AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"It's isn't really a secret," Daryl said. "Everyone knows about it, but they don't talk about it much unless it becomes a problem."
"Out of sight, out of mind?" Carol asked.
"More like—it don't change a thing to talk about it," Daryl said. "Merle, though, he knows everything. He keeps an eye on everything and an ear out for everything."
"He's the leader," Carol offered.
Daryl laughed.
"You got no damn idea how—how hard it is to remember that sometimes," Daryl said.
"You'll get used to it," Carol said.
"Over there," Daryl said, interrupting the train of thought that he'd been running with since he felt like they were a fair distance away from anyone that would overhear them. "You see them squirrels playin'?"
"I'll never hit them," Carol said, shaking her head.
"Not with that defeatist damn attitude you won't," Daryl said. "You said you wanted some target practice."
"I meant with targets," Carol said. "A tin can or…"
"There's your target," Daryl said. "Three of 'em."
"Those are small, moving targets," Carol said.
"You don't never get any better if the challenge stays the same," Daryl said. Carol laughed and her laugh ended in a snort. Daryl caught the laughter. "Did you just snort?"
"It was an accident," Carol said. "But who are you? Confucius?"
Daryl put his hands on her shoulders and Carol couldn't help but smile at his expression.
"Are you gonna try or you just gonna fail 'cause you too damned chicken to try?" He goaded.
Carol sighed and nodded. Daryl steered her in the direction of the squirrels. The third of the trio seemed to have scampered off in the meantime, but two of them were running back and forth in a cluster of trees. Daryl stood by quietly and calmly while she went about preparing herself to try to shoot one of the squirrels. Her first arrow dropped so suddenly after leaving her bow that she was embarrassed and turned her face away from Daryl because she couldn't stand to see whatever disapproval was likely on his features.
"You ain't had much time to practice in the last couple days," he offered gently. "And that was just your first shot. Go ahead. Go at it again."
Carol accepted his gentle encouragement. She left the arrow for the moment and loaded a new one. She took aim, but Daryl interrupted her.
"Steady your breathin'," he offered. "It's OK. You miss the squirrel—we still gonna eat. And—ain't nobody gonna punish you."
The words struck Carol hard. It felt like she'd been punched in the throat. It hit her, like a wall of water coming from a firehose, that he was right. Daryl had realized what she hadn't fully realized herself. On an entirely subconscious level, she'd feared punishment for showing herself as less than perfect. Daryl had never harmed her, and the longer she knew him, the less she imagined him ever raising his hands to her, but the part of her that feared physical punishment wasn't rational and didn't listen to her rational explanations about what kind of man Daryl was.
And he understood that. Even without the words being exchanged between them, Carol knew that he understood that.
Carol lowered her bow for a moment. She stood working to steady herself and catch her breath. She heard Daryl walk toward her. Even at the risk of scaring the squirrels, he was purposely making noise. He wasn't trying to surprise her at all. He put a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry," he offered. "But—it's true. Hit the squirrel or—don't hit it. If you never hit no squirrel, not ever? Ain't nobody gonna be pissed at you. Least of all me. But you too tense. That's one reason your shootin' gets off. When you're relaxed? You aim better. Hit more of what you tryin' for. When you tense up, your arrows start to go wild or you drop 'em."
Carol nodded at him. He squeezed her shoulder affectionately again and then backed away to give her room. She raised her bow once more, focused on her breathing as Daryl suggested she should, and took aim.
She watched her arrow as it flew into the air and made a beautiful arc. She enjoyed watching its graceful movement. It was practically poetic the way that it moved through the air and toward her target. Unfortunately, it flew downward and landed in the general area of the playing squirrels—close enough to scatter them and send them both scampering quickly up different trees—but it brought neither of them down.
"You win some. You lose some," Daryl said as he went to retrieve the arrow. Carol went for the one closest to her, but she was beginning to find that simply bending over was starting to become something of a challenge. She no longer simply folded in half as she once had. Daryl retrieved both arrows before she could, and he slipped them into her quiver.
"Thank you," she said. "But you didn't have to do that. I could have gotten them."
"But you don't gotta, so there," Daryl said. He clearly thought that was all the response that was necessary.
"I'm never going to hit anything moving," Carol said, not trying to hide the defeat she felt.
Daryl laughed to himself and, taking a spot behind her, he dropped a hand onto each of her shoulders and kneaded the muscles hard. It felt so good that Carol's knees nearly buckled and she moaned out her appreciation of the simple gesture. In response, Daryl continued it for probably several minutes more than he'd intended when he started.
"Nobody's great at anything at first," he said. "You'll get there. Especially now that we know this area's pretty safe from Walkers. Still—I don't want you comin' completely alone."
"What about you?" Carol challenged.
"I don't hardly go anywhere alone," Daryl offered. "But I hear ya."
Carol's heart picked up its pace a little. Daryl did hear her. He always heard her. It seemed that when she spoke to him, he was somehow wired to hear all the little things that she didn't say. She wished, sometimes, that he could hear even more of what she didn't say, though. It would make it easier. Then, at least, he could respond to the thoughts that rushed through her mind, and she could put them to rest, once and for all, with his reaction.
She didn't dare to say anything, though.
"The communities," she said, steering him back toward what they'd been discussing before the squirrels had drawn their attention.
He started walking again and she followed him.
"I mean he says there's rarely any trouble," Daryl said. "A hands-off kinda policy. For the most part, at least. The way Alice tells it, there's always been other groups. Come from when they first got started here. Started with these government relief programs or whatever."
