Disclaimer: I own nothing.
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Carol and Maggie stepped out for a walk in the crisp evening air to soothe Maggie, and Carol noted how Maggie kept a distance between them. She wasn't upset by it. She knew it would take time for Maggie to come around to this, and everyone mourned in their own way. It was a long, grueling processes that couldn't be forsaken. Once this moment was over, Carol didn't know how much time would pass before she saw Maggie again in the way they were before Carol was pregnant and before Maggie lost her baby, but it'd be okay as long as Maggie utilized that time to begin to forgive herself and to heal.
Inside Daryl knocked on Carol's bedroom door to see if she was still resting, but there was no reply. He opened the door and poked his head inside, discovering the room occupied no one. He pursed his lips and entered, finding a knitted blue bunny on the bed alongside a calendar. He chuckled at the sight, not knowing why in hell those items were there, but the bunny was soft to touch. He knew women liked soft, cute things, so he chalked the bunny up to that.
Now the calendar was a bit stupid. It was from before, and it served no real purpose. He thought maybe she'd use the pictures for something, but they were cars. He noted a couple Xs and wondered what they meant beyond crossing the passing days off. Why would Carol need to count the days? Was she going to take off again? Or was this for Maggie and Glenn? The doc said they had to wait a while before trying again, so maybe she swiped it for them. He couldn't be sure though. It was something Beth would do. Kid kept a Days Without Incident chart in her room. Carol was the kind of person to do something like this for Maggie and Glenn as well.
Shaking his head and feeling like he was trespassing, he set the cup of tea on her nightstand. Denise said it should help with the nausea. It smelled of ginger, but she wouldn't say what it was exactly. He didn't bother tasting it. He trusted her.
He turned to leave, kicking the nightstand and sending the lamp crashing to the floor. He cursed and tried to catch it, but no such luck. He heaved a sigh and collected the shattered pieces, unplugging it from the wall, and he carried it downstairs, dumping it in the trashcan. He nabbed a lamp from the living room and set it up. He'd explain what with her hold lamp to her when she got back.
He swept up the small bits of leftover clay and dusted it off into the trashcan in her bathroom. He inspected the tea for any bits that might have ended up inside of it, but he got lucky. It was still the same light shade of brown. He knew it wouldn't stay that way, what with the bugs and all. He scanned the room for a slip of paper or a book to cover it with. He didn't want to loiter in her room, it was her private space, but he didn't want this tea to go to waste. Not with her feeling so sick. He wanted to nip her illness in the bud, and he didn't want to waste the tea. Stuff like this in the world they lived in was like gold. He wouldn't it go untouched.
With how much time she spent reading to the kids in the prison, you'd think she'd have one or two books lying around here, he grumbled to himself. He checked under the bed, in case it'd fallen with the lamp, but no. It was all clear saved for a bag. He set his hand on the bed to stand up, and the mattress slid. "Shit."
His eyes then fell on what had unaligned the mattress from the box spring to begin with. That was when he saw something weird. He would have ignored it, as it was Carol's, but what the item was and what it said made no sense. Well, the fact that it was in Carol's room, hidden, with that on it made no sense. If he'd found..something else, some...toy, it'd be embarrassing, but it would make sense. She was a woman, and she had needs same as everyone else, but this? What the hell was it doing here? In her room? In between her mattress and box spring? It didn't make any sense. Or did it?
"You're takin' Carol?"
"She volunteered."
"Are you all right?" Denise leaned a bit toward Carol. "You look a little green."
"What the hell was that?!"
"Another day in our life."
"No, you know what I meant. What the hell were you thinkin'?"
"It's over, Rick. I'm fine—we're fine." She swept a hand out to the group.
"You were impulsive," Michonne remarked. "You can't afford to be impulsive at a time like this! Do you have any idea how stupid this was? We could have handled it!"
"What are you, my parents? It's done. Arguing with me now won't change that."
"But it'll change how this works in the future," Rick remonstrated.
"She isn't exactly in the most pleasant of moods, but she did spend a good portion of the trip puking her guts up."
"Daryl, I don't want to talk about it, okay?"
"Before you go off," Tobin hurriedly remarked, "I am going to talk to her. I know it was a poor reaction, but she said she understood. We agreed on space."
