AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Sophia rode happily on Daryl's shoulders and held onto the top of his head. Daryl held onto her ankles to be sure that she didn't slip, but he'd jokingly told Carol that he was going to stop letting her cut his hair so that Sophia could have something to steer him by while she rode along.

Daryl had gotten ingredients for daddycakes, even though he'd told Sophia that he wouldn't, and he'd made enough to feed the whole of his family—inviting Merle and Andrea downstairs to eat, as well. After everyone had eaten their fill, they split up for each to do the things that most interested them for the day.

Sophia, with a decent nap under her belt and a full belly, was leaps and bounds more agreeable than she had been, so Daryl figured it was perfectly safe for them to venture out and really explore their new home.

To begin with, they simply took a little walk around Woodbury. The place had changed even since Merle and Andrea had been there. The death of the Governor had opened some things up. There were new people that had come in, and there had apparently been a new distribution of resources.

From what Daryl could gather—from conversations he'd had with Tyreese and the other Woodbury residents that had come to the prison—Woodbury was really struggling with the whole idea of a governing body. They needed someone to make some decisions and decide how things would be handled, but they naturally feared someone like the Governor rising to power once more. As a result, ti seemed they were almost always in a constant state of flux when it came to how they were handling things and planned to handle them in the future. Daryl could easily understand that. Their own group had their struggles with needing leadership, but with also finding that every leader had some negative character traits that they brought to the table.

Over time, Daryl felt that his group had settled on something akin to a council, where most people had a voice if they wanted one and the final decision had to be at least somewhat agreed upon, but things could still be rocky at times. He was sure that Woodbury, over time, would find their rhythm as well.

There was no money system in Woodbury, much like in their group. The Governor had originally overseen the distribution of goods, in some way, but that had greatly favored him and his preferred people. Now it was a system where, theoretically, everyone had everything they wanted or needed—just like at the prison—all they had to do was ask for it. Daryl was sure, though, that Woodbury probably saw the effects of some greedy people, and he was curious to see how that was handled.

While they were out, they saw the areas where there would be gardens established that they would work to get going in the very near future. They would also build greenhouses in the area for keeping up a year-round food supply. What was there presently was pretty pathetic, but Daryl had no doubt that they could help. They would build new fences—expand the town to swallow up more of the farmland that surrounded it. They would hopefully find more livestock and take better care of the few animals that had already been gathered and penned as best as it seemed the people of Woodbury had been able to do in a hurry.

They saw the power grid, and they got an opportunity to speak briefly with a somewhat nervous and nerdy man who really had little interest in having an in-depth conversation at the moment—his focus being on something to do with the power grid—but who mentioned that he would love to have a conversation with them, at some point, about all that they'd survived since the turn. In exchange, he promised them whatever information they may want about the Governor's reign, since he claimed to have been something like the Governor's right-hand man in a scientific approach to dealing with Walkers.

The man had been a little much to tolerate for long, and Daryl had welcomed Carol's quick thinking to point out that Sophia was liable to get restless if they stayed in one place too long. The man hadn't seemed to mind getting back to his work on the grid at all, so Daryl assumed he might be relieved not to have to come up with an excuse to end the conversation himself.

They stopped at the food storage or pantry—Daryl wasn't sure what to call it—and Carol picked out some apples from a basket full of somewhat fresh apples that the woman who worked there was trying to give away. She explained that the apples came from some of their trees that they'd transplanted the year before, but these were the bruised and ugly ones that tended not to be as readily snatched up by the general population as the earlier and more attractive apples had been. Carol took quite a few of them, and Daryl already knew they were likely to be turned into applesauce for a treat for Sophia.

Finally, Daryl steered Carol toward the place that interested him.

When Merle and Andrea had been in Woodbury before, the place had one doctor in a little clinic that they built. The assisting nurses and so-called staff had been people with any semblance of a medical or healing background that were anxious to work under pretty protected circumstances—a doctor, it seemed, could just about get a free ride in this world, as long as they were willing to work.

