AN: This is something of a transition chapter, I guess.

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

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

"I reckon I know who sent you," Daryl said. He'd only glanced over his shoulder when he'd heard Rick walking up, and he didn't look back at him now. "It don't matter what'cha say, Rick. I ain't apologizin', I ain't givin' up nothin' I done moved into that cell nor nothin' that I'm still gettin' off this truck, and...if you fuck with me? I'ma tell you the same damned thing I told her."

Rather than get offended, Rick laughed. Daryl laughed to himself, as well, and moved the laundry basket full of items that he'd been packing in the truck onto the little cart that he was going to use to haul the items inside. Daryl and T-Dog had already moved a few large items inside and T-Dog had recently taken one wheelbarrow full of stuff inside. He'd probably return soon to ask if there was anything more that he could do to help Daryl.

Daryl had laid claim to two cells that were next to the one that he and Carol shared. The cell that they called home was some distance away from everyone else's cells. It allowed them a modicum of privacy. As luck would have it, it also meant that they didn't have neighbors. Daryl figured that the two adjoining cells could be turned into cells for Sophia and her sibling—whoever their child might end up being—so he'd laid claim to them now. It wasn't as if it mattered to anyone, after all, what they did with empty cells.

Daryl was steadily packing the cells with items from the truck—all chosen for Carol to make her pregnancy and their time with the baby easier to handle—so that the items could be stored until Carol's so-called baby shower. Daryl figured that, then, she could simply be free to do with the items what she wished. She would know best, after all, how she wanted to arrange a sleeping place for the baby. Sophia, too, could be moved closer to them if she wanted, though she was happy for the time being sharing a cell with Rick and Lori's baby girl.

"Do your children really need six of these stuffed animals?" Rick asked. He reached in the basket that Daryl had just loaded up and pulled out an elephant head with a blanket body attached to it. He turned it over in his hands and looked at it. Those had just so happened to be some of Daryl's favorite items from the run. He reached and plucked the elephant out of Rick's hand and returned it to the basket where it lay among its friends—all of them very similar in build.

"They all different," Daryl said.

"Six of them?" Rick asked.

"An' they's a half a dozen more on the truck," Daryl said. "So you can have what the hell you want, but these is like—they like that lamb that Sophia loves so much an' now she'll have a whole damned petting zoo if that's what she wants."

Rick held his hands up in mock surrender.

"I didn't realize you felt so strongly about the stuffed animals," Rick said, a hint of a smile playing at his lips.

Daryl checked his tone and facial expression.

"I'm sorry, but I want my family to have what the hell I want 'em to have. We cleared out a store that was for mamas-to-be an' babies. Got every damn thing that weren't nailed down an' pried up a couple things that was nailed down. Found this truck an' got it runnin' just to bring every last thing back. There's more'n enough in this truck for every damn body that's got a mind to have some. But—you know your wife was down here tryin' to get everything first. Drain it dry."

Daryl lit a cigarette, showing Rick that he intended to have a conversation with him for the moment rather than go back to work and ignore him. He gestured toward the truck.

"I really don't care, Rick, if she takes everything I leave. Let her take the best an' put the rest in storage for anybody that might need it. Hell—I'd hope that Glenn and Maggie might get them a young'un. I'd say they got a real good chance, especially after everybody's holed up for the winter. I'm not tellin' Lori that she can't have shit, I'm just sayin' that I went out there with T. This run was my idea. We was the ones that were up to our asses in Walkers. That was done 'cause this baby is cookin' an' I want Carol to have everything she needs—an' even what the hell she wants for a damned change."

Rick raised his eyebrows at Daryl.

"I know you think I came out here to say something to you about what you said," Rick responded, "but I didn't. Now—Lori told me what you said, but I figure that's between you and Lori. Believe me, I know how she can be. And there's nothing that we need so urgently for Judith that it can't wait for you to get what you need...or want."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"Yeah, I thank you for givin' me permission to have what was already mine," Daryl said.

