AN: Here we go, another chapter here for those following along at home.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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The cold shoulder wouldn't have been an accurate description of what Carol had been giving Daryl. It was much too warm and inviting for the reality of the past two days. She'd been freezing him out with an intensity that almost frightened him. They were living, still, in the same space, but it was almost like she could ignore entirely his presence. He'd expected, at least for a little while, that she might try to entirely ignore the baby, but he hadn't expected the same to extend to him.
The baby had no name yet. At this point, it didn't matter much to her what Daryl called her. Sweetheart she accepted, Thing even seemed to work, but Baby was simply what Daryl stuck to most often. She didn't question it and he was trying to wait a little while to saddle her with a name. After all, Carol might come around, at some point, and she might want to be involved in deciding what to call the little one.
Or she might not come around at all.
The only sign that Daryl had that Carol was even aware of what was going on was the fact that she spent her "free time" pumping milk that she left for him in jars in the refrigerator. She didn't say anything about the milk, but it appeared there throughout the day. And even though Daryl might look at it and think that it wasn't enough, it seemed to satisfy the baby, so he guessed that was all that mattered.
He was starting to gain a type of respect that he'd never had before, though, for single parents. In his mind, he'd figured that he'd be able to leave the girl alone several hours of the day. After all, he had been able to leave Maison without any problem. Now, though, it was dawning on him that all the time he'd been able to simply disappear to do other things, he'd been leaving the little boy with Carol to take care of him. He'd gotten hours here and there because she'd been there to pick up his slack. He'd slept at night because, instead of him having to sit and feed Maison from a bottle, he could sleep while Carol handled all the things like nighttime feedings. It was a whole different situation when he was handling absolutely everything about the baby by himself. His understanding, now, of people who raised children alone was on an entirely different level than it ever had been before.
Two days and Daryl was exhausted. He was keeping his promise, though, of keeping the baby out of sight and—as much as he could—out of mind for Carol. That meant, though, that he was also keeping the baby out of sight for everyone else and he couldn't count on anyone who might simply pop in to relieve him for a while.
He felt a little like he was caught up in a cycle. He never really knew if the baby was hungry, or wanted to be changed, or just liked to see him squirm. At least, not before he'd run the gamut of possibilities. Diapers were easiest to tell. Then he could try to feed her. Was it too hot? Was it too cold? He wasn't sure if she could be bored or cold or hot. It was all a game of experimentation. And once he'd found the right combination, it was just waiting to do it all over again as soon as there was a new answer to the question of "what did she need" that needed to be found. And he was exhausted. So when she finally went to sleep, he almost danced out of the nursery and toward the bedroom. At the moment, it didn't matter that Carol wasn't really talking to him—he wasn't really in the mood to be talked to. All he wanted was whatever precious sleep the baby would let him have.
It wasn't the baby, though, that woke Daryl from sleep. He woke, instead, to Carol's thrashing around next to him. For a moment, in a fog, he didn't realize what was happening. Nightmares, really, weren't all that uncommon. And, more often than not, they didn't draw attention to each other's nightmares—not unless their "company" was requested. Daryl sat up, though, at the same time that Carol sat up. She'd woken herself from whatever was going in her unconscious mind, but even in the dark he could tell that she wasn't calm yet. He could hear that her breathing was labored.
He could hear that she was still suffering from whatever it was that she'd seen in her mind.
There was the distinct sound of her hands searching out things on the bedside table, and Daryl rolled and switched on a lamp to bathe the room in a soft glow since she seemed unable to find hers. She'd already swung her feet over the side of the bed. Her back was to him. And now he could see that her labored breathing wasn't the only the after effect of dream induced panic. She was overtaken with emotion.
Daryl could, if he wanted to treat her in a frosty manner to match the silence she'd been guarding, ignore her, but he wasn't going to. He thought better of it the minute that it even crossed his mind that ignoring her might be the thing to do. He scrambled out from under the cover on his side of the bed, crossed the mattress—which felt like an epic feat at the moment—and eased himself into position to sit next to her. He waited a moment to touch her before he finally rested his palm on her back.
"She's not crying," Carol said quietly. "I thought—she was crying."
The house was quiet. It probably wouldn't be for long, but for the moment it was quiet. Daryl cleared his throat, still working his way through his fog.
"She ain't crying," he confirmed. "Went down a little while ago. Gonna cry soon—I'm sure. But she ain't crying."
"Is she not crying because she's—not crying or?" Carol asked. She stopped, but Daryl heard the rest of it.
