After leaving Hershel's farm, learning about our fates should we die with our brains intact, and Dad declaring himself the unopposed leader we had to keep moving. And boy did we move.
Scavenging and searching for Dad's elusive place of safety for us, we did nothing but move. Food became scarce, we all became conditioned for the harsh realities that this new world leveled on us.
Carol, no longer with her asshole husband haunting her every move and without Sofia to soften her, came out of the shell that surrounded her from the first moment I'd met her. She threw herself into learning how to shoot-both bullets and arrows (I may have insisted she learn bow first, seeing as crossbow was 'cheating'). She came along in hand to hand, since knives and arrows were quieter and didn't draw the bastards out, it became necessary to insist we all learn to do more than just shoot. She grew and soaked in the very harshness that I'd once cloaked myself in. Hershel, seeing that she needed and wanted more, began teaching her to assist him with the doctoring that we were all bound to need. Especially Lori.
Lori's pregnancy was progressing as normally as possible given our world. She and Dad were still prickly toward one another. I feared that, in the entire mess of our new lives, they were losing sight of who they were as a couple, as my parents.
Carl, my little brother, became more dedicated than Carol at learning to survive. The look I'd seen on his face when he told Dad that Randall should die, grew as did the coldness I felt circling around him. His only light appeared to be Beth, Hershel's younger daughter, as innocent as any of us could hope to be.
When winter bore down on us, it was almost crippling in its cold and we felt lucky to have found storage containers to use as a home. I felt it was prophetic. We were in storage, all our hopes and dreams, all the optimism and plans we had for the future were being locked away. Why not do the same to our bodies?
Every time we moved, it was the same. Daryl scouting ahead. Dad and Carl covering our retreat, and me in the middle maintaining peace and keeping Lori safe and as comfortable as possible. It was nowhere safe enough. And comfort? Is that a joke?
When we managed to stay somewhere more than one night, and even on those single nights, Daryl and I would fight for privacy. Any illusion we could make of being alone, we took advantage of. Our first stolen night came far too long after we left the farm, but it was well worth it. Finding peace together became our balm for the rest of the time. The fear that we both felt, the constant need to put out fires of discontent be it from lack of food or a question of Dad's sanity would fall away, with as many clothes as we allowed ourselves to remove, and when we joined, our world felt right. It was never long enough. Never peaceful enough.
And the day that both Lori and Dad wished wouldn't happen came. The day that our group found out that Lori's baby might be Shane's. I heard the whispers, I felt the looks. It didn't matter. And I made sure that every single person knew that. Lori was the only mother I'd known. Dad was the only father that I could ever wish to have. It didn't fucking matter who put the baby inside her, it was MY sibling. That was the ONLY thing that mattered.
If anything good could have been said about those months on the road, then knowing that Daryl and Dad grew closer. They became almost symbiotic in how they moved through deserted towns, through houses we searched for supplies in, with how they kept the rest of us safe. I was a little surprised when Lori noticed. I thought that she was numb to the world around her, with the coldness Carl and Dad seemed to radiate.
"I think Daryl's growing on your daddy, Jessi." She was smiling, watching the two of them study a map with some of the others. I'd stepped away from most of the planning early on, preferring to keep myself busy taking care of the others.
I smiled at the two of them, heads together, talking about our next moves. "Yeah," I knew my tone was wistful because I was thinking about how our lives could have been. "I have to say, it's a little weird." I felt her turn her attention to me. "I mean, would they be this close if the world hadn't gone to shit?"
Lori reached out and held my hand in hers. "If you'd chosen Daryl in that life, eventually I think they would have come to at least a sort of peace." She squeezed my hand. "A person, even your dad, would have to be legally blind to not see how much he loves you."
The elusive safe place: a fucking prison. I would have scoffed, but I reconsidered when I gave it a thought. The walls would be pretty fucking difficult to breach. It looked like a maximum security institution, which meant weapons. And if the world went to the crapper fast enough, there should be at least a partial stockpile of supplies.
Of course, since it was hard to get into, it was also a mess to get out of, hence the overabundance of the dead. Hearing Dad shout out orders to the rest, mine being keeping Lori safe at the fence, I thought perhaps it was going to be fucking impossible. Right up until we were watching our group sitting around a campfire, Beth and Maggie singing sweetly, and Daryl and I watching from high above the front gate.
"Well, Dixon, I guess we found the place." I whispered, leaning back against his chest.
I felt him snort. "We found the outside of it, I guess." I sighed and his arms tightened around me. "Ain't gonna be easy to get inside, funny, spent most my life tryin' to stay outta penitentiaries. Now gonna be fightin' to get inside one."
I turned in his arms and smiled up at him. "Yeah, but I bet you didn't think you'd get to take your girl inside with you back then." I raised an eyebrow and got his chuckle in return.
"Naw, didn't think I'd get to do that." He kissed me and we fell into the simple peace we yearned for, even if we couldn't go further than that where we stood.
"Y'all are doing such a great job of guarding us," Carol's voice called up to us with a giggle. "Not sure the dangers are in your mouths, but you never know."
I grinned down at her. "You know what Carol? I might have to keep watching all damn night, just to make sure!" Her chuckle rang up to us. She called us down to have dinner, and sighing I agreed. "Rather stay up here with just the two of us all night, Daryl Dixon, but I have a feeling we're being summoned."
Getting inside the walls was a nightmare. Never thought I'd see a walker wearing riot gear and bullet proof everything, but here we were. Once the dead assholes were taken care of, and we got inside, there were more undead fuckers. I was so fucking tired by the time we cleared the cell block that the mere thought of a cheap, uncomfortable mattress nearly made me scream. I had other duties though. I had to make sure that Lori had a real check up with Hershel.
Hearing the woman who had acted as my mother since I was too young to articulate my thoughts say that she feared her own baby dying and becoming a walker was heartbreaking. Dear God, I had to get her and Dad to sit down and fucking come to terms with their issues. Her fear of having a walker inside her, of dying and becoming one herself during childbirth nearly choked me. But hearing her ask, no demand, that Hershel take her out if that happens shocked me to tell her I'd do it. Anything to give her some form of peace. Anything to make her stop talking about something so gruesome.
After Lori's check-up, Carl stayed with the ladies while Dad and the guys went to clear as much of the prison as they could. Of course we couldn't have good luck in that. More fucking dead. More fucking problems. And now Hershel was unconscious, and had only one leg, because he was bitten. Dad was taking a chance, trying amputation instead of death for a bite. As I watched Maggie and Beth taking care of their father, I couldn't help but wonder if anything would ever go right and well again.
