AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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"You can blow the lamp out if you want," Carol said.

She was referencing the camping lantern that flickered on the nightstand between the two beds. It was the only source of light in the room since Daryl had drawn the curtains—leaving the window open to keep some air moving in the room and to allow T-Dog a quick way to get their attention if anything happened while he was on watch—to give the room just a bit of privacy.

Carol had informed T-Dog that she thought it was his turn to take watch for the night. Arguably, it was actually T-Dog's turn to take watch at any rate, but Daryl couldn't help but laugh to himself at the way she'd presented it. As punishment for being inconsiderate, he would sit outside, alone, and stare into the darkness while he waited for trouble and hoped that there was none.

As soon as she'd come in the room and washed off with water they'd hauled up in a bucket, Carol had sat down to go through a few boxes of items they'd found in the backs of vehicles. Undoubtedly, she'd sort the items as she pleased and then she'd take them over to the room that they were using for storage until she needed them.

Daryl had washed off, as well, and now he was lying in bed, pretending to sleep, but he was mostly watching her at intervals.

"You think you might ought to get some sleep?" Daryl asked.

"I'm going to," Carol said. "Unless…you're ready to blow out the lamp now."

"I don't care about the lamp," Daryl said. "I can sleep in the middle of the day if I gotta. I'm just worried that you ain't gonna get no rest."

"I'll get enough rest," Carol said softly. Daryl sat up on his elbow. Carol was folding clothes—tiny clothes—and she was sorting them into piles. She looked at him when he sat up and frowned. "I don't want to keep you awake, though."

"I'm not so tired," Daryl said. He sat all the way up to prove it. "Baby clothes?"

"There was a whole suitcase of them," Carol said. "In that mini-van."

"Got the crib out of it, too, didn't you?" Daryl asked.

"Pack and play," Carol said. "But—it'll be a good crib." She hummed to herself. "I got—a box of toys and some blankets. Bottles and…even a few other odds and ends. All out of that one van."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"We'd call that a jackpot," he offered. "But—you're lookin' kinda down about it."

Carol nodded her head. She caressed the item of clothing between her fingers that she was holding. She'd clearly meant to fold it, but she'd gotten sidetracked. Instead of folding it, she was touching it tenderly and admiring the print. Daryl couldn't see it, but he imagined it was ducks or lambs or bears, since most baby clothes seemed to circle around the same common themes.

"There were a lot of baby things," Carol said. "Somewhere in this motel, a family was going on vacation. They were taking their baby. There was a car seat—I got it, too. There were at least four different carriers and—and wraps—for carrying the baby. Cloth diapers and a Costco box of disposable diapers. Bottles and formulas and two kinds of breast pumps." She laughed to herself. "In the whole car there was one suitcase with things that didn't belong to the baby. Things that belonged to—whoever they were. The parents."

"Good shit," Daryl said. "You need stuff for the kid."

"It was probably their first baby," Carol said. "They didn't know what they needed. They didn't know what they liked or what the baby liked. They brought everything—everything they probably got at a baby shower. The baby stuff? It's all for a baby that's smaller than six months old. A newborn."

"The size you need," Daryl offered. He suddenly wanted a cigarette. T-Dog was outside. Carol wouldn't care. Even with the curtain closed, the window was open. Daryl found a ginger ale can that Carol had drained earlier and he took it to the table to sit and smoke. Carol watched him, but it was more with interest to see what he was doing than anything else. "Ain't that—the size you need?" Daryl asked. "Or like—you think it's gonna need bigger'n that?"

Carol laughed to herself.

"I hope to God that my newborn doesn't need larger than size six months in clothing, Daryl," Carol said. "If it does? It might be better if you just—go ahead and kill me. You and T can just raise the baby yourselves."

Daryl sucked his teeth.

"Lotta size difference?" He asked.

"Little bit," Carol offered with a laugh.

"Sorry. Hadn't spent a lot a time around kids. Like 'em…just…"

"It's OK," Carol said. "Sophia was…" She stopped and smiled to herself. "Sophia was tiny. Five pounds and two ounces. Even her newborn clothes were oversized. She was perfect, though. She ate constantly and she gained weight quickly. And she was so happy."

