AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
As always, I feel like I have to ask forgiveness for a lot of things.
Many extra characters may be a little OOC here since I'm shaping them to fit this particular story. Also, please excuse the fact that, as always, we've got a lot of set up to do as we go along.
There are warnings for discussion of domestic violence here. I think those warnings always come with these characters, but I'm letting you know, just in case, that there's discussion of it here. There are some mentions of Ed's other leanings toward Sophia, as well, though nothing graphic (or any more graphic than the show).
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Merle was off the bike and directing traffic by the time that Daryl parked the truck and got out with Amy. Amy headed straight in the direction of her older sister. Daryl went straight to the car that pulled up directly behind his truck, and he wrapped Carol in his arms as soon as she was out of the vehicle. After a quick hug, he let her go to accept the running hug that Sophia offered him as she circled around the car.
"You alright?" Daryl asked. "Everything alright?"
"We're fine," Carol assured him, wrapping her arms around Sophia as soon as the girl moved away from Daryl. "But—Daryl—what are we going to do?"
She slipped her hands over Sophia's ears. Sophia tolerated the action, and Daryl understood it.
Carol needed to protect Sophia. Maybe that was instinct in every mother—and certainly it existed in every good mother—but Daryl thought that, maybe, it was a stronger instinct in Carol because of everything that she and Sophia had been through.
Sophia was not Daryl's biological daughter, even though she was calling him Daddy because it made her feel good—and it made him feel good, too. He'd been in the process of trying to legally adopt her. Just days before, he'd talked to their lawyer—a guy that had worked with Andrea—about the red tape that they had to trudge through for Sophia to fully become his and for her biological father to lose every last right that he had to the girl.
Looking around him, Daryl got the feeling that this—whatever this might be— was going to slow things down more than red tape ever could.
Daryl and Carol had only been married about six months—barely any time to most people. They'd only dated about a year before marrying. Some people might even say that they had rushed into things. Maybe that's what it had looked like to the outside world. What most people wouldn't know, if they didn't know them, was that Carol was everything that Daryl had ever wanted, and everything that he thought he'd never have. She was everything that he never thought he deserved. Just having her in his life, for the past year and a half, had made him a better man than he'd ever thought he could be. Since meeting Carol—just since the first time she'd agreed to have coffee with him—he'd held down a steady job at the same shop, and he'd already gotten two raises.
That job was gone now, at least until the world got itself turned right-side up again, but at least he knew that he could do it. He could make it all the way to management somewhere, if that's what he wanted. Maybe he'd own his own shop someday.
What people didn't know about Carol was that she'd practically been visibly shaking when she'd agreed to have that cup of coffee with him at Andrea's urging. What they couldn't see, now, was that she'd still been wearing the sling, the bruises on her face, the remnants of the busted lip, and the cut above her eyebrow, stitched up with black thread, that was a scar now, when Daryl had first met her for coffee.
The asshole she'd been married to had put her in the hospital more than once—and that was just when it was too bad for her to fix her injuries herself or to hide them.
It had been the last time that he'd put her in the hospital that she'd asked for help—begged for it. It had been that time she'd told the police that she'd actively fought Ed. She'd sought his violence—she'd instigated the last fight. He'd been drunk, and Sophia had been sleeping, and he'd expressed too much interest in the little girl. Carol had put herself, physically, between the man and his daughter many times to keep him from beating Sophia. She'd taken every blow meant for the girl. But when Ed's interest had started to turn to something else, Carol was ready to kill her husband or die trying. She'd told the police as much. If they weren't willing to do anything to really help save her, maybe they'd do something to save him.
They'd helped her get out, that time, in a much more real way than before—when they'd only offered her the names of some shelters and a few escape routes that had always ended with her ending up, one way or another, back with Ed.
