Chapter 11: Listen

Things were easier, now that she wasn't looking sideways at Daryl and wondering how it would be if he was her man. Easier the way it was when you got accustomed to eating Ramen and never bought the lottery ticket that started you wishing for more.

Days slipped by under the rumble of the motorcycle. After the topless incident at the pond, Daryl seemed eager to be nice to her, like he had something to make up for. She didn't understand why, but it helped them to fall into a rough kind of companionship. Everything about survival. Counting bullets, calories, miles. The parts of her that were feminine and lonely just got quieter until she felt like she was leaving that part of her behind.

It felt good, like dumping off an old car that had never worked right and getting in a new one that hummed with confidence and efficiency. She could wield a knife, now. Her aim was getting better with a gun, though she was still terrible at any distance unless she could rest the rifle on something.

She badgered Daryl into teaching her all sorts of things. He seemed to like it, pleasure sparking in his eyes whenever she laughed at how easy something was for his hands and how clumsy it was for hers. He always brushed it off, saying, "Don't take no brains."

But he started offering new skills, too. All sorts of things she didn't realize he knew how to do, like he'd forgotten himself. Or just didn't realize all the things he took for granted were actually benefits in this new world.

It was nice, seeing how much easier he seemed in his own skin when he was needed. He was the sort of man who was meant to be a husband and father.

The thought startled her, came too uneasily close to reminding her of all her feminine failings, so of course she covered it up by starting an argument.

"I'll tell you exactly why you can't take a watch," Daryl snapped. "First, cause you never goddamn sleep as it is. Second, cause it always goes the same way. I walk out in the trees to take out a walker, hear another one, go after it. Two more come up while I'm fixin' that one, and then it's a whole goddamn rodeo."

"Your point?" Carol crossed her arms and tapped one foot. "That sounds exactly like the last three walker battles we had this week, and I was a part of all of those."

"My point is, you're good for one or two walkers at a time now, but if you get cocky like Andrea did, you probly end up like Andrea did."

"Low." She glared, and he glared right back.

"I'm right and you know it. 'Sides, fighting walkers in the dark ain't as easy as it sounds."

"Neither is putting up with you, and I do that every day!"

Maggie burst into laughter and they both glared at her. "You two are more old married couple than Glenn and I."

"I am nothing like a grouchy old man!" Glenn protested.

"Who said you were the man? I was thinking superstitious cat lady."

He scowled. "I don't even like cats. Before the turn, I had a bird. Birds are way smarter than cats."

"How do you figure?" Maggie asked. "Cats eat birds."

"Not parrots! Parrots are smarter than monkeys, and monkeys are way smarter than cats."

Carol ignored them and turned back to her argument. "There are still plenty of nights when things are quiet, and you men could all be getting more sleep than you are if we divided up the watches more."

"The word 'no' got some other kinda meaning where you come from?"

"This coming from the man who nearly fed me to a pair of walkers to make a point?" Carol straightened up, ignoring his furious look. "I'll wake you up, okay? If it's quiet, you can all sleep, and if there's a problem, I'll wake you up so I'll have backup. Would that make you happy?"

"I'll tell you what would make me happy is—" He launched into a bout of such ferocious creative swearing that Lori grabbed Carl and covered both his ears.

Carol just smiled. "It's settled, then."

#

"Possum," Daryl said after a second of listening to the scuffling sound in the bushes. Carol crouched, her hand still frozen on his arm as she stared out into the trees. He shook her off, yanking his blanket up again and yawning a curse. "You just fuckin' with me because I didn't want you to take watch?"

"How can you tell it's a possum?" she insisted. "There are at least three different kinds of animals the size of a possum out there, and that's assuming you can tell one kind of leaf crinkling from another kind of leaf crinkling and who the hell can do that?" She dropped exhaustedly to her bottom. This was the fourth time she'd heard a noise and had to wake him, and she was on her last nerve. She'd thought listening to the forest sounds while trying to sleep was bad enough, but being responsible for knowing what they actually were was a thousand times worse. If she was wrong and it turned out to be a herd of walkers, it would be all her fault.

"It's a possum because it sounds like a fuckin' possum," Daryl groaned, punching his backpack pillow. "Jesus, woman."

A louder noise rattled from the forest and her hand flew to his arm, gripping hard before she could think better of it.

He growled and thrashed clear of the blanket, rolling to his feet. He picked up the crossbow; checked the bolt, checked the string, slung in onto his back. "C'mon."

She looked up at him, cringing at her own failure after she'd fought so hard to be placed on watch. He grabbed her hand and hauled her to her feet when she hesitated.

"You gonna wake me up all goddamn night long, might as well teach you a thing or two."

He led her far enough away from the fire that their voices wouldn't disturb the sleeping group and sat down with his right side facing the fire. She sat down next to him and he held a finger in the air, spinning it. "Other way. Need your ears facing out two different ways from the fire. This way, we can listen all four directions."

