Carol worked up her courage outside of Michonne's cell. She wasn't really sure what she was going to say to the woman. She wasn't sure it was the kind of thing that she could prepare ahead of time.
"Michonne?" She called, standing outside the blanket that was hung over the bars. When she heard no reply, she waited a few minutes and stuck her head inside. It was dark in the cell and obviously Tyreese had stepped out to help with all the other activities taking place around the prison. Michonne was lying on her side, staring toward the wall, and Carol wasn't entirely sure whether or not she was awake.
Carol stepped forward, letting herself into the cell. She made her way to the bed and craned around, attempting to determine if Michonne was awake or not.
"Are you awake?" Carol asked, finally. Michonne didn't respond, but she did turn her head slightly and look at Carol before turning away in disinterest.
Carol sat on the side of the bed. She hadn't been in her cell often, and she couldn't recall seeing Michonne in her pajamas very often either. Carol rested her hand on Michonne's arm. The woman was hot, her fever very obviously not being as low as Carol's yet.
"I talked to Alice," Carol said. Michonne shifted a little and turned her head.
"I should have known she'd run her mouth. She can't shut up," Michonne said.
"She meant well," Carol responded. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Carol wasn't really sure what she should say. She didn't have practice with this sort of thing, and she certainly didn't know the best way to handle it given their current situation.
"If I wanted to talk about it," Michonne said, "I suppose I would have."
Carol nodded her head.
"Fine, if you don't want to talk about it then we can be quiet," she said, "but I'm just going to stay here a bit, in case you change your mind."
"Suit yourself," Michonne responded.
Carol sat there, silently, for a few moments. Her hand still resting on Michonne's arm.
"I'm sorry," Carol said.
"There's nothing for you to be sorry for," Michonne responded.
"I guess I'm just sorry…" Carol replied, "that you have to go through this. I'm just sorry."
"I suppose you've been through enough of your own things that you don't need to be sorry for someone just because you're not the one going through it," Michonne said.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?" Carol asked.
Michonne rolled over onto her back then, propping her head up with hands under it. She stared at the top bunk, her cell being one in which the bed remained intact.
"What am I supposed to talk about?" Michonne asked. "What does Alice want me to say? Or Melodye? Or you for that matter? Everyone wants me to talk, but no one's told me yet what I'm supposed to be talking about."
Carol was struck for a second and then she considered it. It was true. For whatever reason, when something happened to someone they all wanted to know if they wanted to talk about it, but it was sort of unclear exactly what you were supposed to say.
"Talk about anything you want to talk about," Carol said. "I don't care what it is. If you want to say it, or if you need to say it, just say it. Have you cried about it yet?"
Michonne snorted.
"Yeah," she said. "I cried about it. Didn't change much. Doesn't make much sense to cry about it, you know? What am I really crying about? I take a couple of tests, find out I'm pregnant…and I'm sick…and less than forty eight hours later I'm not pregnant and I'm getting better."
Carol felt her own heart clench and she didn't know if it was Michonne's words, or the tone of her voice, or even her own emotions welling up that was the cause.
"Michonne, I lost a baby once, when Sophia was small. I was only pregnant for a little while and only my family knew about it. When I lost that baby, everyone around me just went on with their lives. Nothing had changed for them. No one understood why I was so upset about it. After all, I'd only been pregnant for a little while. It wasn't even like it was a big deal, you know? But for me, it was," Carol felt her voice start to shake and she swallowed. This wasn't about her and she wasn't going to lose control. This was about Michonne and if anyone was going to cry in this situation it was going to be her and not Carol. Carol cleared her throat and continued, glancing at Michonne who was still staring up at the bunk above her. "I felt like I'd planned that baby's entire life in those few months, and it was gone, and I was the only one that cared that it had ever been there and that its entire little life, everything I'd planned for it, was over. It was the second greatest loss I've suffered in my entire life. So if you want to cry, then I'd say that you have all the right in the world to cry, and to hell with anyone or anything that would make you feel otherwise."
Carol could see Michonne swiping at her face, and in response she simply put her hand on Michonne's leg that was beside her on the bed.
"You knew before you took the tests, didn't you?" Carol asked.
Michonne mumbled something, but Carol couldn't make it out and she didn't ask her to repeat it. She knew it was a confirmation from the tone of voice.
"Had you told Tyreese?" Carol asked.
