AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
We have a little time jump which is explained in the chapter.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"Soph…Sophia…come 'ere," Daryl said.
Sophia left off playing with the cars she was rolling across the bathroom floor to come to where he was working, fixing pipes that had busted from a previous year's freeze. For the past couple of months, they'd been working steadily toward equipping the prison with solar energy—among other things—and very soon they'd be ready to take the showers for a test run. Among many other odd jobs that Daryl had held down for short stints of time in his life, he had worked with plumbing. He joked that he knew only enough to be dangerous, but he still knew more than most of the people that had ended up at either the prison or Woodbury.
In fact, Daryl would finish working on the plumbing at the prison before he took a short trip to Woodbury to help teach some of their people how to handle simple plumbing problems. They had to prepare for the winter, after all, and busted plumbing was always a possibility as temperatures dropped.
"Hi, Daddy," Sophia said as she reached him.
"Hi, Soph," Daryl said. "You still gonna help me?"
"I help, Daddy!" She declared happily.
"Gimme that wrench then, will you?" He asked. He pointed toward his tools that were just barely out of reach. He could go for them, but that would require that he get up and Sophia was a good helper when she wanted to be.
Sophia trotted over to his tools and held up an item for his inspection. He shook his head.
"Not that one," Daryl said. "Wrench, Soph. The one looks like this." He drew a poor rendition of a wrench in the air and Sophia furrowed her brows at him with the same expression he'd seen on Carol's face a million times when she working out a problem he'd presented her with. She selected another tool—this time a screwdriver—and held it up. Daryl shook his head and she picked up another. This time it was the wrench, and he praised her profusely before waving her over.
She gladly brought him the wrench, but as he wrapped his fingers around the tool, she traded the tool for his hand. She caught his hand in hers, holding it tightly in a double-fisted grip.
"Oh!" She declared loudly enough that the sound echoed around the empty bathroom. "Oh, Daddy! Ouch! Ouch, Daddy!"
Daryl jumped, nearly snatching her off her feet for the hard hold that she had on his hand, to sit up. He thought, at first, that something was wrong with her. He thought that something had suddenly hurt her. He expected to sit up and find a snake or something of the like that he would have to beat to death with a wrench before he figured out how to make Sophia feel better.
But he realized, as soon as he'd sat up and she'd stumbled around still holding onto his hand, that it wasn't her own "ouch" that worried her. It was Daryl's.
The dried blood on his fingers was from an accident that had happened earlier that day. He'd busted his knuckles pretty good, and when he flexed his fingers, the scabs still cracked and oozed a little. His daughter, now that he was settled on his ass and she wasn't being snatched around anymore, cradled his hand against her chest in the same manner she might use to hold her baby or a bunny she was being entrusted to snuggle under her Papa Hershel's watchful eye.
"Oh—ouch, Daddy," she declared, delicately brushing her fingers over his fingers. "Ouch—I got it. I got it, Daddy. I kiss it. Don't worry. I kiss it."
"Aaack!" Daryl commanded, snatching his hand back when Sophia lowered her head to make good on her promise and kiss his wounds better. "Don't put'cha damn mouth on that, Sophia! Nasty. Daddy's hands is nasty!"
She clutched his hand for dear life. He'd have to take her off her feet to win his hand back from her grasp. She looked angry. Offended. It was exactly the same expression that Carol gave him whenever he tried to stop her from doing something she intended to do because he didn't want her to get hurt. He'd seen in it from her just the day before when he'd insisted that she not go up the ladder in the storage room because her center of gravity seemed to be shifting at least a little and she hadn't yet mastered the change in her body—and he was sure it would kill him if she fell, even though she might come out of it nearly unhurt.
"I fix it!" Sophia barked at him in the same way he'd barked at her. Everything on her face was drawn up in anger and frustration. "I'ma kiss it better!"
"It ain't a boo boo you can kiss better, Sophia," Daryl argued. "It's busted knuckles. Daddy busted his knuckles."
Sophia looked like this was a reasonable explanation. She held hard to his hand, refusing to relinquish it, but she stopped trying to kiss it for a moment.
"You bust you knuckles?" She asked, garbling the last word to the point that he wouldn't have understood her without the context of what he'd just said.
"I busted my knuckles," Daryl said. "Hit 'em on somethin'. Hard. Now they sore."
"Ouch," Sophia said mournfully.
"It's OK," Daryl promised her. "Don't hurt. Not really. I'm OK."
"You OK, Daddy?" Sophia asked.
"I'm OK," he assured her again.
"I'ma kiss it better, OK?" Sophia said. It wasn't much of a question since she nodded her head as she asked it. Daryl bit the inside of his mouth.
"You your Mama's damn child, you know that?" Daryl asked. Sophia stared at him, unperturbed. She had heard this before, and she wasn't the slightest bit offended by it, if she understood it at all. "Just like she spit your ass out. You know that?" Daryl said with a laugh. "Don't neither one of you listen to nothin' I say that you don't got a mind to hear. My hand is nasty, Sophia. Gross. Nasty."
Sophia nodded her understanding rather sincerely.
"I kiss it better," she informed him. He tugged at it and she stumbled forward. She looked angry at him, for just a split second, for nearly dropping her to her knees.
"Don't kiss my hand, Sophia. I don't want you gettin' germs."
"Germs?" Sophia asked.
"Germs," Daryl confirmed. "I don't want you gettin' sick or nothin'. Here—you wanna—kiss it better? You wanna make Daddy feel better?"