Daryl glowered. "'Poor reaction'?"
"Okay, it was shit, all right? I didn't plan on this happening, certainly not in this...way. I mean, after what she did, and now she springs this on me?" He gripped the test tightly. "I just need to speak with her. That's all."
"Tobin's joining us," Carl reported. "He said he needed to talk to you about the whole...situation, and I invited him for dinner. I hope you don't mind."
The world began to shift, Daryl's eyes were glued to the pregnancy test that still read: pregnant. He couldn't breathe, his stomach a macrame of knots, and his gut entertained the idea of puking himself. He didn't, but the urge was there, underneath the shock and the horror engulfing his heart and his body.
He climbed unsteadily to his feet, not touching the bed or the test, and he stumbled out to the hall, his hands gripping the railing. Carol was pregnant. She was carrying Tobin's kid. That's why he'd seen them together so much, why he came over for dinner, why Tobin looked so scared when Daryl spoke to him. He assumed Daryl knew the truth and was going to stomp his ass for ditching Carol or whatever the hell he did. He thought...Daryl knew.
He didn't know. He didn't even suspect. He wasn't good at reading that type of thing, especially given that Carol avoided him like he had lice or poison ivy. He didn't even know she could still get pregnant. He'd never thought about it, but he assumed after Sophia, she'd be careful to not get pregnant. He knew that day on the Greene's farm haunted them all to this day, and he thought that'd be a big ass reminder to use protection, if she ever found someone she wanted to be with. He thought she'd be smarter than that, or at least Tobin would be.
His blood began to boil at the thought of the man. Fucking towering tree bastard. His knuckle grew white as his grip tightened on the railing. He didn't know anything about Carol's past. He didn't know shit about her, but he was the one Carol went to. He was the one Carol moved in with and slept with and got pregnant with. He didn't know the half of it, he couldn't have known, yet part of him...was growing inside of Carol. Part of that naive, coward was inside of her.
He was aware the thought of Tobin and Carol in anyway together that made this kid caused his previous urge to hurl to return in full force, and he wanted to punch something. He'd use the wall, but he'd rather not have them see the dent and blood that would be there by the time he was done. He'd have to explain himself, which he couldn't do. Maybe he should just go out and find Tobin and punch the motherfucker for being so goddamn reckless. He didn't know half of her past, and he might...have taken her future.
He shoved off the railing and down the stairs to locate Carol. She couldn't have gone very far. If Rick and Michonne were on her as badly as they had been at Hilltop, she couldn't sneeze without them being there.
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"Do you feel...less on the verge of a breakdown?" Carol steered them back towards Maggie's home.
"I'm tired." She had her head on Carol's shoulder, like she used to do with her birth mom when she was young and Mom would carry her inside the house. She'd cried so much, and she was wiped. There was no energy in her to feel or want anything beyond rest. It was nice. It was peculiar and lulling. "How do you feel?"
"Tired." On a level no one could understand. "Let's go home and put some real food in you."
"Thank you, Carol." She squeezed the arm she'd looped through Carol's on their walk. "And I am so sorry."
"I know, Maggie, and you're welcome."
Suddenly their serene walk was shattered, Maggie lifted her head from Carol's shoulder as Daryl tore off the porch and over to them, and Maggie watched Carol shrink back. She wasn't able to ask what was wrong before Daryl was in her personal space and barking at Carol, a fire like she'd never seen in his eyes.
"When you were gonna tell me?" he growled.
"Tell you what?" Carol hoped he meant something else—anything else! Her mind ran over all the ways he could have found out, and she didn't understand who would have told him. Who would have broken her trust. She didn't know anyone aside from Tobin, who she hadn't told to keep it to himself. But what would Tobin be doing with Daryl?
"That you're pregnant!"
"He didn't know?" Maggie looked from Carol to Daryl.
"She knew too? With Rick and Michonne and Tobin?!"
Carol stared at him, her tongue might as well have swollen up ten times its size, because she couldn't speak, and she felt like she was suffocating.
"What? Cat got your tongue?" he snarled. "You weren't ever gonna tell me, were you? You were just gonna hope I didn't notice? Was that it? Or were you gonna wait until the last minute?"
