AN: Here we go, another chapter.

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

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It took a few days before people started to figure out that the announced pregnancy on their news channel was Carol. However, once they figured it out, the amount of people who had stopped to congratulate Carol and Daryl during their regular trips to eat was staggering. People that Carol had never seen before in her life were congratulating her. Guards, servers in the dining hall, and people who worked jobs she couldn't even identify were dropping by their table or stopping them in the street to offer some word of congratulations—and almost praise—for the baby.

It was a little overwhelming, but the worst part of it was that Carol—and Daryl, too, but it didn't seem to bother him—knew that it wasn't true. They knew that, behind the scenes, they were focusing their attention on Dr. Walker and her plan to try to help them conceive. To everyone's face, though, they were the first couple that were proving that they could make the move toward "family building".

And Carol didn't miss that some of the women that congratulated her had a certain bite to their voice and a certain expression that crossed their features. Their mouths said congratulations, but their body language and tone said something else.

She couldn't give the secret away, though. Dr. Walker had already had her back in her office. She'd already promised her that she'd been approved to get everything she might need to help Carol and that she had a plan to start with the simplest options first. She'd already examined Carol, again, and told her that it shouldn't be as challenging as she might think—it was entirely possible. Dr. Walker had told her, as well, that thanks to having her "confirmation" of pregnancy, the government wasn't harassing them, at least for a while, about funding.

Carol had to keep the secret, but the doctor assured her that she didn't have to keep it for long. Soon they'd say that it was all so unfortunate, but things just didn't work out, and then it hopefully wouldn't take long before Carol and Daryl had real news to announce—news that merited the congratulations to which they were already becoming accustomed.

"She said two weeks," Carol said, calling to Daryl across the little house as she toweled her hair dry. She'd already dressed after her shower, but her hair was still holding a good bit of water. "Maybe a little longer. It depends on when I'm ready to ovulate."

"Maybe I just don't know a damned thing about any of this," Daryl responded. "Hell, maybe I don't want to know that much, but ain't it the ovulating thing that we're waiting on anyway?"

He appeared in the doorway behind Carol. He still hadn't bothered to put a shirt on after his own after-breakfast shower. She smiled at him in the mirror.

"That is what we're waiting on," Carol said.

"So if you're gonna do it anyway then—I guess I don't understand what the stuff you're gonna take is for," Daryl said.

"Better odds," Carol said. "Do you want to know this? All of it? All the gory details?"

"Gimme the clean, cliff-notes version," Daryl responded, crossing his arms across his chest.

"I'm going to ovulate and all of this? It's going to make my body want to get pregnant. Like—more than it normally would," Carol said. "And it's going to make me have more eggs. More eggs means a better chance that one of them...you know..."

"Takes," Daryl offered. Carol nodded at him. "So what we're doing right now? It don't got a chance of working?"

Carol shook her head.

"No eggs available right now means no baby," Carol said. "Plain and simple. I can't get pregnant just any day of the week—or month. So right now? We're just practicing for the real thing."

Daryl laughed to himself. He shook his head.

"I had no idea that this shit was so damned complicated," he said. "Every time I turned around? When I was younger? Back—before all this? My brother seemed to knock up every woman he touched—or at least get a scare that he did. He was always running around and trying to clean up messes that he might've made. I started to just figure that it was like a constant thing. Never thought that I'd actually be trying to do what the hell he's probably done on accident a dozen times and never get it to take."

Carol sucked in a breath and dropped the towel over the side of the sink to hang there. They'd come around soon for laundry and the towel would go right into the bag—there wasn't any need to worry with whether or not it would dry properly. She turned around and faced Daryl instead of looking at his reflection in the mirror. She touched her fingertips to his chest and watched as his muscles jumped at her touch.

He still flinched when she touched him. He flinched until the touch wasn't new again.

"It's mostly me," Carol said. "It's not that I can't get pregnant. I've got everything I need and it's all still working, it's just not working as well as it was, let's say, twenty years ago."

Daryl laughed and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him.

"What the hell is?" He asked, barely raising his voice enough to make the words heard. "I like the practice, though."

Carol turned her face enough to kiss his chest.

"Me too," she said.

She closed her eyes and rested her face against him. She was afraid to admit that she felt like there was something there—something that grew a little more each day—that she'd never planned to feel for anyone again, and certainly not for Daryl. She felt it, too, coming from him. For all their promises of "being in this together" and for all their insistence that they were talking about the unpredictable and mysterious project that had now become their lives, there was something else there that they weren't talking about quite as openly.

Not yet.

They might have gone back to bed. They might have worked on a puzzle or taken turns reading to each other from one of the books that Carol had requested. They could've spent the day watching the news channel over and over and narrating for one another old television shows that they'd once seen.

But someone knocked on the door and interrupted them. As soon as the loud knock—a sound that startled both of them—sounded through the house, they broke apart.

"Too early for delivery," Daryl said.

"Maybe it's laundry," Carol responded.

But when the knock sounded again, they didn't hear the announcement for laundry or a delivery. Instead, they heard a man announce that he was there about jobs. Both of them nearly fell over each other trying to get to the door first. By the time the man unlocked the door and opened it, they were both standing ready to greet him.

The young man was probably twenty years old. Carol couldn't imagine that he was much older than that. He was sunburned and he had dirty blonde hair with a tan line that suggested he'd been wearing a hat of some kind for most of his outside employment—a hat that he wasn't wearing at the moment. He didn't try to enter the house. He simply stood on the porch, just at the door, with two guards waiting in the street with three other men that were clearly inmates.

"Grady Hammond," the young man said.

"That your name?" Daryl asked. He got a nod. "Daryl," Daryl offered, not bothering with a last name. "This is Carol."

