AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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Daryl was thankful that Henry met them at the gates and that, as soon as Carol was off the wagon, he embraced her in a hug. He didn't say anything about his feelings, and he didn't say whether or not the man he called his father had spoken to him about everything that was happening around him, but Daryl assumed that the boy might not be comfortable with expressing all of that in a public place.

As soon as Carol was clear of the wagon, Daryl walked around back to let dog out. The animal had jogged along beside them for part of the journey, but he was also content to lay on his blanket and watch the world go by.

As soon as he was down, though, Dog's greatest ambition was pissing on every square inch of the royal gardens.

Daryl didn't ask Carol if she wanted it, he simply reached for the small bag where he knew she'd packed most of her possessions. There was very little that she'd bothered to carry, so he simply dropped the bag over his shoulder to carry it with them.

Ezekiel met them almost immediately and he hugged Carol before he clapped Daryl on the shoulder.

"Pleased to see you made the trip without any grave difficulties," Ezekiel said. "I trust you come bearing good news from the Hilltop?"

Normally Daryl would tell Ezekiel that the whole King thing was too damned much, and many times Ezekiel would at least tone it down some for him, but Daryl didn't say anything because, all around them were Ezekiel's loyal subjects. Whether or not it was a fantasy, it was their fantasy. Daryl wasn't going to disrespect Ezekiel in his own home.

"Good news," Daryl said. "Good tidings. Whatever the hell you wanna call it."

"You have ridden far and travelled long," Ezekiel said. "What say we feast and you can quench your thirst while you share the happy news?"

Daryl bit the inside of his cheek. He accidentally looked at Carol and she was half-smirking at him.

She was tired and starting to get a little grumpy about everything. She'd wanted to go directly to the house, but the wagon made that impossible.

Daryl had told her that they would eat at the Kingdom. The food might help her mood, and he was sure that Ezekiel would insist. He'd promised her that Ezekiel wouldn't be able to rest without at least a little time spent in their company and some news about the baby. He'd told her that, if they refused, they were likely to find Ezekiel on their porch not ten minutes after they arrived at the house.

Now Carol was amused because his prediction had been correct.

He nodded his head at Ezekiel.

"I could use somethin' to drink," Daryl said. "And—Carol really oughta eat somethin'."

Carol didn't argue. She followed Daryl with her arm around Henry's shoulder, and Daryl walked with Ezekiel. Inside, they ended up seated at a dining table that was large enough to have seated at least eight other people. They crowded together at one end of the table so as to minimize the dramatic distance between them all.

For a moment, the silence was awkward. Everyone looked at everyone else like they thought they might start some conversation to break the silence. Everyone, it seemed, was too afraid to be the one to say something wrong or to say something too early. Instead of words, there was a great deal of uncomfortable glances exchanged.

And then Jerry entered the room, carrying a casserole which he put down on the table, and the tension was immediately dissolved.

Carol got out of her chair and thanked Jerry for the casserole—and his presence—with a warm hug. And Jerry, immediately after pulling away from her, pressed his hand against her belly.

Jerry was one of the people that Daryl knew Carol was most fond of in the Kingdom. He was one of the people who knew about the fantasy of it all—or maybe they all did and they just didn't want to admit it—but he was fully committed to the performance. Maybe it made it all just a little bit easier.

"My Queen!" Jerry declared, clearly happy to see Carol.

"Jerry," Carol warned. He grinned at her.

"How's the princess?" Jerry asked, undeterred.

The smile that spread across Carol's face was warm and truly happy. For a moment, Daryl considered thanking Jerry for asking what was on everyone's mind in a way that would make Carol smile rather than make her tense up.

"Yes," Ezekiel bellowed from his seat at the end of the table, "we wait to hear happy tidings of the royal infant."

"Ezekiel," Carol said, her smile falling as she turned to look at him.

Jerry drew her back quickly, though, by physically drawing her attention with another pat on her belly.

"You're still the queen," he offered. "So, this little dude or…dudette? Is still the princess…or, I guess the prince, if you say so."

Carol laughed.

