A/N: Thank you to all of those who have reviewed and made requests on scenes that you would like to see played out in my story. The more you request, the more inspiration I will have and the longer this story will be, so please do not be shy in your reviews or private messages. I always respond! I received some feedback expressing uncertainty regarding the timeline. To refresh, Rick and Michonne met during their junior year of high school when Andre was roughly six months old. Since then, most of our characters have completed some type of training or schooling, be it the police academy or traditional academic work. At this point it has been eleven years since that first chapter took place. Please enjoy Chapter 28 of The Worst Days of Our Lives, in which I begin exploring the paths of characters other than Rick and Michonne in order to begin preparing to conclude this story.
Best,
LEAJPEHP

By the time Rick and Michonne were pregnant with their daughter, their friends from high school had reached amazing milestones as well. They weren't always able to get together like they used to and it made them all sad, but they made do, meeting up as frequently as possible even when not everyone could attend.

On the night in question, they were spread out across the living room and kitchen of Rick and Michonne's house. Eugene had essentially been lost given that he never came back to Georgia anymore, opting to spend all of his time in Massachusetts. Abraham and Rosita were stationed in Germany, but were doing quite well the last time everyone saw them, and were likely to conclude their service when they were thirty. Andrea and Amy were still living in California and said they would video chat later. This left Rick and Michonne to host Maggie, Beth, Glenn, Daryl, Carol, Tara (and the girl who she insisted wasn't her girlfriend), and Shane. Everyone knew Shane would find an excuse to leave before Andrea buzzed in; there was just too much history there. Andre was playing video games in the next room. It was more than Rick and Michonne usually allowed him to, but they needed him distracted for the duration of the night just this one time.

Daryl and Carol had brought plenty of booze, mostly whiskey, but still a broad selection of other liquors. At this moment, Carol was doing her third shot of vodka while Daryl was admiring her from the other side of the kitchen table. Rick smiled knowingly. Daryl and Carol had continued their unconventional relationship all the way through high school, college and beyond, and according to what Daryl told Rick, they never fought as long as their relationship was undefined. Sometimes they slept together, sometimes they went on dates, and sometimes they bought each other gifts. They never put labels on each other, never tried to get the other to commit, never scared the other off, and never made assumptions. As long as they did this, they always came through for each other, always met each other's expectations and were always happy. At first, it seemed as though Carol might eventually grow weary of this noncommittal relationship, but around the time she got her degree in social work, after nearly seven years of this potentially unfulfilling arrangement, she made him have a conversation. It was the last time she made him do anything.

Daryl entered the house late at night, hoping Carol would be asleep by now. He was thinking he was right, as the door was locked and after he entered the house he saw all the lights were off. However, when he entered their bedroom, Carol was standing there, arms crossed, looking ready to have it out. Daryl sighed, setting his phone and wallet down on his nightstand beside their shared bed.

"You've been avoiding me," Carol stated.
"No, I haven't," Daryl said defensively. "Ever since Dale died, the shop's been on me and I need to spend more time there, and if you can't get over that, that's not my problem."
"Try saying that again with a straight face, Daryl Dixon."
"I'm not doing this," Daryl answered. "You want me to fight and I'm not fighting with you. I just want to go to bed."
"You don't get to keep running away, Daryl. All those years ago you helped me learn to fight so that I could face my problems. You had better be prepared to face this problem."
"I didn't realize we had a problem."
"The problem is that I don't know where I stand."
A moment of silence passed before Daryl responded, "We share a house, a bed, and a life. I think it's pretty clear where we stand."
"So what do you want to call it?"
"Why do we have to call it anything?"
"Because it's embarrassing that I have to call you my friend, and that I can't say that I have a boyfriend or a husband. I just have a Daryl, whatever the fuck that means!"
Daryl crossed the room as she spat her last sentence. He stood a foot away from her and growled, "I didn't know I was so goddamn embarrassing for you to be with."
Carol said quietly, "I didn't mean to say
you were embarrassing. It's just embarrassing that at 25, I don't have much to show for it."
"You've gotta be shittin' me. You're trying to say that your fucking degree and this house and that car," he gestured all around him, "mean absolutely nothing because you can't say I'm your boyfriend!? What the fuck Carol?"
"When my parents were our age-"
"I thought you wanted a different, better life than your parents."
"I do."
"This is all I can offer you. If it's not enough, you know where the door is."

Carol slept on the couch that night. It was when she woke up in the morning and saw Daryl sitting at their kitchen table, drinking coffee, scrolling through his phone to look at e-mails, that she realized something; Daryl did love her, and he did want to stay with her. It was when she wasn't so focused on defining their relationship that he was at his most caring, and it was when he surprised her the most. She realized this when she saw the coffee mug sitting at the empty space across from him at the table. She pulled herself off the couch and settled in the chair to face him as she thanked him for the coffee.

"I'm sorry about last night," she offered.
Daryl grunted in response, "Don't worry about it. I don't want to think about it. I just want to move on."
"I wanted to say I'm sorry."
Daryl looked up from his phone and set it down, recognizing that this was an important conversation.