She'd been terrified to have that cup of coffee with Daryl. She'd been terrified, thanks to having her self-esteem almost ground away to nothing by Ed, that Daryl might not approve of her after he saw her. She'd been terrified that he might run away from a woman with so much baggage and a ten-year-old daughter. She'd been terrified that he might think that his sister-in-law had lost her mind for even suggesting that he have coffee with her at all.
But more than any of that, she'd been terrified that he would show her that all men were the same.
He accepted her baggage, though, and he showed her his own. He'd shown Carol some of the heaviest things he carried around in his heart and his mind, and he'd showed her everything very early in their relationship.
By their third date, Daryl had let her see the angry red scars on his back that reminded him of his old man. He hid those scars from most everyone. He'd even worn a shirt every time he'd fucked a woman, until he'd met Carol. After their third date, he'd let Carol see them. Then, he'd let her touch them. He still remembered how his whole body had felt to feel her tenderly caressing them for the very first time. He could recall the surprise he'd felt over the tenderness of the kisses that she'd placed there.
Most people would have called her a whore, maybe, for sleeping with Daryl that night, after only three dates. She'd cried about it, afterwards, lamenting that her ex-husband had told her often she was a whore, even though he'd been the only man she'd been with before Daryl.
Daryl didn't call her things like that. He called her things that made her smile and, more often than not, made her laugh. Sometimes, just for the hell of seeing her caught off guard and giving him that little laugh she had, he'd look up new things to call her: Seductress, Temptress, Siren, Vixen, Enchantress. And, if she was in the right mood, she'd come right back at him with her own playful list of ridiculous names to make Daryl's cheeks burn hot and to make him press her to stop, even though they both knew he never wanted her to stop: Snookums, Snuggle Bear, Stud Muffin, Sugarbutt, Pookie.
Carol had already been through hell. She deserved all the good she could get, and Daryl was doing his best to give it to her each day that he was granted to spend with her.
Sophia, too, had been through her own hell. She didn't know about her father's perverted appetites, but she had spoken with the lawyer, and the judge, about simply wanting her father—because she didn't call him Daddy when he wasn't around to force it—to go away and disappear from her life completely. She was tired of living with the nightmares that he'd given her.
Sophia had seen her mother beaten.
Times when Carol hadn't hidden her way quickly enough, and times when she'd snuck down to see what was going on, she'd seen her father beat her mother like he wanted to kill her. She'd heard her mother cry for help, and mercy, from anyone and anything that could offer it. She'd feared losing her mother, and she'd feared what might happen to her if her mother ever lost the fight entirely. She'd seen her mother care for her own injuries, and she'd seen her mother's crumpled body when she was too bad off to care for herself.
Sophia knew how to dial 911 without any hesitation, and she knew how to talk to dispatchers without the customary anxiety of small children. And she'd confided in Daryl about how most of her nightmares revolved around what had happened to her mother.
Daryl had sworn to Sophia—on a chocolate syrup oath in her little treehouse—that he'd never hurt Carol like that, and he'd spend his whole life trying to make sure that nobody hurt her or Sophia again. He'd promised Sophia, too, that even if the courts couldn't make her a legal Dixon, because sometimes the law just wasn't fair, the chocolate syrup oath was good enough to make her a full-fledged Dixon forever—all she ever had to do was to follow the Dixon code that Daryl and his brother had created, for themselves, the day they'd walked away from identifying their old man's body and had accepted that they were the last of the old Dixons, and the first of the new.
Family was everything to a Dixon.
Even a year and a half after escaping their living hell, Carol needed to protect Sophia at all times. Daryl busted the girl out, every now and again, to let her live a little dangerously—but just a little dangerously—and, during those times, he stressed to her how important it was to remember, with more and more welcomed distance between her and her past each day, just how much she loved and appreciated her mother. Sometimes it was important to let her mother take care of her. She'd almost bought that right with her life, after all, several times over—and her life was a price she wouldn't hesitate to pay if the situation called for it.