"That wasn't what I meant," Rick assured him.

Daryl sighed.

"I know it weren't," he said. "Sorry. I just—I guess I was just pissed from earlier and it's coming out every which way I turn. I don't know who's going to say somethin' and who's gonna just leave me alone."

Rick laughed to himself.

"I actually came to apologize to you," Rick said. "I heard what Lori said to you. I heard her talking to Carol. She shouldn't have said that."

"Shit happens, though," Daryl said.

"And we don't need to be reminded of it at every turn," Rick offered. "I just wanted to—I don't even know. Say congratulations again? Say I'm sorry. I won't make excuses for her, but I guess Lori's got a lot on her plate."

"Don't we all?" Daryl responded. "Listen—the only beef I got with her is that she's first to take everything. She acts like she deserves it. She says she needs it. She whines about it the loudest so every damn person—from Hershel to Carol-hands it over to try to stop it. There's been so many damn times she's taken food offa Carol's plate that...Rick I was damn near fightin' Carol out there for her to take the food she needed off my plate to keep fuckin' going. It ain't been that long that I couldn't count what seemed like every rib an' bone in her body. And it was all so Lori could eat 'cause your kid was gonna be born."

"We've all made sacrifices," Rick said.

"Some more'n others," Daryl said. "I'm tired of makin' sacrifices. I'm tired of Carol makin' sacrifices. It's time she stopped makin' sacrifices. She oughta get the same treatment Lori did. Ain't that what we said? We take care of expecting mothers? I do my part. She does hers. We need meat, I hunt it. Built that smokehouse myself so we wouldn't go without this winter. We need—whatever the hell we need—an' I go out an' get it. Glenn, Maggie, T, and me. Carol takes care of every damn thing around here. She washes your drawers, puts food in your belly, an' makes sure that everybody's got what they need. And all of that's what she does before she starts whatever other job she's got. Hell—I'm bustin' my ass everyday on whatever the hell I can do here."

"If you want a break from your jobs," Rick said.

Daryl cut him off before he could finish.

"I'm not bitchin' about the jobs, Rick," Daryl said. "Carol don't mind it. I don't mind it. I'll do whatever I can to make sure that what we got here keeps on bein' the good thing it's turned out to be. The only thing I want is to feel like—like I'm gettin' mine. Like my family is gettin' what they need. Rubs me the wrong way when I got this stuff special because Carol's gonna have a baby an' the first thing that happens is the wolves descend upon it when I come through the gates. If I'da gone off lookin' for Glenn an' Maggie instead of stayin' here today, I'da prob'ly come back to the whole thing picked clean."

"I think you're overreacting," Rick said with a laugh. "But I understand your concern. To tell you the truth—it's been one of the reasons that Lori and I have had...difficulties."

Daryl rummaged in his pocket and found another cigarette. He lit it. He teased Carol that all the women did while they worked was peck and cluck like a bunch of hens. They talked about everything and everybody, but since their social pond was so small, that meant that they were talking about the same people over and over again. She told him that the men were just as bad.

She wasn't wrong. And Daryl didn't deny it.

Maybe it wasn't a man or woman thing. Maybe it was just a human thing.

He laughed to himself.

"Difficulties," he mused. This certainly wasn't the first he'd heard of it. The whole prison knew about their so-called difficulties. The group had been aware of them for quite some time. In fact, Daryl wasn't sure he'd ever known a time when Lori and Rick hadn't had difficulties.

"You know how it feels when...it's never enough," Rick said. "It's all my fault. Everything that's gone wrong. Every wrong decision. I've got the whole group looking at me. And if that wasn't bad enough...there's never enough. There's always something else we need. Something else I need to be doing. Or I'm doing wrong."

Daryl hummed.

"No, Rick," he said. "I don't know how that feels. At least—it's been a long damn time since somebody made me feel like everything bad in the whole damned world was my fault. Now I—I wake up just about every day feelin' like I'm doing something right. Like I musta done somethin' real damned right to just end up openin' my eyes the way I do and with all that I got." He shrugged his shoulders. "Not only is what I do enough, but it's damn near treated like it's too much. The best thing that ever happened."

