AN: So I was a little off in my calculations and this is actually the final chapter of this short little fic. Thank you to the person who requested it, and who shall remain anonymous. I hope that I did it justice.
And thank you to everyone who has read it and patiently waited for me to finish it.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Daryl didn't stop Carol when she practically leapt out of the bed in the middle of the night to go and get the baby that requested attention some time before the sun rose. He didn't say anything, either, when she brought her into the bedroom and sat in the bed, her back against the headboard and her bedside lamp burning, to feed her. He didn't mind, at all, falling back to sleep to the soft sounds of the humming that wasn't actually meant to lull him back to sleep.
In fact, Daryl slept most of the night, and he wasn't complaining at all about it.
When he woke up, the house was quiet. The baby hadn't woken again yet and Carol was lost in a deep enough sleep that she was unaware that she was snoring quietly. It was a deeper sleep than Daryl had seen her enjoy for some time. Maybe, even though she hadn't been staying up for the past few nights with the baby, she'd needed to rest as much as he had.
Maybe it was just a different kind of rest.
Stirred by the uneasy feeling of a morning that started just this way—waking slowly and stirred only by the natural desire to wake—and ended as the worst morning of his life, Daryl got out of bed as quickly and quietly as he could. He was careful not to wake Carol, as she had been not to wake him that morning before she'd gone to check on Maison, but he moved quickly. He was still stepping into his shorts as he slipped out of the bedroom and made his way to the nursery.
Daryl held his breath as he stepped into the room. He had no idea what it had been like when Carol had found Maison. She wouldn't talk about it in any great detail, and he didn't ask for more than she freely gave. His discovery of the scene had been very different than hers because he'd gone in knowing, given Carol's behavior, that something wasn't right. Now, though, the nursery was just still. No one had come in before him. He was the first to get to the space. He'd be the first to check on the baby girl who was sleeping better and longer than she had in the few days that she'd been there.
There wasn't any sound that he could make out. Glancing at the crib, from what he could see from the threshold, there wasn't any movement. He let out the breath he'd been purposefully holding to make it easier to hear and he crossed the slightly creaking floor to the side of the crib.
On her back, eyes closed and one hand thrown back in abandon, the baby slept. She slept. That was all. Peacefully and entirely unaware of the fear that she could inspire just by sleeping, she slept.
Daryl didn't want to wake her, but he did lean over her enough to satisfy himself and check to be sure—one hundred percent sure—that she was sleeping. And she was. Her tiny chest rose and fell. If he leaned close enough to her, he could hear a very slight hint of a snore, possibly brought on by a coming cold or allergy. She remained unmoved by his presence and he straightened himself up and smiled at her, even if she couldn't see it.
"You usually wake my ass up at the crack of dawn," Daryl mumbled, but he wasn't really mad.
He wasn't mad at all. The emotions that were coursing through his body at the moment couldn't be any farther from anger if he'd tried to make them so.
Everybody in the whole house could sleep as long as they wanted—as long as sleeping was what they were doing.
Daryl decided, while they slept, to slip into his clothes and take a walk down to the pantry. A good breakfast, after all, was the fastest way to guarantee that a good morning turned into an even better day. And today, he thought, was an important one.
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Daryl was shifting the fried meat onto a plate and was about to flip the last of the pancakes onto another when Carol came shuffling into the kitchen. She'd slept longer than he'd thought she would. His whole household, it seemed, was overtaken by sleepy heads. He offered her a smile over his shoulder and she returned it with her lips, even if her eyes were still heavy lidded.
"Breakfast?" She asked.
"That's what people usually eat in the morning," Daryl responded.
"But I usually make it," Carol pointed out.
"Coffee—if you want it," Daryl said.
"I shouldn't have much," Carol said. "Not if I'm—not nursing."
"One cup ain't gonna kill you," Daryl said. He gestured to the table with his head and gathered up the plate of meat in one hand and the pancakes in the other. Carol steered her shuffling walk toward the table and Daryl deposited the plates of food in the center of it—the settings for them both having been put out before he'd even begun to cook. He went, then, and returned with two cups of coffee while Carol watched him with still sleepy eyes. She thanked him quietly when she took her cup from him and she tasted the dark and bitter liquid.
"It's not me I'm worried about," Carol said.
Daryl hummed and bit back a smile.
"Never is," he responded. "But—it ain't gonna hurt her neither. Dawn's done overslept. Guess she could use a little coffee in her life."
Daryl eyed Carol over his coffee cup and wondered if she was too sleepy to grasp onto his words and get anything out of them. She didn't say anything. She finished drinking a few sips of the coffee, put the cup on the table, and then she sorted some pancakes onto her plate and some onto his. He watched as she did the same with the meat and then she poured the syrup that he'd put out for her over her own food before sitting the bottle beside his plate.
She tasted one of the pancakes and Daryl cleared his throat. Carol looked at him and then she turned her attention back to the food.
