Chupacabra

Two Months Earlier

Juliet

Miserable, irritated, and freezing cold, Juliet stood outside her parents car wishing she was back in California. Of course the damn apocalypse would happen when she was stuck with Ed and Carol. It was of little comfort to have Sophia there, she was just someone to look after, a burden if Juliet was honest with herself, but one who was keeping herself easily amused with the young boy from the car behind theirs.

She looked at her phone again, for what would be the last time and reread the last message she would ever receive on it.

Stay safe. I'll come and find you. Robert.

She hadn't replied when she'd got it, and was unable to now all the phone masts were down. Robert was all the way back in California. There was no way he was getting to Georgia, or finding her if he did, and, more to the point, she didn't want him to. Realising this, even while staring at her father as he smoked a cigarette and leered over the boy's mother from the car, she immediately made her pace with being stuck here. Living with Robert was bad enough, let alone during the apocalypse.

For the first time in days a small smile spread across her lips.

"It's fucking cold." she grumbled miserably to no-one. Everyone was busy with other things, she realised, and, initially irritated at being left out of whatever loop they were in she smiled. This was the first peace she'd had in days.

She played with the ring on the chain around her neck and took it off after a while. She remembered his friend Josephine when she'd complain about it, saying women always got used to engagement rings and that one day, taking it off would feel wrong. She'd be incomplete without it. Stashing the makeshift necklace – which he'd insisted on her wearing when she made it clear she wasn't going to tell her mother she was engaged – into her suitcase, she honestly couldn't imagine ever feeling complete with it on.

Now she didn't have to pretend to be.

So far, this apocalypse was turning out to be a blessing in disguise for her. She just needed Ed gone quickly and it would be a dream come true.

Now

She awoke from a dream about the night they met Lori, Shane, and Carl with a little start. She was in one of the tents, alone, feeling fairly claustrophobic. She remembered that night with a bitter smile. She'd thought she had it made this apocalypse. She'd never imagined it would catch up with her in quite the way it had.

They had been on the farm for around a week now, and Juliet was beginning to tire. The searches had got longer, they were now a dawn until dusk march around the forest which seemed to be more an act of delusion than something they all hoped would work every day.

Last night, having had enough, she'd complained she was feeling ill and told them all that she would not be attending the search the next day. Rick understood, and Shane knew now that questioning her was a seriously stupid idea, and Andrea always had an annoyingly sympathetic 'if it was my sister, I'd feel the same' to offer her. The only one who cared really was Daryl, who pretended not to and gritted his teeth. He was the one who she paired with every day, he knew she was perfectly fine and that all that was wrong with her was diminishing hope. She'd gone to bed before he could speak to her alone and talk her in to going. She needed a day off; she'd help with chores, the cooking, talk to Beth and Maggie, try and forget for a day that her sister was still gone in much the same way Carol did. Carol, who she hadn't spoken to for four days now, seemed to be faring a lot better than she was.

It was probably Lori who had let her sleep in, and she was grateful. She couldn't remember the last time that she'd honestly felt well-rested. She exited the tent smiling.

"Mornin'!" Lori greeted her in a falsely cheerful way that made her grit her teeth. Daryl was rubbing off on her.

"Hey." Juliet replied, still a little dazed from waking up.

"We're all gonna cook Hershel's family dinner later. Beth's helpin', I know she'd be glad of your company." She hadn't seen a lot of Beth since her first night here, growing more reserved as the days passed. She felt guilty suddenly, Beth had been so good to her when she'd arrived. "You don't have to, if you're not feelin' up to it or you just want a quiet day... None of us'll stop you."

"No, I want to help." She didn't, but she knew she had to. The world kept turning even if to her it felt like it should have stopped. She'd have to start normalising her days without Sophia. She would fill them with mindless chores, things so dull the would numb her mind, stop her thinking altogether. Thinking was accompanied by misery and regret. "I won't just sit here and be a burden to you all, if I'm not out looking then I intend to pull my weight." She wondered briefly when the others would begin to give up. She knew already that Daryl would be the last one out there, still searching weeks after all the others stopped.

He wouldn't speak to her again if she gave up permanently.

She seemed to have given Lori the right answer as the older woman beamed at her and kissed the top of her head before leaving. She rubbed her temples – people kept giving her headaches these days.

