Chapter 20: Defender of the Innocent

As they walked back from the pond, shouting broke through the soft chirps of birdsong. A hill still stood between them and the house where everyone else was staying, so they couldn't see, only hear. Daryl lengthened out his strides, his head cocked to listen better. Carol's hand went to her knife hilt, but she didn't hear the moans of walkers. Every now and then, they hit a silent walker, but rarely. This sounded like maybe an argument, not a battle. When they came over the little hill, she saw Carl and Rick facing off behind the house.

"I can shoot five out of six cans off a fence, so why can't I have a rifle yet?" Carl said. "You let Carol shoot a rifle when she could barely hit a walker tied to a tree."

"Carol's a grown-up."

"How many walkers do I have to kill before I'm a grown-up?"

"It's not about killing, Carl. That's the entire—"

Carl made a grab and suddenly he was pointing his dad's Colt Python straight up into his face.

Daryl jerked to a stop, his arm going out in his customary "Wait for me to check it out" motion, but Carol was too focused on what was happening, and she walked right into his hand.

"How much of a little kid can I be if I can take your gun away from you, huh?" Carl shook the big pistol. "When are you gonna admit I'm not a baby anymore? I can handle myself, Dad. Obviously, I can even handle myself against you."

Rick raised his hands. "Okay, I can see that. Which rifle did you have in mind? The .30-06 or the—"

In mid-sentence, Rick slapped Carl's sheriff's hat down over his eyes. In the next motion the gun hit the ground and he had Carl down on his face in the dirt, his arm held behind his back as his father's whole big body pinned him into place.

Carol was so focused she had no idea when Daryl had started running but suddenly he was right in the middle of it. His boot struck Rick full-force in the ribs and he went flying off his son, losing his grip on Carl's arm.

Carol gasped, her hands jumping to her mouth.

Daryl jumped over the boy and landed between him and his father. "You a big man now?" he snarled. "Beating up on little kids to show 'em who's boss?"

Carol's eyes widened. "Oh God," she breathed, and then she started running, too.

Rick hauled himself back up onto his feet, shock sagging in every line of his bearded face.

"Come on, big man." Daryl beckoned. "You wanna fucking fight? I'll give ya one."

"Daryl, I don't—"

Daryl never hit with just his arms. He wound up with his whole body and powered his full weight and all that twitchy, endless energy into every punch. This one spun Rick around and dropped him right back to his knees, spit and maybe blood exploding from his mouth as his head flew to the side.

"Daryl!"

Carol dodged around Carl's frozen form and did the only thing she knew would stop the fight. She threw her arms around Daryl and hugged him tight, her body directly between the two brawling men. Daryl shocked to a halt.

"Don't, Rick, please don't." She managed to keep her tone calm but her muscles gave her away, flinching away from the hit she figured Rick would never be able to stop in time.

Daryl jerked, his body responding to the fear in hers, and she bit down hard on her lip.

But the impact never came and she knew Daryl wasn't going to throw another punch, so she spun around and locked eyes with their leader.

"Rick," she said in a low voice, and that's all it took for him to get what had happened. His eyes flicked from Daryl to Carl, and she saw the awareness click into place. Rick rocked back onto the heels of his cowboy boots, his fists falling open at his sides.

"Daryl, I wasn't going to hurt my son." Rick's voice was so raw, it cracked a little on the last word.

"Yeah, well you wasn't 'xactly givin' him no hug, neither." Daryl spat in the dirt.

Carol took a step to the side so she could keep an eye on both of them. He was zeroed in on Rick with that focus he only used on something he was about to kill. Sweat broke out all down her spine.

This could get them kicked out of the group. And if he attacked Rick again, it might go beyond fists before she could stop it.

The memory of Rick laying on top of Carl flashed vividly behind her eyes. Her throat throbbed with pain, picturing a different dark-haired little boy pinned to the ground, nobody to intervene for him.

Rick turned away from Daryl, trusting him with his back as he went to his son. Carl was back on his feet, his eyes terrified and wide as they darted between the two men. Just yesterday he'd spend two hours dogging Daryl's footsteps, begging to learn how to make snares.

Rick knelt down. "Are you hurt?" he asked hoarsely.

Carl shook his head, fast.

"I haven't given you a rifle, son, because guns are dangerous," Rick explained, his tone steady and loud enough to carry over to Daryl. "Rifles have bigger bullets than pistols. Harder to heal from, if there's an accident. Like the one when Otis shot you. They're also longer, heavier. Easier to drop or trip over. I've been waiting for you to prove to me that you can be safe with the gun you have." Rick held out his hand. "And I'm going to need it back, now."

