AN: I've turned this over for a while, and I'll admit that it's not as perfect as I'd like it to be, but I just don't know how to make it perfect. My apologies for that. LOL It's a complicated thing to write, but I needed to write it to keep things moving.
If you missed the last chapter, please make sure you read it!
I hope that you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
Carol was feeling so overwhelmed that, honestly, she almost felt disconnected from herself. She felt a little like she was looking at herself from outside of herself. It was a feeling that she'd felt before, many times, though she'd never known how to explain it to someone. She wasn't grounded, and she needed to be grounded.
There was only one person who had ever truly been good at grounding her when she felt like this, and he was asleep just down the hallway. It might as well have been miles away for the way she was feeling at the moment.
Carol sat on the edge of the bed and thought—or tried to think.
Sophia was here. She was sleeping just down the hallway. Carol had tucked her in, herself, and she'd only reluctantly left her so that her daughter could get some real rest. She'd already crept down the hallway once, since leaving her, and peeked in just to be sure that the room wasn't somehow empty and this hadn't been part of some kind of elaborate hallucination.
Her baby girl was here. She was real. She was healthy. She was here.
Carol knew that she should feel entirely at peace—and some part of her did—but some complicated part of her still felt inexplicably off-kilter.
When Ezekiel came from the bathroom where he'd tended to his needs for the night, Carol stood up. It was a knee-jerk reaction, but not one that she was unaccustomed to having or that he was unaccustomed to seeing. She turned around to face him as he stood there in his bathrobe. The smile he gave her was soft, approving, and knowing.
"My queen is uneasy tonight," Ezekiel said. "The whole kingdom can likely feel the disturbance in the air."
"Don't," Carol said.
His shoulders slumped slightly forward. He nodded his head and toyed at the belt on his bathrobe, but Carol saw that he made no move to remove it. He sucked in a breath and let it out.
"I thought it might relax you," he said. "A little fantasy?"
"No," Carol said.
"Your greatest fantasy has come true," Ezekiel said. "Your daughter has been returned to you. Just as you've dreamed. She's a beautiful young woman. So very much like her mother."
"Ezekiel…" Carol said. She stopped, unable to say anything more, mostly because she didn't know what she wanted to say.
Ezekiel raised his hand and waved it, like he was wiping away whatever it was that hung in the air between them. He walked around the bed and put himself in front of Carol. He reached for her face and she flinched. The movement wasn't meant for Ezekiel—it was never meant for him. He smiled softly at her as soon as she straightened back up and whispered an apology.
"With the return of beautiful things from the past," Ezekiel offered, "at times there must also be the return of not-so-beautiful things. I believe it was Freud that talked about the revenant."
Carol felt herself relax.
"What do you know about Freud?" She asked, laughing quietly.
"Enough," Ezekiel said. His king façade slipped away and he returned to simply being Ezekiel—her friend and companion. "I read a decent amount of Freud when I was working. As a zookeeper, I took night shifts sometimes. They were quiet when you weren't working with the nocturnal animals—and even when you were. I liked expanding my mind and my understanding of things. Freud was a challenge, but some of the things he had to say were interesting. They resonate, even today."
"You're a smart man," Carol said, meaning what she said.
"Smart enough to know when someone I care about is unsettled," Ezekiel said.
"I just—need to sleep in the other room tonight," Carol said. "I've got a lot on my mind."
"I know you do," Ezekiel said. "I can feel it." He reached to touch her face and, this time, she didn't flinch away. His touch was gentle and affectionate, but he didn't take any liberties beyond a simple, comforting touch. "Just—stay here for a moment, OK? Let me have one more look at you in the lamplight before I lose you forever."
Carol laughed. It was a nervous laughter. Something inside her trembled, it seemed, at being seen—something she hadn't even seen yet, perhaps.
"Don't be dramatic, Ezekiel," Carol said. She wrapped her hand around his arm as he held her face with his hands.
"I'm not," he said, his lips curling into a half smile. "I always knew that holding you was temporary. I always knew that losing you was inevitable. Like trying to hold water or sunlight. You were never mine. You never belonged to me. You were slipping through my fingers from the start. But I always knew that holding you, even for a moment, was worth the loss. I never expected to hold you this long. Thank you for being a part of my fantasy for so long."
Carol's stomach tightened. Her breathing caught.
"You haven't lost me," she protested. "I'm not—leaving."