"No," Michonne said. She was quiet for a minute and Carol waited her out. "I wasn't sure," she said.
"And there's no need to bother him if you weren't sure, right?" Carol asked. "You know, if it's something you wanted, you could always try again."
Michonne snorted again. She made a sort of choking sound and Carol looked around, realizing she didn't have a tissue or a handkerchief to offer her and the cell was too dark to find anything.
"Try again? Like I tried in the first place," Michonne said.
"I'm sorry," Carol said. "I know it's not the right thing to say right now, I just didn't know what else to say." She regretted her words now.
Michonne pulled herself up, leaning on her elbow and obviously looking at Carol now.
"It's the best thing that could have happened," Michonne said. She swiped her face with her hand and then started looking around, presumably for a handkerchief. Carol watched her as she pulled one from a pile of things on the table by the bunk and wiped at her face. "I know that, Carol. I lost my daughters, and I don't want to go through that again."
Carol nodded at her. She felt like she could understand any feeling that Michonne threw at her right now. On the one hand it was terrible and heartbreaking to lose a baby, even if it was that only you knew about, and even if you'd only known about the little thing for a short while. On the other it was terrifying to think of bringing a child into this world, especially if you'd already lost a child and you knew the horrible fear that you were bringing another one in just to meet the same tragic fate. There wasn't an easy answer to this, and there wasn't any way that was going to make you feel good in this situation, not as a mother.
"There's no good answer, is there?" Carol asked. "It hurts, either way."
"Well at least somebody understands that," Michonne said.
"I do…" Carol said. "I understand that."
She waited a few moments, but Michonne was quiet.
"Do you want to get up? If you're not up for much you could come and keep me company while I do the laundry," Carol said. "It looks like it's just me out there right now. Everyone else is busy."
Michonne shook her head.
"I really don't feel well," she said. "I appreciate you coming in here, and I know you mean well, but I really do just want to sleep."
Carol nodded a little. She could understand if Michonne was tired and wanted to sleep, but she didn't want to see her pull away from anyone. She didn't want her to pull away from her. She lingered there, on the side of the bed for a bit and tried to decide what would be the best course of action to take. Finally Michonne spoke again, interrupting her thoughts.
"I'm really going to be fine," Michonne said. "I'm not mad at anyone and I'm not trying to hide, OK? I don't want to talk about it…but there's nothing to say. There's nothing for anyone to say to me. I'll be out there, in a day or two, good as new. OK?"
Carol felt like she really wasn't a proper person to be telling anyone to snap out of things or deal with their feelings at any miraculously fast rate, and she wasn't going to be that person with Michonne. She knew that Michonne wasn't like Beth. She wasn't going to cower away from everyone and try to just disappear. Michonne wasn't even like her. If Michonne said she was going to be fine, and that she just needed a couple of days, then Carol figured it wouldn't hurt to give her that.
"OK," Carol said, finally. "You take some time, but I'm coming back in here if you're not out in a couple of days and I'm dragging you out."
Michonne snickered.
"Deal," she said, dropping back to lie like she was when Carol had entered the cell. "Can you do me a favor, though?"
"What?" Carol asked.
"Don't tell anyone else. I just don't want them all looking at me…and stop Alice if she starts to tell anyone else too," Michonne said.
"Sure," Carol said.
She knew what Michonne meant about everyone looking at her. Since everyone had found out she was pregnant, Carol felt like that's what people did most of the time. They just looked at her. She wasn't sure exactly what it was, though she assumed it had a lot to do with no one quite knowing how to process what had happened to Lori. Lori's death had been one in the prison that wasn't exactly Walker related and it had thrown everyone for a loop on many different levels.
Now, whether it was that or something else, everyone looked at Carol oddly. She tried, lately, to make the baby as obvious as possible. She wore her clothes tighter than she'd ever thought of wearing them before. She tried to spark conversations about the baby to get anyone and everyone talking about it. Whether it was a positive comment from someone like Alice or a negative one from someone like Karen, at least when there was a comment they were talking about it and not just looking at her.
It almost seemed, as strange as it was to think, that they were more comfortable with whatever had happened with the Governor than they were with the fact that she was still pregnant. The Governor had been a thorn in their sides. He'd cost them lives, but now he was dead and that threat was over. Whatever damage he'd done was behind them, and now all they had to do was simply overcome it. The baby, though, just lingered around, threatening something, perhaps, in the future, and no one quite seemed to know what to do with that.
