AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
"Well?" Daryl asked when Carol had finally settled in beside him. For so little said, a great deal was said. Carol sighed and fitted herself against him so that he could comfortably hold her. He got the message without any further need for communication, and lovingly wrapped her in his arms.
"They're asleep. Or—at least, they're all in bed. That's the best I can do. I don't think too many people will sleep until they get back and we've got some more answers than what we've got right now about…well…about everything."
Daryl hummed and kissed Carol's forehead before he nuzzled his face against her. She closed her eyes and inhaled the comfort of it—the welcomed scratch of his stubble against her skin soothed her.
"How'd things go with you?" Carol asked.
"We moved the bodies back into the barn," Daryl said. "Closed it up. Everything's secure enough. Shouldn't be no animals that can get at them corpses before the sun's up and they're good and ready to bury 'em. You know—when Hershel gets back and they come down from the shock of losin' their son…their family…they might tell us all to leave. Just get the hell outta here. The rest of it be damned."
Carol didn't like the sound of that. She knew it to be true, and she knew they had no claim on any part of the farm, but it didn't mean that she wanted to leave what they'd found here to go back out onto the road and wander in search of something they could hopefully turn into what they'd already found here.
Carol knew, though, that Daryl was feeling the weight of the world on his own shoulders. He was feeling the weight of it all. If they were cast off the farm, they'd go back on the road. They'd be faced with the dangers they knew before. There would be Walkers, and hunger, and the million little dangers that came from travelling with a group of people who was stumbling their way through a world that none of them really knew how to navigate. Daryl would feel responsible for finding something suitable to build what they needed—and for building it before the winter threatened them. Daryl would feel the weight of taking care of them all, but especially of Carol, Andrea, and Sophia. Daryl didn't need Carol's own heavy feelings weighing down on his already overburdened shoulders. He needed her belief in him. Her trust. He needed her optimism or, at least, all of it that she could muster with such a heavy feeling in her belly.
"Dixons survive," she said. She didn't mean for the sigh to escape, but it slipped out before she could stop it entirely. "We make it, Daryl. And if that's what we have to do…"
"But you sound like you're kinda chokin' on them words, Carol," Daryl said with a quiet laugh. He hugged her gently, squeezing her to reassure or, perhaps, to reassure himself.
Carol hummed in response.
"Do you want me to be honest?"
"I never wanted anything different," Daryl said.
"It's safe here. I feel like we can rest. Really rest. I can sleep at night. I'm not constantly worried about Sophia, and Hershel can help Andrea when the baby comes. I don't know what I'm doing if I have to deliver a baby."
"But you'll figure it out. You figure everything out, when it matters to you. We'll figure it out. If we have to, and it comes to that. We'll just—figure shit out."
"We shouldn't have to," Carol said. "It isn't fair that we're punished for something Rick and Shane did. Something they had no business doing." Carol's stomach twisted and she closed her eyes at the uncomfortable sensation. "It was probably some kind of a pissing contest over Lori, and it's going to cost all of us—and maybe us even more than them. Just like everything else. What if something happens with Andrea, Daryl? With the pregnancy? If something happens, there could be nothing we could do to save her or the baby. We'd just—have to watch one or…or both of them…just die. Sophia would have to see that."
Carol had meant to hold it all together for Daryl. She'd meant to try to be an anchor for him in the storm. Instead, she'd actually surprised herself by crumbling, piece by piece, before she even realized it was going to fully come to pass. She felt surprised by her feelings and helpless against them.
Daryl shushed her to soothe her and hugged her tightly against him in the darkness, his hands trailing up and down her body and massaging a few knots out of her muscles.
"Don't think like that," he said, keeping his voice soft and low. "Don't you even think like that—not for a minute. Don't worry about all that right now. Don't worry about it at all. We'll figure it out. You and me—and Andrea. We always do. That's what the hell Dixons do. We figure our shit out together."
