AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"Hey—OK, look here. You still droppin' that elbow," Daryl said. He walked up behind Carol. She felt him take the now familiar position. He gently tapped her elbow and moved it into place. "Keep steady. Let out your breath. Your holdin' it again. Just let it out easy." Carol smiled to herself and followed his instructions. She could almost hear them in her sleep after several days of practicing with him outside of the time she spent on her domestic chores. "Keep your eye on your target," Daryl said. "And just—let your arrow fly."
Carol released her arrow. It made the arc she wanted it to make and it sailed smoothly this time. Her heart swelled with excitement as she watched it fly toward its mark. It almost felt like it was moving in slow motion. And then it sunk into the wood. Carol lowered her bow and frowned at it.
Daryl walked over and examined the arrow before he pulled it loose. He looked at her, laughed to himself, and averted his eyes quickly.
"It was a good shot," Daryl said.
"You say that every time," Carol said.
"An' I mean it every time," Daryl said. "That's the damnedest thing about it."
"It was a good three inches off," Carol said.
"Remind me that I don't want you in charge of measurin' a damned thing," Daryl teased. "It was an inch—maybe an inch and a half off."
"I haven't hit my target once," Carol said. "Not once."
"You ain't hit a bullseye," Daryl said. "You gotta learn—there's a hell of a difference between a target and a bullseye. You doin' just fine."
"If you had that attitude about your aim," Carol said, "we'd all starve to death."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"You know how big a deer is? Know why—sometimes—I bring you them fuckers with like six wounds? It's 'cause hittin' your target don't always mean hittin' a bullseye. But it'll put food on the table and, most of the time, it'll stop a Walker."
"I can't hit a moving target," Carol said.
"You don't know you can't," Daryl said.
"I haven't hit a single squirrel," Carol pointed out.
"That's damn near up there with the bullseye," Daryl said. "They small an' they fast as hell. A Walker—or a person for that matter? Don't move that fast an' you probably gonna slow the fucker down no matter where you hit him as long as it's two inches from a bullseye."
"If I hit him at all," Carol said. "T's so much better at this…"
Carol hadn't actually seen T-Dog working with the crossbow that he'd chosen—a smaller and lighter model than the one that Daryl preferred—but she knew that he didn't push to go out and practice. He went with Daryl, from time to time, while Carol prepared meals, but he spent relatively little time firing arrows at the various targets that Daryl had carved into the trees he found acceptable for the practice.
Carol, on the other hand, spent nearly every moment that she wasn't engaged in something else firing off arrows—one after another—to try to get her elbow right, her breathing right, or simply to learn where her eye needed to look. Even while Daryl and T-Dog worked, she stayed close enough to yell for them, in the case of an emergency, and practiced.
But she still wasn't as confident as T-Dog was, and she still wasn't as good as she wanted to be.
"T is happy with mediocrity," Daryl said. "He ain't no better'n you. Maybe worse. It's just—you know them kids that was happy when they got like just above passin' in the class? They liked ridin' along at just good enough? That's T. And he's happy there. He'll get better just 'cause he does it more as time goes on, but he ain't gonna bust his ass if he can get by with what he's got. You, on the other hand, I think you got dreams of grandeur or somethin'."
"I want to have something to offer," Carol said.
Daryl stood, toying with the arrow by using it to scratch the bark on the tree next to him.
"Whether you ever hit the damn bullseye," Daryl said, "you got plenty to offer. Might wanta start understanding that."
He glanced at her. He barely made eye contact, and then he dropped his eyes to watch the ground as he crossed it toward her. As he reached her, he passed her the arrow. She took it and he kept walking, taking his place some few feet behind her.
"Again," he said.
Carol sighed, lifted her bow, and positioned the arrow. Step by step, she went through her mental checklist of how to hold the bow properly and how to hold her arrow. She checked her feet. She drew the string back, checked her stance, and reminded herself to be mindful of her elbow. She set her eyes on the target and purposefully released the breath she was holding.
Maybe Daryl wasn't wrong. Maybe she had something to offer the group even if she never learned to shoot the bow the way she wanted to. Maybe she could offer them plenty even if she never hit her mark. She could, after all, cook for them. She kept their clothes clean. She was good at cleaning the food that Daryl brought her—she wasn't even squeamish. She could build a fire, relatively quickly, in a variety of circumstances. She could catch fish, and she was patient. She could sew and she had tended enough of her own wounds that she'd taught herself to handle almost all minor injuries and a few more serious ones.
She had things to offer.
But she would like to be able to offer protection—from Walkers and people alike. She would like to be able to offer some assistance in hunting so that putting meat on the table didn't always rest on Daryl's shoulders.
She would like to know the feeling of confidence that had to come with raising her bow, choosing her target, letting her arrow fly, and seeing it land true.
She released her arrow. It slipped silently through the air and sunk into the wood. Behind her, Daryl cheered. Carol lowered her bow and looked at him over her shoulder. She couldn't help but laugh to herself at the way that he was sitting there—perched on a fallen log with a cigarette between his fingers—grinning with his crooked ass smile that made just the corner of his mouth turn upward.
"Asshole," she shot at him.
"What?" He asked, laughing quietly. "It's close."
"Three inches," Carol said.
"I bet it was your ex that taught your ass to measure," Daryl said.
"What?" Carol asked.
