AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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When Daryl woke up, Carol was still asleep. He lay there for a moment without knowing what to do. If he got up, he'd probably disturb her. If he stayed there, though, there was nothing to do but stare at her—and she would probably be horrified if she knew that was how he spent the time before she woke.

He made a decision without actually making a decision when he simply failed to move at all. He lay on his side, facing her, and watched her sleep. For just a moment, it felt like he had no choice. He was compelled to do it on some level.

She was peaceful. Completely lost to the world and relaxed. Then, without much warning, she seemed to start to dream something very different than what she had been dreaming. The dream she was having must not have been entirely pleasant. Her expression was almost one of anger. It might have been fear. There was a distinct line formed between her brow even as she slept. She twitched in her sleep. Her legs shifted under the cover. When she let out something like a whimper, her face drawing up more with the dream, Daryl reached his hand out and pressed it gently against her shoulder before he shook her. She came into herself with a sharp intake of breath.

"Shhhh shhhh…" Daryl responded. "It's OK. You're OK. It was just—a bad dream." Carol looked around, clearly disoriented. The line remained deep between her brows. She was no stranger to nightmares, and neither was Daryl. That fact was one reason they preferred to try to sleep around each other on the road. Their nightmares might disturb others, but neither of them was really bothered by the other. "It's our house," Daryl offered gently. "Remember? We live in the Cedar Falls community, now."

Carol relaxed. She sighed. She sunk into the pillow. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face against the pillow before she opened them to Daryl again.

"Did I wake you up?" She asked.

"I woke you up," Daryl said.

"I mean—with the nightmare," Carol clarified.

Daryl shook his head.

"I just happened to wake up," Daryl said. "Just—just woke up. Hadn't had time to get up yet."

"Thank you," Carol breathed out.

"No problem," Daryl offered. "You hardly got any rest at all last night."

Carol laughed to herself. She yawned and rubbed her face against the pillow again. When she did that—the little sleepy things like that—it made Daryl want to touch her face. It gave him the strange desire to find a way to give her the expression of happiness that she made when she enjoyed the touch of something like soft sheets or a blanket. He wished he could touch her in ways that seemed to please her as simply as those other things.

He didn't dare to touch her, though, beyond those touches which he could easily explain.

"You didn't either," Carol said. "And—that's my fault."

"I got enough," Daryl said. "You wanna—talk about the nightmare?"

"It won't change it," Carol said. "And it was just a nightmare."

"Might make you feel better," Daryl offered.

Carol smiled at him.

"You really want to hear about my nightmare?" She asked.

"I'd really listen," Daryl said. "If you wanna tell me. But—it's yours to keep to yourself if it's not the kind of thing that you…wanna talk about."

"Same old same," Carol said.

Daryl knew that Carol typically had three kinds of nightmares. She had the kind involving Ed, the kind involving Sophia, and the kind that involved both of them.

"Him or…"

"He wasn't there, but it was him," Carol said. "Chasing me. And I was trying to keep Sophia safe, but—I knew he was right there. Even though I couldn't see him. We were just running somewhere and I looked over my shoulder to see how far behind us he was and…" She smiled at Daryl. "And then you woke me up, so that was it."

"Glad I got you up, then," Daryl said.

"Thank you," Carol said softly. She frowned and turned her face into the pillow for a moment. The way she cuddled it this time was different than it had been before.

"Hey—you don't gotta think about it no more," Daryl said, reaching his hand out to squeeze the top of her arm. "Was a nightmare anyway; weren't real. Got a lot to do today. Better not to even think about—about what's back there, you know? In the past."

"You're right," Carol agreed. She pushed the cover back like she was getting up. Daryl watched her as she got up and padded to the bathroom. He stayed in bed until she returned and then, without a word, he got up. He was in his underwear, and he was aware of that, but she was in a pretty revealing nightgown. They'd seen each other like this for the past two nights, so it wasn't like they had too many great secrets between them. He went into the little bathroom connected to their bedroom and closed the door. In the bathroom, he pissed, washed his hands, and washed his face. He stared at his own reflection in the mirror for a moment. Then he stepped out of the bathroom.

Carol was sitting on the side of the bed in the somewhat revealing nightgown that Andrea had given her two nights before. Daryl tried to look away from her bare legs but, so far, his success rate for actually doing that was relatively low.

"You need a haircut," Carol offered.

"I shaved," Daryl responded.

"And now you need a haircut," Carol said with a laugh. "I could cut it for you, if you like."

"Fine," Daryl said. "Whatever. When you want."

"After—I see the community doctors?" Carol asked.

Daryl's stomach tightened.

He didn't want to have any sort of conversation related to this. The night before, he'd mentioned it to Carol and she'd been deeply upset about. She hadn't explained to him why and, in fact, she'd pretty much refused to say anything to him about her feelings. She'd been so adamant about it that she wouldn't even agree to go to bed until he'd promised her that he wasn't going to force her into anything—going to them or talking about why she was upset—as long as she at least tried to rest a little.

He hated seeing her torn up about something so much that just remembering her reaction had his heart pounding in his chest already.

He sat down on the bed, and studied his cuticles for dry skin.

"If that's what you want," he said.

"You mean the doctors or the haircut?" Carol asked.

"Both," Daryl offered. Finding a piece of skin that was barely accessible on his middle finger, he focused on catching it with his teeth to nip it off.

