AN #1: Hello everyone! Thank you again for the response, means so much to me. I'm sorry this took so long to get up, I had some issues with how I wanted this story to continue, so just hang in there with me!
Disclaimer: I do not own or write for The Walking Dead or AMC.
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Tyreese and Mika returned not long after that, full sloshing pots in tow. They were laughing together, not caring about the world and what was so very wrong with it.
Daryl's heart hurt when he saw that moment of change in their eyes, the second Mika's baby faced giggles morphed into shock and terror, when Tyreese's face fell, concern evident in his eyes.
He shot Daryl a questioning look, glancing at Beth and Carol, still curled into a half-embrace on the ground, and then back at him. Daryl only shook his head, his eyes flitting to the ground, lightly covering the little ear that wasn't resting against his sternum.
"Carol?" Mika stuttered out, her voice high and shaky.
Beth stopped her crying with a hiccup, and leaned forward, plastering a smile on her blotchy face. Carol straightened and smiled at the little girl.
"Oh, good," she said lightly, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "Come here honey, bring that pot with you. That's just what we needed."
Mika's mood immediately shifted with Carol's. She smiled and hopped forwards, the tall stainless steel pot splashing water down the front of her dirt stained t-shirt. She looked down at herself and murmured an "oops", giggling quietly. Carol kept smiling at her.
"Thank you, honey. Now you stand and hold this towel up in front of Bethy so I can help her get all cleaned up, alright?"
Mika nodded dutifully, setting the pot down and reaching towards the towel that Carol was lifting off of Beth.
Daryl turned quickly, and made towards the little campfire. The sun was setting quickly, casting a warm, dreamlike quality over their little camp. Tyreese was busying himself with building the fire up below the little grate that the pot sat on. Lizzie stood behind him, half-turned, her knife out as she watched him from the corners of her eyes.
His grip on Judith tightened instinctively.
The child stirred against him, eyes blearily opening. She let out a little whine as she fisted her hands in those little eyes, bottom lip tremoring precariously as she looked up and around. She looked up at Daryl and her expression calmed for a moment, and then soured again. She let out a bleating cry, pushing against him, bringing her hand back to her mouth.
He started bouncing her again quickly, but when that proved inadequate, looked to Tyreese.
"Any formula left?" He asked loudly over the din of her cries, trying to be heard but trying not to upset her further.
Tyreese nodded tiredly, and motioned towards the diaper bag. "Got a whole can," he breathed, blowing on the fire to try and get it going. "Only got one bottled water left though, and until this boils, that's all we got. So use sparingly."
Daryl nodded, and tried again to bounce her into silence. He half galloped over to the diaper bag, trying unsuccessfully to unzip it and make the bottle with the screaming girl in his arms.
He glanced over at Lizzie, made sure she was a fair distance away, and then stripped off his leather vest, laid it on the ground, and laid her on it.
She kept right on screaming, but at least now he had two hands to try and figure this out.
He sighed with relief at the image of three clean bottles, each having measured scoops of formula inside. He hurriedly fixed the bottle, and in record time, whirled around and shoved it in her squealing little mouth.
She made a squeak of surprise as the nipple hit her tongue, seeming very confused at the sudden sensation, but began sucking with such gusto he almost dropped the bottle. He laughed at her, and she ignored him, going to town on what he was assuming was her only source of nutrients since they had left the prison. There were no little mason jars of pureed carrots in there, and he knew how fast they went through pureed carrots. He was usually the one meticulously placing each and every glass jar into the buggy. What idiot had come up with the great idea of glass baby food jars, anyway?
The girl was probably starving.
He picked her and the vest up in one armful and cradled her against him with the bottle in one hand and her in the other. He settled down against a pine tree at the base of the forest line, glancing up quickly at the suddenly silenced campsite.
Tyreese was now unpacking empty water bottles and canteens and setting them by the fire. Lizzie was staring at him in a way that made his skin crawl, and Mika was dragging the sleeping bag over towards the fire. Carol was helping Beth hobble over closer to the rest of them. She was wearing new pants, but from where they came from, he had no idea.
