Author's Note: Thank you for your reads and reviews. I am amazed that anyone bothers.
I've started mapping out where I am going with this thing and I've got the next 5 chapters in mind. If I stop where I think I'll be ready to stop, it should be about 10 chapters long in total. But then I got this badass idea and I'm not sure if I will continue on with the plot to put it in or make it a one shot. I'll figure it out by chapter 8 I guess. I've been pretty awesome about updating every day, but I won't be tomorrow. I'll be somewhere without an internet connection, but I should have my laptop to write, so all going well, it'll be up Friday. /end ramble
TWDTWDTWD
Carol was surprised by how quickly hunting became a part of her daily routine. Every morning, she'd be up before the sun came up. Usually Daryl would wake first and creep up to her attic to check she was up, but sometimes she'd surprise him by being downstairs already, a pot of coffee on the go. It would only be a couple of hours of hunting, just until the first of the others woke up, around seven. She was getting better with her aim, missing moving targets less often now, although never surpassing his kills. Daryl would usually came back with half a dozen or so rabbits and squirrels, whilst she'd consider it a good haul if she got three. But she always came back with something and between them, it was always a good meal on the table.
After getting back to the house, he would get straight to work helping the men on the wall. After a week, T-Dog had laid the foundation and it was already two foot high all the way around. With every day, each man was getting better at laying the bricks and more and more was achieved.
Carol would usually clean that evenings meal first before helping Lori, Beth, Maggie and Carl with the task of planting the seeds and it was just as gruelling as laying bricks. The weather had cooled over the previous weeks, but at the height of day, the sun was still strong on their back as they worked hands and knees on the hard earth, turning it to plant their fruit and vegetables.
Lori was finding it particularly hard, her bump seemed to have popped up overnight and she frequently looked gaunt and frail. Carol had to call Rick on more than one on occasion to take her inside to rest because the woman would not heed Carol's advice. But she knew, that as soon as Lori would be cleaning in the house, hating the feeling of uselessness. Carol knew how that felt.
The only rested for lunch, although no-one wasted time by cooking up anything particularly time-consuming and ploughed straight on with work until the sun began to fade. It was then Lori usually began to surface, doing her best to stomach the smells that plagued her so that she could have dinner on the table for them when they walked in the door.
They rotated the washing up, everyone taking their turns without complaint. Even Daryl, who usually made references to "women's work" on a daily basis. Afterwards, she and Daryl would sit on the porch by candlelight, cleaning their weapons in darkness before she headed to bed, absolutely exhausted, to do it all again the next day. And she loved it.
Once the seeds were all planted, she and Maggie began to help the men with the wall. Daily applications of aloe meant her fingers and forearm were almost completely healed, thanks to Daryl. The bricks were heavy and she was slow, but every little helped.
TWDTWDTWD
Daryl found himself hating the monotony of the wall. Slowly working up and down the same strip of earth, layering on wet cement and pressing it onto the bricks below was mindnumbingly boring.
He wanted to be out in the forest, tracking and hunting. Exploring what beyond the river. He knew that hunting wasn't urgent. There was less mouths to feed these days, plenty of food in the stores and he had Carol taking some of the work from him.
She surprised him. He truly thought that after the first day, her hand covered with blisters, she'd jack it in and step back into the kitchen. He never thought she'd actually be that good. Not many people could do what he did, not even Merle was, despite being the one to teach him, on account of his yappy mouth and tendency to be high as a kite most of the time. But she kept getting better. She was starting to recognise tracks in the ground, spotting the occasional kill before he did.
He wondered though, what brought about this change. He knew the change of heart happened somewhere between the conversation they had beside the dying fire, the first terrible night out of the Greene farm and the day she approached him with her scrap of paper, asking for a weapon, but he couldn't decide why.
He always found Carol interesting. Right from the beginning, when they first met at the camp outside Atlanta. He never spoke to her, she never spoke to anyone apart from the women, her douchebag husband made sure of that. He knew from the first day how that relationship went down. He had his own experiences with shitty family. But that day, when she took the axe from him to batter her husband's skull beyond all recognition, that's when he noticed her. He knew her to be stronger than everyone thought, had to be to put with that piece of shit on her shoulder her whole damn life.
She pissed him off plenty. She knew exactly how to wind him up, creep right under his skin til he wanted to throw punches at the wall. She knew him. Knew how he thought, how he behaved and it made him so mad. He couldn't hide anything from her. Yet, all that time, he kept coming back for more. He didn't want to hide from her. Not anymore. Not this Carol. This Carol, who wanted life. Who wanted more than she'd been given.
He wanted to be with her now, outside the growing wall, teaching her all he knew. Instead he was building a wall alongside Rick, who couldn't seem to stop jabbering on about plans after the wall. At this rate, it felt like all that lay ahead of them was the neverending fucking wall.
"Hey, Daryl, can I ask you something?" The sheriff asked him, not stopping his work.
Daryl looked at him, squinting in the sunlight. If somebody asked you if they could ask you something, it never turned out to be anything good, in his experience. Still, he nodded anyway.
"You planning on sticking around?" His voice was low, avoiding the ears of Carol and Hershel, who were across the way from them.
"I ever said I'm goin' anywhere? 'Sides, what kinda idiot do you think I am, workin' my ass off building a wall I don't intend on livin' behind?" Daryl was surprised. He liked Rick well enough, for a cop. Man did what was in everyone's best interests. They usually worked from the same page on most things.
"I thought...Carol's gettin' awful good on that bow..." Rick trailed off, hoping the other man got the hint.