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Nothin'," he said. "Forget it. I'ma find you a ruler. Next on my list of useless shit to hunt up in a car. Carol—that shit right there? It's an inch—tops—an inch away from your damn target. Look here—you see this. She this part of my finger?"
"Yes," Carol said, moving her hand to work at the muscles of her lower back.
"One inch," Daryl said. "You look an' you tell me that arrow's further away than this."
"That's more than an inch," Carol said.
"Show me an inch, then," Daryl said.
Carol held her fingers up at the interval that she thought was close to an inch and Daryl snorted.
"That's like—it's like a centimeter or some shit. Carol—you been lied to. This is a fuckin' inch," Daryl said.
"Well it still isn't the bullseye," Carol said.
"Listen—by the time you bringin' that lil' bullseye you carryin' around out here for real? You'll be hittin' the damn bullseye on the tree every time you aim at it," Daryl said.
"Like you?" Carol asked.
"I miss a lot," Daryl said. "An' I been shootin' since—since I weren't hardly able to stay on my feet."
He finished his cigarette and snubbed it out in the dirt between his feet. Then he got up and immediately started collecting up the few items that they'd brought with them.
"We're leaving?" Carol asked.
"Well—speakin' of your lil' bullseye got me thinkin' that…you ain't eat since breakfast. So neither has he. It's about time we take it in for lunch. We got plenty to eat for now, but I'll come out later an' see about somethin' fresh for supper."
Carol watched him gathering up the few scattered bits and pieces of things. He brought his bow and arrows. He brought extras for her. He brought a few different types of materials that he had her practicing with to see what she preferred to protect her arm from the bite of the bow string. He had a bag in case a rabbit or something he might have wanted to eat had crossed their paths.
He gathered all of it up.
And Carol watched him because, if she'd tried to help, he would have told her that he could handle cleaning things up and she probably didn't need to be doing all that bending when it wasn't necessary at all.
If anyone had told her, when she first laid eyes on the Dixon brothers at a rock quarry outside of Atlanta, that she'd come to think of Daryl Dixon as one of the gentlest souls she'd ever met, she'd have told them that they were crazy.
She'd seen it first, though, when her husband had died. Daryl had lost his brother and there was a flicker of something like sympathy there. Maybe the sympathy wasn't so much for the loss as for the type of marriage she'd had. Ed's abuse, after all, hadn't been a secret to the group or to Daryl.
She'd seen his gentleness, many times, when they'd been on the road. It wasn't overt or over-the-top. It was a simple gesture of making sure that she and Sophia got something to eat ahead of him or making sure that they didn't need a hand when they stopped by the road to use the bathroom.
She'd seen it again when Sophia had gone missing. He'd put everything into trying to find her little girl. He'd nearly sacrificed his own life for nothing more than to give her a night of sleeping with hope under her pillow. And in the middle of everything, he'd thought to bring her a flower—just because he wanted it to bring her hope and comfort.
Her ex-husband had taught her that flowers were only lies. They were unfelt apologies for broken bones, black eyes, and dislocated shoulders.
Daryl was far too gentle for those things.
Gentleness, of course, didn't mean delicacy. At the same time that he was the gentlest man that Carol had ever known, he was strong, and hard, and steady. She had seen his back, even though he'd tried to hide it from her, and she knew the truth. Daryl had been on the receiving end of the same kind of cruelty that had given her familiarity with numerous levels of pain and suffering. He'd been raised under it. He'd cut his teeth on it. That was what made him hard. That was what made him a force to be reckoned with when he wanted to make himself into a veritable wall.
And, perhaps, that was what made him gentle as well.
For whatever reason, he continued to show gentleness and care to Carol. He continued to offer her friendship and affection when he didn't have to. He blessed her with easy conversation and he did his best to build her confidence.
Carol didn't know why he cared, but she was thankful that he did.
There was a part of her, though, deep down inside that wanted so much more. There was a part of her that wanted to know how far that strength in him extended—a part of her that wanted to experience his strength with the exhilarating knowledge that she needn't fear it. And there was a part of her, too, that wanted to know how gentle he could really be.
She felt ashamed, sometimes, at the stirrings she felt around him. The desire to simply be close to him—as close as humanly possible—in every way imaginable.
She usually imagined that he would be horrified to know, too, exactly what she thought sometimes when she was watching him doing something as simple as smoking a cigarette or gnawing his cuticle in the way that he often did. Watching him do such things often made her think that she'd like to help him find ways to soothe the compulsion that he clearly had to explore the world with his mouth. She'd like to give him so much to explore that she knew was new and unknown to him.
She usually thought that he would be horrified to know how much she secretly wanted to be so much more to him than just a friend and a travelling companion.
But then, sometimes, he looked at her like he did when he called her name and, seeing her jump, teased her about her daydreams before he told her to come on because it was late for lunch. When she reached him, he bumped her with his arm and smiled at her—just enough of a smile to turn the corner of his mouth upward—and he looked at her. It was a look that lasted a fraction of a second longer than it had to. It was a look that lingered between them a little longer than was necessary, or even reasonable, before he gestured back toward the motel.
And when he looked at her like that, Carol's stomach did a little dance and she wondered if he already knew her secret.
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AN: Before anyone gets impatient, we are going to learn more about the fires. I promise. And we're also going to learn a little more about what happened at the motel
But patience is a virtue!
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!