DISCLAIMER: The Walking Dead universe isn't mine. The characters aren't mine. I just lured them over to the dark side by promising them cookies.
It was on a particularly frigid night three months later that Carol woke up from yet another nightmare that she couldn't remember. Shivering from cold and fear, she burrowed deeper under her thin blankets and tried to muffle her sobs with her fist so that she didn't disturb the others. They were in yet another house, this one being more of a shack, with only one bedroom and a main living space that included a kitchenette. All of the furniture had been shoved against the walls to make room for their bedding, and they all slept as close together as possible to conserve body heat.
Beth slept on her left, curled into a ball against her father's back. To her right, the blankets were empty, and she was grateful for that in spite of the cold. Daryl was outside on watch, then, and her sudden night terror wouldn't be the cause of yet another awkward moment between the two of them.
She hadn't asked him to start bedding down next to her at night, and he hadn't asked her if she minded. But as the nights had grown steadily colder and their shelter options became less than optimal, the tracker had taken to laying out his sleeping bag next to hers. This wasn't her first bad dream since he'd starting sleeping so close to her and it wouldn't be the last, but she hated the fact that she had managed to disturb what little sleep Daryl did get every time she woke up crying.
In several cases, it had been screams.
To his credit, he had never gotten angry with her, but she was painfully aware of how uncomfortable her sleeping patterns made him. Most nights he would roll over, back to her, with his pillow jammed over his head. But on some nights, particularly the bad ones, he would place a hand on her shoulder and squeeze gently, whispering gruffly, "Calm down, woman. Yer safe. Everthin's alright."
It wasn't much, but it helped.
Daryl always took first watch and always refused when someone else offered to let him get a full night's sleep for once. He was always up before dawn on the days that they were staying put, spending hours outside hunting to fill the group's empty stomachs, trying to stretch what food they had managed to find that much further.
As the months had worn on, the dark circles under his eyes had grown more pronounced, and his clothes seemed to hang looser than anyone else's, even though they were all losing weight at an alarming rate. Carol fretted between Daryl, Lori, and Carl, always saving the largest portions of the meals she cooked for them, even it meant taking less than her own share. She knew that they needed it the most, and she wasn't going to burden the rest of the group further by taking food out of the mouths of the people who needed it.
Daryl had caught on to this rather quickly, though, and usually scraped some of his food back into her bowl. "Stop starvin' yerself. We ain't dyin' yet," and he refused to take her emphatic no's for an answer.
This was how she calmed herself down when she woke up crying in the dead of night. She thought about how close they were all becoming, in spite of how damaged they'd been after the farm. She counted the blessings, what little she could number. The day that Daryl and come traipsing back into camp dragging a fat buck a little over a month ago. The ammunition they'd found hidden under a bed in a house when their supply of bullets was all but gone. The tanker full of gasoline still sitting next to a convenience store when they'd encountered another herd and had to double back the way they had come. The day that Lori's pregnancy had finally started to show, giving them all hope that the baby might just make it into this world after all, however dreadful that world might be.
Carol had just started to drift back to sleep when the sound of the front door opening and closing started her back awake. She shuddered at the colder air that breezed through the room, listening intently as the sound of boots on the rough wooden floor crossed the room. The bedroom door creaked open and she heard Daryl call for Rick to come take his turn on watch. The Grimes family had been the only ones to take up residence in that room, and no one begrudged Lori for needing to sleep in a real bed whenever possible.
Moments later, Daryl was shuffling back across the room, dropping wearily to the floor, and not even bothering to unlace his boots as he threw back the edge of his sleeping bag and crawled into the empty space beside her. She rolled over from her back to her side, facing him.
"How was watch?" she whispered, her words carrying just far enough for him to hear.
For a moment, he didn't answer her, and she thought he'd already fallen asleep.
"Took out three walkers," he finally muttered. "Gonna have to move on in the morning. Sorry I woke ya."
"I was already awake," she sighed, and winced when she heard his sharp intake of breath. He knew why she was awake. Of course he did.
"Well, try ta get some sleep," he whispered, thankfully choosing to ignore the obvious. "We'll be leavin' at first light."
"Okay," she breathed, resigning herself to what was coming in the morning. "'Night, Daryl."
His only answer was a soft snore.