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The realization that she'd had nothing at all to do with the change she saw come over Daryl was something of an epiphany. Carol had been conditioned pretty much her whole life to take responsibility for the changeable moods of others. When Ed was tired, it was because she didn't let him get enough sleep. When he was hungover it was because she drove him to drink. When he hit her, it was because of something she did. When he yelled at Sophia it was because Carol was a bad mother. When there wasn't enough money she had wasted her allowance. She knew, in an academic sort of way, that none of it was true. But even after standing up to Rick and declaring that she would never live like that again, when Daryl went quiet she immediately started looking for what she may have done to cause it.
His declaration that not everything was about her hit hard. She didn't think he even knew that he had done it, but it felt like someone had pushed her into a pool of ice water.
And it had been almost easy between them up until now, each of them recognizing enough in the other to walk softly around certain edges and to ignore it when thoughts occasionally turned in odd directions. The days following their misunderstanding were spent trying to get their balance back as they continued to work on the house. She wasn't sure why Daryl was still so quiet, but she knew that she was often lost in her own thoughts. Often, those thoughts centered around trying to understand what had been so different about this misunderstanding, when there were exchanges in their past that were much more hurtful. Possibly, Carol decided, it was because they had grown used to understanding one another, and the reminder that there were still so many landmines around them made them both overly wary of stepping on another one.
Their nightly questions were all about silly things, meant to try to make each other laugh.
Everything felt careful and distant and Carol didn't like it.
She didn't know how to fix it, either. And so things remained for a time, each of them tiptoeing around the other, unable to find a way out of the trap they'd made for themselves.
She was out checking the snares nearly a week later, Daryl a shadow behind her, when things finally shifted again.
"That's damn nice," he said, clearing his throat.
Carol shifted so she could look over her shoulder to answer him, and noticed a patch of red spreading around the base of his neck. She didn't realize what she was seeing at first. He was scanning the area like he'd heard a Walker creeping up on them, or like he didn't want to look her in the eye, and before she caught herself she said, "The snare, or my ass?"
He turned on his heel, eyes wide and shocked looking, and the red patch spread all the way to the tips of his ears. "The hell?"
"Which one is damn nice?"
"I ain't lookin' at your ass!"
He was breathing a little too fast, staring at her like he didn't know if she was about to hit him or laugh at him. There was a line between fun teasing and genuine distress, and Carol could see it glowing bright in front of her with giant flashing neon arrows pointing at it from all sides. She sighed, "I'm just teasing. I didn't think you were."
He opened his mouth, closed it again, then looked away for a second before turning back to her. "First with the questions, now it's gonna be comments?"
"That does appear to be the case. But to be fair, it'll probably only be one or the other." She winked at him. His rolled his eyes at her, his breathing returning to normal as they backed away from the subject.
"Don't believe you," he muttered, but the edges of his mouth were twitching like he wanted to smile but thought he was too much of a tough guy to do any such thing.
The whole incident was interesting, and Carol resigned herself to turning that reaction over and over in her mind as the day wore on. They gathered up the two skinny rabbits that had been caught and reset the rest of the snares, then they spread a tarp out on the ground and Daryl went to work with his ax. They worked together, him cutting smaller limbs from trees and her gathering and placing smaller pieces of wood to stack on top of the tarp, and things just settled. It was almost as if the silly little exchange had been the one that was finally enough to bring them back to where they'd been before, and Carol replayed it like a little movie in her mind.
She was so caught up in trying to figure out why it had been that particular exchange that did the trick, just in case she needed the information later, that it took her longer than was probably suitable to realize that he'd already been blushing when she made the joke. And there was only one explanation for that, no matter how many angles she tried to view the incident from.
He had been staring at her ass while she set the snare.
The very idea was shocking. It felt foreign and vaguely ridiculous, and there was no way that she wasn't mistaken.
She knew that Daryl had more or less raised himself, with occasional input from Merle. And the whole group had been witness to Merle's idea of charm. She imagined that Daryl, if he were really interested in a woman, would express it much the way his older brother did. That kind of thing was learned, after all.
Dragging a tarp covered with limbs from the edge of the forest to the spot in front of the house where Daryl chopped firewood wasn't a fun or pleasant task, but it did afford her the opportunity to think. And those are the things she thought about. The work itself was routine, now. She took up her corner of the heavy plastic without a word, nodding at him when Daryl took up his side. Talking wasn't an option, as it would take more air than she felt like existed in the world, and considering what interest from Daryl Dixon may or may not look like distracted her just a bit from the burning in her chest. And her arms. And her thighs. And hell, maybe by now she did have a nice ass. All this physical work had to be good for something.
She was still obsessing over things that didn't really mean anything when they made it the house. Carol rested her hands on her knees, leaning forward and taking huge gulps of air. "I swear that does not get easier."
"Only took us fifteen minutes. Took an hour the first time," he said, lips twitching.
She straightened and crossed her arms, forcing words out between too loud breaths. "You think this is funny, don't you?"
