"Are you, um...staying down here tonight?"
She'd been wandering around the house before turning in for the night - half familiarizing herself with the place she'd be leaving herself vulnerable, half figuring out where he'd disappeared to. She found him in the back room of a back room in the basement - an old office space? - laying down some old coats to cushion the floor.
He wasn't taking watch tonight, surprisingly.
"Yeah. If I'm gonna get any shut eye, figured I might as well be as far from the action as I can," he told her, voice gentle with the exhaustion that cloaked the end of this day. His eyes met hers though, steady and seemingly in an attempt to reassure her of their safety in this new place they'd found.
Carol nodded as she took in his response, her eyes roaming casually around the small, narrow space. Coat racks lined the wall to the right of her, filled with little girls' clothes of all sizes. Based on two of the three bedrooms upstairs, she figured they were hand-me-downs; waiting for the younger of the two girls who used to live here, to grow into them.
There were photos of them all over the home. The older one hadn't been much younger than Sophia, the younger one looked to have been three or four. They both had curly hair; the older one had a face full of freckles. They were beautiful.
"There's room upstairs," she told him with a half-shrug. "You'll be more comfortable."
His eyes narrowed. He didn't miss the unnerved edge that her voice took.
"Nah, I'm good. Let someone else take it tonight."
Her gaze lowered to the laminate floor beneath her feet, she took a breath that shuddered just slightly.
"I just, um...well," she huffed out a breath and looked up, her gaze meeting his.
Who was she even kidding? They slept together most nights (when he wasn't taking watch), since they - along with T-Dog - seemed to be the outliers of the group they now called family. Maggie with Glenn. Beth with Hershel. Lori and Carl with Rick. They knew every single twitch and sigh that the other had ever expressed in their sleep. Every movement. Every nightmare.
So she didn't need to pretend with him. The reminder of the freedom she had to just be draped over her anew.
And since T was taking first watch tonight, that left Carol completely alone in one of the little girl's rooms.
—
They hadn't slept in days. An hour here, twenty minutes there. When it was finally Carol's turn - finally - she's succumbed so fast that it didn't even matter that she was in the wide open air, no kind of roof above her head, barely in any kind of secure area. She just couldn't keep her eyes open.
—
"Will you...can you sleep upstairs? Please?"
He took a gentle breath, gnawing on the inside of his cheek as his gaze travelled the planes of her face. He stood up then, grabbing his crossbow in the process. He locked eyes with her once more, and nodded.
—
They'd had to run again. The exhaustion was slowing them all down but they had to run. The walkers didn't care how sleepy they were, or how badly they needed one night to rest.
So he roused her from her sleep as gently as he could so as not to startle her, even though they hadn't a second to spare.
Carol, he'd whispered urgently. We have to go - now.
And then he wrapped his arms around her while he half-pulled, half-led her through the brush after the rest of the group.
She stumbled along blindly, trusting him implicitly as she slowly made her way back to consciousness, realizing in her haze that she couldn't tell whether or not she was dreaming. And then she heard the snarls and it occurred to her that she was tired enough to have slept through her own death.
—
He knew she wouldn't stay down the night in the basement with him, in the confines of the small space with nowhere to go if they found themselves trapped. The claustrophobia would have been too much.
Carol nodded in return, one corner of her mouth turning up just barely - not having to be embarrassed about being too terrified to sleep alone, not having to explain herself.
She led him through the house, up to the smaller of the two children's rooms. A daybed with fairy sheets sat just under the window.
Carol walked over and pulled out the trundle that was tucked underneath it, already set up with sheets and a pillow. They got settled into their beds - Carol on top, Daryl on the pull-out - and instinctively laid on their sides to face one another.
—
She collapsed once they'd been able to stop, after what seemed like half a day later. The sounds of her heavy breathing and weeping mixed in with everyone else's. They'd all made it.
Daryl fell to the ground next to her, sprawling out on his back while she held herself up on all fours, still unsure of whether or not she wanted to vomit.
Thank you, she panted.
It took him a moment of heavy breathing before he was able to speak. He grabbed her wrist and their eyes met.
I've got you.
—
Their eyes locked for a solid minute, letting the day wash over them and rinse away as they drifted off comfortably, for the first time in such a long one.
Tomorrow would be another day - long and trying as they all seemed to be. And when the night came, it would be Daryl's turn to need her by his side as he attempted at getting some rest. Her hand would hold his between their resting forms, her thumb grazing his skin softly as it always did on those nights.
And so the dance would go, the bonds between them strengthening night after night, as they trudged through each day. Two halves of a whole, slowly helping the other put themselves back together in a world fallen apart.