Yes, Carol could understand that MIchonne wouldn't want anyone looking at her, not like that. Michonne had a certain reputation and visibility within the group, and this wouldn't be something that fit with the image that she'd constructed of herself. Carol wouldn't tell anyone, not even Daryl, and she'd stop Alice from talking to anyone that she hadn't already told, though she suspected that Alice hadn't told anyone except Carol, Melodye, and Tyreese, and they were all capable of realizing this wasn't something that everyone needed to know.
Carol sighed and got up. She didn't say anything else, but she did pull the cover up on Michonne's bed and pull it up around her shoulders. She turned and gathered up the laundry that was in the basket tucked in the corner of Michonne's cell and she slipped outside to get some work done and to leave Michonne to relax.
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Daryl had night watch. Rick was down on the ground, walking what was still left to be reinforced of the fences. Most of the trucks had been emptied throughout the day and they'd done a good deal of work on the fence line, but there was still work to be done. A few small fires still blazed where they'd been busy burning all the boxes that things from the trucks had come in. They'd started dumping their contents into boxes and bags they knew were clean and burning the boxes before they'd ever even took anything inside. No one wanted to take the chance that anymore of the mold and mildew or whatever it was that they'd brought from the warehouse, got tracked inside their home.
Daryl didn't want to take night watch. He preferred the idea of staying with Carol, but he'd been banished to the guard tower and she'd told him that it was alright. Apparently she was tired and nothing was going to happen in their cell that he needed to be aware of, so she she'd hushed his complaining and sent him on his way.
But not before he'd grabbed up one of his hunting bags and the book that Alice had given him. Carol questioned him about it and he showed her the pregnancy book. She'd flipped through it, smiling and shaking her head at the thought of him reading the book alone in the guard tower over the light of one of the lanterns they'd put up there, but she hadn't teased him about it. He didn't tell her about the notebook. He'd excused his need to take his bag with him, saying that he was going to work on some arrows or something in between checking on things below.
As Daryl crawled into the guardtower, though, he realized that a lamp was already lit and he wasn't alone in there. Glenn was in the corner looking more like he was camping than anything else.
"Ya brought a blanket?" Daryl asked, coming through the door and taking his place against a wall.
"You brought something with you," Glenn said.
"I brought stuff ta do, not a blanket," Daryl said. As soon as he said it, though, he realized it was a lot cooler up there than it had been on the ground. The nights were getting a lot colder now, and suddenly he wished he'd brought a blanket too. He wouldn't admit it to Glenn, though. "I thought you was sick," Daryl said.
"I was," Glenn said. "I'm better now. Just like everybody else, and now I've got duty…apparently with you."
"Sorry to bust ya bubble," Daryl said, shifting around and pulling one of the lamps near him. "I got things I'd rather be doin' too."
"There's nothing going on out there anyway," Glenn said. "I've been up here half an hour just watching Rick for the most part. He's the one that's going to know if anything's going on. It's not like we can see to far past the fences and there are just Walkers out there."
"At night it's more for show than anything else," Daryl said. "Makes everyone inside sleep all cozy."
He pulled out his little notebook and stuck it to the side of him. Then he opened the big book that Alice had given him to the page that he dog-eared.
"Daryl Dixon reads?" Glenn asked, sitting up and readjusting his blanket.
"Shut up!" Daryl said.
"What are you reading?" Glenn asked. Daryl looked at him, annoyed, over the top of his book. He sighed, knowing full well that Glenn wasn't going to leave him alone.
"It's a book Alice got me, OK? It's about what Carol's goin' through right now," Daryl said. Glenn grinned at him and Daryl slumped down, pulling the book up a little so he didn't have to look at the boy's shit eating grin. Without saying anything the kid was taunting him.
"Can I see it?" Glenn asked.
"Get'cha own damn books," Daryl growled.
"Don't be like that," Glenn said. "It's boring up here, and if I keep watching Rick like this he's going to get the wrong idea about things. Can I see the other one?"
Daryl realized that now the boy had spotted his blue notebook tucked beside him. He sighed, realizing he wasn't reading the big book in his lap anyway. He folded down the corner of the page again, closed the book, and slid it across the floor toward Glenn. Glenn crawled forward, pulling it to him and grabbed another of the lanterns, sinking back against the wall again and readjusting the blanket.
