AN: Here we are, another chapter here!

I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!

111

Nearly every piece of furniture that they'd chosen to keep in their house—rather than moving it somewhere else or carrying it to a house where the occupants could make better use of it—had been strategically placed at this point. One thing that they'd learned was important, in their house, was that no piece of furniture put the user's back entirely to the entrance of a room. Everything was, at the very least, angled.

Daryl had learned this was particularly important one night when Carol had been reading in the living room. At that time, the chair she'd been sitting in had been facing the fireplace dead-on. Daryl had walked up behind her, not thinking about the consequences of a genuinely innocuous action, and he'd wrapped his arms around her to hug her. As a knee-jerk reaction, Carol had immediately started to fight him, and she'd managed to black his eye pretty good before he'd gotten her out of her panic and had gotten her to understand who it was that had approached her and what his intentions had been.

They had quickly decided that, in a house where trauma was in abundance, it might be best for everyone to be sensitive to that—furniture didn't face away from the entrances to the rooms, and everyone announced their presence, in some way, when entering a room.

Keeping that in mind, Daryl tapped his knuckles gently against the bedroom doorframe when he saw that Carol was in the bedroom, wrapped up in a blanket she probably didn't need for warmth, reading a book in the chair they'd dragged up there for her to put in the corner by the built-in bookshelf in the room.

She looked up and smiled at him.

"Pookie," she said, as a greeting.

Daryl smiled at her.

"Woman," he said, stifling a quiet laugh when she uncurled herself and stretched like a cat. He'd tried nicknames. He still tried them from time to time. Nothing worked, though. Nothing came out naturally and with as much affection as he meant except the simple declaration of "woman." It managed, somehow, to encompass everything that he needed it to encompass—everything her "pookie" did for her. He could use it teasing her, but he also simply felt affection behind it. She was, after all, his woman—the only one that would ever exist in his life in quite the way that she did.

"Did you finish what you wanted to do?" Carol asked.

Daryl stepped fully into the room. He closed the door. He started to undress. His clothes were clean. He was clean, really. He'd bathed after dinner, at the same time as Carol, and then he'd sent her to read while he'd more or less considered some things and lazily walked the property, keeping a half an eye on Lydia and Beau as they sat on the back porch of Alice and Melodye's house, protected by screens, and played a few board games that had been found in the attic.

"That one shed's gonna make a decent workspace," Daryl said. "Talked to Sadie about it. She wants to get in there and mess with some shit, too. Crafty and all. There's room for Muh to do whatever the hell it is that she wants, and it gives me some room to play around with shit I always wanted to spend more time gettin' good at insteada half-assin'. If I get what I need, get in there and play around with it, I don't see no reason we can't get a really reliable grid system going for electricity—better'n what we got rigged up right now that's reliable half the damn time."

Daryl relieved himself in the bucket in the bathroom. At the dresser, he poured water for himself into the bowl and washed his hands and took what Merle had always called a "whore bath" to hit all the places that might need freshening up after his walk around.

"You'll figure it out," Carol said, folding her blanket to drape over the back of her chair and straightening up her little sanctuary corner. "And—if it doesn't work? We're OK."

"Possibly bustin' frozen ass water up with an axe every damn day," Daryl mused, "meltin' snow, an' ice, an' every damn thing else over the fires in the fireplaces is gonna get fuckin' old quick."

"And yet, we will survive," Carol said with a laugh. "I can swing an axe pretty well at this point in my life."

"You do everything pretty damn well," Daryl said, picking up her laughter. "You want me to put somethin' on?"

"You never have to put anything on around me, Pookie," Carol teased. She was pulling back the blankets on their bed and fluffing the pillows. At the moment, she was wearing pajamas—a top and a bottom, though they didn't match at all—but Daryl didn't know if she intended to keep them on all night. He wasn't going to push one way or another. She had quite the appetite for his company lately, so he wasn't about to complain if she should decide that she simply wasn't in the mood for some simple snuggling up and loving on each other.

Daryl and Carol passed each other as they moved to their respective sides of the bed. They didn't always stay on those sides, and there was sometimes the frequent switching of sides if they were feeling energetic enough for a couple of rounds of lovemaking, but they usually tried to start out on their sides. Daryl slipped under the covers and held his arm up to invite Carol to come over to him. She came and curled under his arm, leaning against him as they reclined against the pillows she'd fluffed and propped against the headboards until they decided to actually sleep.

Daryl kissed Carol's forehead before nuzzling his cheek against her. She responded by rooting affectionately into him and running her finger lazily around his nipple—an action that he'd found could be erotic or simply tender, depending entirely on the way she did it. At the moment, it was clear that she only meant it for the affection.

"Maybe we find someone that's like fuckin' great with electricity," Daryl said. "Seen a couple signs of life out there, you know? Not a lot, but…there's some signs. We ain't alone out here. Not entirely."

"I don't like it," Carol said quickly and without leaving any room for doubt over her sincerity.

Daryl squeezed her gently to offer any comfort he might.

"I know you don't," he said. "But—we ain't the only good people out there, Carol. If we weren't open to people, we wouldn't'a ended up with everybody we got now."

"And if we hadn't been open to people before," Carol said. She didn't finish. She just let it hang.

"The damn difference is bein' open to people an' bein' willin' to say we ain't tryin' to rehabilitate no assholes," Daryl said. "We ain't—tryin' to play with nobody that's so damn far off their rocker they ain't never climbin' back on."

"And we don't know who those people are until it's too late," Carol said. "And—we meet them and they know where we live. They see what we have. They want it. Maybe they're just cruel and…we have to think about our people, Daryl."