Since Merle and Andrea had been gone, though, and since the Governor was no longer killing almost all the new people they found, first to take their goods and skipping asking questions altogether, it seemed that the community had actually brought in a few more doctors and people with assorted medical training in their backgrounds.

As soon as Carol saw the makeshift sign hanging outside the building with all the flair of the shingles of days far in the past, she looked at Daryl with an expression of absolute betrayal. Her expression practically took the air out of Daryl's lungs.

"As long as we're here…" Daryl said. Carol shook her head at him. He didn't know if she looked angry or ready to cry. "Someone can have a look at Sophia."

"Hi, Daddy!" Sophia called, drumming on Daryl's head at the mention of her name.

"Hi, Sophia," Daryl said.

"Down," Sophia suggested. "I get down, please. Please, Daddy?"

Daryl shifted and, catching the little girl under the arms, lifted her up and over his head. Then, he lowered her to the ground. He rested her feet on the ground and gave her a second to get steady on her feet before he removed his hands.

"Stay right here, Sophia," Carol warned. "Don't walk off. Stay right here."

Sophia looked at Carol and nodded her understanding. She did take a few steps, but they weren't enough to alarm either one of them as soon as it became evident that her interest was in the grass that lined the sidewalk. Sophia found a small yellow flower, and she plucked it.

"It ain't a bad idea to just get someone to look at her," Daryl said.

"There's nothing wrong with her!" Carol said.

"I didn't say there was," Daryl said. "But I mean—what's it gonna hurt?"

"What's the purpose?" Carol asked.

"Peace of mind?"

"I'm peaceful now," Carol said.

Daryl laughed to himself.

"You look about as far from peaceful as you can get," Daryl said. "I don't know if you can feel it, but there's a vein in your forehead that looks like it's damn near gonna explode, Carol, if you don't take a couple breaths."

"I feel like—you tricked me," Carol said.

"I ain't tricked you," Daryl said. "How'd I trick you? Your eyes have been open the whole time we been walkin'."

"You wanted me to come here, so you brought me here."

"I did want you to come here," Daryl said. "And you said you'd come. Remember? Deal was—Hershel's still delivering the baby. Now he can choose to have assistance if he wants, that's up to him. And the baby's gettin' born in our bed, where you can be comfortable. Not on some table in the basement of this here building. That was the agreement."

"Here, Mama!" Sophia said. She brought the flower. "I pick this for you. It's pretty, Mama. You can have it."

Carol did her best to replace her sour expression with a smile for Sophia. It was almost a grimace.

"Thank you, sweetheart," Carol said, accepting the little flower. "It's so pretty!"

"Put it in your hair, Mama!" Sophia demanded.

Not having quite enough hair—and not having the hair she did have fashioned in a way where she might keep it in place—for that to be possible, Carol tucked the flower behind her ear.

"Is that OK, sweetheart?" She asked. Sophia smiled at her, very clearly pleased by it.

"You pretty, Mama," Sophia informed her.

"Thank you, baby," Carol said.

Her smile seemed more genuine and she clearly relaxed as she interacted with Sophia. After a moment, Sophia turned back to the grassy area, content to go on a search for whatever kind of creepy crawly friend she might be able to unearth.

"The vein ain't stickin' out so bad," Daryl offered. "Does that mean you don't want to kill me?"

Carol frowned. She wasn't angry this time. She didn't even look betrayed. She just looked sad and, honestly, that tore at Daryl's chest worse than the thought of some unsoothable anger had.

"I thought we were going to look at furniture," Carol said. "A chair for the living room. And baby things, Daryl. I thought we were going to see if—there was some cloth for me to make a few things for the baby."

"We are," Daryl assured her. "We are. We're still gonna do all of that! This is on our way, though, to the storage place. I figure we can pop in. Meet the doctors that work here. See if you just—like one of 'em, Carol. Maybe let 'em look Sophia over just to know she's perfect—to know what we already know. And then, if you ain't too against it, we let 'em look you over, too. Make sure that everything's OK with you and with the baby."

