A/N: Now I feel clairvoyant for mentioning Enid and Alden were in a relationship earlier in this story…I didn't expect it to actually happen in the show! But alas not much else from this story will probably happen in the show…we are way into AU territory here. Thank you to all those who are taking time to comment. Reviews are the fuel of fanfic writers.
[*]
"Chick town?" Michonne asks as she curls her bare feet underneath herself on one end of the couch. "Are you shitting me?"
"I wish I was," Carol says from the other end of the couch, where she forms a similar pose. She sips her tequila.
"Well, you've got to shut that nonsense down!" Michonne insists. She raises her glass in Carol's direction, and the clear liquid sloshes up. "Win by a landslide!"
The door to Hershey's room, which he's sharing with R.C., creaks open. Daryl steps out and shuts it behind him. "I told 'em to quiet down," he reports. "Goin' to bed." He pauses on the wood floor outside their bedroom. "Ya comin'?"
Carol knows what that means. He wants sex. "Michonne's leaving in the morning," she reminds him. "And I didn't get to see her two weeks ago."
"Mhmhm. Well, 'nite." Daryl slips behind the door.
Michonne chuckles. "Am I keeping you from your wifely duties?"
"He's getting spoiled," Carol says, and they both laugh, and for a moment she's reminded of the early days at the quarry, when she and Andrea and Amy and Jacqui were laughing over the things they missed, before Ed ruined it all by hitting her.
She had friends before Ed, more than most people in this world would ever guess. But one by one she grew apart from them after high school, as some went off to college and some married and moved away, and what few remained in her small town - well, Ed made sure she was severed from them. She's made female friends here in Hilltop, too, of a sort – Rosita and Tara – but those feel more like working relationships. Enid feels almost like a niece to her. She wonders sometimes if this world is too intense for casual friendships – if everyone is either family or foe, fellow warrior or enemy, someone to be loved or to be left behind when the need arises.
Michonne is the closest thing to a female friend she has in this world. In the peace between the War with the Saviors and the War with the Whisperers, they finally began to really talk to each other for the first time. They bonded over their shared experience of their lost children Andre and Sophia, and over their shared experience of their adopted children Judith and Henry. Carol harbored some quiet jealousy that Michonne had been able to have another child of her own, but she also rejoiced in her friend's happiness.
"I'm so glad you came to visit," Carol tells her now.
"I am, too." The boys begin to murmur behind the closed door again. There are two giggles, and then a snort, and then a shhhhh! "So is R.C. And Judith had a great time shooting and knife throwing with Daryl after dinner. He must have worn her out. I can't believe she's already asleep." She raises her glass. "I should visit more often. Especially if I get booze like this!"
"Daryl says it was almost full when he found it. He took a swig and I'm sure he let Henry have one. Aaron and I had a shot or two, but otherwise it hasn't been touched." She raises her glass. "More for us!"
"I promise not to drink it all," Michonne assures her. "Although, Ezekiel's got me defending the water engineers all the way back to the Potomac, and it's a lot of work. The walkers have been migrating from Baltimore, I think. I haven't killed this many since the Whispers used to direct them toward us. I could use a drink." She takes another sip, which empties her glass, and Carol refills her. "Does Ezekiel quote Shakespeare in bed?"
"I told you," Carol points her glass at Michonne. "We are not comparing notes."
"What does Daryl say in bed? Anything? Or does he just grunt?"
Carol laughs.
"He talks dirty, doesn't he?"
"I'm not telling. But…" Carol smiles. "You might be surprised."
Michonne's eyes widen. "Sweet nothings? I knew it! It's always the ones you least suspect."
Carol laughs again. By the time they're done talking, the tequila bottle is about half empty, which means they've only had a few drinks each, but she's not used to drinking. It takes her two tries to turn the knob of the bedroom door, and she's uneasy on her feet when she enters.
She finds Daryl standing in his worn black boxers and muscle shirt and poking the fire to get it to burn better. She giggles, runs into the bed, and cries, "Ow!"
Daryl smiles – that smile she loves – closed lip, almost unnoticeable, but like a neon sign to her. "Ya liquored up?"