As soon as she said it, she realized she didn't feel like she meant it. She didn't know why she didn't mean it, and she didn't know exactly what she meant instead, but she didn't feel like she meant what she'd said. Ezekiel, thankfully, didn't look like he believed her any more than he might have if she'd told him that the stables were suddenly filled with unicorns.
"Of course not," he said. "You'll always be here for me, just as I'll always be here for you. My friend. Henry's mother. But…"
"Sophia's back," Carol said. "And—I feel like I felt before. Like—I'm not sure who I am."
"You're Carol," Ezekiel said. "But we all have a right to figure out who we are, Carol. No matter how many times we have to do that. And we have a right to shed the past versions of ourselves." He smiled at her. "Or to find them again—as the case may be."
Carol swallowed against the aching in her throat. It wasn't an aching of sadness. Rather, it was an aching of appreciation for being seen and, more than that, for being accepted.
"I don't want to hurt you," Carol said. "I have never wanted to hurt you."
"And you never have," Ezekiel said. "At least—not on purpose. And anything else is easily forgiven."
Carol sunk into him and hugged him. He was strong. His body was solid and she closed her eyes as she rested her face against his chest. Many times, before, she'd sought comfort in his arms and he'd offered it to her when that's what she came searching for.
"I never wanted to hurt you," she mused again, pulling out of the hug. "It's just…"
"You never loved me," Ezekiel said.
"I…" Carol started to protest.
"Not like that," Ezekiel said. "And that's OK. I was never fooled. I always knew that this day would come, Carol. I accepted that from the beginning."
"How could you know?" Carol asked with a laugh. "I thought Sophia was dead. You couldn't know she'd come back."
"You're right," Ezekiel said. "I didn't know that Sophia would come back. But—maybe I knew that one day you'd need to leave the fantasy to explore something else about your reality. Maybe I knew that—your past would never leave you entirely. It would be back. The revenant."
"You don't make any sense, Ezekiel," Carol said.
Ezekiel laughed. He tipped her face and kissed her forehead affectionately.
"I make more sense than you want to admit," he said. "And that's OK, too. The extra rooms are full, my queen. So—I grant to you our royal bed. I'll sleep in Henry's room for the night. The morning always brings clarity and new possibility for us all."
"No," Carol said. "You sleep in here. It's more comfortable, and I don't think I'm going to be doing too much sleeping anyway. I have too much on my mind. Really…"
Ezekiel looked like he might argue with her, but finally, he simply nodded.
"Goodnight, Carol," he said. "If you need anything…"
"Thank you," Carol said, not waiting for him to finish and not sure if he had any intention of actually finishing.
111
Daryl was up before the sun. He was almost always up before the sun.
Admittedly, being up this morning had taken very little effort on his part. He'd hardly slept the night before. There had been a great deal of activity in the Kingdom and, though he'd pretended to hear none of it, he would have had to have been deaf to sleep through it all.
The room where he slept was close to the room where Sophia had spent the night. Carol had been in and out of the room several times throughout the night. Daryl knew her step. He could identify her gait on nearly any floor, by sound alone. He assumed she was checking on Sophia and, maybe, she was just assuring herself that Sophia was real.
Daryl had peeked into the room, admittedly, once or twice to assure himself that Sophia was still there and very much real.
Carol had been restless. Without the room that she often called her own available to her, she'd slept in Henry's room. Daryl had ventured out of his own room several times during the night to check on her. He'd kept quiet, and he'd kept somewhat hidden from her, but he'd wanted to be close by in case she needed him for something. He could feel her unease in the air. He knew that she struggled, sometimes, with her feelings.
Maybe a part of him wanted to be sure that she didn't run while overwhelmed—something she'd been known to do before. He doubted she would do such a thing, at least not without taking Sophia with her, and not without Henry, but a concerned part of him always worried that Carol would slip away from him. Maybe, if she'd tried to run, he simply wanted to be close enough to follow after her before she managed to make it too far.
The farthest she'd actually ran was to Henry's room. After she'd been quiet for a while, Daryl had quietly sneaked into the room to make sure she was OK. She'd been sleeping, then, and he'd carefully tucked her in and assured himself that she was resting as peacefully as she could be when her spirit was obviously restless and struggling with something.
The two times that Sophia had gotten up to wander around the house—twice to go to the bathroom, it seemed, or at least she'd covered her nocturnal ramblings with trips to the bathroom—Daryl had quietly followed her, too. Something in him made him worry that, like her mother, she might be restless and struggling to handle everything that was happening. It was overwhelming, and the last thing that he needed was for her to run in some way. Carol would be devastated, and Daryl couldn't let that happen.