She blinked at him. "You don't hear in directions, Daryl. What are you talking about?"

He reached over and touched her ear, surprisingly gentle. Her fingers jerked in her lap.

"The way it curves," he said. "Funnels sound." He traced a finger from the back of her ear up to the rim of it. "Bends forward there, right? Funnels sound real good from the side or the front of you, but not the back. Deer's ears do the same thing, but they can move 'em. We cain't. So when you're on watch, turn your head a lot."

He dropped his hand but goosebumps were already prickling her skin all the way down into the collar of her coat.

She scooted around so they were back to back. Quickly, so she wouldn't forget that she wasn't a woman anymore. She was just a person. With her coat on, she was straight-bodied and androgenous, a rifle laid across her lap like one of the guys. She gripped it for strength.

"That one," Daryl said, when the first sound came. "See how it sounds higher, how there's like a…sharp scratchy sound? That's nails on bark, not dirt. Little ones, though, so probly a squirrel."

"But in the leaves, how does a possum sound different from a fox from a walker?"

"Steps," he said. "Possum kinda shuffles along, foxes step light. Walkers drag their feet, usually. Live people step heavy."

"Not you." She blew out a breath. "I've never understood it. Leaves make noise, leaves hide sticks that break. But you never make half as much noise as the rest of us."

"Bend ya knees," he said abruptly. "Soak up your weight in your legs, not let it stomp down through your feet. And I go slow. Set m' heel down first, test it, then roll onta my toe. Show ya next time we're out."

"Heel-toe, heel-toe," she murmured. "I'll remember that."

They sat up for hours. The silences between sounds sometimes stretched minutes, sometimes hours, but after every one, Daryl's low voice murmured, describing it, explaining which part of which animal made what noise. When he explained it, she could suddenly hear all the differences. He never sounded tired, or bored. It was like he could listen to the forest forever.

Their weight shifted over time, their backs leaning more and more into each other, until they were holding each other up without ever talking about it. He was warm, even through both their jackets, and that was nice, too.

Carol shifted her legs, propping up her knees because he was a little heavier so she had to brace to keep them both sitting. "Did your dad teach you all that? When you learned to hunt?"

"Nah. Sittin' in the forest out back of my house, when I's a kid. Scared like every noise I heard was the chupacabra Dad was always telling me about." He paused. "Took me a long time to get 'em figured, but everything seemed less scary once I figured out what all the sounds was."

"Why would you sit out there alone in the first place if you were scared?" She frowned. Sophia wouldn't even go out on the porch after dark, much less sit alone in the woods.

Daryl didn't answer, and she bit her lip, feeling like an idiot for asking. Obviously things in his house were more intimidating than anything in the forest, even before he knew what was out there.

"Why'd you marry Ed?"

Her stomach muscles twitched. "I'd rather not talk about that."

"Nah, I'm serious. Ain't making fun. Was he nice, at first? Or good-lookin' or somethin'? Why…I mean you married him."

She sighed, sitting up. Daryl's weight fell a little before he caught himself, sitting up so they weren't touching. Her back felt cold. "He was popular, and pretty soon I was pregnant. That's about all there was to it. By the time I had my first miscarriage, I already had the ring on my finger."

"Plenty of girls got pregnant, back where I's from. Most of 'em didn't get married."

"What do you want me to say?" she asked sharply. "That I was stupid? I was. And old-fashioned, and idealistic. But no, he wasn't like what you saw from the start."

" 'S not what I meant," he said after a moment. "Just…Lori and Rick seem like they hate each other, most days. And Maggie didn't seem so hot on Glenn at first. I just don't know how girls decide, you know? That they want to be hitched with somebody for good." A twig snapped, but she didn't jump because his hands were always messing with something when they talked. She was used to that. "Seems crazy. Thinkin' you'd know something like that."

"Maybe that's why people get it wrong, as often as not," she said. "Were you ever married?"

"Me?"

"No, the possum."

He huffed out a breath. "Nah. Couple girls, off 'n on. Not like, a girlfriend. Just…stuff. I dunno."

She stared at the forest, running her hands along the gun. Letting the metal parts feel sturdy and neutral like her arms and legs. She could be as cold and useful as this gun. That's what this world needed. Not someone shrinking inside at the thought that he'd never had anyone to hold him at night, to smile at him when he got home.

She tried to focus on the conversation, on what he'd asked. "I think you can know, though. When you know a person deep enough, you know what they'd do. How they'd react. How living with them would be. It's the other part that's hard, I think. Asking them to take you on, forever. However you are. When I married Ed, I didn't realize that's what I was doing." She paused. "Probably never would have had the guts to do it, if I'd known."

"Yeah," Daryl said, sounding far away. "That's a lot to ask."

"It is." Carol stared out at the trees. She'd been sitting in the cold for so long, she could barely feel her body. Maybe it was better that way. "It really is."

Author's Note: Up next, Carol does something that I've wanted to see her do for a long time (that she's never done on the show).