Daryl is doing that thing where he just sits in his chair and stares silently into the fireplace. He's been doing it for almost an hour since he put Herhsey to bed. He's not cleaning his rifle or waxing the strings on his bow or reading a motorcycle manual or anything. He's just sitting and staring and…waiting. For her.

Carol shuffles her completed responses into the manila folder, walks over to his arm chair, and asks, "You got room?"

"Mhmhm."

She curls onto his lap and he wraps his arms around her.

"What's on the fire?" she asks. "60 Minutes?"

"What?" he mutters.

"It's like you were watching T.V." She can imagine him in the old world, lounging on the couch of a cabin or trailer or extended stay hotel in his wanderings with Merle, just staring at the television. Although 60 Minutes would not be the show she would imagine him watching. "What was your favorite T.V. show in the old world?"

"Gunsmoke."

"You're not that old. I'm not even that old."

"Reruns. Used to watch a lot of old westerns."

"Yeah. What did you like about them?"

"'S always bad guys. 'N 's always good guys. 'N ya always knew which was which." He looks down at her in his lap. "Ya ready for bed?"

"I'm still a little keyed up from all those complaints from old lady Witherspoon. I'm not really tired."

"Yeah, but ya ready for bed?"

She smiles. "You want to get laid, don't you?"

"Been three nights," he reasons.

Their heads turn as the door opens. Henry clomps in and immediately looks abruptly away from them.

"It's okay," Carol assures him as she slides out of Daryl's lap. "You haven't interrupted anything." She settles in the wooden rocking chair nearest the fireplace, the one she used to rock Hershey back to sleep those first three months after Maggie died, when the then five-year-old would awake screaming in the middle of the night.

Even though she and Daryl have pulled apart, Henry concentrates fiercely on unlacing his boots for a while. He steps out of them, lines them up against the cabin wall, and finally looks at them.

"How was Jacob?" Carol asks. Jacob, who is eighteen now, is one of the hunters and Henry's best friend.

"He's moving into the dorms," Henry says. "And his parents are giving his old bedroom to that elderly couple from Oceanside."

"They're in their sixties!" Carol cries.

"Oh, well…they look eighty."

"Told ya," Daryl mutters.

"Well, I guess that means the last dorm room is taken, then, and we have no one to give your bedroom to…" Carol smiles. "So you have to stay here."

"The dorm room has bunk beds. I'm moving in with him. We agreed tonight."

Carol's smile fade. "Are you sure you - "

"- I'm sure," Henry interrupts. "I'm moving tomorrow."

"You have your own room - "

"- Carol." This time it's Daryl interrupting. He said her name sharply, but now his tone softens: "'S time, sweetheart."

Carol sighs. "Well, I'll help you pack when you get back from the hunt."

[*]

In the aftermath of love, Carol's heart beats hard inside her chest. She breathes in Daryl's scent – sweat and soap, earth and smoke – and kisses his bare shoulder before snuggling in. "Ten minutes of cuddling, please."

"Mhmhm." His sinewy arms encircle her.

They haven't lit the small bedroom fireplace – all of the bedrooms have one, and they vent through clay chimneys –so she appreciates the warmth of his embrace. Daryl began building this cabin for her and Henry ten months after they left the Kingdom for the Hilltop. Until then, Carol and Henry shared an RV, and Carol sometimes snuck into Daryl's tent at night to make love. When he told her he wanted to build a cabin for all of them, she took it as a sort of marriage proposal, as close to one as she was ever going to get, anyway.

Daryl worked under the guidance of the Hilltop's master carpenter and with the help of two of his apprentices. Daryl made Henry help, too, and the boy enjoyed the project so much that he began to talk of apprenticing himself to the carpenters. Daryl grumbled about him choosing the carpenters over the hunters, until Carol told him he had to be more supportive. So finally Daryl told Henry, "Buildin's just as important as huntin'. Do what the hell ya want. Just think ya'd make a damn good hunter is all."

"Yeah?" Henry asked. "That's all I really wanted to hear." And the next week, when his first and last school year at the Hilltop wrapped up, Henry formally apprenticed himself to Daryl.

It's strange, Carol thinks, how well they get along now, given that Daryl couldn't stand Henry for the first four months they lived at the Hilltop. Carol accused Daryl of jealousy, saying, "You're not ever going to be the only person in my world." Daryl replied, "Ain't jealous. 'S just he's a little shit, Carol." Carol went a bit mama bear on him for that comment, but she ultimately cooled and said, calmly, "Then help him be less of one."

Daryl's so quiet that Carol assumes he's fallen asleep, but when she raises her head to peer at him, he's just staring up at the shadowy patterns of starlight and darkness that scatter across the logs that form the ceiling.