She went up to the house, hoping she could help with the cleaning or something else boring until dinner. They were always cleaning something in there. She went up the front steps and knocked on the door. She was accustomed to being in the house, ever since her second night at the farm when she had accidentally slept on the porch and Hershel had found her at first night, laughing and saying she should just knock next time. Juliet always found it uncomfortable being around people whose opinion of her she could not determine. Hershel was this kind of person. She knew he tolerated her because Beth liked her so much, and for her first few days there she had waited for someone to let her in out of politeness, now she let herself in, only because Hershel had told her she should. Knocking anyway was just courtesy. Not like the others who since day one had taken to letting themselves in through the perpetually unlocked back door or hadn't come in at all and had barely introduced themselves, treating their temporary home like a camp ground rather than some poor man's back yard. Hershel said nothing but hated it silently.

"God morning." she said pleasantly, popping her head around the door to the front room. As he often was when he wasn't working, he was taking a little break from his work reading in the front room. His taste in literature was nothing like hers unfortunately, though he had offhandedly remarked that she was free to borrow any of his books when she wanted.

"Morning." He was not so irritatingly chipper as Lori, and she was relieved by that.

"Just a heads up, everyone is planning on cooking you and your family dinner, so people are going to be in and out." He looked irked, not by her by the notion, she hoped. "They decided it before I woke up or I would have intervened on your behalf."

"No… no. I suppose there wasn't much to be done about it anyway."

"I'll enlist Beth and Patricia to chaperone so we don't completely trash your kitchen."

"I'm sure I can rely on you to do that anyway, you're probably more sensible than Beth, but thank you. I suppose I should be grateful." Juliet shrugged, brushing a loose strand of hair away from her face before she spoke.

"You're letting us stay here, you don't have to be grateful. Hopefully we'll be out of your hair soon and you can all go back to normal." The look he gave her made her feel like a naïve child.

"Do you really think that you are all just going to pack up and leave willingly once your people find your little sister?" She went to answer but Hershel shook his head and stopped her. "We have something built here, safe, away from everything out there. I don't blame your people for wanting to stay here, and I'm powerless to stop you, but I don't like it."

"Rick's not like that. When you want us to leave we will, peacefully." It was a lie and they were both aware of that. Rick and her might be fine with it, and some of the others too, but most of them would want to stay. Hershel was right, this place was tucked away from the apocalypse, it felt like the one corner of the world that it hadn't ruined. Most of her group probably didn't want to leave, and if she had to guess she would say Shane was probably the one who would pull out the guns if Hershel asked them to. He wasn't a peaceful person, and while back at their cosy little camp outside Atlanta she had liked, even trusted him, something about his attitude had switched, plus his estimation of her as a helpless little girl did nothing to make her like him more. She didn't sleep while he took watch anymore, instead sleeping while Rick guarded them.

"Your optimism is endearing." Juliet laughed loudly.

"Never in my life has anyone referred to my attitude as optimistic before. It's a refreshing but possibly wrong outlook for you to have." Juliet said, just as she was struck with the notion that this was her first proper conversation with Hershel.

"I didn't want to say you were being naïve." She blinked and did nothing for a moment before he smiled at her and laughed, and she breathed, relieved. It was genuinely impossible to tell whether or not he was joking most of the time, and she teetered on the edge of not wanting to look stupid by not laughing and also not wanting to laugh when he was genuinely irritated by something.

"Well thank you for not implying that in the least." she said, accompanied by the kind of laugh that implied she was becoming more at ease around him.

"How rude of me that would have been."

Beth

Beth was pleased when she came back in to the house from milking the cow, to hear her father laughing. It was something so rare now that she often forgot he was capable of it. She heard Juliet's voice in there and she was pleased. Her father obviously wanted them out, but Juliet was her friend, and having other people around now when they had been so isolated was such a relief to Beth, she didn't want them gone. Maybe even if he made them leave, her father might let Juliet stay, although, thinking about it, she probably wouldn't want to, she was capable out in the real world and she had strong ties in her group as well as her mother. Even if her sister didn't come back, Beth didn't see her as the kind of person to abandon family.

"You two good in here?" Beth asked, popping her head around the door.

"I'm just telling her some embarrassing stories about you." Hershel said immediately. She knew he was joking but couldn't help the horrified look which passed over her face anyway.

"You better not be. Jules, we're startin' cookin' soon, Lori said you were plannin' on helpin'." Beth either didn't notice or pretended not to notice the uncomfortable look which passed over her new friends face at the nickname. She was happily oblivious to how much she hated it, as she was happily oblivious to quite a lot.

"Okay. Thank you for entertaining me." Juliet said to Hershel, still smiling.

"My pleasure. Bethie, you should have had more polite friends."

"They were polite but you scared them, Daddy." she reminded him fondly. He shook his head like he didn't know what she was talking about and she rolled her eyes and took Juliet's hand to drag her out of the room. As well as her hatred of nicknames, Beth hadn't picked up on Juliet's dislike of physical contact.

