AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I wanted to say that if you read the first chapter on FFNet, you might really want to consider going back and rereading. Something happened on the platform and the first chapter loaded with missing sections. That's been fixed, now.
I hope you enjoy this chapter! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
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From the moment that Daryl had been certain that Carol intended to really leave, he'd been preparing everything that she would need in order to be safe and well-provided-for until she could reasonably acquire more supplies. From the moment that he'd gathered up the courage to ask her if there was room for him in the new life that she desperately needed—and she'd confirmed that she would love to have him with her—he'd been preparing for both of them to go.
He'd also prepared for Lydia to go, just in case, but she'd decided to stay behind, and Daryl had left her supplies with her in hopes that it would give her a chance at a good start somewhere else. He was confident, after all, that she wouldn't remain with the group for long.
Daryl felt confident that they were prepared. He had spent more time reading since they became dedicated to this trip than he had in the whole of his life before. He had gone on runs for supplies and library books. He'd scoured survival guides and historical accounts of cross-country travelling when the country wasn't yet a united country. Their wagon had been built to carefully chosen specifications, and Carol had sewn their large tent to a pattern that Daryl had prepared for her, making it out of the material he found. Daryl had measured, cut, and sanded the tent poles and pieces himself, constructing it and taking it down until he was satisfied with every last notch and stitch. A smaller tent had been made for Lydia who liked privacy and a certain amount of solitude.
Daryl believed that both he and Carol were very capable survivors, but that didn't mean that he didn't anticipate difficulties on a trip where there were only two of them moving across the country. He wanted them to be prepared to navigate those difficulties together.
Carol worried that Daryl would hate leaving behind everyone they'd come to know since the world had slipped into the level of chaos that they now considered normal. The truth was, he did hate to leave some people behind. He would miss them. He would wonder what became of them and how their lives went. He had enjoyed saying "one day" to them and hearing it in return, even though they all knew that their paths were entirely unlikely to ever cross again.
But leaving them behind only made him sit with moments of melancholy. Letting her go, without him? He wouldn't have survived that. He'd lost her before, too many times to count, and each time had made him feel like he couldn't make it. Each time he'd gotten her back. To watch her go, knowing with the same certainty that he felt right now about others, that he would never see her again?
His chest ached just to think it. There were some things that were intolerable.
Carol worried that Daryl would miss the physical things he left behind in favor of filling the well-built wagon with what they would need to survive and, more than that, to thrive. She thought he would miss a motorcycle enough that he would be willing to go back and to leave her to go on alone.
The motorcycle had always given Daryl a feeling of freedom. It had given him the feeling of wind on his face and hope in his veins. It had felt like power and the ability to escape something he wanted to escape—to seek something new.
The wagon gave him the power to seek something new. There was no shortage of wind and freedom. The combined power of the four sleek-coated and heavy drafts combined was incredible. Each of them—hearty stock—was at least fifteen hundred pounds of pure power.
Daryl was escaping everything they'd known in the past, at least as much as anyone ever could—he was moving toward a new start, and a bright future, with his heart full of hope—at the slow and steady speed that would get them wherever they might be going, with enough supplies to help him sleep at night with the security that they would have what they needed, without costing the four fine animals their lives.
The greatest thing, honestly, that Daryl thought he might miss about the bike was the feeling of Carol's body pressed warm against his back. She'd been forced to hug him—to hold him—on the bike. He would miss that. At least, though, he had her by his side, now, and he could be happy with that, if that's what had to be, as long as she stayed there for the duration of their lives to come. By giving her freedom to run, and by running with her, Daryl hoped he never had to suffer the pain of having her run away from him again.
Hook, Duchess, Goliath, and Dolly were well-trained horses that Daryl had specifically chosen for their gentle natures and their easy-going attitudes. Even though Hook and Goliath were still in possession of their testicles, they were fare more cooperative than most of the stallions and, having been raised together since birth, they tolerated each other's presence well. Of course, Daryl was certain they would have some demands of their own when Duchess and Dolly came into season, but they were prepared for that, and it was absolutely one reason why he'd insisted on trying to take stallions instead of geldings on this trip. In general, though, the heavy horses were good at ground-tying, and they could be picketed with practically no more than a loose branch or a stone barely big enough to be seen. Any one of them could walk off with a whole damn tree, just about, if they'd wanted but they simply weren't interested in that. Daryl used white cord, laid out on the ground, to create a grazing "fence" for the horses, and they happily stayed within their visible barrier.