Carl dropped his eyes, scrubbed his toe in the dirt. "I wasn't really going to shoot you, Dad."

"Look at me."

Daryl started pacing again at the demand in Rick's voice, seething back and forth behind Carol like a barely caged animal. She didn't try to touch him, but she was watching. She wasn't breathing.

Carl peeked up, just barely.

"Don't you ever point a gun at somebody you don't intend to kill," Rick said.

His son blinked. "What about a bad guy? If you just needed to scare him away."

Rick put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "If it's a bad guy, and you aren't willing to pull that trigger?" He paused. "They see it. In your eyes. And once they see it, that gun might as well be in their hands."

Carol's hands wound into fists. She'd held a knife on Ed once, to get him to stop. A stupid, ridiculous little paring knife that he'd slapped right out of her hands. She still had the scars. A long, straight slice down each buttock. Her reminder every time she sat down that she'd threatened her own husband. Rick was right. Bad guys always knew if you didn't have the guts to follow through.

"Not only that, if you point your gun at one of us, because you're trying to scare us or you just forget for a second, it can go off by accident. Like it did for Sergeant Phillips, remember? When you were six, and he shot himself in the hand at the station when he was trying to clear a jammed cartridge?"

"I remember," Carl murmured.

Daryl wasn't pacing anymore. Carol risked a covert glance at him and there were deep lines bracketed out from his eyes. He was chewing on the inside of his lip. It wasn't something he'd probably seen before. A father just talking to his son. Not screaming or punishing. But being firm for the boy's own safety, not his ego.

"Guns kill people, Carl. All it takes is one second. Your finger slips or you lose your temper, do something you didn't mean to do…" Rick paused for a long, thoughtful second, holding his son's gaze. "All we have left in this world is this little group of people. Your mom, Carol, Daryl, the others. Daryl was just about to break my ribs because he thought I was hurting you. Do you think I should give a gun to someone who might put him in danger?"

"No," Carl whispered.

Rick held out his hand. Carl pulled his silenced pistol out of the holster with a trembling hand and laid it in his dad's palm, barrel faced away from the group.

Carol swallowed. Shane wouldn't have understood why Daryl went off like he did. He would have made it about whose dick was bigger, who was in charge. He would have wanted to punish him for it. He wouldn't have apologized in the only way Daryl really needed him to: by being kind to the child. By saying he was forgiven without the two men ever having to face off over it.

She checked over her shoulder and Daryl was easing back, like he wanted to make one of his fade-into-the-trees getaways before anyone noticed. But his eyes were caught on Carl and Rick and he didn't seem able to look away.

Carl took off his sheriff's hat and held it out. "Do you want the hat back, too?"

"No," Rick said, and his voice had gone scratchy again. "You earned that, son. And you're going to earn back the gun, too." He squeezed Carl's shoulder. "Now you go thank Daryl for looking out for you and then go see if your mom needs help with dinner."

A wave of tingles flooded through Carol's whole body and the numbness started to fade from her fingers. They weren't going to be cast out, with no one to defend Daryl's back against a world full of walkers but her own, inadequate self.

Carl trotted over and stared at the ground. "Thank you, Daryl."

Daryl's hands fumbled with the snap on his knife hilt, checked the rag in his back pocket. He managed a jerky little nod and a grunt, and Carl trotted off toward the house.

Carol squared her shoulders and looked to Rick. She'd grovel for the both of them, if that's what he wanted to make this right.

He nodded to them, his lip already starting to swell, blood dripping slowly down his chin from where Daryl's rough knuckles had broken the skin. "Lori was heating up water for tea, if anybody's in the mood for that before dinner. Might be nice."

And then he walked inside.

Carol could have hugged the man. Even with every stupid thing he'd ever done and that asinine "This is not a democracy" speech. God bless him, he'd understood, and treated Daryl with not just respect, but compassion.

She turned to Daryl with a tentative smile lighting her face, but he was already gone. Not even a track in the dirt to show he'd been there.

Author's Note: Okay, what do you guys think? Would Norman Reedus not have played that scene brilliantly?

FYI, Rick's little "attack in mid-question" technique was taken straight from an interview I did with a Krav Maga instructor for one of my romantic suspense books. Pretty decent self-defense trick for getting the jump on the bad guys!

Up next, we've got another deleted scene to explain why Daryl hasn't made a move on Carol yet (since in his mind, the arm around the shoulders thing was platonic, though it was still a huge step forward in their relationship) and another little peek at his childhood, since that seems to be a crowd favorite around here.