Carol sucked in a breath and let it out, feeling a little better wrapped in the comfort and safety of Daryl's arms. She knew Daryl was only a man and really couldn't promise that everything would be fine, but he still made her feel like he could.
"Do you want to cash in your raincheck?" Carol asked.
Daryl laughed quietly and squeezed her again.
"No, woman," he said. "It ain't raining, and I think I'd rather we just stayed like this for now."
Carol smiled to herself and closed her eyes. She couldn't argue with that—not at all.
111
"My wife would very much like to see the baby born here," Hershel said.
He wasn't looking at any of them. In fact, he'd hardly made eye contact with them all morning.
It had been a morning from hell, and Daryl had a headache that made it feel like his left eyeball might actually pound so hard that it found some damn way to shoot directly out of his eye socket. His only hope, really, at this point, was that, when his eyeball launched itself out of its socket and became a deadly projectile, it was aimed at Rick's dumb ass head.
Rick, Shane, and Hershel had returned sometime in the middle of the night. Daryl had heard their return, but he'd been too comfortable and too dedicated to sleep to bother waking up Carol and leaving the tent. Instead, he'd listened to the chaos outside the tent until he'd fallen asleep again, convincing himself that much of what he'd heard had been some kind of dreamed creation of his half-asleep imagination.
He was wrong, though, and he hadn't imagined a thing.
The three men had returned—which was a good thing, at least, in that they'd brought Hershel back safe and sound—but they'd brought someone with them. The someone in question was locked, currently, in another of the small storage barns on the property. The explanation for this that they'd all been given had been pretty limited because there was too much going on around the farm to allow too much time for explanation or discussion.
Hershel had led them to a bar in town. While they were there, and Hershel had been drinking and raving against the injustices done to his family on his own land, a group of apparently unsavory individuals had showed up. They said they had some place—apparently not too far away—and had said some other things that Rick and Shane both said made them uncomfortable. They'd decided to take Rick, Shane, and Hershel back with them—to force them to tell them where they might find their group and supplies—and a fight had broken out.
All the unsavory men had been killed—save one. This young man had ended up, somehow, impaling himself on an iron fence—an injury that wasn't fatal, given that he'd impaled himself through the leg. His screams, mixed with every other overly loud noise they'd been making in the area, drew a small herd of Walkers to the area.
For Daryl, that's where the story should have ended. For Daryl, the asshole impaled on the fence should have become a Walker shish kabob, and they should have driven off with the sounds of him keeping the damn mini-herd distracted growing ever fainter as they left the scene behind them. That's how Daryl would have handled this, but that was probably because Daryl was tired of bullshit and had enough people to take care of in his life. He didn't feel the need to burden himself with the troubles of anyone that wasn't his family or, at least, his somewhat adopted family.
And he didn't give a shit how an asshole went out in the world they were currently calling home—not when his brother had likely been murdered, torn apart and bleeding out from losing his hand, by a horde of those creatures, and nobody had so much as batted an eye. Not when he was responsible for his brother's widow and the last remaining earthly tie she had to her husband.
Daryl couldn't find two shit-covered fucks to rub together over how an asshole died in this world.
But Rick and Shane had pried this asshole's screaming, shit-stained ass off the fence, blindfolded him, and brought him right to the farm—right to what they were calling home; at least until Hershel threw all their asses back out onto the road. They'd stuffed him in a barn, and now they wanted to talk about what to do with him.
But that talk, in general, had to wait—because there was other shit to deal with. Other shit, of course, that had been stirred up by the very same assholes that had put the bleeding, sniveling snotbag in a barn.
Most of the group had helped with the funeral as much as they could. They had dug the graves, and they'd covered them over when the bodies were laid, as respectfully as they could be, to rest. They'd stood as solemnly as they possibly could while Hershel had nearly choked to death trying to speak words over his son's grave while his wife seemed on the edge of collapse and his daughters held each other and cried. It had been Daryl that had beaten on the door of the barn where the asshole was being held and had threatened his life if he so much as made a half a fucking peep while the funeral was going on.