"Actually," Carol said, "it turns out that the fever hallucination I had…"

"Dream," Jerry interrupted like he was trying to help her construct a narrative fit for telling in Ezekiel's royal presence.

"The dream I had," Carol corrected with a hint of a smile curling the corners of her mouth upward, "turned out to be correct. We're expecting a girl."

Both Henry and Ezekiel left their seats to embrace Carol, rub her belly, and give their congratulations. Daryl stayed in his seat. He'd congratulated her many times, and he'd congratulate her many more as they figured out how to navigate these next few months before they welcomed a baby into the world.

While he waited for them to finish fawning over her—something he figured was probably good for her and good for her overall morale—he fished around in the bag of her prized possessions. He did his best not to look at anything in there except for to quickly lay his hands on what he knew she'd be keeping with the things she held dearest.

He pulled the frame out, but he rested it in his lap for a moment.

As soon as the initial excitement died down, Ezekiel returned to the table. Surprisingly enough, he offered a hand out in Daryl's direction.

"Happiest news we have," he declared, "that the Queen shall bring forth a daughter from her…beau."

Daryl realized that Ezekiel's hesitation came from the fact that he didn't know what to call Daryl. The truth was, though, that Daryl wasn't sure what he should call him. In the land of reality, he and Carol hadn't had time—or they hadn't taken the time—to discuss things like titles. Maybe that was because, in the land of reality, titles didn't really matter all that much. These days, honestly, they mattered even less than they once had.

In the land of make believe that Ezekiel inhabited, Daryl would be another character entirely—a character he couldn't even imagine.

Still, he took Ezekiel's hand, still seated at his spot at the table, and gave it a hearty shake.

"Congratulations," Ezekiel said. "The fates have truly smiled upon you and brought their blessings."

"Yeah," Daryl said. "Thanks, man."

"Maybe we need to be a little sparing with the congratulations," Carol offered. She had the attention of everyone. She shook her head because she could tell, just like Daryl could, that everyone immediately thought the worst. He wouldn't have expected any less, though, because her words made his stomach drop and he already knew the state of things. "There's nothing wrong," Carol clarified quickly. "I just mean—until we know more or…the baby's here. Everything's fine right now, though the baby is a little on the small side…"

"Which we been assigned to remedy with food like this here casserole," Daryl offered. "So why don't we have some of it?"

"And cobbler!" Jerry declared. "There is cobbler for after your meal. Made fresh this afternoon. Apple—you usually like it."

"I do like the cobbler," Carol said. "Thank you, Jerry."

"If the lady's concern is food," Ezekiel offered, "there is an abundance at the Kingdom. You needn't go without."

"And we appreciate it," Daryl said. "I can hunt. We could even clear some of that land enough for better fences. Expand them. We could grow food. Put up a greenhouse. But we won't be planting until the spring."

"It's not just the food," Carol said. She started back toward her chair, but she stopped before she sat down. Holding onto the back of it, she sighed as she struggled either with her words or with actually getting them to come out. "It's…"

"Mom? Is something wrong?" Henry asked. Daryl could see the boy was genuinely concerned. He walked over to Carol and practically draped himself around her. He couldn't miss the worry on anyone else's face either.

"There's not a damn thing wrong!" Daryl said, some of his irritation coming out. "There ain't. The baby's fine. She's a little bit small, but it's just 'cause she missed a couple meals. We're gonna feed her. Appreciate all the—casseroles and cobblers and vegetables or whatever we can get. Carol's fine. Healthy as a horse."

Daryl wasn't going to scold Carol for her concerns. He might discuss them with her—possibly time and time again—but he'd do that in private. He would help he figure out how to get her worries under control, he wouldn't scold her for them. And he wasn't blaming her for her feelings. If he was blaming anyone, he was blaming the doctor for simply not skipping any of the worrisome sounding bits to share privately with Daryl or to keep to himself. After all, unless there was something they could really do, there was no need to worry. And recommending anything he recommended could have easily been done without introducing any doubt into the scenario. Nobody alive, Daryl would venture to say, was living under the illusion, after all, that there weren't risks involved in absolutely everything these days. They certainly weren't laboring under the illusion that pregnancy and childbirth came without its share of possible difficulties. Daryl decided to somewhat voice his frustrations as a way to relieve them for himself and to relieve some of the confusion of others.

