Chapter 6: The Velveteen Rabbit and the Shooting Gallery

A house.

It wasn't much. Two stories with a roof that was leaking into the bathroom, and eight walkers had wandered in just in the hour since they'd arrived. But they'd pushed so long today, Maggie had complained Daryl was trying to lead them all the way to Canada.

Carol knew he wasn't looking for Canada. He was looking for shelter.

She set her backpack just inside the door of the room she'd claimed for the night. Was he determined to find them someplace warmer because he was worried about the kids and Hershel? Or did he just want to avoid another awkward night of sharing her blankets? She ducked her head, itchy heat crawling up her neck when she thought of the dreams she'd had last night after she finally fell asleep.

Normally, it wouldn't have bothered her to have a dirty dream, but if Daryl knew what she'd been thinking, he'd be embarrassed. That made her uncomfortable. She never thought she'd be the kind of woman to chase after an unwilling man.

Not that she was chasing. She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck, dusting her palm against her pants when it came away gritty. She was just...thinking. And not even really that. An urge wasn't a plan, or even a wish. It was just that. An urge.

She swallowed and went across to the closet, opening it to check for any clothes they could scavenge. They desperately needed warm socks. Hats. A thicker coat for Daryl if she could find anything he'd wear. Some days she thought he'd probably wear a tarp for a cape and hardly notice, and then she'd bring him something like a blazer and he'd stare at her like she'd asked him to dye his hair pink.

Where was he going to sleep tonight? The bed was a double, and they normally slept near each other, but somehow she didn't think he'd follow her into a room. It was different, somehow, when there were walls.

Boundaries.

"Hey."

She jumped guiltily, and took a second to school her expression before she turned. Why did it suddenly feel so weird to be in a bedroom with Daryl?

"Sorry. Kind of got out of the habit of knocking," he said.

"You didn't scare me. I was just lost in my thoughts, didn't hear you coming." Her eyes narrowed. "What do you have there?"

He was standing in the doorway, both hands behind his back. "Guess."

"A leg of lamb and DVDs of all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"Who the hell'd wanna see that? Chick named Buffy probably wouldn't last five seconds in a herd o' walkers."

"I don't know. Buffy was pretty tough." She crossed her arms. "You gonna show me, or did you just come up here to tease?"

He pulled out both hands with a flourish, brass rattling against cardboard as he shook the two boxes of bullets. "Found a little .243 hunting rifle down in the living room with a scope. Probably meant for a lady, because it's just the right length for your arm. Not too heavy." He held up one of the boxes, starting to smile. "And hollowpoints for the 9mm auto I've been hauling around. One of those is all it takes to liquefy a whole walker brain."

She didn't follow half of what he just said, but watching his eyes dance made her want to keep listening. "You get this excited about handgun ammo, I'd just about have to give you some privacy if you found shotgun shells."

"Stop."

She touched his arm, then dropped her hand because his muscles felt a little too nice against her skin. "It's just good to see you happy."

"You wanted ammo," he said. "Said you wanted to learn to shoot, right?"

"Whenever you think I'm ready, sure."

"Well, I got a surprise for you tomorrow morning. Get some sleep." He left, the red rag in his back pocket waving like a bullfighter's cape. She tried not to follow it with her eyes.

Failed.

#

Carol flipped over in bed, pulling the sheet up over her shoulder. It was still early, but it had been dark outside for hours and they didn't have the batteries or the candles to sit up. She could use the extra sleep. There was no reason to be so restless. Or to feel so lonely in a houseful of people.

It was the damned walkers. Their groans had been attracting more ever since they'd stopped for the night, and now that everybody was in bed and not constantly thinning them out, their moans had gotten louder. More numerous. She thought she'd feel safer with walls around her, but it just gave the walkers something to bang on.

She yanked a pillow over her head. There must be more farms around here, for there to have been so many dead nearby. She didn't know how the hell they were going to make it out to the cars in the morning. Whatever surprise Daryl had planned was surely cancelled now.

The thought made her punch her pillow again. It's not like he had the energy or time to trouble himself with anything extra these days. For a surprise to be spoiled before she even found out what it was seemed like the height of unfairness.

Where was he sleeping? He hadn't taken a room and T-dog was snoring from the living room couch. Had he even gotten a bed? It wasn't fair, him sleeping on the floor when he'd worked so hard to find them a house tonight. She swung her legs out of bed.

If he was still awake, she'd haul this mattress onto the floor and he could have that. She'd take the box spring. Of course, they couldn't drag it into the hall without waking the others, so they'd have to share the room.

She pushed the thought out of her head. Not relevant.

She eased the doorknob open as quietly as she could and tiptoed out into the hall. As soon as she saw him, a smile crept onto her face. She should have guessed where he'd end up.

