AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl sat on the edge of their bed, holding Sophia against him as she slept drooling down his shoulder. He watched Carol and practically chewed a chunk out of his cheek because he refused to laugh at her.
"You packin' like I'm takin' you to be executed," Daryl offered quietly.
"I feel a little like that," Carol said.
"You wanna talk to me about it?" Daryl asked. Carol shook her head. He gave her another few minutes of forlornly folding their clothes and placing them into the bags. "Prison's cold in the winter," he offered. "Bet we get a place with a fireplace in Woodbury."
Carol shrugged her shoulders. It was bad. It was worse than he'd suspected earlier in the day when he'd seen Andrea hugging her to offer her comfort—or at least that's what he'd assumed she was doing. Carol had kept on doing what she had to do, but it was clear that she'd been blue since Daryl had come to her with the news that they wanted to go ahead with the exchange and move to Woodbury for a couple of months to get the people of Woodbury started. They'd work on figuring out where they'd start their gardens, they'd work on building greenhouses, and they'd work on getting everything ready to start planting as soon as winter was done.
In addition, they'd exchange knowledge of a few basic skills, and they'd promote a little more brotherhood and goodwill between the two sister communities.
From what he could tell, there was nothing wrong with Carol other than the fact that she was pregnant and, according to Hershel, might be practically drowning in hormones and emotions. She didn't seem physically hurt in any way. She'd continued her work all day long without complaint and without interference from her feelings beyond a slightly sad expression that she'd worn for most of the day. She'd cared for Sophia as she normally would and the little girl had noticed nothing out of the ordinary—she'd even convinced her mother to sacrifice a little of her dignity and to share the metal bathtub with her so that they could play together in the water. It was a treat that Sophia loved, but Carol always reserved for very rare occasions.
Now that Sophia had been nursed and was absolutely lost to the world in a deep sleep, Carol could let her feelings loose a little. Daryl didn't mind being the one to experience them with her.
"Fireplace could be kinda nice," Daryl offered. "Romantic." Carol shrugged her shoulders again and continued folding the clothes. Daryl thought he saw her chin quiver. He stood up because, suddenly, he could barely breathe. He stood up because he needed to take care of one thing at a time. He'd never been good at handling more than one thing at a time. He carried Sophia quickly and quietly to her little bed—making sure not to make eye contact with anyone. He made sure not to say a word to anyone. He didn't want to be distracted. He lowered the sleeping girl into her little pen and tucked her in with her favorite fuzzy blanket. He gave her her lamb and her baby for good measure. He told her goodnight, though she was far away and never heard him.
And then he returned to the cell to handle his wife and his other child—a child he could only really imagine at this point, but which he enjoyed dreaming of as being every bit as real and consequential as Sophia.
As soon as Daryl slipped back under the blanket that gave them some semblance of privacy, he reached out a hand and caught Carol's shoulder.
"You are killin' me, woman," he said. He half wanted to laugh at everything, and he half felt like his chest was actually going to crack in two. "I can't stand you lookin' like you're so damned sad. If you don't wanna go with me, then you can stay here."
"I don't want to not be where you are," Carol said.
"Then I won't go," Daryl said. "I'll stay here an' we'll pretend I never even suggested that we could go to Woodbury. You can put all that right back where you packed it from and we'll go to bed and to hell with everyone else and everything else that's happenin' outside this cell. That make you feel better?"
Carol laughed halfheartedly to herself, her chest barely bouncing with the insincere laughter.
"They came here to help," Carol said. "Because of them we've got solar power. We'll be able to get even more as we keep working. We have some idea of how to keep it working and fix it if it breaks. They'll come back if we need them. And we've got more people here. It's only fair that—we hold up our end of the bargain. We told them we'd exchange skills with them, too."
"So, everyone else can still do that."
"You're good at just about everything," Carol said. "Plumbing, electricity, construction, even what we might call engineering. They need you. Besides—you can teach them how to hunt so they don't starve to death all winter."
"If it's gonna mean breakin' your heart like this," Daryl said, "I'd let the whole damn lot of 'em starve, Carol."
Carol's chin quivered again as her sadness returned and Daryl's chest ached in response. He pulled her with him to the bed and she sat down next to him and leaned into him.
"This is our home," Carol said.
Daryl laughed to himself.
"It's a prison cell, though," Daryl said. "We gonna have an apartment at Woodbury. A whole place for us an' Sophia. You might like it there ten times better than you like it here. You might never wanna come back here. Might just wanna keep it as a winter home or somethin'. Stay there half the year."
"But this is our home," Carol said. She rested her head on Daryl's shoulder. "Our first home together. After the little tent. After the bedroom that Hershel let us use. This is our first home. I just keep thinking about that. And this is where our baby was conceived. Right here. In this bed."
"The prison ain't goin' nowhere," Daryl assured her, looping his arm over her shoulder. "This cell ain't goin' nowhere. This is ours. Them two we claimed for Sophia and the baby? They belong to us, too. Nobody's touchin' our cells and nothin' we got in 'em. I'ma chain 'em shut, just in case. Got padlocks. You and me gonna have the keys. Everything locked up."
"I'm not worried about us being robbed," Carol said with a laugh. "I don't care that much, really, about things. Anything I can't stand the idea of parting with I'm packing, really. It's just the space…it's the memories."
