AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"Is Sophia OK?" Carol asked, her voice barely coming out as more than breath because she didn't want Sophia to overhear, she didn't want to wake anyone else, and she didn't want to do anything to alert any creatures that may be ambling close outside of their camp.
They had learned, from observing the creatures—because Carol couldn't think of the monsters as humans at all, that they were able to hear, and they followed sound. They turned their heads, this way and that, and they fixated on objects, but they all believed that they could only see shapes and light. It was possible to confuse them by standing still and even partially hiding or blending in with the surroundings. They could absolutely smell the living, however. There was no doubt about that. And their sense of smell could, sometimes, be the most dangerous sense they had.
So far, though, the tin can warning system around their camp was working well. Each morning, when they went out to hunt, Daryl and Merle killed all the Walkers in the immediate area of the camp. Usually there were no more than four bunched together—because they were almost always together and seemed to travel in bunches, packs or, according to Glenn, even in herds—in the vicinity. Around midday, Shane would take someone with him to clear the Walkers, again, and to make sure the camp was safe. Just before sunset, two other volunteers would walk the outside perimeter of the camp and, finally, just before they settled in for the night, all of them checked the tin can warning system for anything that might have damaged it during the day and, while they did that, they assured themselves that none of the Walkers had gotten close to the camp.
Still, at night they were particularly careful to keep their noise level low. A few sounds escaped tents—scattered conversations and some undeniable sounds of sex which Carol, unable to shelter her daughter in a world like this, and not wanting to build a castle of lies, had explained to Sophia as sounds of a special kind of grown-up "love" between the married men and women of the camp. Sophia was a child that was pleased with love, especially since she'd seen so little of it early in her life, and so she accepted that entirely and, remarkably, with a great deal less question than Carol had expected.
Tonight, Carol didn't want to wake anyone, and she certainly didn't want to draw the Walkers to the camp. After such a stressful and exhausting day, the only thing she wanted was to sit and enjoy the quiet a little before bed.
Daryl laughed to himself as he pulled the folding chair close to Carol and sat next to her. He reached his hand over and took hers gently in his.
"You an' her are two peas in a damned pod, you know that?" He asked.
Carol couldn't help but laugh to herself at his tone of voice.
"What do you mean?" Carol asked.
"Whole reason she wanted me to tuck her in was so she could get me in there an' make me pinky promise that you was gonna be OK," Daryl said.
"Did you do it?" Carol asked.
"Did I do what?" Daryl asked, helping himself to one of his cigarettes and taking back his hand only long enough to light it.
"Pinky promise her that I was going to be OK?" Carol asked.
Daryl sucked in a breath and let it out with something of a sigh. He was tired, too. He had to be exhausted. Physically, he'd overexerted himself. He'd hunted that morning, spent most of the afternoon digging Ed's grave after he'd killed him, and then had put himself to normal camp chores like he hadn't killed Ed in the heat of the day. His eyes had been red-rimmed for much of the day, and Carol could see it was all weighing heavily on him, but she didn't push him one way or another—and she wasn't going to deny him this quiet time of sitting with her. She brushed her thumb over the skin of his hand and squeezed it gently, more than aware of the blisters that dotted his palms and fingers from heavy digging—six foot down in hard soil was hard for all of them. He hummed in satisfaction over the gentle touch.
"I did the only thing I could do in good faith," Daryl said. "I pinky promised her that I would do everything I could to make sure that you an' her both was OK."
"You take good care of us," Carol assured him. They were simple words, but she used them often. She meant them and, beyond that, Daryl appreciated them. Carol enjoyed giving him anything she could to make him happy because he truly appreciated everything and, of course, because he really did take such good care of both she and Sophia.
"I think she's actually gonna sleep tonight," Daryl offered, not responding to Carol's words with more than just a light squeeze of her fingers that were locked in his. She didn't need more than that.
"Yeah?" Carol asked. Daryl hummed.
"She was actually pretty much out when I come out here," Daryl said. "About couldn't keep her eyes open to hear me tell her what she wanted to hear."