Carol was watching Sophia, not that there was really too much to watch. She was bent over, bottom up in the air, examining the grass. From the looks of it, she might have found something to watch.

When Carol looked at Daryl, she was still frowning.

"But what if it's not all OK, Daryl?" Carol asked.

"What?" Daryl asked.

"What if it's not OK? What if—there's something wrong with me or the baby? Then what?"

"What do you mean? You think there's somethin' wrong? Somethin' you haven't told me about or—told Hershel about?"

"No," Carol said. "No—not like that. I'm not keeping secrets from you or anything. I just mean—there are a lot of possibilities, Daryl. All kinds of things can happen with babies. And—I worry about that. It keeps me up at night sometimes. I wake up and—I can hardly breathe. I just feel like I'm suffocating because of some nightmare I had. I had them with Sophia, too, sometimes."

"Then they don't mean nothing," Daryl said. "They're just nightmares. You're thinking about things and…you fall asleep with your mind chewin' on worry. We all know what that's like. If they bother you, we can tell the doctor about 'em. Maybe there's something they can do. Something they know we can do. But they're bad dreams, Carol. That's all. Just worry and it comes out in your dreams."

"But what if they come true?" Carol asked. "Daryl—I don't want to go in there and find out that…that something's wrong with our baby. I don't want to find out that…it isn't alive. Or it isn't going to make it. Or anything else horrible. I don't want to have to make some decision about what to do."

Daryl's stomach churned. He knew about possibilities—bad ones and good ones. Hershel had discussed them in some detail with him so that he could be prepared. He had figured that he could be better at supporting Carol if he were prepared himself.

"Is that why you didn't wanna come see somebody?" Daryl asked. "Because you were worried about all that?"

"Don't laugh at me," Carol warned.

"I swear on everything I'm not," Daryl assured her. "You're worried. I get it. I have nightmares that give me the cold sweats that somethin' happens to you or Sophia. Carol—our baby's alive. I just felt it movin' around not two hours ago, remember." She smiled in spite of herself and rubbed her hand over her small bump. "That's all that really matters, right? That it's alive and OK. Any damn thing else ain't nothin' but a thing and we'll get through it. But we know it's alive. OK? So why don't we just—go and see what they might say? If there was somethin' wrong, it would be wrong whether or not they told us about it, right?"

"I guess—I just wanted to keep this as long as I could," Carol said. She gestured widely. "You and me, Sophia, our baby…our beautiful, happy little family. I wanted to keep that as long as I could. And I didn't want them to—break it."

Daryl laughed nervously to himself. He grabbed Carol's arms and squeezed them. It was meant to comfort him as much as it was meant to comfort her.

"Hey—I don't give a damn what nobody says about anything, or what happens, Carol. No matter what? Nothin's gonna break us. Nothing. Not a damn thing. We're unbreakable. Our family can't be broke. You, me, and Sophia? That's a sure damn thing." He shook his head at her. "And I'm not willing to give up on our youngest, neither, so you can calm down about that, too."

She smiled softly at him and pulled loose enough to genuinely wrap her arms around him. He hugged her back and held her until Sophia, noticing that there was love to be had, come over to ask to be held so that she might be in the middle of the love that was being doled out. Daryl scooped her up and let her get her fill of hugs in the middle of the sidewalk. Then, he wiped at Carol's face with his hand.

"You better?" He asked.

"I'm better," she said.

"Can we just check it out? If you hate it, we leave."

Carol nodded.

"But, Daryl?" He hummed at her. "If everything's alright…"

"It's gonna be great." He broke in.

"I still want—to look at baby things."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"Just as soon as we're done," Daryl said. "And this time, you'll be able to do it without being nervous, because you'll know that everything's perfect. Come on—let's go check it out."