"So this one's…gonna be the same size?" Daryl asked. "When it's born?"

Carol dropped a hand away from the garment she'd been toying with and rubbed it across the small swell of her belly—a swell that almost disappeared entirely when she sat the way she was.

"I guess it might," She said.

"Does that make you sad?" Daryl asked. "Or…somethin'?"

"It makes me sad to think that someone was here with their baby," Carol said. "Their brand-new little baby. They had so much hope for that baby. They were so prepared to meet every possible need that baby might have and then some. They were probably terrified to even travel with it and then? This happened."

"Was the van torn up?" Daryl asked. "You an' T cleared that one out. I didn't get a look at it. Was it torn up?"

"There wasn't anything wrong with it," Carol responded.

"So it was packed," Daryl said. "Everything in it. They was either just gettin' here, or they was just leaving. Otherwise—they wouldn'ta left everything they had in the van."

"I guess," Carol said.

"No blood," Daryl said. "No bodies."

"No," Carol said. "Come to think of it—we haven't seen any blood. No bodies."

Daryl shook his head.

"Weren't nobody trapped in their cars," Daryl said. "Didn't nobody die in their cars. Not that we seen so far."

"That's odd," Carol said. She lost interest in the outfit she was folding. She put it on the stack of clothing instead of continuing to toy with it. "On the highway—we saw so many cars. Wrecked. People—dead in their cars."

"Prob'ly waitin' for Walkers to leave 'em alone," Daryl said. "But I got some ideas."

"Care to elaborate?" Carol asked after a moment.

At least she wasn't looking as sad anymore. With something else to think about, she wasn't thinking about what made her sad. She wasn't thinking about some happy couple with their first baby going on their first vacation to end up being eaten by Walkers. Now she was thinking about the mystery of the almost entirely abandoned motel with a full parking lot of packed cars.

Daryl didn't know a single damn thing about what might have happened there, but he had a pretty good imagination. On top of that, he was also fairly optimistic as far as realists went.

And he liked the way that Carol looked when she was happy a lot more than he liked the way that she looked when she was sad. He'd do just about anything to make her look happy.

"Big tourist area," Daryl said. "Lots of busses in and out. The government looks out for areas like this because they know they got high concentrations of people. Up here? They got entire like—like police forces, I guess you'd call 'em. But they—they ride in helicopters."

"Helicopter police?" Carol asked, raising an eyebrow at him. He nodded at her.

"Gotta have 'em," he said. "Up in here in these mountains it can be difficult to get emergency vehicles in and out in a hurry. You get to goin' to fast on them curves an' you gonna lose control. You goin' fast an' then slammin' on your brakes a lot an' you gonna burn right through your brakes. Ain't gonna do nobody no good if you come here in some emergency vehicle that just ends up…slidin' over the side of the mountain or…or somethin' like that. You wanna get saved, not have them kill you some way you weren't already set to die."

Carol considered his words, but clearly seemed to think they were reasonable.

"You think the government sent helicopters?" Carol asked.

"Airlifted the people outta here," Daryl said. "Coulda sent some down out the mountains in trucks. Cleared the area out, though. You see we don't see nearly the kinda signs of panic here that we saw back there in Georgia. Streets ain't full of crashed cars and they ain't lined up empty at the gas stations."

"And the Walkers in the kitchen?" Carol asked. "At the front desk? Why didn't they get out?"

"If they was ever gonna be holdouts when the government come to save people? These mountains is where the people were gonna hold out. I told you that 'fore we got here. Told you in the truck. The people in these mountains—especially the ones that are from these mountains? That's what they did. Some of 'em died, yeah, but it's probably what a lot of 'em still doing. They survived without needin' the rest of the damn world."

"But the tourists went with the government," Carol said. Daryl hummed and nodded. Carol reached down and plucked another garment from the box of baby clothes she'd filled from the suitcase found in the back of the van. She held it up to gesture at Daryl with it. "And they left all their stuff behind?"