"What's the little one about?" Glenn asked.
"None a' ya damn business. Shut up an' look at the damn one ya got an' don't'cha say a damn thing ta nobody or I'll knock ya out," Daryl growled.
"Don't worry," Glenn said, opening up the big book. "I won't let on to anyone that Daryl Dixon cares about women's woes."
Daryl curled his lip at Glenn, but Glenn was already flipping through pages and not paying him any attention. He pulled open his little notebook and skipped past the first lesson that he'd read from Alice and focused on the next.
Back again? You're one hell of a student!
This one's important.
You made a very big slip in my office that made you sound like an asshole. Don't do it again. Do not EVER say that there is something "wrong" with your kid. Don't even ask it. You don't have enough degrees to use that word, and especially not before the kid is born.
There's nothing wrong with that kid. Not one damn thing. Apparently some people around here, who shall remain nameless, thought there might be, but there isn't a damn thing wrong with it. It's just like every other kid in the same position. It looks like a little fuckin' alien and it's acting like a parasite. That's it. That's all the damn thing does, all day, every day.
Your kid's current activities include swimming around in what's essentially a fuckin' waterbed in your wife's gut. Nice image, huh? There are better ones in the big book. You're reading that, aren't you? You better fucking read it because if you just look at the pictures you're going to be flipping a shit and you're likely to vomit over a few. If they showed that shit to women before they ever got pregnant there'd be a lot fewer of those Walker things outside the fences, you can bet your nuts on that.
The rest of the day the kid spends sucking whatever the fuck food and water and any damn thing else it needs out of your wife's body through this little hose thing. That's why the hell you see me picking through her food all the damn time. I don't have some kind of kinky ass food fetish. I just know that we eat a lot of shit these days, and she's got to eat less of the shit and more of the good stuff because she doesn't get to keep a whole damn lot of what she gets.
That's it. That's your kid in a nutshell. Exciting little motherfucker, ain't it? But that's what the hell it's supposed to do, so there's nothing wrong with that.
The reason you can't say it, you might ask? Well it's simple. When you say the word "wrong" you're dumbass is simply saying that something doesn't register on your radar (and I'm guessing a whole lot of shit flies right over, right?), but when a woman hears the word "wrong" in reference to her child, she becomes like fucking superman. She can jump to the worst fucking conclusions and cause herself a total meltdown in less time than it takes the average person to sneeze.
So don't say "wrong." If you should care to inquire about the health of your child, use "positive terms". You can ask things like "Is the baby OK?" "Is everything fine with the baby?" "How is the baby?" The key here is to keep things positive. By using positive terms, you're indicating that you don't think there's a problem, you just want some damn body to verify that. That's one of those psychological pointers. Melodye says "hi", by the way.
So there you have it. An easy little lesson to make your life better and keep Carol from suffering quite as many fucking cardiac episodes as you seem to want to put her through. We all appreciate your dedication to testing the strength of her heart and shit, but it's really not necessary.
Your kid is fine. You have my permission to punch anyone in the nose that says otherwise, and then send them to me to stop the bleeding.
Now I don't know what the hell you're doing while you're reading this shit, but wipe your nasty ass or whatever you need to do and get your ass back to work.
Over and out,
Alice
Daryl scanned the page a second time and tucked the notebook back in his bag. That was the second reference that Alice had made to the fact that this kid had a waterbed, and Daryl was slightly curious about it. He wondered how hard it would be to find a picture of this thing in that book. He made sure his notebook was out of sight so that Glenn couldn't get his grubby hands on it and he got up, crossing the tower to where Glenn was sitting, his face scrunched up, looking hard at the book on his lap.
"Gimme that back," Daryl said, reaching his hand out for the book.
Glenn looked up at him, his face scrunched a little.
"You better be nice to Carol," Glenn said. "I'm going to be nice to Maggie just to get a head start on this. Have you looked at some of these pictures?"
Daryl glanced down but didn't really look at the pictures. Glenn was already near the back of the book, just looking at pictures and turning the pages.
"No, I ain't hardly looked at none a' the book, but I wanta see somethin', so gimme the book," Daryl commanded again.
Glenn closed the book and handed it to Daryl.
"Gladly," Glenn said. "I'd rather watch the Walkers trying to get in the fence. Geez, they call that shit a miracle in there. It didn't look too miraculous to me."