"It's very good," she said, mistaking his throat clearing as a request for validation of his cooking ability. "Thank you."
"Welcome," he muttered, soaking his own plate in enough syrup that, if she'd been paying attention, Carol would have scolded him for it.
"You checked on her?" Carol asked.
"Three times," Daryl responded, trying not to sulk over the fact that Carol was practicing a very strong case of selective hearing this morning.
"And she hasn't woken at all?" Carol asked.
"No," Daryl said. "But she's fine. Just sleeping. Whatever you give her in that milk's knocked her out."
Carol laughed to herself.
"I think—maybe? She wasn't getting her stomach as full from what I pumped?" Carol offered. "Maybe she got more and just didn't feel like she needed to wake up as much to ask for more?"
Daryl hummed and shrugged at his drowning pancakes as much as he did at Carol.
"Maybe," he mumbled.
"You're sure she's sleeping?" Carol asked.
Daryl became, for just a second, overcome with an irritation that even he wasn't expecting. He smacked his hand harder than he meant to on the table. He hit the wooden table top hard enough that it stung his palm.
"Yes, I'm sure she's sleeping!" Daryl spat.
He surprised even himself. He shocked himself. His immediate instinct was to apologize, knowing that Carol didn't care at all for outbursts, but she surprised him to the point that he couldn't even manage to do that. Sleepy Carol, sitting just next to him at the table, didn't look sleepy anymore. She looked so awake that it was hard to believe that she'd even been asleep.
And she laughed at him. She laughed at him like he hadn't heard her laugh in a while. It was a good laugh. A solid laugh. The kind of laugh that made her wrap her hand around her waist because her organs protested such a laugh at breakfast. And Daryl laughed too, out of his surprise and his shock, even though he had no idea what was funny.
And when it died down, the smile remained on Carol's face where the laughter had been. The light stayed in her eyes that it had lit there.
"You don't have to get so mad about it," Carol said once her amusement was under control. "I was just making sure that—Dawn—was still asleep."
Daryl was even more surprised, then, that she'd heard him. She'd heard him and she'd said nothing about his decision to try to come up with a name for the child himself. She hadn't ridiculed or scolded his decision. She hadn't pointed out—like he'd argued to himself that she might while he was testing it out on his tongue during his walk back from the pantry—that it wasn't the best name that the girl could have. Carol hadn't said anything at all about it.
And she still didn't. She simply got up from the table, tasted her coffee once more, and headed in the direction of the nursery.
"She won't be asleep for long now," Carol announced. "She probably heard us." Carol didn't stop walking, but she did slow her steps. She kept her back to Daryl. "I heard you," she said. "And I think it's a very nice name, Daryl. I hope—she wears it well for a very long time."
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Daryl knew that Dawn probably wasn't wide-eyed for any long length of time, but for the moment he was enjoying the fact that she was awake. She sat, or rather she lie, in the crook of his legs and stared at him—or just beyond him—while Carol cleaned the breakfast dishes.
She'd nursed the baby while she'd finished pancakes and she'd skillfully burped her. Daryl could never quite manage to burp her, or any baby for that matter, without costing them at least some of the milk that they'd just eaten. But at least seventy percent of the time, Carol was able to do it with the skill of an absolute professional.
When Carol had instructed him to take the baby, Daryl's stomach had turned slightly and disrupted his pancakes. He didn't want to push her, but he also didn't want to believe that she could—after showing concern and certainly showing a willingness to respond to the girl—simply turn her back to the child again. His concern must have shown on his face because Carol had offered him a simple and quick kiss on the lips and she'd pointed him in the direction of their barely used couch.
"I'm just going to wash the dishes," Carol had said. "And you're going to—be Daddy. You're going to keep her entertained for a bit."
And that was one job that Daryl could do. He could keep her entertained for a bit. He could keep her entertained for as long as she might like. And when Carol was ready, which she assured him she would be when the dishes were washed and put away and all was in order again, he could gladly pass the baby off to be cuddled and held by another willing to entertain her.
A baby found hanging in a sack from a tree branch wasn't going to fix the world. She wasn't going to bring Maison back, or even replace him. She wasn't going to take away the ache that they both felt every time that they thought of him, and it would be a long time before either of them were comfortable with the sounds of silence in the morning.
A baby, unfortunately left alone but somehow saved from the obvious and constant threats of this cruel world, wouldn't restore the order that had been disrupted. She wouldn't bring back those children who had been lost to things that she'd narrowly escaped. She couldn't return to them the ones that they felt they'd lost. Sophia would never return to them. Mikka and Lizzie were gone. Beth was still lost to poor choices and youthful compulsions in Atlanta.
A baby didn't have the power to restore their hearts or repair the broken pieces.
All that she could offer them was all that they could offer her—and all that they both sought repeatedly. A new start.
Dawn could only offer them a new day.