"S'bout time. She and Beth 'bout the only ones who didn't know shit about defendin' themselves." Daryl reached over to take a pull out of his water canteen.
"I know she wanted to go. She was all kinds of mad at me that night." Daryl knew instantly which night Rick referred to.
"Bein' honest with ya Rick, I wanted to kick the shit outta you myself." He looked up at him, a smirk on his face. Rick looked mildly alarmed.
"I'da done it already if I still did. But she ain't goin' nowhere. Neither am I."
"She tell you that?" Rick pressed on, stopping to watch Daryl respond.
"She don't gotta. She ain't goin'." Daryl repeated, slapping another brick with cement, he turned to watch Carol, who had paused to crick her back. "She's...she's better'n ever." He turned away as she caught his gaze.
Rick seemed happy enough with this answer. "She any good with that thing anyway?" He asked, laughter in his voice.
"I'd watch your ass if you piss her off anymore." Daryl chuckled back. "She got me for a teacher, ain't she?"
"That's true, man." Rick kept his mouth shut after that, for which Daryl was grateful. All that talking did no-one any good. He did not want to talk to anyone about Carol. He knew that they all assumed too much and he wasn't about to tell them anything.
TWDTWDTWD
Several mornings later, it rained. It was the soft drizzly kind, the kind that looked harmless but soaked you to the skin, chilling you to the bones. But Carol knew that a little rain wouldn't stop Daryl Dixon and his crossbow. And that meant it wouldn't stop her. Still, she waited until he came up to her room to wake her, savouring the extra few minutes in bed.
As they prepared to leave, he handed her a buck knife, sheathed, for her to slip through her jeans belt.
She looked at him questioningly. "There's Walkers out there, you never know, bow ain't always enough." He told her. He didn't know why today of all days he handed her that knife. Couldn't explain it and was pretty sure she would laugh at him if he tried. There was just a feeling, something telling him that she should have it. Truth was though, he couldn't teach her shit about using that knife, because there would be no time for practice if she ever needed it.
She accepted his answer and undid her leather jacket so she could thread it onto her belt.
"Can they even work on the wall in this weather?" She asked, as they stepped out onto the porch. It was nearly complete now, just a couple more rows of bricks and it would be taller than all of them. There was plans for a door, Rick reckoned he'd seen something they could tear down and bring back from a property a few miles down the road, one they'd plundered for furniture in the early days of their. It had to be wide enough to fit the vehicles in the makeshift driveway.
"Doubt it. They'll be glad for a break anyways." He told her, as they made their way through the wall and towards the forest.
The rain seemed to drive all the creatures into hiding. She could hear rustling higher up in the trees but she couldn't be sure if it was a meal or just the rain pattering on the leaves. Daryl spotted his first kill quickly, a hare and took it out. As he went to retrieve it, she heard a definite animal noise above her and with no hesitation she drew her bow and released, killing the squirrel instantly, pinning it's carcass to the trunk. She flung her bow on her back and made her way up the tree to retrieve her prize. She was in no mood to hang around today, if they were having a day off, she wanted to spend at least some of it in the living room, by the fire with a cup of sweet tea and a book.
As she began to climb back down the ten feet or so, she heard his crossbow again and she was glad he caught something again.
"Stay up there, Carol." He growled up towards the tree and she heard the bow go off again. "We got a couple of Walkers."
Her heart leapt to her throat when she heard the last word, but she climbed further down the tree anyway, feet stumbling to get to the branches. She stopped a few feet from the bottom when she pulled her bow off, loading it in and releasing it into the head of a Walker across the ways, a few feet from where Daryl stood, retrieving his arrows from the fallen undead. It crumbled to the ground instantly and she felt bile rise into her throat. She killed her second Walker.
She jumped from the tree and landed in a crouch, straightening up to scan the clearing where they stood. "You alright?" She asked.
He nodded and turned suddenly, hearing the noise of something else. Another Walker came lurching towards him, a small one, a young boy, maybe fifteen or so, shredded clothes hanging from his body, exposing his open wound, ribs on show and it was missing an arm. Daryl aimed his crossbow and the arrow hit the Walker in the chest, the force sending its small frame to the ground. Before it could get up, Daryl jumped it, one foot on its chest, the other on its remaining arm. It snarled and moaned at him, jaw mashing to get a bite of him.
"Get over here and take it out." He told her, voice eerily calm.
She stepped over slowly. "Why did you aim at its chest?" She asked, pulling the knife from the sheath.
"You gotta do it." He pushed harder on the Walker's chest, forcing it down, it kicked furiously to release itself.
She reached them, every footstep hesitant.
"You gotta do it Carol, you gotta know what it feels like." He urged her on. "This is what it takes, to live."
"I...I..."
"Do it!" He didn't meant to snarl at her, but it ripped from his throat before he could stop it. She glanced at his face, looking straight at him, before she plunged the buck knife into the Walker's head, blood splattering the ground, it stilled on the first penetration, but she stabbed again, to be sure.
She sank to her knees to pull the knife out and he stepped back to retrieve her arrow from the other Walker.
"Come on, let's go back." He was gentle now, she noticed, grasping her by the arm to help her up.
"No." Carol finally pulled her gaze away from the young Walker. "We still got food to find."
"It don't matter. This'll do." He told her, moving her along with a hand at the small of her back. "You need to go back." He thought he had pushed her too far. She wasn't ready for this. She was too delicate for this.
"No, I'm fine Daryl. Let's keep going." She pulled herself away from him and took the arrow out of his hand, putting it back in the quiver and exchanging it for another to load her bow, she turned away and walked further into the forest. He followed her. He'd always follow her.