AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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They spent the evening moving furniture and other odds and ends from the over-crowded storage house to the rooms that Carol and Andrea had designated for nurseries. For the time being, Andrea had only taken the crib she'd picked out, but Carol needed more things. She needed to furnish the room. She took a dresser, a rocker, and a changing table. She took, as well, a selection of items that came from those that they'd brought from the motel—most of which they'd donated to be shared with anyone who might need them—and some which had been found by those in the community who led expeditions to clean out surrounding areas.

Daryl and T-Dog, as well, had snagged a few odds and ends that they simply wished to acquire as creature comforts while they'd been busy moving things.

Back at the house, after everything had been moved into place, Carol, Daryl, and T-Dog had drank coffee on the porch and spent a few moments merely settling down for the evening. Soon, Carol had excused herself to do a few things and T-Dog had excused himself to the upstairs, and Daryl had remained outside long enough to finish one cigarette in complete silence and to drink the last few swallows of his thoroughly cooled coffee.

Inside, he'd expected to find Carol in the shower or the bed, but she'd been neither place. He'd made his way to the nursery and found her there. He stood in the doorway and watched her as she worked at whatever she was doing by the light of a lamp that she'd found for the space.

"I'm glad to see you doin' this," Daryl said, breaking the silence of the room.

Carol jumped dramatically and dropped a stack of what appeared to be blankets. She muttered a quiet curse, and Daryl wasn't sure if it was over being scared or over dropping the blankets. She moved to pick them up, but Daryl saw that bending for them wasn't the easiest thing she'd been asked to do all day, so he stepped forward quickly and gathered up the blankets to hand them to her.

"I didn't mean to scare you," Daryl said. "Honestly, I thought you knew I was there."

"I guess I was just—daydreaming," Carol said.

"I was just—sayin' I was glad to see you doin' this," Daryl said.

"Putting things away so they aren't in cardboard boxes?" Carol asked.

"Doing anything in here," Daryl said. Carol hummed and went back to her work. Daryl walked over to the rocking chair and sat down in it. He rocked himself with his feet while he watched Carol.

"Things need to be put away," Carol said. "Besides—if we leave all this cardboard around, we'll end up with roaches."

Daryl hummed at her mostly to make it clear that he was listening and not ignoring her.

"Is it just the roaches you worried about?" Daryl asked.

"What?" Carol asked.

"The roaches," Daryl said. "Is that the only reason you puttin' that stuff away?"

"It needs to be put away," Carol said.

"Forgive me for sayin' it," Daryl said, "but I'm gonna say it 'cause—well, maybe 'cause I'm just the kinda asshole that sometimes says what the hell people think I shouldn't. But—I couldn't help but notice that you seemed more excited about Andrea gettin' that crib than you seemed about anything you got. You was damn near giddy with her gettin' the crib, but you just kinda pointed out the shit we got for you like—whatever. That oughta do it."

Carol had moved on from the blankets, and now she was folding tiny clothes that had come to them tossed in a box. She paused from folding the tiny things and seemed to carefully consider the piece of cloth in front of her.

"There's just something so magical about a first baby," Carol said after a long moment.

"Somethin' that ain't magical about a second?" Daryl asked. Carol looked at him and he held his hands up in mock surrender. He could practically feel something radiating off of her. It was an emotion that was strong enough to turn his stomach slightly, but he wasn't entirely sure what he might call the emotion.

"I'm not tryin' to be an asshole," Daryl said. "I'm genuinely asking a question. It's not exactly like I got a whole lot of experience with the whole—havin' babies thing."

Carol was rubbing her fingers quite methodically over the soft fabric of the garment. She twisted it through her fingers like she wanted the fabric to touch every inch of them. Daryl watched it for a second. He recognized the need to give one's fingers something to do.

"Do you really care?" Carol asked. "Or are you just making small talk?"

"Is what you got to say different dependin' on the answer?" Daryl asked.

Carol glanced at him and nodded before she turned her eyes away from him. He didn't take it personally that she didn't want to hold eye contact with him. Whatever she was going through, inside, was clearly something she was struggling with.

"I care," Daryl said. "For the record—I don't just engage in small talk too much. I'd rather we didn't say nothin' at all then try to fill up hours with shit that nobody cares about. So, I care. I wanna know what the difference is. And I wanna know—whatever the hell else it is that you think you'd like to tell me. As much as you got to say. I got nowhere to be, and neither do you. You can even have the chair if you wanna, ya know, sit down."

Carol shook her head. Daryl assumed it was her refusal of the rocking chair, so he didn't move. In fact, he chose not to move at all because Carol was clearly thinking. Maybe she was deciding how much she wanted to share with him. He realized, in that moment, that he wanted her to share everything with him. He wanted to know her beyond what he already knew.