"We always gonna think about our people," Daryl assured her. "Gonna keep this place a secret as much as we can. We don't bring no damn body back here until we're sure we can trust 'em."

"I don't like it," Carol said. "What about Lydia?"

"What about her?" Daryl asked.

"What if something happens to her, Daryl? To Beau—he's just a boy."

Daryl swallowed. His throat was tight, suddenly, and he nuzzled against her and squeezed her gently.

"You worried somebody's gonna get to Lydia or Beau?" He asked. Carol didn't say anything, but she didn't pull away from him, either, which he considered to be a very good reaction to things, all things considered. He believed in applauding progress, no matter how minor. "Of course, you fuckin' are. Why the hell wouldn't you be?" He said, answering himself. "Listen, Carol—we're gonna do everything we can to make sure that them kids? They grow up—all the way up. Older'n Muh."

"Sometimes everything we can do is not enough," Carol said, leaning up to look at Daryl. He caught her chin and kissed her. She made the kiss every bit as sweet as he wanted it to be.

"It's gonna be," he said. "Shit is different now. We're all on the same page. Every one of us. Ain't nobody here that's on some kinda mission to save the world, or rebuild civilization, or become some kinda damn god among men. All we want is the same damn thing—a life. If somebody ain't on-board with that, they ain't part of our lives. All we want is a future. A good future. For every damn one of us. Together? We gonna make it happen, and we ain't gonna let a single damn asshole stop us."

Carol smiled at him.

"You sound so sure, Pookie."

"I am sure," Daryl said. "I ain't never had nothin' to fight for like I got now. There ain't no damn demon crawlin' straight up from hell that wants to try to take from me a single damn thing I got now." He laughed quietly. "And heaven help the asshole who thinks they wanna tangle with the whole damn lot of us, because there ain't a single damn soul here that ain't crazy as fuckin' hell an' still plagued with a single damn fuck to give. Hell—I believe Muh would take some asshole's head off with an axe an' then ask you if you was wantin' some mud tea before the body got cold."

Carol laughed.

"And half of us would drink the mud tea," Carol said. "Just to keep from hurting her feelings because she's so sweet."

Daryl laughed at the irony of it, and Carol did, too. The mood lightened, though, and he was thankful for that. He trailed his fingers over Carol's back, scratching it gently. He knew she liked that. She enjoyed stray, gentle touches, and he liked it because touching her made him happy, but it also gave his hands plenty to do.

"I was checkin' them does we got," Daryl said. "We gonna have us at least one litter of kits soon. Real soon."

Carol sat up and smiled at him.

"I know we're going to eat them," Carol said, "but I'm still a little excited for the baby rabbits."

"You an' every damn other woman around here," Daryl said. "We ain't gonna eat 'em right away, though. Gonna let 'em grow. Maybe breed them, too. Figure she might throw us five or six kittens."

"Just one litter?" Carol asked.

"Just one doe is lookin' heavy," Daryl said. "Don't mean we ain't got more that just ain't showin' good yet." Daryl's heart drummed in his chest. If he focused on it, he could feel Carol's body against his. He was hyper-aware, when he thought about it, of the life he knew she was harboring—a life she believed, somewhere inside her, that she was keeping a secret; maybe, even, she was keeping it secret from herself. Daryl cleared his throat. "When we get back from clearin' out tomorrow, I'ma work with Beau to get a couple separate hutches made so the does can rest with their kits, you know? Give 'em a quiet place where the others ain't fuckin' with 'em."

"We could work on that tomorrow, while you're gone," Carol offered.

"If you got time," Daryl said. "But—stick to what you had planned, first. Stockin' up for winter is just as important." He cleared his throat again, his anxiety felt like it was closing it up. He knew what he wanted to talk to her about. He knew what he wanted to say, but he wanted to say it delicately enough that it didn't cause any problems for which he simply wasn't prepared. "I was thinkin', you know, that while we out gatherin' up stuff—does an' the kits got me thinkin' and all—might not be a bad idea if we was to, you know, gather up a couple things in case we were to have…to have some use for some of it for a couple human babies or…somethin' like that."

Daryl winced at his own words, but he couldn't see all of Carol's face to see if she'd reacted negatively at all. What he could see looked relatively serene.

She leaned up to look at him again.

"You mean—Lydia and Beau?" She asked.

"Maybe," Daryl said. "In the future. I mean—not right now, hopefully, but…it don't hurt to be prepared. Nobody knows about the future and all—and maybe we'd be findin' good people or…you know, hell, nobody knows, really. Could even be others."

She stared at him. He stared back at her. For a fraction of a moment, he didn't know how the stare ended. He didn't know how they got out of this. Luckily, she broke it and rested her head against him again.

"There could be," she said. "Babies are so…vulnerable."

Daryl's heart beat hard and fast, and there was no way that she didn't hear it. It was impossible to even imagine that she didn't hear it. She didn't draw attention to it, though, just as he didn't draw absolute attention to the vulnerable little life that he knew she was growing. He hummed.

"Important," he said. "For the future."

"If they make it there," Carol said.

"Everybody makes it in our future," Daryl said.

Carol laughed quietly.

"You can't guarantee that, Daryl," she said.

Daryl hummed at her again and resumed his earlier trailing of his fingers. She nuzzled against him. He decided he'd pushed enough for one night. He kissed her forehead, again, before nuzzling her again.

"Ain't nothin' guaranteed, maybe," Daryl ceded. "But—there ain't much I've been more certain about, let's put it that way."