He gave her an innocent look and shook his head, and she gaped. He was teasing her. This wasn't a little remark under his breath that could be taken a dozen different ways. This was open and easy and suddenly both so like and unlike them that it made a warm, happy feeling spread through her chest.
"Naw. 'Course not. Ain't a bit funny."
"Because we could have beets and pickled asparagus tonight," she answered back, raising an eyebrow.
He held his hands in front of him, "Whoah. No reason to go straight to the damned nuclear option."
That was the moment that she decided it didn't matter what he was or wasn't looking at. Because this? What they'd been building since that first night in a rundown gas station? This was too important to ruin it with a bunch of did he or didn't he junior high school crap.
"Well, then I suppose I'd better clean these rabbits. Stew sounds good."
He grunted his affirmative grunt at her, and went to work chopping wood.
Later, the stew was thick and hot and filling, and she made biscuits to go with it. Daryl held his hands out in front of him for the bowl before she'd even finished dipping it out, which was his version of shouting with excitement. She pretended she didn't notice, but it added to her good mood.
He must have felt it the difference in the air, too, because he heaved a relieved sounding sigh as he settled in to eat his meal.
"You get your damned questions or a comment, but you don't get both," he said. "And you already picked comment, so don't start."
She smiled at him, "Well, the exercise has certainly done nice things to your ass, I was hoping it was doing the same for mine."
Daryl choked on his stew.
"Son of a bitch, you ain't never gonna stop now," he muttered, blowing on his stew before taking a piece of meat between his fingers.
Carol nodded. "Only if you really want me to?"
"First question," Daryl growled. "Where the hell you from? You don't talk like nowhere."
"I thought I didn't get my damned questions?"
"I sure as shit ain't sittin' through a whole night of comments," he said.
"Well, in that case it was my turn to go first," she said, waggling her eyebrows. Her voice turned serious, and she said, "Why did you stay with the group, after Merle was lost?"
It was a risk, but she'd wanted to know. The question had plagued her since they left for the CDC.
"You can't answer that one. Got to be one you can answer too, right? And I already asked one," his voice had gone soft, but he didn't seem at all upset. If she had to name the look on his face, she would call it pensive. He was staring at his stew, only glancing up at her every now and then.
Carol sighed, but didn't push. She would try again another time. "I'm from up around Helen," she answered. "I didn't speak much at all when it was time to start school. My mother was deaf, and my father was absent right up until they divorced and he decided to fight for custody. He got me because we were both hearing, and because I couldn't speak as well as my age suggested I should. It was all about the battle for him. Once he had me away from her, he went right back to not caring as long as I didn't embarrass him. I signed first, and preferred it. Probably partly because he forbade it, to be honest. I was in speech therapy for most of my childhood, so if I don't sound like anywhere, that's why."
She fully expected him to use up both his other questions following up on that one. To her relief, though, he said instead, "When I's a kid, Merle says a bunch of folks thought I was stupid, but I just didn't want to talk to nobody but him. I kind of remember thinking it was funny that nobody believed him when he said I could talk, but it's all fuzzy and I don't know if I'm really remembering it, or if my brain made it up from his stories. Hell, I knew that signing stuff? Probly never would've learned to talk at all, I figure. That why you picked up my signs so fast?"
"Maybe. I don't remember as much of it as I should, really." She didn't know if signing first had any bearing on how quickly she picked up the gestures he and Merle come up with together, but she did know it was why she hadn't ever been afraid of him. Daryl talked with his whole body, and it didn't always say the things that his mouth was saying. It wasn't anywhere near an infallible system, obviously, but she'd always known he wasn't like his brother.
She suspected even his brother wasn't like his brother. Merle Dixon put up one hell of a front. That much was obvious to her. Unfortunately, whether it covered up someone better, worse, or just different from what he appeared wasn't nearly as easy to figure out.
"Be good to know," Daryl said. "A way to talk without making any noise."
"I really don't remember, Daryl," she said softly. "Some of it, sure. Bits and pieces. But I wasn't allowed, and then I was with Ed, and I've forgotten nearly everything."
The crackling of the fire and the sound of the wind picking up filled the room, and she could swear she could hear every breath that each of them took. It had been a long time since she thought of her mother, or of how much she'd missed the woman as a child. One day her mother was a hero, fighting for her with everything she had, and the next she just disappeared. Gone forever. She'd been a teenager before she found out her mom committed suicide not long after losing her. When she did, Carol decided her father had killed her mother, just as if he'd used the gun himself. From that moment forward, all that mattered was getting away from him. Years later, she would wonder how much of her hatred for her father had been, well, fair. She knew for a fact that her father was better than Ed by far. And she more than suspected that what she once considered her horrible childhood, would have felt like heaven to the man sitting across from her. But it was far too late to change anything now.
"Gonna be colder than a witch's tit out there tonight," Daryl said.
Whether it was the abrupt change of subject or the colorful phrasing, it startled a laugh out of her. And once she'd started, it was a good long while before she could stop.
Only when she was finished catching her breath did she notice how smug he looked.
He did that on purpose, she thought, surprised.
"Tonight," she declared. "You get two cups of coffee."
He smirked at her, looking more than a little proud of himself. "Won't say no."