He sat at the top of the stairs, a clear bowshot through the open railing to the door below. The one with the most walkers piled up against it. His forearms rested on his knees but his head came up right away, tracking her movements as she tiptoed down the landing and joined him.

She sat down without waiting for an invitation. He tipped his head in question, and she shook hers.

They sat together, listening to the moans. The thump of haphazard hands against the siding, the door.

She'd have felt better with the heat of his shoulder against hers, but she had sat down a hand's width apart from him. If she scooted closer now, it would mean something. She didn't know what, but something. More than they could handle. Certainly more than he would want.

Glass cracked.

Her hand flew to his thigh, gripping hard. Her knife was back in the bedroom. Why had she left her knife behind? Stupid.

" 'S alright," Daryl said in his low rumble, not getting up. "Rick boarded over the glass in that door. Those panes are on the outside."

She let go of his leg, mildly embarrassed at her own reaction. What good was that was going to do, holding onto his leg? Slow him down from actually being able to fight, that's all.

"I can't sleep with the sound of all of them out there." She shook her head, so tired of thinking about walkers. "Let's talk about something else."

"Like what?"

"Anything. Tell me a story."

"I don't know no stories." He blew a disgusted sound. "Except dumb shit Merle done. Shit I done. Stories about methheads and drunks, mostly." He picked at his fingers, his back hunched tiredly.

He needed sleep, sometime. Somehow.

She wanted to smooth her hand down his back. A week ago, she would have done it without thinking. Why was it different now? Did he think it was different?

"You're a mom. You should know lots of stories."

She blinked at his use of present tense. But then, she supposed none of her mom knowledge had died along with her daughter. Just her heart.

"I could tell you Sophia's favorite story," she said.

He looked over, but in the dark she couldn't make out anything about his expression. Just the focus of his eyes on her face. She could always tell when he was really listening.

He nodded.

"Lay back." She nodded to his wadded-up blanket behind them. "I always read it to her before bedtime. It's called 'The Velveteen Rabbit.'"

"Ain't heard that one." He laid down, his feet still propped on the first stair and his head on his blanket. He tossed over the other end for her to use as a pillow, and she took it, breathing in his scent of leather and blood and sweat and trees.

She quickly fell into the familiar rhythm of the story and found herself doing all the voices, just like she had for Sophia. It felt a little silly for telling a story to a grown man, but he never interrupted, not once.

But when she finished, he scoffed. "What the hell kind of story is that to tell your kid?"

Her forehead creased, and a faint echo of hurt touched her throat. "What do you mean?"

"What, like you ain't real unless somebody loves you?" He sat up. "That's some dumbshit marker of what's right. Kid can't help where he gets stuck. Who he gets stuck with."

She sat up, too, ducking her head to try see his downturned face. "It's not meant like that, Daryl. Not like a contest. It's more like, you get more courage when someone else believes in you."

He looked over quick, then away.

"Like you believed I could fight," she said softly, "even before I did."

His head hung low and he was back to picking at his fingers. She almost said, "Like I believed in you." But she didn't want to push him too hard. The unease was still pouring out of him.

She sat with him for an endless, quiet moment. Even the rattling of the walkers faded into the background as her ears strained for some sound from him. Some indication that he wasn't as hurt as she feared he was. She didn't know how to explain to him that he was loved. There didn't seem to be a safe way to do it.

"I do think," she said hesitantly, "that you get to feeling more real the more loved ones you have. Like it ties you into this world."

He tipped his head then, his fingers going still as he looked at her for a long time in the dark.

"You should get some sleep," she whispered when she couldn't take it anymore. She didn't know what he needed from her in that moment and she was too scared to give him the wrong thing.

He nodded.

She looked down at their feet, lined up side by side. His laces mismatching where he'd had to swap out his broken ones. She hated to leave him here, when she wasn't sure if he was still hurt by her bad choice of a story. The banging of the walkers outside already seemed louder. But she couldn't think of any justification that would make it appropriate to sleep out here rather than in the room she'd picked. She got up. His gaze tracked her, but he said nothing.

She brushed her fingers over his crossbow, one last glimpse of comfort to help her get to sleep. In her peripheral vision, she thought she saw him shiver, but when she looked over again, he was still. Didn't mean anything. It was chilly, even inside the house.

She nodded, feeling stupid and childish, and forced her feet down the long hallway back to her room for the night.

#

The next morning, everybody was packed up by dawn. Carol was twitchy from another sleepless night and the increasing volume of the moans from the buildup of walkers outside. But Daryl was flitting from room to room with something in his walk that could very nearly be described as a bounce.

She squinted at him. "You find a stash of coffee or something?"

He ignored her, looking to Rick. Their leader gave him a nod.

Carol crossed her arms. "You want to decode the nonverbals for the rest of us, or was that a classified manly nod?"