Sophia had only seemed to need to ramble as far as the bathroom and back, though, and Daryl had checked on her after she'd been quiet for a while.
Calling it a morning and getting up, officially—going outside for that first morning cigarette—was almost a treat at this point. It was nice to call the night ended.
At this hour, the air was cool and Daryl's breath fogged. He could see it in the temporary glow of his lighter as he lit his cigarette. He could feel the nip of the morning on his hands. He was glad they'd found Sophia before it got too cold. He was certain that she'd probably weathered as many winters in less-than-cozy conditions as he and her mother had, but he didn't like thinking of her out there, cold and alone. Especially not since he was still having a hard time seeing her as the woman—or very nearly so—that she was, and not as the little girl that had haunted his dreams and nightmares for years.
The Kingdom was still at this hour. Sounds carried. They seemed to carry more with the coolness. He heard the sound of a horse nickering from the not-so-distant stables. He heard the bumping of a large animal's rump against a gate as the horses woke and started to wonder about the status of their breakfast.
He heard the undisguised sound of shoes crunching on packed dirt, and he touched his knife.
"Good morning," Ezekiel's voice announced as soon as Daryl's hand moved toward the handle of his knife. "I hope I didn't startle you."
"Did I wake you up?" Daryl asked, finally seeing the man as he came into view—his sound travelling faster than the sight of him in the darkness.
Ezekiel laughed quietly. His voice sounded twice as loud as it normally did in the stillness of the morning. Daryl was also willing to admit, though, that it might sound louder simply because of the fact that he'd had so little sleep.
"I think we both know there was precious little sleep happening in the royal household last night," Ezekiel said.
"That your way of sayin' you didn't sleep either?" Daryl asked, slightly amused, in spite of himself, at Ezekiel's antics.
"An hour," Ezekiel said. "Maybe two."
"I'd say you got me beat by one…one and a half," Daryl said.
"I didn't want to interfere where I wasn't wanted or needed," Ezekiel said. "Did the queen rest at all?"
"You're supposing I would know more than you do if your wife slept?" Daryl asked.
"I think we both know you would," Ezekiel challenged. "And—I think we both know that she no longer wishes to be my wife."
Daryl digested those words. He knew them to be true, of course, in his gut. Carol's distance had started the moment that she'd come through the gates with Sophia, and it had been blatantly obvious by the time they'd eaten. Ezekiel, thankfully, didn't sound too torn up about things, and Daryl assumed that the man couldn't have dealt with Carol for all these years without learning a bit about her and her ways.
"She slept a few hours," Daryl said. "She was pretty deep asleep when I came out here."
"At least she's resting," Ezekiel said. "For now."
"You meant that about—her being your wife?" Daryl asked.
"I think we both know what I meant," Ezekiel said. He sighed. "It was a matter of time. The whole thing was a matter of time from the start. But—it was worth it."
Daryl's stomach had a strange reaction to the words. How would he feel if he were married to Carol? How would he feel if that marriage ended? He felt that, if he ever held her, he'd never let her go. It was hard to imagine that the pain of losing her could be bearable, no matter how long he'd had her to call his own.
"You—OK?" Daryl asked, not knowing quite how to breach a discussion of feelings with the man that he'd known, throughout the years, as really just another person that he walked through this world with—a world where people were there and gone and in an instant.
"There is peace in the passing of an inevitability," Ezekiel said.
"Whatever the hell that means," Daryl said.
Ezekiel laughed.
"I'll survive," he said. "I am concerned, however, about Carol."
"I think Carol's got the best thing she could dream of right now," Daryl said.
"Without a doubt," Ezekiel said. "But I think that unexpected happiness is still unnerving to some degree. It's unbalancing. Carol is still searching for who she wants to be…especially now that she has accepted that she doesn't want to be the queen. That she never truly wanted to be the queen."
"Whoever she wants to be, she'll figure it out," Daryl said.
"I don't want to see her hurt in the meantime," Ezekiel said.
"Makes two of us," Daryl said. "I'll make sure she don't get hurt—no matter what the hell she's gotta do to figure things out and get settled."
"I'm sure you will," Ezekiel said. He turned and started to walk off from where they'd been talking with no more discussion than that of everything that Carol would have to do as she came to terms with Sophia's return to her life, the shift that caused in everything, and what that meant for her as she moved forward. He called back to Daryl as he moved back toward the house. "There will be coffee, soon, if you'd like some. Let's hold breakfast until the ladies rise."