mel?" Alice asked. "Talking to her might help you figure it out, you know?"

Carol shrugged.

"Daryl wants a family," Carol said. "He wants more children...and I wanted another one, but it just fell apart."

"Nothing fell apart," Alice said. She shifted around and brought her legs up into the couch, her feet brushing Carol's feet. "You had a miscarriage," Alice said. "Let's call it what it was and stop beating around the bush. You had a miscarriage and those things happen. You didn't do anything, you didn't not do anything. It was just one of those things."

Carol nodded her head more to do something than to actually agree with anything the woman was saying.

"Carol, I don't know how hard that must be," Alice said, "but I can tell you that there could be more kids in your future. And even if there isn't? Look at Cayden. He's the cutest damn kid in the world…literally. I mean he might be like one of four or five even left."

Carol laughed in spite of herself and kicked the foot that was touching Alice's to punish her for making her laugh when she didn't want to laugh in the slightest.

"Alice," Carol said, "I know that Cayden's perfect and he's wonderful…but I keep thinking that maybe I'm not going to do this right. I keep thinking about Sophia and…"

Carol shook her head and had to take a moment to compose herself to keep from growing more upset than she wanted to allow herself to be at the moment.

"I keep thinking that I didn't do the right things," Carol said. "I raised Sophia wrong. I kept her in that life. I kept her around Ed all those years. I failed Sophia and I'm not saying that for you to tell me I'm wrong. I didn't protect her and I didn't give her what she needed to protect herself. And maybe I'm just not cut out for this…I'm going to be bad for Cayden. Already some other woman knows how to get my baby to do the things that he needs to do."

Alice sighed almost as loudly as Carol had earlier.

"You don't want me to tell you you're wrong," Alice said. "But you are wrong so I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to tell you. You didn't fail Sophia and I didn't even have to be there to know that. And Cayden? You're not going to fail the Butterbean…or any possible future butterbeans for that matter. You're a great mother. Look at how damn happy that kid is!"

Cayden was sitting in Carol's lap now, his meal finished for as much as he wanted it right now, reclining back on her and fully focused on the buttons on his shirt that had just caught his attention and now must pay for their awful transgression of having crawled, undetected, onto his stomach.

Carol just shook her head at the woman because she didn't want to lose herself at the moment and she was sure that opening her mouth would lead her to do just that.

"Carol," Alice said, either ignoring that she couldn't talk at the moment or being fully aware of it and deciding to keep talking to save her the effort, "Maddie didn't do anything to teach Cayden to walk. She doesn't have any magical answers. Cayden's been able to walk for a while now. He just doesn't want to. That's all there is to it. He can walk, he just doesn't want to. And you did that. You're the one that got him here. For fuck's sake…look at everything you put into just getting that kid born. And since then? You've held his hand and walked him along every step of the way. He wouldn't be the kid that he is if it weren't for you. Some woman coming waltzing in isn't going to change that at all."

"Daryl…" Carol started to say.

Alice sat up then and pointed at Carol.

"No! Don't do that!" Alice barked, loudly enough to startle Cayden. Carol turned him around to hug him against her. "Don't do that, Carol…" Alice said, lowering her voice. "Don't put thoughts and words into Daryl's head. Give him a chance to fuck up all on his own…for crying out loud we know he's really damn good at it, but don't make him fuck up before he's even thought about it."

Carol stared at Alice. She knew that she was right. She shouldn't suggest that she knew how Daryl felt or what he was thinking, but she couldn't help but form her own thoughts or jump to her own conclusions.

"I'm not," Carol said. "He'd be better…"

"Holy fucking shit! You're doing it again!" Alice barked. "Didn't I just tell you to stop that?"

Carol almost laughed.

She didn't know how to respond to Alice or what might be permissible for her to say at this moment.

"Daryl's not thinking anything right now except for the fact that he has no idea why you walked out that house to leave Cayden lying on the ground and crying like his life had ended," Alice declared. "Crying because you left…he doesn't cry because anyone else leaves. He sure as shit doesn't cry because Maddie leaves. So don't tell me how Daryl feels or what he's thinking alright? And don't tell me or him what would be better for him. Do you even realize how different Daryl is than when I met him? And I've heard stories about what kind of trip he's been on from before that."

Carol sighed.

"What do you want me to say, Alice?" Carol asked. "Am I supposed to just change how I feel?"

Alice shook her head.

"No, not at all," Alice said. "You feel how the hell you're going to feel. You're entitled to that. But you ought to talk to Daryl about it and you ought to let him feel how he's going to feel instead of trying to tell him how he feels."

Alice got up from the couch and paced a short line in front of the piece of furniture.

"He's your husband and he loves the hell out of you and out of Cayden. Give him a chance to help you sort out your feelings," Alice said. "Or at least give him a chance to carry them with you. But…"

She stopped pacing and held up a finger at Carol.

"But…don't push him away and don't tell him what's better for him," Alice said. "You keep telling him that and you keep pushing him away and he's going to start to believe you and he's going to go grazing in that other damn pasture if you tell him that's what he needs in life and make it seem like you're shutting him out of this side of the fence."

Carol chewed her lip.

"That's not what I wanted to do…but Maddie…" Carol started, but as soon as she said it, she realized that she didn't even know how she was going to finish the statement. She wasn't even sure it was a full statement. It was just a fleeting thought like so many of the other fleeting thoughts.

"I'm going to talk to Daryl," Alice said. "And I'm going to send him over here with dinner. And Maddie? If I need to talk to her too, then I'll do that…but I really think if you'd stop deciding you can tell him how he thinks or feels…or what the hell is good for him? I really think if you'd just tell him what the hell you feel and lay off of his feelings…you might get a hell of a lot farther."

Carol nodded, feeling almost like a child that was being scolded because of Alice's demeanor. She wondered if this was how it was whenever Daryl got a "talk" from Alice.

"And," Alice added, "you should talk to Mel. She's not real good at life lessons, but she does a hell of a job with straightening up fucked up thoughts. If you won't talk to her, though, at least talk to Daryl."

Carol nodded again.

"I'll talk to him," Carol said.

"Damn straight you will," Alice said. "I'm sending him…either you talk to him or I'm going to come back and hold your baby hostage until you do."

Carol chuckled and Alice shook her head.

"I'm serious," Alice said. "So damn serious…don't underestimate my ability to do morally questionable things."