Carol smiled to herself. She felt the split in her lip pull and tear a little. She felt the dampness on her lower lip from the slow seeping of a little blood. It would do that for days. She didn't care, though. Not really. It was the last time that Ed would ever split her lip, and that thought numbed most of the inconvenient pain of recovering from what he'd done.
Carol moved her chair over as close to Daryl's as she could get it, returned her hand to his, and leaned her head against his shoulder. He kneaded her hand in his as a silent show of approval for the affection.
"She's tired, Daryl," Carol said softly. "We're both tired. Exhausted. It's been a long fight with Ed—her whole life. Even before she was born and, maybe, she has some kind of sense memory that I was fighting for her—against him—even when she was still just forming…growing inside me."
"That shit never shoulda fuckin' been so," Daryl muttered.
Carol smiled to herself and squeezed his fingers, this time, to draw him back to her and to the moment at hand—to keep him from going too deep into his feelings about Ed or anyone else that had no business treating women the way that they did. Daryl's feelings about abuse, after all, ran very deep and were very personal. Carol never minded hearing him, and she never minded helping him out of his darkness, but she didn't want him to even have to feel that—not tonight. Tonight was about enjoying the peace that was currently around them.
"My point is that, we're both exhausted. Ed wore us out. But now he's gone and Sophia can sleep, for the first time in her whole life, without worrying—what's going to happen with Ed. She doesn't have to worry, anymore, about if he's ever going to hurt me again. She doesn't have to worry about if he's going to try to get to her or do something to hurt our family. She can just—sleep. And she can do it knowing that you're here, keeping watch over both of us." Carol sighed. "I can sleep, too. God—Daryl. I can sleep tonight and know—he's never going to touch her again."
"Ain't gonna touch you either," Daryl said. Now he was playing with her fingers while her hand rested on his leg. He'd flipped her hand over and he tapped his fingertip against each of hers, letting his finger dance back and forth across all her fingertips like he was playing some kind of instrument. When Daryl had a lot on his mind—or even just one thing that he was really chewing over—he fidgeted. His fingers needed to keep busy. Sometimes, it seemed that he needed his fingers to keep as busy as his mind was, and so they ran quite quickly through whatever task he picked up. For now, he was satisfied with toying with Carol's fingers, and she appreciated the gesture more than she ever should for something so simple.
"No," Carol said. "He won't. Never again."
"I'm still sorry he did what he did," Daryl said.
"I know you are," Carol said. "But it doesn't matter. It's done. And he's paid for it. And he'll never do it again. You know, that's the first time that I ever felt like—Ed really paid for it. Even those couple of times he went to jail, I never felt like it was worth it. I just knew he'd come back with a vengeance."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"Well, he ain't comin' back this time. It was a small ass target, but I got his brain. And we planted his ass deep—six feet, and maybe seven. Buried him face down, too, just like Merle wanted. Even if he was to come back outta some kinda fuckin' mutation of this virus? His dumb ass couldn't find the way out of that hole we put him in."
Carol laughed to herself at the image, despite the fact that something in her gut tried to tell her that it was improper to laugh at the dead—even the dead that she wasn't sorry to see gone.
"You didn't really, did you?"
"Bigger'n shit," Daryl assured her. The glow of his cigarette was the only thing that distinguished any part of him from any other part in the darkness. He was little more than more solid darkness against the darkness that wrapped around them. The moon and the stars lit up the camp a little, but not much. It was a cloudy night. Carol leaned her head against him once more, nuzzling him a little, and stayed that way for a few moments with the two of them simply enjoying the quiet together.
It was Daryl that broke the silence first.
"I was scared she'd be scared of me, ya know? Seein' what I done an' all that blood," Daryl mused quietly.
"She's seen blood before," Carol said. "But I understand what you mean."
"She weren't upset at all," Daryl said, his tone still making it clear that he was doing little more than thinking out loud and inviting Carol to join him. "Not about him, at least. She was plenty upset, but it didn't seem like she reserved any of it for him. It was all about you and—were you hurt or not?"
"Maybe he's used up any care she had for him," Carol offered. "Maybe—now she just—doesn't have any left. He made it so that she couldn't love him. I don't think we should hold it against her that she honored his wishes."