So, Sophia tolerated that Carol covered her ears over with her hands. She rolled her eyes, jokingly, at Daryl and Daryl bit the inside of his mouth so that he wouldn't laugh at her and give her away to her mother.
"Government ain't gonna look for us up here," Daryl said. "They ain't gonna worry about a couple of us bustin' loose and goin' rogue. They're blowin' up Atlanta, right where they told everybody to go, because I guess they're wipin' out the majority of the population."
"But why?"
Daryl shrugged his shoulders.
"Control the plague or whatever this is? Lessen the numbers?" Daryl said. "I got no more information than what you got, Carol. I swear that I ain't hidin' nothing from you. All I know is that it's not likely they're going to comb the area looking for stragglers. So, we're gonna camp here. Give the dust some time to settle. Then, when it's been a little bit, we'll see what there is to see. Check shit out."
"Are we going to be OK, here?" Carol asked.
Daryl put his hands on either side of her face. Stepping to the side, so that he didn't crush Sophia between them, he moved close enough to Carol to press his lips to her forehead. When he looked at her again, she was still staring at him with concern on her features.
"You know us," Daryl said. "If anybody's gonna survive whatever the hell this is? It's Dixons. You know that, right? Huh? What the hell I tell you?"
Carol smiled, perhaps in spite of herself.
"Can't nobody kill a Dixon except a Dixon," Carol said.
Daryl took advantage of her lightened mood to sneak a quick kiss—little more than a peck—and he continued to hold her face so that she would focus on him instead of becoming distracted by anything taking place around them as the cars started to arrive and park around the area. He saw what his brother was doing, now with the help of the police officer. They were surrounding the area with the vehicles. They were securing the camp with cars to begin with. They'd talk about the rest of the security soon. Daryl was sure of that.
"Listen," Daryl said, brushing Carol's face with his thumb, "we're gonna be alright. Those quarries got water and fish. This area's got good huntin'. You know that. We're so damn far back here that most of the damn state of Georgia don't even remember this is back here. We're gonna be alright here. Just—need your help settin' up camp. I know you're good at that. Good at—makin' chicken salad outta chicken shit."
Carol smiled at him. She nodded her head.
"OK," she said. "I can help set up tents. I'll take Andrea to get wood for fires."
She dropped her hands from Sophia's ears and Sophia stepped away, just far enough to keep out of Carol's grasp.
"Can I go see the water with Amy?" Sophia asked, pointing after Andrea's younger sister.
"You stay close to Amy or Andrea," Carol said. "And you don't go close to the edge of that water, Sophia. Not right now. Not—until me or your Daddy's with you."
"Don't worry," Sophia called, already trotting toward Amy. "I won't."
"Come on," Daryl said, catching Carol's arm affectionately and tugging her toward Merle. "Let's go—see what he's got in mind."
"Who are all these people?" Carol asked, watching as people started milling about, spilling out of their vehicles.
"People just tryin' to survive," Daryl offered. "Like us. Saw us leaving, and I guess they figured they didn't have a thing to lose."
"Do we have enough food for all this?" Carol asked.
"Don't matter," Daryl said. "We'll figure it out. See who everybody is. What they got to offer. We'll figure it all out."
They were just passing by the police officer—still in uniform—that had moved some distance away from Merle to work out some logistics of parking on one side while Merle had gone to help arrange cars on the other side of their designated camp area, when Daryl recognized—all at once and like a bucket of ice water had been thrown on him—who the officer was talking to.
Instinctively, Daryl pulled Carol closer to him.
"Son of a bitch," Daryl said. "Change of plans. I'ma go talk to Merle. You go distract Sophia."
"Why?" Carol asked. She hadn't noticed. She'd been to focused on taking in everything that was happening and keeping her eye on Merle. "What is it?"
"Ed Peletier," Daryl said. "The fuckin' devil himself's done popped up in our damned camp. Don't you worry about it. Just go get Sophia and stay with Andrea. We'll figure out how the hell to handle it."