Carol had always had a knack for that, having exactly what you needed. The woman squirreled away anything useful, and when someone's shoelace ripped, or their pants snagged a hole in a very undignified place, or a sweater was stolen by a couple walkers in a pinch, Carol was always there with a replacement. Didn't matter your size or gender, she always had something to give you.
She helped her settle down again, then took one of the empty water bottles and filled it with the simmering water. She took it back to Beth, who thanked her and laid down, her back to the rest of them.
Tyreese was eyeing her anxiously, and seemed to be on the verge of asking, when Carol returned, a small, sad smile on her lips, and shook her head slowly, as if to say This is really sad, and I might tell you later, but don't you ask now.
He seemed to get the point, and instead amended the question.
"So how did y'all find us? Did you… Did you see anyone else get out?" he asked quickly.
Daryl knew what he was really asking.
He shook his head slowly, shifting the bottle up higher to keep the air at the top.
"I didn't see Sasha," he intoned softly. "All I saw was the bus leaving, and Rick and the Governor goin' at each other."
And the Governor hacking at Hershel's neck as he died. He had seen that, too.
But he didn't add that, not with Beth so distressed just a couple yards away. And surely not in front of Carol, who wasn't even there to know the horrors of what they saw.
"We were headed for one of the evac houses when I saw your tracks. Beth saw one of Judith's diapers, and so we kept on going until we found you."
He popped the empty bottle out of Judy's mouth and propped her up against his shoulder to burp her.
Tyreese just gawked at him.
His eyebrows lowered. "What?" he quipped gruffly as he patted gently against the baby's back.
Tyreese just shook his head, a throaty laugh rumbling from his core. "If you only knew what I went through trying to get the kid to shut up on the way out of the prison… Screamed her head off the whole night, drew every walker from a mile round on our trails." He shook his head again and motioned a finger towards them.
"You got her to sleep in less than a minute, and then you knew exactly what was wrong with her. Man, you should've been the one with the kids," he said.
No, I shouldn't have, he thought to himself, shame blanketing his thoughts as he remembered that first night.
He shook off the bad thoughts, busying himself with Rick's baby.
"Pfft," he answered in his usual way, wanting to hide his face as Judith burped loudly, jerking at her own sound and then twisting to turn back around and see everyone else.
"See?! I never even knew you had to do that!" Tyreese laughed out.
Carol settled down with her pack and started putting her various items away methodically, a big smile playing on her face. He knew how uncomfortable praise made him. And she was wallowing in it.
"Daryl has always had a way with that baby," Carol said matter-of-factly, not even looking up as she unzipped pocket after pocket.
Daryl felt his face burning, but didn't say anything. Just held the girl in his lap as she reached towards the rocks on the ground, giggling in that beautiful baby way as she tested each color, each size, each texture.
It became a rhythm of pushing her hands away from her mouth; warding away the dirty and occasionally blood-splattered rocks that little Judith wanted so desperately to taste and gnaw on.
Everywhere was a grave. Everywhere.
The sun was dipping low, and visibility was getting bad. When the pot had boiled for a sufficient amount of time, Carol pulled it off to let it cool, and set the other on the grate.
Why would Carol have pots with her? He knew Tyreese wouldn't have taken them. He barely got the girls out.
He tried to catch her eye to ask her quietly, but she was too caught up in filling the water bottles and canteens, distributing them to the backpack and the diaper bag.
He cleared his throat, and her head immediately shot up.
He nodded towards the pots. "What you doing hitchhiking with gumbo pots?"
Carol chuckled at him. "I wasn't hitchhiking," she said vaguely, a small smile on her face. "I told you I found a hippie's car. I found a couple suitcases filled with clothes, a couple pots, some other supplies. Lots of drugs. I was driving…away from the prison… when I heard screaming."
"She saved us," Mika piped in, smiling shyly. "Me and Lizzie and Judith were surrounded, and she killed them all."
A shadow passed over Carol's face, but it quickly passed and she gave her a motherly, you-know-better, look. "There weren't that many."