"Memories ain't goin' nowhere either," Daryl assured her. "I'ma lock them up safe with the stuff. Right here."
He tapped his chest and Carol leaned up just enough to smile at him. It was the first smile he'd seen since he'd told her they were going to Woodbury, so he was happy to see it. He kissed her and she nipped at his lip.
"A lot can happen in a couple of months," Carol said. "Something could happen to the baby and I'd be all the way in Woodbury."
"And they got a doctor there," Daryl said. "A real one. Like not a vet like Hershel. This one worked in a hospital and everything."
"I'm comfortable with Hershel," Carol said. "So comfortable that—I'm not even sure I care if this other person's more qualified. If something terrible were going to happen? I'd want it to be Hershel that told me…not some stranger."
Daryl dropped his hand and rubbed her belly. She would complain that she felt huge—like a whale. In reality, the evidence of their child was nothing more than what Daryl might have described as a tight little bump. He wouldn't have paid it any attention, really, if he hadn't been practically fixated on its growth because he knew that it marked the growth of their little one. He tickled her belly, gently, with his fingertips, and Carol laughed and pulled away from him as the tickling clearly made her muscles jump.
"I try to get you a romantic place with a fireplace to keep as your winter house," Daryl said, "and you repay me by dreamin' up horrible things to happen to my kid?" Carol laughed quietly. The tickling and affection elevated her mood, so Daryl continued to gently rub his fingers over her belly. He stole a kiss from her, too, when he thought she might be in the giving mood. "Why does somethin' horrible have to happen to our baby 'cause we're gonna spend some time in Woodbury?"
"I didn't mean that it had to," Carol said. "God—I hope it doesn't."
"Shhh," Daryl offered before she could worry herself even more with something that was entirely hypothetical. "It won't. Don't even say it or think it anymore."
"I just meant—Hershel…"
"Is goin' with us," Daryl said. Carol's shoulders somewhat sagged with the news. Daryl laughed to himself at her visible relief. "Hershel is goin' with us. Hell—if it makes you feel better, we'll ask for an apartment big enough for all of us. Let him stay with us since none of his kids is goin' with him. Keep him from stayin' alone. He wants to study some with the doc they got there."
"I want Hershel to deliver the baby," Carol said.
"Absolutely," Daryl said. "Whether it comes here or there or—wherever the fuck we are, Hershel's gonna deliver it as long as he's there to do it or we can get him there to do it. Carol we won't be gone that long, though. If you don't want."
"I wanted the baby to be born here," Carol said. "I thought it would be born right here. In our bed. In the bed it was conceived in."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"But maybe that was before we knew there was somethin' better," Daryl said. "Maybe you'll like that place. If the baby comes when it's still cool, might be better it's born there. Won't need to be so bundled up."
Carol glared at him. Daryl realized there was plenty of time for negotiations and reconsidering. There was plenty of time for her to change her mind. Right now, he was doing pretty well at working her toward going to Woodbury and going there happily—instead of looking like she was headed toward execution.
There was no need to push his luck too far.
"We're not that far away," Daryl said. "Hell—me, Merle, and Andrea walked from Woodbury here and it didn't even take half a day. Drivin' we're here in like thirty minutes and that's not tearin' up the damned road. Even if we're there when the baby comes, we can make it back here if it means that much to you. Hershel, too. We'll just haul him back with us when we come."
"You wouldn't mind?" Carol asked, a little amusement creeping into her voice.
"You're gonna be doin' the ridiculously fuckin' hard work of bringin' the kid into the world," Daryl said. "You get to pick where that happens and how that happens, as long as it's in our power to control it. You get to have it the way you want it. And I don't think that I'm going to have any room to complain about how the hell you want to go about pushin' our kid outta your body."
"That wasn't how Ed felt about it at all," Carol offered.
"Good damn thing I'm not Ed," Daryl said. "It would be awkward as hell to whip my own ass and then, when I killed myself for bein' an asshole, I'd miss everything in our life. And I'd fuckin' hate that, because I don't wanna miss any of this."
Carol laughed to herself.
"I don't know what to pack," she said. "I just—keep putting things in bags."
Daryl's stomach flipped. That was it. It was the moment that she made the turn. She wasn't going to be sad about this. She was all in now. The sadness had actually left her features. She'd said what she needed to say and she'd gotten the comfort that she needed to get.
They would go where they needed to go, do what they needed to do, and face this new little adventure together.
"They got furniture," Daryl said. "All of that. So just the stuff you gonna need or want. But we close enough that we can come back if you forget somethin'. It ain't nothin' but a thing. And, like I said, I'ma lock up our cells. Everything's gonna be right here when we come back. Just like we left it."
Carol smiled at him.
"I'll leave the bed," she said. "But I'm bringing the pillows and this blanket."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Fine with me, woman," he said. "But—what do you say we leave off packin' tonight? We ain't leavin' in the morning. What if we were just to crawl up under this blanket, instead of packin' it right now, and—maybe think about re-enacting when this little one was conceived, since it's been on your mind so much lately?"
Carol smiled at him very sincerely. She laughed to herself and raised her eyebrows at him.
"I can't think of any other way I'd rather spend this evening," she offered.