Sophia nodded her head. Daryl smiled to himself. At least his daughter was someone who cared enough about him that she wanted to make him feel better—and not even dried blood and dirt was going to deter her from her self-appointed mission.
"Then give me a kiss on the cheek," Daryl said. "Right here." He gestured with the hand she wasn't holding.
"That'a make you better?" Sophia asked.
Daryl didn't point out to her, again, that he wasn't suffering half as much as she seemed to believe he was suffering. He simply nodded his head. She was satisfied with his offering and she leaned and gave him a kiss—much wetter than he expected—on the face.
"You better?" She asked.
"All better," Daryl offered. "Go play with your cars, OK? I'll tell you if I need somethin' else. You just go play with your cars."
"OK, Daddy," Sophia agreed.
She trotted back to her cars and Daryl watched her for a second before returning to his work. In watching her, he noticed that they weren't alone.
"You comin' all the way in or you ain't?" Daryl asked.
Merle laughed in the hallway and pushed the door the rest of the way open. It was cracked open with a brick, but Daryl had seen Merle's shadow extending into the room.
"Creepy as fuck hangin' around out there without comin' in," Daryl said, teasing his brother. He gave up his work for a moment and crawled toward the place where he'd left his cigarettes and lighter on the floor. When Merle came in the bathroom, Sophia looked at him, but she returned quickly to her cars. She was accustomed to Merle at this point. She would allow him to hold her, and she would sometimes request his attention. She no longer felt the need to keep an eye on him when he was in her presence. She no longer felt, either, the need to protect her Daddy from him in case strangers turned out to be less than pleasant.
She was comfortable with Merle, but Daryl wasn't always certain that he could say the same for his brother's comfort in the presence of children. He was trying, but Merle never seemed quite sure what to do with the Sophia and Judith.
Merle sat down on the bench in the communal shower room and, with relatively little struggle, especially given that he had only one hand, lit a cigarette for himself to join Daryl in a smoke break. Merle was dirty, himself, suggesting that he'd been hard at work. He'd been doing a lot of the work outside the prison where they'd been putting up new fences to expand the amount of land they had where they could move freely.
"Ain't wanted to interrupt your lil' girl time or whatever," Merle said.
Daryl smiled to himself.
"You wouldn'ta interrupted nothin' but life with Soph," Daryl said. "Go back to your cars," he said, when Sophia turned at her name. She did.
"Saw your Mouse outside haulin' laundry," Merle said. "With Andrea. Shouldn't she be out there with them?"
Daryl shrugged his shoulders.
"Sometimes she's out there with them. Sometimes she's in here with me. I like for her to be where she wants to be. Besides—it's good she's learnin' things."
"She's a girl," Merle pointed out.
"You don't fuckin' say," Daryl mused. "All these nights I been givin' her baths an' I never realized. I'm glad you come along to point that out to me, Merle. Otherwise I mighta just been thinkin' her dick fell off an' I threw it out with the dirty ass bathwater."
"Smart ass," Merle said. "I just meant she'd do better to learn—you know—girl shit."
"Carol does damn near everything around this prison an' then some," Daryl said. "By that argument, Merle, I reckon just about anything is girl shit. Besides—we decided we don't want Sophia feelin' like she's limited to scrubbin' people's drawers an' cookin' food. She can hunt the food if she wants to."
"Your Mouse is lookin' right plump," Merle mused, clearly deciding to change the subject—at least slightly.
Daryl smiled to himself.
"Woke up a couple days ago an' it was like—where the hell'd that come from? She's still cryin' about it sometimes, but she's calmin' down."
"Prob'ly don't ever go back to what the hell she was again," Merle said. "I heard havin' a kid'll ruin a body."
Daryl rolled his eyes at his brother, not that he expected Merle to notice.
"Well she had Sophia an' I ain't had no complaints," Daryl said. "I guess I'm not gonna care too damn much when she has this one. But—if I catch your ass sayin' that shit where she can hear you? I'll knock you out. She's heard enough of that shit in her life an' I don't want you bein' just another asshole she's gotta deal with. Besides—the damn hens around this prison say too much shit anyway. Don't need you joinin' in."
Merle hummed to himself.
"Never figured you'd end up bein' the family man, lil' brother," Merle mused. He held his hands up. "I won't offend your woman. Not even if she gets so damn fat we can't squeeze her ass through the doors."
"Widen the fuckin' doors," Daryl said. "That's all the hell I can tell you. And lie about why you doin' it just so she don't get her feelin's hurt."
Merle laughed.
"I hear ya, brother," Merle offered. "How damn long 'fore we got these showers workin'? I'm gettin' sick of bathin' outta buckets or washin' my naked ass in that in cold ass creek water."
"Ty says less than a week," Daryl said. "We blockin' off all the other shower rooms. Keep this bathroom goin' right."
"I'm about ready to christen this shit," Merle said. "First night these showers is open—you just go ahead an' figure I want last call on the showers."
"Last call? Figured you mighta wanted first call."
"Last call, lil' brother," Merle said. "And when you hear the howlin' comin' outta here? You just tell every damn body it ain't nothin' but the sound of your brother doin' a little damn plumbin'. 'Cause I'ma be layin' some damn pipe like the assholes around here ain't never heard before."
"My damn daughter's right there, Merle," Daryl offered.
Merle laughed and stood up from the bench. He dramatically stretched his back before he shuffled back toward the door to, presumably, head back out to continue his work on the fences.
"Don't you worry, lil' brother. I know how the hell to talk to kids. Real damn good at it. An' she don't know shit except her ole Uncle Merle's real good in the plumbin' business. Just like her ole man, I'd say, from the look of things 'round this place."