"Yeah huh!" Mika argued. "There were, like, at least six. And you didn't even use your gun!"
It was Carol's turn to blush. She just shook her head, smiling to herself. "No, I didn't. Should've, though. Would have been much smarter." She looked pointedly at Lizzie, whose back was turned and stiff, as if she were purposely trying to be as little involved as she could manage.
Daryl wasn't sure he wanted to know the details.
"But I rescued the wrong people," Carol said softly, continuing on her story. "Mika wasn't screaming, she knew better. Tyreese had gone to help some people who had been ambushed by several walkers. We headed towards them, and they were all dead except for one. He was bitten, so it wouldn't have been long for him. He told us to keep to the tracks to the west, to stay out of the woods. They didn't even know they had been travelling towards the tracks."
Daryl nodded, putting it together.
"So you went back to get your stuff."
Carol nodded. She put the last baggie of herbs in an outside pocket and turned her head over her shoulder.
"You doing alright, Beth?" she questioned, her face a mask of duty and concern. She mumbled an affirmative.
"…So why did you stop here?" he asked, quickly unraveling Judith's soft palm from a discarded bottle cap she had discovered. She protested lightly, but he hushed her, placing a smooth pebble in her hand, and she started babbling again.
Carol shrugged. "The girls needed to rest. So did we."
He waited.
"…and it doesn't really sit well with me."
He looked at her, willing her to explain herself without him having to ask.
It worked. She glanced up at him, and her eyes narrowed into a squint. She swatted a mosquito away from her face and sighed.
"The map. To that Terminus, Sanctuary place? The only way to get there is by the tracks. Which means the only way to get there is on foot, completely vulnerable. It doesn't sit well with me. The sign made it seem like they were eager for inhabitants, but it's been a long day, and we're not even close. Why aren't there tents, packs of water, backpacks of supplies along the way? It just doesn't make sense."
Daryl's eyes had gotten considerably wider as she spoke, and by the end, he was practically kicking himself. This was insane. She was one hundred percent, without a doubt, right. This just screamed Woodbury.
He could tell Tyreese felt the same way. His eyes were wide, and he shook his head at the ground, poking absentmindedly at the fire. "We can't keep going then," he answered, looking up from his eyebrows. "We can't risk it."
Carol shook her head. Daryl nodded.
"I guess we make our way back to one of the evac houses, then?" he offered, watching Carol closely as he did. Something –fear, anger, anxiety- flashed in her eyes, but she nodded slowly. She looked back at Lizzie, who was still patrolling, with Mika now by her side, and her face took on an expression of such anguish that he had to stop himself from reaching out to her.
There was a heavy silence that fell.
Tyreese broke it as the sky began to lose its yellow hues. He swallowed deeply. "Is someone going to tell me what's wrong with Beth?"
Daryl focused intently on the ground and tried not to look up, willed Carol to answer him.
She did.
"She's having a miscarriage. I think it was probably the stress of the losing the prison, getting separated from her family. Could have been over-exertion. Or really anything at all," she breathed, wiping her brow and sparing a look behind her. "She's a tough girl, though. She'll make it through."
Tyreese blanched, but tried to cover it quickly with a couple nods. "I should have known. Back at our first camp, there was a woman, she was pretty far along." He took a deep breath. "Walker got her husband, and she was so upset she miscarried. That was before we knew that, well, you didn't have to be bit to turn. She held that tiny little thing all day and all night. Sasha and some other old lady finally got her to let them bury it."
Carol was watching him closely, processing his words. "So… It didn't turn."
Tyreese shook his head. "Plenty of time to, too. Guess whatever it is that makes you come back, you don't get it until you breathe it in."
Carol seemed to relax at that, and leaned back on her palms, legs crossed. She sat back and watched Beth's tiny form, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. "I was worried about that. Thank you."
He nodded slowly. "Poor girl's been through enough. At least she don't have to go through that, too."
Carol and Daryl both nodded, looking to the living baby in his lap that had no idea her world was in shambles.
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AN #2: Thanks for reading! I'll try to get one or two more up by Sunday, so wait up!