"You want the last bite of my oatmeal?" Lori offered.

Carol shot her a look. "I'm not cranky. I'm just asking."

"Time to shoot," Daryl said, scooping up two rifles and jamming a pistol into the back of his pants.

"Right now?"

Rick stepped up. "Daryl thought if you practiced in the mornings before we moved on, then if the sound drew more in, it wouldn't matter."

"That is..." Carol stopped. "A really good point. Why haven't we been doing that all along?"

"Common sense. Don't take no brains." Daryl was already halfway up the stairs. "You comin'?"

Carol glanced around to see if anybody else was taking a lesson.

"Have fun!" Maggie called. "Try not to shoot off anything you might need later."

Carol made a face at her and hurried up the steps when no one else responded. She followed the noise of breaking glass to an upstairs window. Daryl leaned in, a rifle to his shoulder as he tested the angle down to the front door. Satisfied, he sat back, pointing out different parts of the rifle to her.

"Magazine. Safety. This is a bolt action. This one, you just pull the trigger again." He opened and closed each of the rifles and the pistol, showed her where the bullets went in, made her load an extra magazine for both. Showed her the sights for one rifle, the crosshairs in the scope for the other. "There's plenty of walkers. Shoot as many as you can, then reload as fast as you can and shoot more. Reloading's when you die. Get good at it."

"Careful. I'm not sure my sweet tooth can handle that much sugar coating." She pulled the rifle to her shoulder, ignoring whatever dire homicide-promising look he probably just gave her. The crowd of walkers outside was nauseatingly large.

"Don't hold your breath," Daryl said. "And don't go yanking on that trigger. Squeeze it steady and slow."

This was a lot more instruction than he normally gave her. She shot him a look, but couldn't tell if he was nervous. He almost sounded nervous. He was biting at his cuticles, looking toward the far wall.

"Was that story really Sophia's favorite?" he asked abruptly.

Carol's finger jerked and she nearly shot a hole in the wall. "Yes. Why?"

He shrugged, sinking deeper into silence. She could tell he was thinking something over, but had no idea what. Probably deciding she was a bad mom for telling her daughter a story about toys only becoming real when they were loved. But she loved her daughter ferociously, every single day of her life. Sophia knew that. It's why she liked the story.

Carol pulled the rifle to her shoulder. She couldn't afford to be distracted by the man at her side. Someday, his life might depend on her not being distracted.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Those walkers ain't getting any younger."

She pulled the trigger. The reverberation of the rifle in the small room was so loud she jumped, and the shot went wide.

"Shoot them trucks and Rick's gonna kill both of us."

"Shut up." She racked the bolt action, popping another bullet into the chamber and sighting cautiously. POP. A walker dropped and she perked up. "I got one!"

"Make it ten and I'll light ya some fucking birthday candles."

She racked in another shell. "Watch it, Dixon. You're going to give Beth a run for her money on who's the most likely to start waving pom poms around here."

"You talk this much every time you's killin' walkers, ya won't be having 'nother birthday to light candles for."

Her throat tightened as she wrestled with the bolt action, but she swallowed and spat out, "Wanna make that a bet? I win, I'll make you bake the birthday cake."

She popped off the rest of the shots in the magazine, felling two more walkers. He handed her the second rifle. At this range, with it resting against the window, her aim was steady and true. She started bringing down a walker for every two shots, then two walkers for every three shots. By the time she ran out of bullets, she was grinning.

"Reload!" bellowed Daryl, leaping to his feet.

She jumped and dropped the rifle.

"You tryin' to shoot off my fucking foot, woman? Reload!"

She grabbed for a new magazine and tried to jam it in, but she'd forgotten to take the old one out.

"The hell you doing?" He kept shouting at her, full volume as she fumbled and busted a fingernail and forgot where the magazine release was.

Finally she dropped the gun and glared at him. "How long are you going to keep yelling at me?"

"Till you start yelling back," he said tersely.

Her nerves started to ebb away, and her frazzled brain kicked back into gear. "You're such a nag."

She double-checked the magazine, lifted her gun, and fired.

"Just shoot the walkers, woman," he said, and she was pretty sure she could hear a smile in his voice. "Quit yer whinin'."

They moved windows once for a new angle, and when the last walker fell, a whistle came from downstairs. Daryl snatched up the spare rifle and slung it over his shoulder, taking her gun and trading her the handgun. "Stay close."

He led the way down the stairs. The rest of the group already had the door open, packing their gear into the cars. When she ran out, though, she jolted to see the walkers weren't cleared out. From two sides of the house, yes, but they were already staggering around from the rear of the property, more filtering in from the woods. This whole area was infested.

Daryl ran into the back of her, his weight nearly knocking her down. "Plant yer feet," he said, low and terse. There was no shouting, no show of cleaning his fingernails. He was deadly serious and it ran a shiver up her spine. "They's harder to hit with a handgun. You've gotta be calm, you gotta shoot straight. Don't fuck around."