Now, Hershel's girls had taken his wife upstairs to rest, and he was sitting in the living room addressing all of them. Daryl figured this was where he gave them their walking papers, told them all to go to hell and, more than likely, to take their newly acquired garbage with them.
"Josephine believes that—we have seen too much loss in this world. We have lost too much, and we know that others have lost too much. She believes that—this baby is a sign that God is not done with us. He hasn't turned his back on us. He doesn't want the world to die. Instead—like the olive branch after the great flood, he wants the world to live. To continue."
Lori snorted and drew everyone's attention—including Hershel's, even though he'd seemed very reluctant to look at any of them until now.
"I'm sorry," Lori said. "I am. I'm sorry. Only—it's not the Messiah or something like that. It's the offspring of a…of a drug addict."
Daryl—and everyone else, really—was too tired to even respond to her. It didn't matter, anyway. Most people would only see Merle as a drug addict because they'd only known him as a drug addict. They weren't, really, to blame for that. They would never know how hard he'd fought against his own demons, or how low it had brought him to lose the fight time and time again. They would never know how much he'd truly loved the woman that carried nothing more than the offspring of a drug addict.
"And yet the Lord loves even the weakest and most unworthy among us," Hershel mused. He looked toward Andrea, then, looking several years older than he'd even looked the day before. "Jo would very much like to see the baby born here. And I would very much like to assist in bringing the little one into the world as safely as I possibly can."
Andrea hugged herself. She didn't even look pregnant—not really. She looked no different, really, than when she put on a few pounds here or there, which she often did, throughout the year. Her weight had fluctuated often because of stress, and her life had always given her a great deal of stress to navigate. Still, the little weight she carried made her look healthier, and Daryl thought that maybe there was a certain pronouncement to the belly that she caressed absentmindedly nearly all the time that her hands weren't busy or otherwise occupied.
"I would like that," she said. "I know—I can speak for everyone, but especially my family, when I say that we'd love to stay through the winter, like we planned. We'd help, just like we said we would. The baby could have a chance to get strong enough to travel before we had to look for…something."
Hershel sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out. He nodded his head somewhat absently.
"I didn't want you to stay at first. Make no mistake about that. Rick and Shane—the pulling of the trigger makes no difference to me. I consider you both guilty. I didn't want you here, on my land, in my home. But—Jo did say that we had already lost him. That what we had left was a shell, and we know that now, even though we didn't know it when we closed that lock the first time. That he wasn't at peace. Now, I can only hope that he's home. Where he should be. Please make no mistake—that does not make what you did any more forgivable in my eyes, but I have to forgive so that I, too, may be forgiven. My Jo has her heart set on seeing this baby come into this world. She has her heart set on seeing, with her own eyes, God's promise that mankind—that the world—will go on with His love and blessing. She's lost enough. She won't lose that, too. Not on my account. If you want to stay, you may stay. All of you. But I ask you, please, to never meddle in the affairs of my family again."
Everyone accepted Hershel's decree with nothing more than some nods, solemn hums, and low spoken thanks. The moment felt, somehow, like it wouldn't allow for more. Considering his words said and his decree made—the whole business put to rest—Hershel stood up.
"I am tired," he said. "And I would like to rest with my wife. You know the chores that need to be carried out on the farm, and I would appreciate you seeing that they're done." He directed those words to Carol. She offered him a tight-lipped smile and nodded. He looked toward Rick and Shane. He might have chosen to do his best to forgive them because of his beliefs, but Daryl could see a flickering ember of anger still burning there. "I don't wish to be involved in the resolution of the situation you created," Hershel said. "I don't wish to even know how it is resolved. But I do expect it to be resolved before the sun sets."
Without another word, Hershel turned and left the room. Nobody moved until they heard him mounting the steps, the old wood creaking slightly under his weight. Then, with the same solemn silence that they'd guarded while he spoke, everyone broke and started to move toward their tasks for the day.