Daryl snorts awake when Carol pushes on his shoulder. "Scoot over," she demands, and he turns on his side and slides his back to the wall so she can crawl into bed and spoon with him on the narrow mattress.

Her flesh is cold when she snuggles in, and he doesn't understand why, because it's not quite spring and they still light the wood stove in the main cabin at night. "Hell you been?" he asks.

"Helping to deliver a baby."

Daryl half sits up. "There's a new baby? Is it alive?"

Carol chuckles. "Do you think I'd so casually come to bed if it wasn't?"

"Maggie's?"

"Has anyone else been pregnant around her I don't know about?" she asks.

Daryl settles his head back on the pillow. "Hope not. Beth's a bit young. Addison's even younger. Girl or boy?"

"Girl. So now poor little Dale is outnumbered. She's tiny. Just seven pounds exactly, and only eighteen and a half inches. But she's sure got a set of lungs on her. They named her Josephine."

"Hell kind of old lady's name is that?"

Carol turns in his arms and looks at him through the bit of starlight seeping through the porthole. "It was Maggie's mother's name."

"Oh."

"They'll call her Jo. Like in Little Women. I loved that book when I was a little girl."

Daryl laughs.

"What's so funny?"

"Just trying to imagine you as a little girl. Bet you had one of them little easy bake ovens. With the light bulb."

"I had a Holly Hobbie oven."

"Who the fuck's Holly Hobbie?"

"A fictional character." She smiles and kisses him. "Now I'm trying to picture you as a little boy with a little Nerf crossbow."

"Didn't have Nerf crossbows back then. And I had a real crossbow as a little boy. Well, compound bow. Got the crossbow when I was ten. My Uncle Reedus gave it to me."

Carol mimics his tone, "Hell kind of name is Reedus?"

"Dunno. He was my mama's brother. That family all had weird names."

Carol snakes a leg between his as they now lay face to face and slides her arm around his waist. "You don't like any of the names anyone picks for their babies around here."

"All old folk names. It's weird calling a little baby by an old folk name."

"What would you name our kid if we had one?"

Daryl moves his head back. It thuds against the wall of their cabin, and he blinks. "Said you couldn't have kids."

"I can't. It's purely a hypothetical."

"Dunno. What would you name 'em?"

"I used to like Walker for a boy," she says, "but…circumstances have changed my association with that name."

He snorts.

"I also like Hunter," she says. "And Wyatt. Colton."

"Where the hell you come up with all these redneck names?"

Carol laughs. "You're one to talk."

"Me and Merle didn't name ourselves. Geez. Might as well name him Jim Bob."

"So what would you name him? Leopold? Randolph?"

Daryl smirks. "Montgomery. Call him Monty."

"You would not."

"You'd probably name our girl Harlene," he tells her.

"Harlene? What's that? Some kind of feminization of Harley?"

"Dunno. My aunt was named Harlene."

"The one who was married to your Uncle Reedus?" she asks with a twinkle in her eye.

"Wouldn't says as they were exactly married. Legally speaking."

"Well, neither are we."

Daryl goes quiet.

"I scare you?" she asks.

"Just wonderin' what you mean by that. Think we should be?"

"I don't know how we could be," Carol replies. "The courts aren't exactly functioning."

"Yeah. But I mean…Glenn and Maggie had that ceremony."

Now Carol is the one to raise her head. "Are you proposing?"

"Want me to?"

"Are you?"

"Not if you don't want me to."

"But if I want you to, you are?" she asks skeptically.

He shrugs. "Guess."

"You guess." She laughs and shakes her head before she settles it back on the pillow beside his. "Then I guess I'm saying yes. But let's wait until late spring for the wedding. I want it outside under an archway of woven flowers."

"Pffft."

She laughs, and he kisses her, and they make love in their little bed as the houseboat shifts lightly on the black waters of the lake.

[*]

When Carol awakes in the morning, Daryl is gone. She finds Jackson in the kitchen, making pancakes. She's not sure what he used in place of eggs. He offers some, and she sits down at the little kitchen table as he serves her a stack of two.

"Not hunting with Daryl today?" she asks.

"No. Michonne and I are going on a run. We're going to check farms for chickens. Maybe some managed to survive." Jackson sits down at the table across from her and picks up his fork. "Did you and my father have a fight last night?"

Carol flushes. She might have screamed a bit toward the end of their romp there. Maybe she'd sounded angry? "No. Why do you ask?"

"Just, I woke up early and he was asleep on the couch out here."

"Oh, he just does that sometimes. He likes his space. It doesn't mean anything. You haven't noticed before?"

Jackson lets out a sigh of relief. "Oh. No. He's always up and ready to go and knocking on my door in the morning. I didn't know where he slept."

Carol smiles. "Does this mean you like us together?"

"Sure. You're good together."

"Good, because we're getting married. Your father proposed last night." Carol pops a bite of pancake into her mouth.

"Really?"

When she's finished swallowing, she says, "Don't sound so skeptical."

Jackson smiles. "Did he get down on one knee?"

"Not exactly. The wedding will be in May."

Jackson's tongue snakes out between his smiling lips, and when it does, he looks like Daryl. "Well I'm looking forward to seeing him in a tux."

Carol laughs.

[*]

Daryl doesn't wear a tux for the wedding, and there are no flowers woven in an arch. But after surviving the last of winter, and watching their world thaw into spring, they do hold the brief ceremony near the now-blooming gardens on shore, with friends all around, birds cooing from the trees in the distant forest, and babies cooing in their mothers' arms.

That summer, the camp grows. During supply runs, survivors are brought in, after being asked three questions:

(1) How many walkers have you killed?

(2) How many people have you killed?

(3) Why?

By the next summer, the house boats are full, including those with no solar power, though the newcomers do get use of a couple portable generators from time to time. Outhouses have been built just beyond the shore near the tree line. A smokehouse now stands not far from the gardens. Judith, Dale, and Jo are toddling wildly about the shore.

That next fall, Daryl concentrates on filling the smokehouse, but Jackson does not join him as often as he used to. He's too often busy on supply runs with Michonne. Daryl finds a new apprentice in Addison.

One night, he and Carol are watching the sunset in deck chairs on the prow of their houseboat when Jackson and Michonne return. They watch from a distance as the talking, laughing pair unload goods into the storehouse. When they part, they kiss.

"When did that happen?" Carol asks him.

"Think it's the goatee."

Carol laughs.

"What? She wasn't interested in 'em. He grows that damn goatee, and now suddenly…they're all kissy kissy."

"Well, he's also older now, and more of a man than ever. They've spent a lot of time together. And maybe Michonne has gotten over caring if anyone calls her a cougar." She glances at the fire on shore where Beth and Carl are watching Judith and Jo and roasting venison sausage over the flames. "In a couple years, I bet she won't be the only one either. Carl has really matured."

Daryl rubs his chin. "Maybe I should grow a goatee."

"Don't. I kiss on you plenty already. And, besides…" Carol reaches over and runs the palm of her hand along his smooth cheek, "I like you clean-shaven for other purposes."

He smirks. "Yeah?" He nods back to the ladder leading below deck. "I'll go down first."

THE END