Carol continued, "I shouldn't have pushed you like that last night. We're happier, or at least I am, when I just let us be."
"You know I don't like to be trapped," Daryl said.
"I know, and I shouldn't have made you feel that way. While I wish we could say what we are, I realized feeling it is more important, and I'll stop pushing you."
"I can't tell you that I want to get married, because I don't. I can tell you that you're going to have a rough time shaking me off though. I'm like a dog, Carol. If you try to make it go in the cage it won't want it, but if you just leave the cage door open, maybe I'll go in."
"You're not a dog Daryl."
"That's an argument for another day."
"You're not as broken as you like to think you are."

Daryl was forcing Glenn to drink more than he could handle, his reasoning being that since Maggie was pregnant, Glenn needed to drink for two, lest all the alcohol he brought go to waste. He tried to reason that surely Maggie's typical imbibing would not compensate for the excessive quantity of alcohol displayed on the counter in front of them. Glenn getting heckled always attracted Tara's attention, and now Glenn found himself staring at Maggie, his eyes pleading her to save him and Daryl poured him a more than generous shot of whiskey and Tara chanted, "Shots!"

Maggie smiled, placed her hand over her barely there baby bump, turned around and walked away with her glass of water. This left Glenn with Daryl forcing the shot into his hand and Tara clapping him on the back as he downed it and winced at the burning in his throat.
"Alright, Chinaman," Daryl said. "We'll go again in fifteen minutes. That ought to be enough time for you to recover."
As Tara and Daryl erupted with laughter, Glenn groaned, "Maggie! We need new friends. Friends who know I'm Korean! And friends who don't make me drink this much!"
Maggie didn't hear him and Glenn was left at Daryl and Tara's mercy. Glenn had to admit, even though he was being tortured, it wasn't the worst night he'd had in a while. It was as he walked into Rick's living room that he saw Michonne and Maggie exchanging pregnancy stories that he thought of the awful nights he and Maggie had had in previous weeks.

Hershel had passed away nearly two months ago now. It had been completely unexpected, and completely accidental. He had been driving home in the middle of the night, having finished up an emergency foaling with one of his clients and saw someone with a flat tire on the side of the road. He helped the young girl, Cindy was her name, change the tire. Wobbly in his old age, he lost his balance as he stood up and fell backwards into the road and a car happened to be driving by. The woman driving had even slowed down when she saw the flashing hazard lights on the two vehicles, but didn't expect anyone to be coming. Hershel died in the ambulance. Maggie and Beth both had a hard time dealing with the death of their father, but Maggie had a particularly rough go of it. She had joined Hershel's veterinary practice after she finished school. It was a logical step; her father could teach her and eventually when he retired she would be able to over the practice entirely. The way she saw it, she should have been on call that night and Hershel would have been fine because he wouldn't have been on the road anyway. A month after he died, she found out she was pregnant. She had a lot of sleepless nights since then, and as her husband, Glenn was privy to this information. He heard her toss and turn, held her when she cried, spoke sweet nothings to her as she wept in his arms and helped her get through the day as she ran the practice on her own, far earlier than she could have ever anticipated. Glenn thought working helped her though. There was something therapeutic about working with horses and cows. Glenn was always available to his wife when he was lecturing at the local community college.

Maggie met Glenn's drunken eyes later and smiled at him from where she sat with Beth. Maggie had been unsure of dating Glenn when they first met in high school, but the way they maintained their relationship through all levels of schooling made marrying Glenn the most obvious decision in the world and she was more and more grateful for it every single day

Maggie sat with her mother and her two siblings as Glenn followed the doctor to confirm that the body they had was in fact Hershel Green. Maggie had been ready to do it, but as she stood, Glenn jumped up and guided her back into her chair saying, "I can't let you do this. I'll go. You shouldn't have to see him like that."
Maggie burst out sobbing and Beth clutched her, trying to quiet the absolutely agonizing scream that erupted from Maggie. Glenn tried not to wince to hard. He couldn't stand to hear these noises coming from her, but imagined that it would have been much worse had she been the one to see Hershel's body.

At his wake and funeral, Glenn found himself unable to focus on much other than how talented the people who worked on dead bodies truly were. The Hershel in the casket was a far cry from the mangled mess that Glenn had confirmed the identity of just days earlier.
Glenn spent the better part of two weeks comforting Maggie before and after she went to work. Just when it seemed that she was going to get through this, he came home to her sitting on their bathroom floor holding a plastic stick. She looked up at him, feeling mixed emotions, and handed him the item in her hand. He took it with confusion on his, but the confusion quickly rectified itself as Glenn realized what two blue lines meant. He pulled Maggie up off the floor and into his arms, kissing her face, whispering, "We're going to have a baby."
When he broke away to look at Maggie, she was crying.
"Maggie?" he asked. "What's wrong? I thought we wanted to have a baby."
"He's never going to know my dad," she whimpered.
Glenn understood why she wasn't happy. The rest of their evening was silent until they retired to their bedroom and got into bed.
They faced each other, and Glenn reached out a hand to rest in on Maggie's face, whispering, "I'm sorry that our baby won't know your dad. We will make sure he knows how wonderful Hershel was. I know your dad and I never necessarily saw eye to eye on what happens when we die, but right now, I feel pretty confident that he's looking down on us, smiling."
"I hope you're right," Maggie whispered back, taking this hand from her face and clutching it in her own.