"Daryl, you need to back off," Maggie recommended, her sense heightened with a possible threat to the baby. It wasn't Daryl. He wouldn't hurt Carol in any way, but the yelling and getting in her face would generate stress. A lot of stress, as he wasn't backing down, and that would hurt the baby. She wouldn't let that happen. "Now."
"Tobin? Really?" He ignored Maggie. "You know the risks. You know what happened to Lori! You weren't there, but Maggie was. Why don't you tell her about it?"
"Daryl." Carol at last found her voice. "This was an accident. I—I didn't tell you, because I didn't know how! Now that you know, I still don't know what to say to you."
"How about why? Why couldn't you tell me? You don't trust me? You don't think I'd want to know?" There were tears behind the scorching rage in his eyes. "You don't think I'd care?"
"No, no. It wasn't anything like that."
"Then why?"
She faltered, her eyes falling shut. "I don't know."
He scoffed. "How long?
"What?
"How long?" he repeated in a hiss. "How long have you known?"
"Maybe a week now," she murmured. "I had a hunch then...went to Hilltop with Maggie when she began to experience abdominal cramps."
"A week?" He stumbled back a step. "A whole goddamn week?"
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, you're sorry? You're sorry? Should I feel better now? Huh? Should I give a hug and offer you—you some kinda congratulations?" he ranted. "Should I be happy for you? For you and Tobin?"
"That's enough, Daryl." Maggie could see their people forming a distant crowd around them.
"You can't even look at me."
"Daryl." That was Rick. "What's goin' on?" One of the kids came to tell him Mr. Dixon was yelling at the cookie lady in the middle of town.
"He knows," Carol answered, opening her eyes to look at Rick as she couldn't look at Daryl.
"How?" It didn't take rocket science to know Carol hadn't told him, and Rick made sure the ones who knew kept their mouths shut. So how did he find out?
"She wasn't feelin' well, and I saw her throw up, so I brought her some tea to help her upset stomach." Daryl learned he couldn't look at Carol either, so he addressed Rick, "And...I found the test when I was lookin' for a book to cover the top of the cup with, didn't want bugs to get in it. And...she's always readin', so I figured she had to have a book nearby."
"You just found it?" Carol was disbelieving, as she knew where she'd hidden it.
"I thought maybe a book would be under the bed, or between the nightstand and the bed, so I bent down to look. And when I stood up I used the bed to keep my balance, and I guess you didn't fix your bed right 'cause it slid over... The test was just lyin' there."
"Christ." She covered her face with her hands. That was all it took? He was being kind, trying to help, and instead he discovered she'd been lying to him. Fucking hell.
"Did she tell you?" Daryl wasn't demanding, all of the ire had fled his body, but he was curious to know. "Or Michonne? Or hell Maggie?"
"She told me when she...suspected." Rick closed the space between them. "I told Michonne."
"Denise overheard," Carol listed. "I told Tobin, and he told Abe. Enid found out when I fainted, and Tobin took me to see Denise."
"Carl found out through me and Michonne," Rick added.
"I also overheard when they took Carol to see Denise." Maggie crossed her arms. "Then you found the test."
"Did you ever plan on tellin' me?" Daryl's eyes cut to Carol's face.
"Eventually, yes. I would have thought of how to tell you, but for now I just wanted to see if it would last. It's always risky in the beginning, so in a couple weeks who knows if there'll even be a baby to make a fuss about."
"So that's the golden excuse?"
"It's not an excuse!"
"You keep tellin' yourself that." He ran his eyes over her then to Maggie and Rick. "You all knew, and nobody thought to tell me?"
"I made Rick promise not to tell," Carol quickly confessed, not wanting him to blame them. "I asked the others to keep it hush as well. It was my choice to keep this from you. All they did was respect to my request."
"You kept it hush? Just you."
"Daryl—"
He backed up from group, turning his back on them, and he stomped off. Rick tried to call to him, even followed him, but Daryl didn't bother talking. When Rick attempted to force Daryl to stop and look at him, Daryl punched Rick square in the jaw and proceeded to get the hell away from them. Rick held his jaw and could only watch as Daryl mounted his bike and blew out of Alexandria without a second thought.
A/N: Thank you all for the kind wishes! And I wanted to let you know I may not be posting as often. I don't have a lot of time on my hands right now, but I'll try to post as often as I can!