"The doctor—he's a fine doctor. And I'm glad he knows what the hell he's doin', but maybe he don't know how you gotta talk to people these days. He wanted to throw around words—words that weren't meant to do nothin' but sound scary and leave him room to say that if…if things didn't go well, it weren't his fault. It weren't nobody's fault." Daryl stopped a moment. He could feel some of his irritation leaving him. He felt tired, suddenly, but it felt good. He'd successfully drawn the attention away from Carol. She was staring at him as hard as anyone else, like she had no idea what he might say, and he held her eyes. "Carol's fine," he said. "Doc's comin' within the month to stay here. We appreciate you puttin' him up. We got a prescription for—for helpin' the baby grow. She's just about perfect."

He pulled the picture frame out his lap and looked at it for a moment like he hadn't practically committed the entire thing to memory the night before. He gave Carol a hard time about how much she'd touched and looked at the pictures since they got them, but he couldn't really hold it against her. Just seeing the grainy profile of the baby gave Daryl butterflies in his gut. He offered the frame out in Ezekiel's direction.

"She's just about perfect," Daryl repeated, realizing how truly tired he was beginning to feel. "We brought a couple pictures of her. So—how about we serve this casserole around and…everyone can get a good look at her?"

Carol sat down at her seat across from Daryl and Jerry quickly served her casserole before he made the rounds. He looked so damned happy at the moment that Daryl might have thought that serving casserole was all he'd ever dreamed of doing with his life.

Ezekiel carefully studied the pictures in his hand and then he reached a hand over and patted Carol's.

"She is a beauty," he said. "She inherited her beauty from her mother." Ezekiel winked at Carol and Daryl allowed it because what he said was true, and also because the harmless teasing made Carol smile. Ezekiel passed the photo over to Jerry, who was hovering behind her shoulder, and who declared she was "one of the best looking babies he'd ever seen," before he passed the frame on to Henry.

Across the table, Carol was watching Daryl. Even around the fork, when she ate, she smiled at him. She was smiling at him with her eyes. The expression made his chest tighten. It loosened a little, though, when he felt her nudging him with her foot under the table. Her smile widened when she saw that he'd noticed, and he very clearly read her lips as she mouthed a "thank you" to him.

"What was the prescription?" Henry asked. He was sitting beside Carol and he half leaned into her and toward the table like he was trying to get closer to the center of things.

"What?" Carol asked, accepting the frame back that she got from Henry. She looked like she wasn't sure what to do with it, so Daryl waved his fingers at her and took it back so that she wasn't troubled with figuring out where to put it for the moment.

"You said you had a prescription," Henry said. "To help the baby grow. What is it? The apothecary can make a lot of things, but there's a lot we've found, too. It may be there if you don't have it already."

"It's a natural prescription," Daryl offered. "Won't run out. Good food—keep her fed. And—relaxing and resting. That means takin' it easy."

"It means not being bothered by insignificant concerns," Ezekiel offered.

Daryl had the distinct feeling that Ezekiel's comment was directed at Henry more than anyone, because Henry sunk back into his chair. Daryl imagined that, perhaps, something of the sort had already been suggested to the boy.

"So, what are we going to name her?" Jerry asked, sitting down at the table and inviting himself to share some of the casserole.

"Jerry," Ezekiel said.

"We haven't gotten that far," Carol said.

"Got plenty of time," Daryl offered.

"She ought to have a really royal name, you know? Like…what was the Russian princess? Anastasia? Or you could just go crazy and just call her Princess…or go straight to…"

"Jerry!" Ezekiel said, more loudly than before. He interrupted Jerry and, almost like a scolded child, Jerry froze and simply looked at Ezekiel—fork halfway to his mouth—like he was waiting for further information. Ezekiel sighed. "Why don't you go and see if the cobbler's ready? I'm sure that the queen and her beau are road weary and wish to retire to their home soon."

Daryl didn't say anything immediately, but he hoped that Henry would be joining them.