"I had a few."
"Mhmhm? Ya loose?"
"Why?" she asks as she turns down the quilt. "Do you intend to take advantage of me?"
"Ain't like I'd fight ya if you decided to throw yourself on me."
"I'm not sure I'm in a position to throw myself anywhere but in this bed." She climbs in and, feeling her head buzzing, rolls onto her back. "Ezekiel and Michonne are going to start dating."
"Zeke n' 'Chonne?" Daryl asks in disbelief.
"Why do you sound so surprised? Henry and I told you he had the hots for her."
Hershey and R.C.'s voices rise and fall in the bedroom next door, punctured by a boyish cackle.
"'S ridiculous."
"I thought you'd be happy. Now you can finally rest easy that he's not trying to get back together with me."
Daryl seems to consider that. He pokes the log. It rolls and the flames crackle, so he puts the iron back in the stand. He throws himself sideways on the bed, which shifts beneath his weight, and the room begins to spin a bit. Daryl puts a hand on the quilt at her waist and begins to tug it down.
Carol puts her hand over his and pulls the quilt back up. "Not tonight. The boys are still awake. They'll hear."
"Ya know how to be a good, quiet girl." He tugs at the quilt underneath her restraining hand, but she holds it still.
"Not tonight," she repeats. "I need to sleep. I have to work tomorrow."
"We both have to work every damn day, sweetheart."
"No, sorry…I drank too much." She rolls on her side, away from him. "Maybe tomorrow."
"A'ight. Love ya."
She thinks she says she's loves him too, but she's not sure, because sleep so quickly overtakes her.
[*]
A few days after Michonne returns to the Kingdom, Carol has to deal with an unexpected disruption. John Markwood, who upon Daryl's advice has refrained from acting on his notion to cheat on his wife, learns instead that his wife has been cheating on him. All those late-night meetings Julie's been having with her Assistant Director of Education have involved more than curriculum planning.
John seeks out the other man, kicks in his trailer door, and drags him down onto the earth below. John gives his wife's lover two black eyes, breaks his nose, and then proceeds to enter his trailer. With the butt of his shotgun, John busts every window, and with his gutting knife, he tears up the sheets and guts the mattress. He then kicks in the lower kitchen cabinets and storage cabinets with his steel-tipped boots, splintering the weak wood in dozens of pieces.
Carol and the Council have to deal with the resulting assault and vandalism charges, as well as Julie's immediate application for divorce and division of property. It's an unusual case, and not one they've encountered before. There's only been one previous divorce, and it was as amicable as a divorce could be - the division of property was decided by mutual consent, and the Council was not required to rule.
They deliberate for a long time and decide to kill two birds with one stone - John's punishment for destroying the trailer and assaulting Julie's lover will be the loss of his own cabin, which also settles the major property division question. The cabin will be given to Julie and her lover, and John will have to find other lodging.
With two hours of the ruling, Carol hears the resulting grumbling around town:
"John should have kept the cabin. He helped build it."
"That man screwed John's wife. And now he's sleeping under John's roof!"
"Leave it to a female mayor to punish a man for defending his honor."
"The scandal in this administration! They've got directors sleeping with deputy directors!"
"I tell you what. If this wasn't chick town, if we had a little more testosterone in those Council chambers…"
"We've got a woman for mayor, and two women and two gay men on the Council. And Eugene. Does anyone in those Council Chambers have any balls at all?"
So Carol's in a pretty foul mood already when she comes home that evening and finds John in her living room with Daryl and Hershey. John is cleaning his rifle – without a drop cloth – on her coffee table, while his dog Daisy lies quiet and pregnant before the fireplace and Hershey attempts to keep Merle from bothering her by distracting him with a chew rope.
"Hello, John," Carol says as calmly as possible. She looks at the open door to Henry's old bedroom and sees two fully stuffed hiking packs on the floor, a large cardboard box, and an array of extra weapons lying on the bed. "Are those your things in the bedroom?"
"'S movin' into Henry's old room," Daryl mutters as he finishes attaching a replacement limb to one of his crossbows.
"Daryl," Carol says coolly, "may I speak to you privately for a moment? Outside?"