She turned to face the walkers, her heart pounding as she aimed. She squeezed off a shot, and blood spurted from the neck of the first walker. It just kept coming. Her eyes flared. She blasted off three more rounds, hit nothing but air.

"There's too many! Why isn't anybody else shooting?"

She threw a glance over her shoulder. The cars were already running and pointed toward the street, bags loaded. Their entire group was spanned out behind them, guns in hand and lowered, ready to back her up.

Hershel gave her a quiet nod. "Go ahead," he said. "Take your time."

A strange kind of strength swept into her. She couldn't have named it, because she'd never felt it before.

"Carol." Daryl's voice snapped her head around, and the first walker was barely two steps away.

She covered its face with the barrel of the gun and shot. It went down and she snapped her sight to the next one.

The gun clicked empty. Her heart squeezed, her stomach heaving up into her throat.

"Kick out that mag," Daryl said, very low.

She hit the button and the spent magazine fell to the ground. He swooped it up and started refilling it with bullets as she slapped in her second pre-loaded one.

Everything in the world shrunk down to the world of her sights and she kept reloading and shooting, shooting and reloading. When her hands started to shake from fatigue, her hand sore from the kick of the gun, Daryl grunted, "Steady yourself on a truck when you can. Or a tree. There's generally always a tree."

She glared, tossing him another empty magazine and slamming in a full one. "You see a damned tree?"

"Lean on me," he said, already finished loading the magazine. He crossed his arms, standing solid.

"Won't two people waver even more than one?"

He shook his head. "Two's better 'n one. Fixes it, somehow."

She rested her extended arms against his shoulder. His skin was warm and bare, because he hadn't had a chance to pull on his jacket this morning. She blinked, and the walkers were already too scary close again. She shot, and two walkers went down instead of one.

"Carl!" Rick warned. "It's Carol's turn."

"That one was close!"

"Wait your turn, Carl. You can shoot when I say."

In spite of the bodies piled at their feet, Carol and Daryl swapped a quick look, and she smirked. The next three walkers went down as smooth as if she were a professional, and that was the end of them.

Someone started to clap, slowly. Then one more joined in, and another, and by the time Carol turned around, they were all applauding.

Maggie grinned. "That was better than breakfast theatre."

"Hell, even better than breakfast," Glenn said.

"Nice shootin'." Hershel's eyes were kind, as if he'd known all along she could do it.

"Good teacher," she said, sending a look sideways.

Daryl looked startled, pausing as he gathered up the rifles, getting their straps all tangled with the crossbow already on his back.

"When he starting in yelling at y'all upstairs, I thought for sure you were going to shoot him." Beth grinned.

"You owe me your dessert, next time we find some," Carl said.

"It wasn't a real bet!" Beth argued. "I mean, I didn't think she'd shoot him shoot him. Just smack him a little or somethin'."

"Kids are taking bets on when I'll shoot you." Carol elbowed Daryl as they all made their way toward the trucks. "Apparently your winning personality is really getting you a reputation."

"Smart kids," Rick said, straight-faced.

Daryl flicked him a raised middle finger, and Rick smiled.

Carol stuck her new handgun in her jacket pocket as they got to the motorcycle. "Did you see all those walkers I shot? What was all that whining about what a terrible shot I was going to be?"

"Used half the bullets in the damned universe, too," he griped as he passed off the rifles to Glenn to put in the truck. "We wanna kill a walker for the next month, we gotta stab it with a stick."

She poked him in the side. "Would it kill you to say you're proud of me?"

"What's it matter what I think? You ain't dead. You wanna trophy?"

She smirked. "Don't get too sappy on me, Dixon, or I might shed a tear."

He huffed out a chuckle, looking like it was mostly against his will. Lori came over and slapped her a solid high five. Daryl took the opportunity to fist a couple of handfuls of bullets out of his pockets, dropping them into the motorcycle saddle bags.

"I saw that," Carol said as Lori walked away. "Thought I'd need more bullets than I did, didn't you?"

"Shut up."

"You can deliver my trophy to #1 Motorcycle Way. Seat B. I'll sign for it." She batted her eyelashes.

Daryl's gaze paused, flicked a little lower. But before she could decode that look, he slung a long leg over the motorcycle. "I ain't got all day. You comin'?"

She grinned.

"Don't say it, or you ain't ridin'."

Author's Note: I admit, when I thought of how Daryl would be affected by the Velveteen Rabbit story, it pretty much turned me entirely to mush. I'd love to hear what you guys thought.

Next up: Things aren't going well for Daryl and he's going to require a little of Carol's special brand of comforting. Plus, Carol gets herself in trouble with Rick.