Daryl took the book and crossed back over the room and sat down. He took a moment to look out over the prison yard. He couldn't see much of anything beyond the smoldering fires and the distant silhouette of Rick ridding Walkers from around the fence line.
Daryl was a little nervous now about looking at any pictures in the book. Glenn's face was stuck with the same troubled expression. Still, Daryl knew that Alice was going to bug him about whether or not he'd read the stupid book and he was curious. He opened the book back to the dog-eared page and immediately put his hand over the picture. He decided that if he read the pages first and then looked at the picture, maybe it would freak him out like it had apparently done to Glenn.
Daryl wasn't a speed reader, and he imagined it was going to take Carol less time to grow the kid than it was going to take him to read about it, but as he went along, he did find it rather interesting. There was a lot of stuff that he didn't know about, and the more he read, the more he realized that he didn't know much of anything about this baby stuff. He even dug the pen out of the bag that Alice had tied to his notebook and underlined a couple of things in the book so that he'd remember that he wanted to put them in his notebook for Alice to write about.
"You're really into that, aren't you?" Glenn said, snapping Daryl out of his focus.
"What?" Daryl asked.
"You're really into that book," Glenn said. "You look like you're studying for some big exam or something over there."
Daryl rolled his eyes at Glenn. This would be much easier without an audience making him feel even dumber for looking at the book.
"Man, shut up! What the hell's it matter to ya what I read?" Daryl asked.
Glenn chuckled a little.
"Calm down, Daryl. I'm not making fun of you," Glenn said. "I think it's good that you give a shit. I mean it's your kid too, right?"
Daryl didn't respond. He wasn't sure that he trusted that Glenn wasn't going to harass him about this. Glenn leaned back and looked out over the yard, and then he turned his attention back to Daryl. Daryl was still watching him over the book, not wanting to get back to reading until he was sure that Glenn really was going to leave him alone.
"By the way," Glenn said, "what was all that with the rings?"
"What'cha mean?" Daryl asked.
"Maggie comes stomping up to me earlier and says that Carol's telling everyone you two got married already," Glenn said.
"We did. This mornin' 'fore breakfast," Daryl said.
"So what? You just got married and didn't tell anyone? Who married you?" Glenn asked.
"We married each other," Daryl said. "An' we didn't want nobody else there."
"No dress? Nothing?" Glenn asked.
Daryl shook his head. Hell, there hadn't been a dress. Carol hadn't even been wearing a bra, just panties and he'd been wearing boxers. They couldn't have anyone else there anyway because they weren't decent for company…except for maybe Alice, because she didn't seem to give a damn if you were stark ass naked or not.
Glenn chuckled.
"And Carol was fine with that? She didn't want something 'special'?" Glenn asked, waving his hands at the last word.
"Was her idea," Daryl said.
"Don't you just get all the luck," Glenn said. "I had to cover Maggie at some store while she was finding a dress that she was happy with, and she's planning some kind of prison social event of the season for the wedding, and you just get married in your cell and nobody even knows about it until Maggie said they were doing laundry and she noticed Carol was wearing rings."
"My woman ain't all about shows," Daryl said. "It's somethin' we got in common. Just 'cause everybody ain't talkin' 'bout it, don't mean it ain't real. Same goes for our kid."
"I'm sure that's next on Maggie's list," Glenn said, "though I'm not sure how I feel about it right now. There's so much that's out of our control right now, you know? I mean I'd love to have kids with Maggie, but I don't exactly like the idea of thinking that I couldn't take care of them. I mean look at what happened to Sophia, and she was more able to take care of herself than a baby would be."
Daryl chewed at the skin on his thumb. These were things he didn't want to talk about, and he didn't want to think about them either. Every time he started to think about them, he got this really funny feeling in the pit of his stomach and it got harder to breathe…and right now it was way too dark to go hunting and try to get his mind on something else.
"Sorry," Glenn said, apparently realizing that Daryl might not want to talk about this. "I didn't mean it was the same for you or anything, I was just…" Glenn paused for a minute, looking uncomfortably at Daryl. "Sorry," he repeated.
Daryl didn't say anything. He sat there, waiting until he was sure that Glenn was going to shut up, and then he tried to focus on his book again, hoping it would distract him and eventually the feeling in his stomach would go away. Glenn must have gotten the message, because he was quiet for nearly the rest of the entire watch.