Carol had wanted to put a few more miles between them and what they'd left behind before calling it a night. Daryl had judged, from the map, that they'd soon be forced to make some decisions about where to go from here. Once they made a turn, they would be entirely on their own. Nobody would know where they had gone, and few people would have any way to track them, even if they had the ability. He had his reasons for choosing to stop early for the night, but he'd easily explained it to Carol as the fact that, since it was the very first night that they'd ever be setting up camp together, he wanted to stop early to allow them some time for navigating the learning curve and handling any potential problems. Carol had been more than happy with that explanation, and she'd been quite agreeable.
Along the road, Daryl had found them a good spot with lots of overgrown areas for the horses to munch clean and a small creek off in a slightly overgrown copse of trees that had given him a pretty good indication that he might find water there. Daryl had hunted—finding a deer that would give them enough meat to carry with them—and Carol had watered the horses and started a fire, according to Daryl's instructions, out by the edge of the road and far enough away from where they would set the tent and bed the horses that Walkers, drawn by the flames, would give them warning before they approached.
Carol heated bath water, and Daryl bathed while Carol cooked the meat that he'd prepared for her. They both ate, happily, and Carol packed the food away before bathing herself, while Daryl made sure that their horses were satisfied and secure.
They had a little time before they needed to start sleeping—forced to sleep in shifts while someone kept watch over the camp—so they sat together on a blanket outside their tent while the sky changed colors and started its transformation into night.
Each mile they'd travelled had seemed to visibly lift pounds off of Carol's shoulders. Since they'd stopped for the night—with the promise of sleeping, for their first night, without the weight, whether real or imaginary, of everyone's expectations and memories of who they once were—Carol had smiled more, and more sincerely, than Daryl had seen in some time.
Settled on their blanket, relaxing for a little while together, Carol sat comfortably next to Daryl and leaned her body against him. He closed his eyes for a moment, drinking in the feeling of her warmth there. He didn't need the bike. She would still rest close against him if he was simply quiet and let it happen.
Daryl studied their map. Carol was leaving it up to him. He could decide where they went and, really, what they did. She wanted a new life, and that was all that mattered. She wanted to build that new life with him and, really, that was all that mattered to Daryl. That and, honestly, that they choose somewhere sustainable. Daryl wanted that new life to last as long as it possibly could and to give them both safety and security to enjoy together.
They had said New Mexico, but that had been a destination pulled out of the air on a whim. The true location meant nothing to either of them and, after making sure that Carol felt that way, Daryl had started to consider other places they might choose to call home. New Mexico, upon further research, didn't have quite the climate that Daryl wanted for their future lives. Carol was leaving the decision of their final destination entirely in Daryl's hands, and he wanted to make the decision that would be best for the both of them.
Leaning against him, Carol read a paperback. After a few minutes, Daryl got the overwhelming urge to tease her. He wanted to see that smile. He wanted to hear her laughter—and to know he earned it. He wanted her attention beyond the quiet attention of simply being with him. He could fight the urge, but he'd never win against it for long. Teasing Carol was one of his greatest joys in life when things were going well, and he knew she felt the same about teasing him.
"The hell you readin'?" He asked straightening up enough to make a swipe for her book.
"Stop it!" She barked; the sound dotted with laughter that sprung up immediately.
"Lemme see! What'cha readin'?" Daryl asked. "Gotta be somethin' if you so damned determined to keep me from seein' it."
"Stop it! You read your map!" Carol responded. Still, Daryl closed his fingers over the pages of the book and tugged. "Don't tear my book, Daryl," Carol warned, some sincerity in the plea. Daryl slackened the amount of strength he put behind pulling the book away from her.
"Lemme see it," he insisted.
"Asshole," Carol muttered lightly as she released the book. "Don't lose my place…"
"I ain't gonna lose your place," Daryl said slipping his finger into the pages to mark her spot. He turned the book over to look at the cover. Immediately, his face ran warm. On the cover, there was a cowboy with a woman—dressed like she was on the prairie or ready to walk down the streets of Deadwood in the eighteen hundreds—wrapped tightly in his arms. They looked just about ready to kiss. Lush green land stretched on behind them. "My Heart is in Wyoming?" Daryl asked, speaking the words of the title out loud. Carol's cheeks had colored slightly.
"You can read," Carol said.