Though he had low tolerance for small talk, he had a great deal of appreciation for honest conversation. He also had patience in abundance when it was necessary. He sat in the rocking chair and waited her out.

"With the first baby you don't know anything about how it's going to be or how—you're going to feel," Carol said. "You have so much hope. You're just dreaming about this perfect little life. You're already imagining what their whole lives are going to be like and what they're going to be like. You can imagine how you want everything to go."

"You can't do that with the second?" Daryl asked.

"Maybe you can," Carol said quietly.

"But you don't?" Daryl asked.

"Every single thing with the first has the potential to be—amazing," Carol said.

"What you mean?" Daryl asked. He could imagine, honestly, what she was saying. He could also tell, though, that there was much more she wanted to say. And if she just wanted to talk about Sophia—if that was hanging heavy on her mind after the eventful day that she'd had—he'd let her talk about Sophia. Sometimes it was just good to get things off one's chest, after all, and Carol hadn't allowed herself too much opportunity to mourn her daughter.

"Everything," Carol said mournfully.

"Like what?" Daryl pressed.

"Will it be a boy or a girl," Carol said. "What will they look like, who will they look like, what will their personality be like, what will they do, what will be their first words…" she ticked off things. "And when you're pregnant—when will you start to show and will you feel beautiful, and when will they kick and what will it be like…"

"And that stuff just ain't magical no more?" Daryl asked. He noticed when Carol stiffened. "It was magical before?" He asked, deciding to change tactics to get her talking again.

"Not as much as I wanted it to be," she admitted. "You don't want to hear about this…"

"I asked," Daryl said. "I'm an asshole so—if I didn't wanna hear it? I'da walked out the damn room by now. But here I sit with my ass in this chair."

Carol laughed to herself.

"You're not an asshole," Carol said.

"You just don't know me," Daryl offered.

"Oh—I know you," Carol said. "Maybe—there's still a lot left to know, but I know enough."

Daryl swallowed. His gut churned a little and his heart picked up speed. He rolled his next string of words over and over in his mind. He wondered if he dared to say them. Then, with the same feeling as jumping feet first from the pier into cold lake water for the first time and praying that he learned to swim before his brother had to jump in after him, Daryl simply spit out the words and hoped for the best.

"I don't know a lot about you," Daryl said. "Not enough. And I wanna know more. Was it magical before—since I don't think it is to you now?"

"He took away all my magic the moment it was there," Carol said.

"Ed?" Daryl asked. Carol nodded. "What'cha mean?"

Carol laughed to herself.

"Pregnancy is expensive if you do it right," Carol said. "And doctors get nosey about bruises. I spent most of my pregnancy with Sophia just—trying to keep him from remembering that I was pregnant."

Daryl's stomach tightened. She hadn't exactly spent much of this pregnancy celebrating it. She'd spent most of the time keeping everyone from noticing she was pregnant. Maybe she'd had a lot more practice than they had realized keeping that kind of secret.

"As soon as she started moving and it was real to me? I worried—night and day. I just worried that something would happen to her. I worried that I would fail her. I would fail to protect her. And I would lose her."

Daryl's stomach twisted a little more violently. It was no secret that Carol blamed herself a great deal for what had happened with Sophia. She hadn't saved her daughter—even though nobody else had been able to save her either—and she'd seen that as a personal failure.

"And then—the more I…the more I looked pregnant, the more disgusted Ed got," Carol said. "My body changed and it was horrible. He hated the way that I looked. I hated the way that I looked. I was…"

She stopped.

"You're pregnant," Daryl offered quietly. "You gonna look like you pregnant, right? I mean—if it's all goin' like it should."

He didn't point out to her the strange attraction that he felt to her pregnant form. He'd been attracted to her before, but there was a different element to it now. To admit that, though, would be to open a can of worms that she probably didn't need to deal with on top of everything else that she was clearly carrying around.

"He wanted a boy," Carol said. "A son. Ed Jr. Like every man, I guess. As soon as I found out Sophia was a girl, I knew things were going to be even worse than I imagined. I lied to him for the rest of my pregnancy. I told him they couldn't tell. She was never in the right position. He never knew because he never came to my appointments. I never bought anything for a little girl because I couldn't give away the secret."

"He found out when she was born," Daryl offered, pushing her forward.

"He found out a while after she was born," Carol said. "When he came to pick us up. I complained too much. I was too—demanding and needy." She laughed to herself, but the sound of it only wrenched Daryl's gut worse because he knew it wasn't sincere. "He slapped me even while I was getting out of the car at the hospital because…I said something he didn't like. I cried the whole way into the hospital and he told the nurse at intake that it was because I was scared to have the baby—and I was generally a crybaby about those things. And then he left because it took too long and he wasn't going to sit there and listen to that for hours."