"She's asleep," Daryl said. "Ain't been asleep that long. Won't be asleep that much longer. Not if her schedule keeps up like it's going. Now I know why she was—hanging in a bag in the trees. Cryin' every couple of hours for something? She'd have pulled every damn Walker down on them in the area. Like constantly ringing a dinner bell."
"Her mother was smart," Carol said. "The bag was smart. It was a good idea."
"You woulda thought about something like that," Daryl said.
Carol shook her head at him. She continued shaking it.
"I told Ryan I would look after them like they were my own," Carol said. Daryl knew immediately what she was talking about and he was pretty sure that he could guess what her dream might have been about. She laughed to herself, but it was insincere laughter. "I kept good on that promise," she said, a hint of bitterness coming through in her tone—it was bitterness at this world.
"You couldn't help what happened," Daryl said. "None of it. And I know you don't understand that, but you gotta try to understand it. None of what's happened—none of it—was your fault."
"I killed Lizzie," Carol said.
"To keep her from killing herself," Daryl said. "To keep her from killing Judith. Tyreese. You, even. And then? Killing herself. Getting herself killed. Torn apart by Walkers. You killed her to save her from dying a whole lot worse than the way she did. If I ever lost my mind? Ended up thinking the way she did? I would hope somebody would do the same thing to me before I really did something horrible."
"She didn't understand this world," Carol said. "She didn't understand...Walkers. And who could blame her? Mika? She didn't understand this world. Sophia? And I failed them all in that. I failed them because...it was my job to help them understand what they needed to understand."
"You ain't God," Daryl said. "Sophia didn't understand completely because...hell...none of us did, Carol. We were all still figuring shit out as we went along. You done what you could do for her. You couldn't have saved her. None of us could. Because we didn't know then what we know now. We weren't used to it like we are now."
Daryl rubbed Carol's back in response to the shaking that he could feel pulsing through her body. She reached and found one of the folded handkerchiefs from the nightstand—maybe what she'd been in search of earlier—and she hid her face behind it while she wiped at her nose and eyes.
"That weren't on you no more'n it was on all of us," Daryl said. "Tyreese was with you. With Mika and Lizzie. He couldn't do nothin' neither."
"Tyreese wasn't ready for this world either," Carol said.
"None of us were," Daryl said. "Still aren't, sometimes. But we keep going. That's what we've gotta do. Weren't your fault. I've told you that before. I'll tell you that again, too, if I gotta keep saying it. Because if you can't believe me? How am I supposed to believe it wasn't my fault that Beth ended up at that hospital? How am I supposed to believe that I couldn't have stopped them getting her and..."
"You couldn't stop that," Carol said quickly, interrupting him. "You couldn't stop them taking her and you certainly couldn't stop what she did. She decided to do that. On her own. Nobody saw it coming and nobody could've stopped it."
"And you can't stop the world from turning just the way it's going to neither," Daryl responded back, this time with the same matter-of-fact tone that she was using on him. "It's a shame. And it keeps us up late at night. But it's nothing that we can stop. All we got is what we got here and what we got now. And you and me? We both know that ain't carved in stone. It could all end..." He snapped his fingers, louder than he intended, and Carol jumped. But he thought that she got his point.
And maybe someone else got his point too, or either it was simply time for another round of figuring out what the baby needed, because he heard a sharp howl from the nursery that was followed by a softer round of the cries that would continue until Daryl answered the call.
Carol looked at him, expectation in her eyes, and he chewed at his lip.
"She's probably hungry," he said.
"You don't have enough milk?" Carol asked.
Daryl hummed in the affirmative.
"Could be easier, though, if you wanted to—just feed her," he said. Carol began to shake her head at him and he realized that he may be pushing that a little too far. It may be a little too fast. But she was thawing to him some, that was clear, and it meant that she might be thawing to the little girl. After all, she was concerned about her—and whether or not she was peacefully asleep—so it was fair to say that there was something there.
"You wanna just see her?" Daryl asked. "Look at her? You don't gotta—do anything else. Don't even have to touch her if you don't want to."
Carol hesitated and Daryl got to his feet. If she didn't want to look at her, she didn't have to. He'd keep his promise of keeping them apart for as long as he could. Whether Carol wanted to see her or not, though, it was clear that the baby wanted to see him. So he started out of the bedroom to go and begin his regular routine of trying to create the best experience for the little girl that he could.
"Daryl?" Carol called, getting his attention. He stopped and looked back at her. She hadn't given up her position on the bed and she was still tugging at her nose—which was likely on its way to being raw—with the handkerchief. "Bring her? Just—for a minute?"
Daryl nodded at her, but he didn't say anything. A minute, an hour, whatever it was or it ended up being, he'd take it at this point.