"You okay?" she asks.

"Mhmhm." He raises his free hand – the one that's not on the small of her back – and gnaws on his thumbnail. It's amazing he still has a nail there. She waits for him to say what's on his mind, and he finally does: "When I said his daddy could run fast, Hershey…Thought of me first."

"You know," Carol says, "he's probably thought of you as his daddy for a while now."

"Maybe." Daryl lets his hand fall. "What he don't know is I got his daddy killed."

"He doesn't know that because that never happened. That wasn't your fault."

"Just 'cause Maggie forgave me don't mean – "

"- Maggie didn't forgive you," Carol says, "because she didn't blame you. She absolved you. Please tell me you accepted that absolution."

"Ain't that I feel guilty 'bout it anymore. 'S just…'M raisin' Glenn's boy. 'N those are damn big shoes to fill. 'Cause I ain't half the daddy Glenn would have been. Hell, he'd of made a fucking six-hundred-page scrapbook by now."

Carol chuckles. She kisses his shoulder. "You're an excellent daddy, Daryl. You raised Henry. And he's less of a little shit now, isn't he?"

Daryl snorts. "Well he ain't little anyhow."

"Taller than you now."

"Don't remind me. One day I'm gonna be old and slow enough he could kick my ass."

"One day?" Carol asks with a smile.

"Not today," he insists.

She lays her head back down against his shoulder. They grow quiet again, and beyond the fastened shutters of the window, she can hear the fall crickets singing song of love. Her thoughts weave their own twisted path down sad alleyways of yesteryear. "It's different for me," she says.

"'S differ'n?"

"Maggie died when Hershey was five. He still remembers her, and hopefully he always will. You may have gone from Uncle Daryl to daddy, but I think I may always be Aunt Carol to him." She sighs. "And I guess I'll always be just Carol to Henry."

"Yer Henry's mamma and ya damn well know it. Just 'cause he don't use the word don't mean he don't see ya that way. But he's ten when he met ya."

"I know he sees me that way," Carol admits. "But it's possible I'm never going to hear anyone call me mama again." She bites down hard on her bottom lip to try to keep the tears in, but it doesn't work. She sniffles instead, but that doesn't quite force them back.

"Hey, hey…" Daryl rolls to face her. He pulls her flush against his naked chest and tries to kiss the tears away. Eventually, he gives up and wipes them off with his thumb.

Carol bends her head and buries her face in the crook of his neck. When she's recovered herself, she pulls back, the tears still drying in streaks against her cheeks, and says, "I didn't even know I wanted a baby until we lost it."

Daryl's jaw clenches and his nostrils flare. They don't talk about that years-ago miscarriage, but she knows it affected him deeply.

It happened before the War with the Whispers, before Maggie died, before they applied to the Council to adopt Hershey. She didn't even know she was pregnant. Sure, she hadn't had a period in three months, but sometimes she went seven to ten weeks between them. She figured she was just starting menopause. And yes, she was gaining weight, but those were flush times, before the War, during a bountiful harvest. But then she started cramping terribly in the middle of the night. Her groaning woke Daryl. He insisted she go see Siddiq, and she miscarried in the clinic.

Daryl kept asking Siddiq, over and over, Hell's wrong with 'er? Hell is that?

Siddiq had to explain to him what had happened.

Now that Carol hasn't had a period in a year, there's no longer any chance of pregnancy, and she wouldn't want to get pregnant at this age anyway. But sometimes she still thinks about what might have been.

"Sorry," Daryl murmurs.

"For what?"

"That I wasn't there for ya. Way I should of been."

He got badly drunk that night and wandered off outside the gates of the Hilltop. She was terrified he'd never come back, and yet angry that he left, so angry, that she didn't go looking for him.

But he did come back. At sunrise, he crawled into the bed where she'd finally cried herself to sleep. She awoke at the feel of his cold leather vest pressed against her arm and at the pungent waft of the whiskey on his breath. He lay his head on her chest and wept.

"Neither of us handled it well."

"I love you, Carol," he whispers. "'N Hershey and Henry love you, too."

"I know." She pulls the quilt up to her neck and kisses his forehead. "But Henry's moving out."

"'S time."

"I know. But it's still too soon. He's moving tomorrow. It's so sudden." She rolls on her side and pushes back against him, spooning into the curve of his body.

Daryl settles his arm around her.

"Ten minutes of cuddling?" she asks again.

"Won't move until ya fall asleep."

"And if I don't?"

"Still won't move," he promises.

But she does fall asleep, there in the protective curve of his muscular arm, with her bare back pressed to the warmth of chest, and the sound of his gentle breathing in her ear.