"He weren't there when she was born?" Daryl asked.

Carol shook her head.

"Being in labor with Sophia—those hours at the hospital without Ed, when I knew she was coming and they were monitoring her and telling me she was healthy? Those were the best hours of my pregnancy," Carol said. "They let me hold her the whole time after she was born except for—maybe fifteen minutes when they had to take care of her. They just let me hold her the whole time. And I did—until he got there. That was my magic."

Daryl sat there for a moment and swallowed against the lump in his throat. He carefully chewed over what he might say or what he might do to make both Carol and himself feel better.

Finally, he got to his feet. He walked over to where she stood facing the dresser—the tiny clothes she'd stopped folding were lined up across the top of the dresser—and he rested his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him over her shoulder and offered him a tight-lipped smile that was meant to bring him some comfort.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For bein' shit on?" Daryl asked. "'Cause ain't none of us that's ever been shit on asked for it."

"For—whining about something that really doesn't matter," Carol said.

"Oh—it matters," Daryl offered.

"What's done is done," Carol said. "You can't undo the past, and you can't get back what you missed or lost."

"No. You can't. None of us can. But—you missin' the whole idea of second chances," Daryl said. "And if we ain't got that shit, what the fuck do we even have? That's what this place is—it's a whole new world. If Merle gets to come in here an' be a leader instead of an addict and an asshole…why the hell don't you get to have your magic again?"

Daryl squeezed her shoulder. His heart pounded. He wanted so much more than the simple touch, but he was happy to have it, at least. She reached her hand up and touched his fingers with her own before she turned to face him and broke the physical link between them.

"I guess I just don't feel the magic," Carol said.

"Or you afraid to," Daryl said. "You ain't even tried. You done nothin' but keep this whole thing a secret until—you woulda tried to keep it a secret 'til the kid was born."

Carol frowned at him. He could tell she didn't want to, but she wasn't in control of her emotions entirely. She was on the verge of tears. He felt the frown. He felt it in his own muscles. He licked his lips.

"They all believe you my wife," Daryl said. "And they all believe this is my kid. And even if nobody else has any expectations of me, my brother is gonna expect…well, some things. For as long as…for as long as we keep this secret, at least. And—I ain't never had a first. I maybe…probably…ain't never gonna really have no first baby—like ever. So maybe we could go through some of the motions for everybody to see, you know? But—also, maybe…if it's OK with you…we could go through some of 'em for me. Just—just for the experience."

He might've thrown up for all the discomfort he felt in his gut if it hadn't been for the slow transformation of Carol's expression toward a smile.

"You don't have to do anything," she said. "Not for me."

Daryl laughed to himself. The fluttering that took over was, at least, more pleasant than the earlier feeling.

"You don't know me as good as you think you do," Daryl said. "I can be pretty damn selfish."

"Maybe…" Carol said, hesitating and carefully thinking about her words, "I'd like to get to know you better."

"I'm sure that shit can be arranged," Daryl said. "You can—finish up what'cha doin' here. I'ma just—I ain't really goin' nowhere but, I'ma just step out. Smoke a cigarette on the porch. Don't want you to think I'm runnin' out or nothin'."

Carol laughed nervously.

"You could if you want to," she said. "After—everything I said tonight? I'd understand."

Daryl hummed at her.

"I don't want to," he said. "But—it does kinda feel like it would be one of those times when…"

"When?" Carol asked.

"Don't you think…I mean if it was like…if we were to really be married. Don't you think…this'd be one of those times when I'd probably kiss you?"

Carol's cheeks flushed pink and Daryl felt the oxygen practically leave his chest at his own audacity. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"I think so," she said. "But—there's nobody looking."

"Gotta get comfortable with it," Daryl said. "For—when they are, I mean."

"Practice," Carol breathed out.

"Practice," Daryl agreed. "Soft or…?"

"What you think is best," Carol said.

Daryl touched her chin with his finger and brought his lips to hers. He chose soft. She must have known. She delicately kissed his lips, just barely catching his lip between hers, before she pulled away and came back for another of the soft kisses. He pulled away before his instincts could drive him to kiss her harder. He pulled away before his body—tingling with interest and anticipation—could choose to react too dramatically to the kiss.

He pulled way to see the blush on her cheeks and the hint of a smile on her lips.

"I'm goin' to smoke," he said. "You just—finish up here."

"I will," she said.

"And—uh—try to…try to enjoy it," Daryl said. "As much as you can. For my sake," he added. She laughed and he laughed too.

"I will," she assured him before he slipped out the room and left her to her work.