Daryl stands, puts his crossbow in his armchair, and drops his tool into the pocket of his cargo pants. He seems confused by the request, but not concerned. He follows her onto the front porch, and she closes the door behind him.
Carol leans back against the railing to face him. "You can't just invite a man to live with us without consulting me first!"
Daryl doesn't immediately see the error of his ways. Instead he pfts. "He asked. Hell ya expect me to do? He ain't got nowhere else to go. Y'all took his cabin 'n gave it to his wife's n' 'er lover."
"So you disagree with the Council's decision, too?"
Daryl crosses his arms over his chest and doesn't respond.
"They both owned the cabin. But John trashed that man's trailer, and it's uninhabitable now. So the Council decided a house for a house. It wasn't even my ruling. I don't get to make those rulings."
"You could of vetoed it. Sent it back down."
"It was already four to one. They probably would have overridden my veto with a unanimous vote. And I'm not sure I disagree with their decision."
"That man fucked his wife," Daryl says, his voice rising a little higher than Carol's comfortable with. He must see that in her face, because he lowers it. "I'd of done the same damn thing. Hell, be a miracle if I didn't kill 'em."
"Yeah? You didn't fight back when Ezekiel hit you," she reminds him. Although if she's being honest, the fact that he took those blows without reacting surprised her at the time.
"'Cause in that case, I was the other man."
"Oh." He has a point there, although it was not as if they'd been cheating. They kissed there in her dressing room, the morning of the wedding, for the first time ever, after he begged her not to marry another man.
"I deserved worse than he gave me," Daryl says. "Felt like shit for stealin' his woman. He ain't deserved it. Zeke never did nothin' but love ya. But there wasn't no help for it. I 'couldn't let ya…" He lowers his voice almost to a whisper. "Couldn't let ya go like that."
"You know John was toying with the idea of cheating already."
"Yeah." His voice is back to normal again. "Cause she was fuckin' someone else."
"He didn't know that. So let's just say that marriage wasn't in a solid place on either end." She sighs. "Daryl, I'm mayor. I can't be seen to be taking sides. If we take him in – "
"- Maybe ya want to be seen to be takin' sides. 'Cause a lot of people ain't too happy with the Council's decision."
"I know. I've heard the talk. But if we take him in, then people are going to say I'm a hypocrite for letting the Council do one thing and then turning around and - "
"- Where's he supposed to go?"
"He can fix up the trailer he destroyed," Carol suggests. "He can live in that."
"That'll take a long while. 'S my friend, Carol. He Just lost his wife. Lost his cabin. Ain't got nothin' or no one. 'M puttin' my foot down on this one."
"You're putting your foot down?" Carol asks.
Daryl rubs a hand across his goatee. "Yeah. M' foot. M' puttin' it down."
She laughs.
"Ain't funny," he growls.
"It is. It's a little bit funny, Pookie."
"'N don't call me that 'round John."
"Oh. No. I wouldn't want to sully your reputation with the trailer trasher."
Daryl glowers so darkly that she suddenly thinks better of teasing him. She can get away saying things to Daryl no one else in the world can, but she knows he has lines even with her.
"'S my friend," Daryl repeats.
Daryl doesn't use that word often. As far as Carol knows, Aaron and Tara are the only two other people at the Hilltop Daryl refers to that way. But he's been hunting on and off with John for almost seven years. Carol doesn't understand their friendship, because she doesn't share it, and John is not her favorite person in the world. But extending this offer of help him is clearly important to Daryl. "Fine," she agrees. "He can stay with us. Temporarily. Until the trailer is fixed. But would you consult me next time before you invite someone to move into our house?"
"Mhmhm. Yeah. Sorry. Should of."
"Damn right you should have."
Carol's still a little bit irritated when she goes inside, throws up the roll top on her desk, and sits down to work.
"Thank you for your hospitality, Carol," John tells her in his smooth southern Virginian accent. "And just so you know, I don't hold the Council's ruling against you, even if you could have exercised your veto."
"John, I'm in no mood," Carol says, and she doesn't hear another word out of him for the rest of the evening.