"This one of them…" he hesitated. There were certain things he had a hard time talking about, especially with Carol, and that was mostly because of how desperately he wanted more with her than the friendship they shared. He wanted things that he didn't dare to admit to her because, more than likely, she wouldn't want them with him. "Sex books?" He asked, screwing up his courage. He would never be the cowboy on the front of the book and, for the first time ever, that kind of thought disappointed him.
"It's a romance," Carol said.
"What's it about?" Daryl asked.
"You don't care," she said, eyeing him.
"What the hell's it about?" Daryl asked. He handed her back the paperback and she held it with her finger in the pages. From beside her, she produced a feather and slipped it between the pages. Daryl recognized it immediately. It was just a silly feather—he'd found it while they'd been out on a run one day, and he'd tucked it into her braided hair, insisting that if she were going to wear her hair in a long braid like that, she ought to have a pretty feather. Daryl brought his eyes back up to Carol's.
"It's just a romance," Carol said. "A rancher and—his new wife...that's all."
"In Wyoming?" Daryl asked. Carol laughed quietly.
"Where the hell else?" She asked.
"Why Wyoming?" Daryl asked.
Carol shrugged.
"Maybe it's good farmland. Ranch land," Carol said. "Maybe it's…romantic."
Daryl's stomach tightened. There had been a time—one time, in what almost seemed to be another life—when he had stood on a bus at night with Carol. She had teased him, playfully, about the night. He could still hear her, in his mind, telling him that it was romantic, and then she'd asked him if he wanted to screw around. At the time, he'd wanted it so desperately that it terrified him. What terrified him more was that she might be genuinely kidding. Telling her how much he wanted it might have ended everything they had between them, and Daryl would rather live with something as relatively insignificant as sex missing from his life than with something as important as Carol missing from his life. He'd told her to "stop" and he'd dismissed her further innuendo. During many nights, Daryl had lie awake and wondered how things might have gone if he'd met her challenge. He'd told himself he'd be bold enough, one day, to meet the challenge if she brought it out again and presented it to him. She never had, and he wasn't as bold as he wanted to be.
He screwed up just a little of his courage.
"Maybe we—go to Wyoming?"
Carol eyed him a moment. He swallowed against the practical swarm of butterflies half-thundering around inside him a whirlwind of nerves, but he held her eyes. A hint of a smile played at the corner of her lips before she made it disappear.
"You're serious?" She asked.
"Tomorrow we gotta make a decision," Daryl said. "You—wanna go to Wyoming with me?"
Carol smiled. She licked her lips, and Daryl watched her tongue. It was an innocent gesture, but with the way he was feeling, parts of his anatomy stirred uncomfortably at his new focus on Carol's mouth. He made himself focus on her eyes.
"Yeah," she said. "I do. I want to go to Wyoming with you."
"We'll leave in the mornin'," Daryl said.
"You ought to get some sleep," Carol said. "I'll take first watch." Daryl shook his head.
"You first," he said.
"I can sleep while you drive," Carol challenged.
"And you can drive while I sleep," Daryl countered back with a laugh. "But—either way—let's give it another minute or…about eight."
Carol raised her eyebrows.
"Why eight?" She asked.
Daryl smiled at her.
"Because judgin' by the sound, that's just about how long it'll take Lydia to get down to the road where that fire was burnin' earlier," Daryl said. "And she's gonna be wantin' somethin' to eat and we'll have to get her settled." Carol furrowed her brow at him. She strained to listen. "How can you tell what that is? I didn't even hear it until just now."
"If it means keepin' somethin' from sneakin' up on us? I can hear a gnat fart two miles away," Daryl teased.
"How do you know it's Lydia?" Carol asked.
"Instinct," Daryl said. "Intuition. Figured we'd keep to the road for a day. If she was gonna change her mind, it wouldn't take long."
Carol stood up and offered her hand out to Daryl like he might need her help standing up. He didn't, but he accepted the offered help anyway.
"Come on," Carol said. "Let's go down to meet her so she doesn't get nervous that she's in the wrong place."
Carol started toward the road, and Daryl watched her go with a practical hop in her step. She'd wanted the girl to come more than she'd been willing to admit. Now, with a few miles between them and their past, and the promise of more miles to come, she was clearly feeling that it was fine to let some of her feelings show. Daryl liked the obvious lightness to Carol's movements, and he liked the way it made his chest feel—like he could breathe easier, too. The air was different out here.
"Are you coming?" Carol asked, stopping and looking back over her shoulder. The clop clop of horses' hooves was louder, now. Anyone would have heard them. Daryl started his forward walk.
"I'm right behind you," he called out.