Carol was surprised when the young man offered them both a hand to shake.

"I'm working construction on the new lots that we're putting in," Grady said. "You might've noticed them. We're looking for hands. People who can work construction are preferred, but we've got jobs for anybody. Gotta get fifteen houses up and a dividing fence."

"You asking or telling?" Daryl asked.

"Do you want the work or not?" Grady asked. "That's what I'm asking. You don't have to take it, but it's there if you want it. Standard pay. Same as everything else."

"What do we need to get paid for if they give us everything?" Daryl asked.

"This place is headed for independence one day, right? Prison camp turned regular neighborhood?" Grady asked, his voice prompting Daryl and Carol to respond to him. They simply nodded their heads. That was their understanding of the whole thing—whether or not it was true remained to be seen. Grady shrugged. "You save up the pay because the government won't be footing your bills forever. You want the work or not?"

"We want it," Daryl said quickly, not even looking at Carol before he answered him. She wouldn't have told him otherwise, though. They'd been waiting on jobs and they weren't turning anything down. There was no telling when the offer might come around again.

"Get dressed," Grady said. "I'll wait. We'll give you work clothes to change into, but you probably want to wear more than that heading down there."

Carol started to turn to go with Daryl, in search of her shoes, but Grady called her back with a gentle "Ma'am" that surprised her as much as his earlier handshake. She turned back to look at him while Daryl went to get a shirt and his boots. Grady shook his head at her.

"You can't go down with me," Grady said.

"I want a job," Carol said. "I can't—do much construction. But I can clean up? Bring water? I learn pretty quickly."

Grady shook his head at her again.

"White flower," he said. Carol cocked an eyebrow at him.

"What?" She asked.

"White flower," he said, he waved her out of the house. She watched the guards to see if they'd stop her, but neither of them seemed the slightest bit interested in her. In the street they just stood there, glancing around and waiting. Carol leaned out of the house enough to see what Grady was gesturing toward. On the doorframe of her house, and Carol was almost certain it hadn't been there this morning, there was a white flower that had been put there. Whether it was drawn or painted or simply attached like a sticker, Carol couldn't tell. "White flower means that the lady of the house is pregnant. I can't take no woman to do construction that's got a white flower on the door. They'll find you something, I'm sure, but it won't be with me."

Carol slipped back into the house. Her expression must have given away her disappointment because Daryl, scuffling his feet because he hadn't tied his boots yet, stopped to tie them beside her and asked her what was wrong.

"I can't work," Carol said. "Not with you. Because—of the baby."

Daryl snorted.

"You should've known that," Daryl said. "You tell him or just everybody knows now?"

"White flower," Grady repeated.

"The hell?" Daryl asked. He straightened up, his laces knotted enough to keep his boots on as they went gathering up more workers.

Grady gestured for him to come out and he showed him the same thing he'd shown Carol.

"White flower," Grady repeated. "Means the lady in the house is pregnant. Means she don't work with me."

Daryl hummed and studied the drawing. He looked at Carol.

"Cherokee Rose," he said. "Not the best done one I've seen, but a Cherokee Rose. You stay here. Better anyway. Hot and a construction site can get dangerous."

Grady nodded his agreement to that and stepped out of the way enough to let Daryl step entirely onto the porch to their little house.

"Congratulations, by the way," Grady said. "To both of you."

"Can I ask you something?" Carol asked. "Before you go?"

Grady looked at her and gestured to himself like he wasn't certain if she had a question for him or for Daryl. She nodded her head at him and he mirrored the gesture to give her permission to address him.

"It's just, you don't seem uncomfortable with us," Carol said. "At all—why is that?"

"Why am I gonna be uncomfortable with you?" Grady asked. "You trying to do something I should know about?"

Daryl chuckled at that.

"If you didn't get the memo, every one of us is wild," Daryl said. "Tamed, but wild."

Grady laughed at that. He shrugged.

"I guess—I just don't believe in it, that's all," he said.

"Don't believe in being wild?" Carol asked. He shook his head.

"My parents were captured as wild," Grady said. He shrugged again. "I was with them. If I'd have been older—I guess I'd've gone to prison too. But I didn't. Got a foster family. Told me my parents were Wilds and they weren't fit to raise me. Told me—that they were gonna keep me from being wild. I didn't remember my parents being no different the last time I saw them than...the first time I saw one of the Dead walking around. So—either they weren't wild or we all are." He looked over his shoulder toward the street where the guards still looked as bored as they had when Carol had watched them before. They weren't paying them any attention. They were hardly paying attention to the inmates, all of which looked equally as bored, that were likely in their care. "But—don't tell them that," Grady said. He winked at Carol. She smiled at him and nodded.

"Wouldn't dream of it," she said. "But I think—you're a bright young man."

He beamed a little at that.

"Congratulations again, ma'am," he said. He gestured with his head. "But you gotta get back inside so I can lock the door. I'm sure they'll be around with something you can do soon."

Carol nodded her understanding and her thanks and started to step back into the house. Daryl barked out a quick "wait," though, and interrupted her retreat. He leaned into the door long enough to peck her lips and Carol felt her cheeks burn warm at a kiss—no matter how small—with an audience. Grady, too, had pink cheeks when she glanced at him again. But Daryl, if he was embarrassed, showed no signs of it. Instead, he turned and hopped down the porch steps as he called a greeting to one of the inmates that he'd apparently met before.

Carol slipped back inside the house and pulled the door closed. She stood at the door and waited until she heard the click of the lock—and then she settled down on the couch to read her book until Daryl returned or, if she was lucky, someone came to offer her a job that was suitable for a woman with a Cherokee Rose on her doorframe.