"Not a lot of room on helicopters," Daryl said. "Gonna want to get as many people on there as you can. The two of them and their baby? They got on there with everybody else. They was probably thinkin' that there wasn't another thing that mattered—not as long as they all got on the helicopter."

Carol smiled to herself.

"It still seems—haunted. Like I touch it and I can imagine…another mother. This was meant for her child. I just think…what if she lost that baby?"

Daryl's stomach ached. He lit another cigarette like that would settle it. It wouldn't, but he was willing to try.

"Like you lost Sophia?" He asked. Carol didn't look at him. She didn't have to. "I ain't gonna lie. That ain't fair. It ain't never gonna be fair that…there's good mamas that lose their kids. Any mamas that lose their kids 'cause kids shouldn't have to get lost. But maybe you don't think of it that way. Maybe you think—she got outta here on a helicopter. One of the lucky ones. Took her baby with her. An' she'd be fuckin' damn happy to know that—right now? There was a mama who was…well, who was just waitin' to put them clothes to good use."

"Waiting on a second chance," Carol said softly.

Daryl hummed at her because he couldn't speak. He knew he couldn't, and he wasn't about to embarrass himself and try to speak until he'd give himself a moment to get control of the feeling in his throat.

He couldn't really explain the number of packed vehicles they found in the parking lot. He didn't know if people died before they could leave or got trapped in the motel after loading their cars and thinking they had more time than they did. He had no idea what had happened there at all. He was as perplexed as anybody else and it rang true that dead men told no tales. They'd never know what happened there.

But Carol didn't have to know his secret. She didn't have to know any of them.

She didn't need to know he made the story up just to make her happier—to make her sleep better when she finally blew out the camping lamp to face the darkness.

And if there was any justice in the world, she'd get that second chance.

Carol didn't say anything else to Daryl. She abandoned her job of folding and sorting clothes. Instead, she took the tiny stacks of clothes that she'd made and carefully arranged them back in the box on top of the clothing that she hadn't folded. Presumably it was a job she'd finish at another time. She moved the box to the side and walked around to sit on the edge of her bed.

"Are you ready for—me to blow out the lamp?" Carol asked.

Daryl took a final draw off the cigarette that had mostly burned down while it hung between his fingers, and he dropped it into the ginger ale can. He left the can on the table and came around to sit on his own bed. For a moment, he was close enough to her that their knees might have touched if either of them had moved a little forward.

Carol smiled at him. It was sincere in a way that made his stomach flutter.

"Thank you," Carol said.

"For what?" Daryl asked.

"For a nice story," Carol said.

"Just—tellin' you what prob'ly happened," Daryl said.

Carol renewed her smiled. She reached her hand out and touched his knee with familiarity. He liked the touch and she left it there for a moment before she straightened back up. Her smile didn't fade.

"It was nice of you to tell it," Carol said. "But—Daryl? I was there. Outside Atlanta. I know they bombed it. It's—impossible to think they were helicoptering people out of here to take them to some kind of paradise and they were blowing up Atlanta, Georgia." Daryl frowned at her. She didn't look upset anymore, but he hated that she didn't truly have the comfort of the story. "It's OK," she offered. "It's a nice story, and I hope—it's true."

"Whether or not it is," Daryl offered. "She still woulda wanted you to have everything you got."

"I would want—someone to have it," Carol said. "If I had it to offer. So, I'm sure you're right."

She leaned forward and blew out the lamp. Immediately they were bathed in darkness. Daryl could hear Carol moving around, getting comfortable in her bed. He hesitated a moment before he did the same. Finding the pillow and balling it up under his head, he thought about the fact that all that really separated them was a small space—just large enough to place the small nightstand.

"Carol," he said, almost fearing that he would wake her, even though he knew she wasn't asleep. She hummed back at him to give him permission to speak. "Just so you know? I'ma do what I can. To make sure you get that second chance."

She didn't answer him. She'd probably pretend that she was asleep. She wasn't asleep, though, and Daryl knew that she heard him. That was all that was important, really. He didn't need her to try to find something to say. There wasn't anything that she needed to say. All he needed was to know that she heard him.