Rick smiled to himself.

"Carol treats you like a king," Rick mused.

Daryl hummed.

"And I treat her like she was a queen," Daryl said. "At least—as good as I can. Maybe that's how it works."

Rick hummed.

"And if you get to the point where...you don't exactly feel that way about her anymore?" Rick asked.

"I never will," Daryl said quickly.

"But if you did," Rick said.

Daryl knew that Rick's question didn't have anything to do with his relationship with Carol. He was, in his own way, asking for relationship advice. He did that from time to time. It wasn't lost on Daryl, either, that Rick—who had been married for some time—was asking advice from Daryl who, before Carol, had never had a relationship.

Still, Rick seemed to believe that Daryl had some kind of relationship advice to offer.

"If I didn't love her no more," Daryl said, "then I don't think we'd be together. Simple as that. If it weren't workin', and we both knowed it weren't workin', we might as well just stop with it."

"The prison is small," Rick said. "There's not a lot of room to breathe here."

"But it's easier to breathe if you don't got a big ass weight on your shoulders," Daryl said. "I don't know what the hell you want from me. End your marriage or keep it going, but that's got to be between the two of you. You know what's going on. You know whether or not it can be fixed—or even if you want it fixed. You got to handle that yourself."

"We're all crammed in here so tight these days—I can't even imagine what everyone would say if we tried to create some kind of new order about divorces."

"Maybe that's your problem," Daryl said. "You've already spent too much time worryin' about what people's gonna say. At the end of the day, even your friends talk. We all do. You and me are talkin' right now about Lori. It's gonna happen anyway, so you might as well make yourself as happy as you can." He shrugged his shoulders. "Whole damn thing could end tomorrow anyway."

"Ever the optimist," Rick said.

Daryl laughed to himself.

"I got a healthy dose of hope for the future," Daryl assured him. "I got a kid and one on the way, and I'm hopin' they both see good long lives. Kinda thinkin' about how much I'd prob'ly like bein' a granddaddy. But I know better than to let my mind run too wild. A certain amount of being realistic never ruined anyone's life."

"Are you really going to throw Carol a baby shower?" Rick asked after a second, directing his attention to Daryl's spoils and ignoring the opportunity to talk about the fact that their lives could change dramatically at any moment.

Daryl smiled to himself and nodded.

"It ain't gonna be no big thing," he said. "I just—wanna give her something. I wanna celebrate with her. If you ain't seen it yet, I got her a ring, too. She said yes."

"Like she was ever going to say anything else," Rick responded.

"Hey—she mighta decided that marriage was too damn much an' run when she saw the ring," Daryl offered.

"Congratulations," Rick said, not even entertaining the possibility that Carol might have said "no" to Daryl's proposal. "I hadn't seen the ring."

"And I feel like a bit of a dick sayin' somethin' about it when you're tellin' me that it's anything but good with you," Daryl said.

"Not that you didn't know it already," Rick said. Daryl chose not respond to that. Rick hummed at him. "I don't begrudge you any happiness in the world, Daryl. And I'm happy for you. I'm happy for Carol, too. You two are good together."

"We're gonna ask Hershel to marry us," Daryl said. "Maybe—have a little ceremony or somethin' if anybody wants to be there."

Rick smiled and reached to squeeze Daryl's shoulder affectionately.

"I wouldn't miss it, and I'm sure nobody else would either," Rick said. "You need a hand taking this inside?"

"T was supposed to be helpin'," Daryl said. "After that last load, though, I got a feeling he's left me. This is the last that I'm takin', but the rest has to be moved to storage so Glenn an' Maggie can use the truck when they get ready to go back to the area they found."

"I'll help you get it cleared," Rick said.

"Won't Lori wanna go through it?" Daryl asked.

"She can go through storage," Rick offered. "Just like everybody else."