Carol sat with less than a foot of bed between them—still bare-legged, and he was sure of it because Daryl kept stealing glances out of the corner of his eye—and rubbed her hand over her belly.

"Before—out there? It was easy to just think that it would be over," Carol said. "One day would just be a really bad day and there'd be no more baby, you know? I'd have to explain to everyone that there had been, but then there wasn't."

"Pretty sad way to look at it," Daryl offered.

"Isn't that what it is, though?" Carol asked. Daryl wasn't certain that the question was really one she intended for him to answer. "I'm a mother and then…I'm not. It all happens in an instant."

Daryl didn't expect the statement to make it feel like he'd been impaled by a hot steel pole, but it did.

It wasn't even his grief. He shouldn't feel it as sharply as he did. Yet, suddenly, he found it a great deal harder to breathe than he generally remembered the action to be.

"You're always a mother," Daryl said. "Nothin' takes that away."

"Just a mother with…no children," Carol said.

Daryl stood up. He walked around the bed and opened the window. It took him a moment of playing with the locks to figure out how to slide it up. He welcomed the distraction for a moment. He knew, now, that he would have given his right arm to have kept Sophia from coming out of that barn—to have had the chance to have delivered her, healthy and alive, into her mother's arms.

He'd had more than one nightmare about the girl, himself, but he'd simply lied and told Carol that it was about something else. She had no reason to question what he said his nightmares were about.

Daryl got the cup off the nightstand he'd used for water the night before and used it for an ashtray at the moment.

"You gotta be positive," Daryl said.

Carol laughed to herself.

"Who are you?" She asked. "Mr. Rogers?"

"I just—know that negativity poisons you," Daryl said. "Poisons all of us. You gotta be positive because that baby don't need to grow in poison."

"When we were out there," Carol said, "I kept expecting it to end. I kept waiting on it. I'd go to sleep and my stomach would hurt and I'd think…tomorrow will be the day. But it wasn't."

"Your stomach hurtin' was you damn near starvin' to death," Daryl said.

"When we left the group—that was the first time I didn't think that tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day would be the day," Carol said.

"Got distracted," Daryl offered. He cleared his throat. The tight feeling that had been suffocating him when he'd practically been trying to claw his way out of the window was passing. The air in the room was lightening.

"I felt safe," Carol said. "Secure. Cared for. I started to actually feel like—there was some hope."

"We got more hope now than we did then," Daryl said. "You really looked at this place? I had a good look at them fences. They're solid and there's three layers of fencing. They been working steady on this place since the very beginning and it was protected before the outbreak even started. This is the kinda place where people live. Babies live here."

"One baby," Carol said. "None of the rest have made it."

"Because they was in a bad way," Daryl offered.

"What if…?" Carol asked, but she didn't fill in the rest of the question.

"What if it ain't?" Daryl asked. "Look—you might not like the answer to a question, but at least you get an answer. It's better than livin' scared and not knowin'."

Carol stared at him across the bed. She dropped her eyes and picked at the corner of the blanket.

"You're right," she said. "One way or another—I know what I'm dealing with, right? I know—if I'm just waiting for tomorrow or…"

"Or if we're going to get one of them cribs that Merle says they got in storage an' get it put together in that extra bedroom," Daryl offered.

"We can go to the doctor right after breakfast," Carol said. "And that'll give both of us the whole afternoon to work."

Daryl felt a catch. He laughed nervously to himself.

"You want me to go with you?" He asked. "To the doctor?"

"You weren't going to go?" Carol asked.

"Well—it's kind of a private thing, ain't it? Personal?" Daryl asked.

Carol frowned at him, but she quickly turned her face away to examine the blanket and hide her expression.

"I just thought—everyone thinks you're my husband and the baby's father," Carol said. It hung between them for what felt like an eternity, though it was really only a matter of a few silent seconds. Daryl really didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to respond. On the one hand, he felt oddly terrified of the visit. He might push Carol to go and face the truth, but he wasn't too thrilled about the possibilities if things didn't turn out the way he wanted. Furthermore, he didn't want to feel like he was invading her privacy. Yet, something about her tone of voice and expression told him that she was disappointed that he was considering not going. "But it'll be fine. I doubt anyone will really say anything. Or think anything. Ed—never went with me for anything with Sophia."

The hand that had impaled Daryl with the hot steel pole earlier twisted the pole a little before shoving it deeper through Daryl's body. He took another two drags off the cigarette in rapid succession—feeling like he needed far more strength than the nicotine gave him, and he dropped the cigarette butt into the cup before he put it on the windowsill and walked over to the little chair in the bedroom where his clothes from the day before were tossed haphazardly. He picked up his jeans and stepped into them.

"What are you doing?" Carol asked.

"Getting dressed," Daryl said. "We need to get to breakfast so we can get to see the doctors early. Like you said—we both got work for this afternoon and evening."

"You're going with me?" Carol asked.

"Unless you don't want me to," Daryl offered. "It's what you want."

Carol smirked at him—the damn smirk that meant she was about to tease him. He pretended he hated it but, really, he loved it. He loved it so much just that the thought that she was about to tease him made his heart beat a little faster.

"Of course, I want you to go," Carol said. "Will you hold my hand, too?"

Daryl laughed to himself.

"Shut up," he said. "Get your clothes on."