"Oh—I weren't sayin' that," Daryl said. "Weren't sayin' none of that. Hell—I don't fault her if she don't never think of him again with any kind of decent thought. I guess I was just…noticing. She did like your idea, though, about goin' to clear traps first thing in the morning."
Carol smiled to herself.
"That was your brother's idea, actually," Carol said. "Some kind of rite of passage. Something to take her all the way from being a Peletier to being a Dixon."
"I like that," Daryl said. "Leave the name of Peletier fuckin' buried in the dirt out here where it ought to be. Ain't nobody here but us Dixons."
"Nobody here but us Dixons," Carol mused. "And one Harrison. Annoying as she can be sometimes, we can't leave Amy all alone. No matter how much—no matter how much Andrea's parents used her to hurt Andrea? It was never Amy's fault, and Andrea loves her sister, despite it all."
"Hell," Daryl mused, "maybe we'll just figure out some kinda fuckin' rite of passage for her ass, too. Looks like Merle an' Andrea's gonna be stuck draggin' her along forever anyway."
"What do you think we do, Daryl?" Carol asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Do we just live here forever? In our—pop-up camp at the quarry?" Carol asked.
"No," Daryl said.
"What do you think we do?" Carol repeated.
"Hell if I know right now," Daryl said. "But I'm gonna know. We gonna figure it out. It's just—early, right now. Too soon. We don't know if we go back or—if there's anything left to go back too. That lil' Asian boy's been makin' the runs."
"Glenn," Carol reminded him. "He's Korean."
"We'll start makin' bigger runs with him," Daryl said, ignoring her input and clarification. "Get more of us goin'. It'll be safer that way, anyway. We can bring more back at once. Saves us trips among the dead."
"Isn't that still short term?" Carol asked. "We haven't seen another living person, outside of this camp, since that night outside of Atlanta. Right? Glenn says it looks like there's nobody left but the dead. Can that be true? And what do we do when—everything runs out?"
"Before it gets to that, we'll figure somethin' out," Daryl said. "A way to grow our own food. Build somethin' worth havin'. Here or…or even somewhere better. I'ma take care of you and Sophia, though. Promise. We gonna figure it all out. It's still early right now, though, and we just don't know too damn much."
Carol sucked in a breath. The night was nice. It wasn't too hot. Daryl's hand wasn't sweaty in hers, despite the fact that he'd returned to holding it.
His words were soothing. They calmed the worries that rolled around in Carol's gut. It was early, and they had no idea who was out there—or what was out there. They didn't know, yet, what the world around them might become. Still, Carol believed Daryl because he'd never lied to her before. He'd always kept his promise, since the very first time he'd made it, to take care of her and Sophia. She had every reason to believe that he would continue to keep that promise. Dixons, he'd taught her, had a code by which they lived their lives—at least, they had one that he and Merle had created and sworn to fight, against everything that sometimes went wrong inside themselves, to live in accordance with it.
Dixons took care of each other.
Carol might not know what the future looked like for all of them, but she could rest. She could believe that there was a future. They just had to feel it out and, more than likely, they had to roll with a couple of proverbial punches.
But Dixons were good at that, too.
"I know you'll take care of us," Carol said. "And we'll take care of you."
"Always do, woman," Daryl offered.
Carol smiled to herself. The sting of her split lip almost felt welcome—a burning reminder of the warm feeling of happiness that replaced the horror she'd once known. The horror—her past—gave her the wound. Her present happiness, though, gave her the sting as the wound healed. She'd take the sting.
"I know something else," she said. "It might be early to figure everything out, but it's late for Dixons that have rabbit traps to clean in the morning and little Dixons to initiate fully into the clan."
"You right," Daryl said, standing up and offering to help Carol up. She accepted his assistance. Her body was stiff. "Come on, Carol. Let's get some sleep."
She gladly entered the tent at his urging, undressed quickly while he did the same, down to what they would wear for sleeping, and slipped under the sleeping bag they used to cover themselves. She closed her eyes as he wrapped himself around her, soothed some of his concerns about her shoulder, and drifted off to a deep and restful sleep, listening to the sounds of Daryl's even breathing near her ear.