"So—like safe zones?" Carol asked.
"Some people was moved out to what was supposed to be safe zones," Daryl said. "At least as far as Alice knows. They lost connection and it weren't like they ever come back for nobody here. Coulda been they just took them people to wipe 'em out." Carol winced and Daryl frowned at her. He hadn't missed her expression. "I mean that probably ain't what they done, but they didn't never come back for the rest. Alice had come up here, though, with the others before the outbreak got bad. The whole idea was to cure it early on. When it got outta hand was when things started goin' crazy. They couldn't evacuate everyone. People went in waves, but a lot refused to go. Hunkered down. They was takin' people out to safer places, but she an' the others volunteered to stay until they got back."
"For like a second wave of evacuation?" Carol asked.
"Somethin' like that," Daryl said. "Decided to gather together whoever they could. Anybody that weren't out. Have 'em ready when they got back."
"But they never came back," Carol said.
"Never came back," Daryl said. "At least, though, they never dropped napalm on 'em, neither, like they done to Atlanta. Just—left 'em to live or die. Weren't no nevermind to them what happened to them they left behind. So, they broke into different factions. The ones that was left behind. Different people with different ideas about how to live in a world that, as far as they knew, didn't have no laws and no government."
"Why not just become one group?" Carol asked. "What about the whole idea of strength in numbers?"
"Don't work if you can't agree on how to run things," Daryl said. "Hell—we split from Rick and company 'cause we couldn't agree to the one for the Grimes an' all for the Grimes mentality."
"Are the other groups dangerous?" Carol asked.
"Anybody's got the potential to be dangerous," Daryl said. "Even us. Still, Merle handles most of the shit. Whoever the leader was before—he got the group into a bit of a shit-show with one of the factions around here. Started wantin' to have a bit of a pissin' contest. Merle says it works better if they're promotin' the whole idea of you stay in your sandbox and I'll stay in mine. We keep our distance. Still, from time to time he says one asshole or another will get to feelin' his Wheaties."
"They fight?" Carol asked.
"Only if they have to," Daryl said. He shrugged his shoulders. "I understand that. Hell—I'm on Merle's side with this. I'm all for peace an' the best damn way to handle anything is to try to keep a strict rule of I don't fuck with you if you don't fuck with me. But if they come over here fuckin' with me? I'ma protect me an' mine."
Carol smiled to herself. She didn't really realize that the expression actually snuck out of her mind and spread across her lips. Daryl stopped his forward progress and she halted her steps, as well, through the crunchy leaves.
"What?" He asked, the corner of his mouth curling upward.
"What? What?" Carol asked.
The smile spread just a bit more on Daryl's lips before he swallowed it back.
"That smile," he said. "What was it for?"
Carol knew she'd been caught and she felt the warmth rise up in her cheeks. She shrugged her shoulders.
"It's all just—very chivalrous," Carol said. "You're going to fight for you and yours."
"If it come to that," Daryl said. "You don't think I would?"
"I know you would," Carol said without hesitation. "It's just—it was just an image, I guess. In my mind. It's very noble. But, then, you're very noble."
"Noble ain't got nothin' to do with it," Daryl said. Carol wasn't sure if he was insulted or not. She couldn't really tell what he was going through, but there was definitely some kind of shift in his mood at the moment. He plucked a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. Carol thought his hands shook slightly. She wondered what he might be dealing with that she wasn't capable of detecting. "Besides," he mumbled around the cigarette and half under his breath, "I got me a family now."
Carol's heart, which had not been entirely reined in from her earlier concern, jumped around wildly. Her breathing suddenly felt almost as labored as it had when she'd been dealing with the subconscious fear that she'd be punished, somehow, for being a disappointment to Daryl.
"And I have no doubt that you'd fight for—for Merle and…Andrea's your sister-in-law, now."
Daryl frowned at her briefly, and then seemed to develop an immediate and uncontrollable interest in something that was just off to the left of them. He looked in the direction of the something that had caught his attention and shrugged his shoulders as he took his cigarette between his fingers to free his lips for clearer speech.
"I'm a married man now," he said. "Got a kid on the way. A baby girl. I'd be…I'd fight for that. To keep that. Even if it was just—some kinda fantasy."
There was an almost hollow feeling in Carol's chest that came as a result of Daryl's words. It was an aching. A tugging sensation accompanied the hollowness. Carol swallowed, unsure of how to process the feeling.
She knew what she wanted to say to him. She knew what she wanted him to know. She knew the feelings that she'd been dealing with since that morning—the feelings that had been simultaneously warming her from the inside out and eating her alive since Daryl had left their newly acquired house. She knew that she desperately wanted him to hear her feelings.
But she didn't know how he would respond.
She didn't know if he would leave her out there in the woods to find her way back to the gates that opened to their community—if he'd leave her to stumble back on tired feet and shaky knees.
She was suddenly aware that her knees were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.
Her breathing was out of control. If he'd been paying her attention instead of paying attention to whatever it was that kept him from looking at her, he'd have noticed the shift in her breathing.
She didn't know how he would respond.
But there were some secrets she simply wasn't sure that she could stand to keep any longer.
"Daryl…" she said, her voice coming out weaker than she wanted it to. She heard her voice tremble. Her vocal cords seemed to be shaking as much as her knees were.
"Hmmm," he hummed at her, not looking in her direction. He dropped his eyes to the ground, still smoking his cigarette, but he didn't look at her.
"What if…it wasn't all fantasy?"