"So they're not quite ready to start yet, but I found a couple of Shaun's old books that you might like, I know you were complainin' the other day about not having anything to read and he had a pretty similar taste to you so you might like some of them." Beth announced proudly as she guided Juliet firmly up the stairs and in to her room. She'd been pretty pleased with herself when she stumbled upon the old box the night before. She hoped it might firmly cement her friendship with Juliet. She was right about that.

"Beth, that's so sweet! Thank you for looking for me, you didn't have to."

"It was no trouble, I mean, you'll probably hate most of them but you might as well look, right?"

"I'm sure I'll love them." Juliet assured her, and Beth beamed at her. She knelt down and pulled the full box out from under her bed where she had stashed it.

Juliet's face lit up visibly when she saw the ones on the top of the box and dropped quickly to her knees to take them out, growing more and more delighted every time she saw another title. Beth liked very much that she had made someone with so many reasons to be unhappy happy, if only for a few minutes while she looked through the box and didn't have to think about everything else.

"Did I do good?" Beth asked her. She might have smirked if she was that kind of person, because it was obvious she had.

"Hell yes! I love most of these, and the others are just ones I've wanted to read for ages. I mean, fuck, I can't believe your brother was in to The Bloody Chamber of all things, that's my favourite collection of short stories." Beth's smile faltered just for a second while she remembered that Shaun wasn't just off at college anymore. "You must miss him." Juliet's tone grew sympathetic and quiet. Beth nodded.

"Like crazy."

They stayed up there for not a whole lot longer before they heard Lori shouting on them. They agreed Juliet would keep the books in Beth's room, a clever ploy by Beth to make sure she was in there spending time with her as often as possible. Between her sister and Jimmy she was about ready to die from the lack of variety in company.

Lori refused Beth's offer of help even though she assured her she didn't mind. Instead Beth sat at the kitchen table talking to them all happily, guiding them to where various things were kept around the kitchen. She was looking forward to dinner that night, getting everyone together. She hoped they'd all become more at ease with each other, then her father might be a little more open to letting them stay longer. He surely couldn't think that forcing them off in to the world with so many dangers out there was the right thing to do?

She watched Juliet carefully. She was silent, as she often was in a group rather than alone, but what perturbed Beth was the lack of contact between her and her mother. They didn't speak a word to each other. Beth couldn't imagine having a relationship like that with anyone in her family.

Maybe Juliet would want to stay on the farm without her. She certainly didn't look like she cared much what happened to her.

Andrea and Jimmy arrived back, and out of obligation Beth left the others alone to go talk to Jimmy for a little while. She was so bored of him – she wished she'd been holed up with the quarterback she'd been fantasising about rather than her dull boyfriend who she was only dating because she hadn't the heart to say no at first, and breaking up with him now was basically impossible since they lived together and that would be super awkward.

He excitedly recounted going out with Andrea to look for Sophia, and she thought his tone was a little cavalier. When she said so he looked devastated.

"But don't you think I'm brave?" he urged her. She shrugged.

"Did you kill one of them?"

"No… But that's not how we do things around here." he reminded her quietly. She pretended not to know what he meant by that. She wished she didn't.

"You're not brave. Andrea's brave. She goes out even though people tell her not to. She put her sister down, they said. Juliet's brave because she goes out and faces them head on even while her little sister's missing. Shane and Rick are brave because they go out there injured to make sure that kid comes back. Daryl's brave because he doesn't care what anyone thinks of him, and Carol's brave because she has to deal with her daughter being out there and she can still smile. Patricia's brave because she didn't crumble when her husband died, and Daddy and Maggie are brave because they protect us and get us supplies and keep us going. We're not. We don't do anything. You followed Andrea out today and I stayed here and told people where the saucepans were. Face it. We're as useless as each other."

He looked shocked. She was pleased about that, it meant he wasn't speaking. She got up without another word and went back to the kitchen where she knew he would be too intimidated by the busyness of it all to call her out on what she had just said.

Juliet

Whenever she was in the house too long, Juliet always had the same feeling she had done when she visited relatives far away who she didn't know very well. She felt ill at ease and never truly able to relax and treat the house as anything more than a museum where everything was to be left alone unless she was explicitly told otherwise. Beth's room had provided a small solace from that in the beginning of her stay, and then she had realised it reminded her of a less mature version of Sophia's bedroom. It had the same sugar pink walls, stuffed toys on shelves and the bed, and a myriad of trophies and ribbons for singing, dancing, and horse riding, three things Juliet had never been able to do.

Beth always grinned innocently when Juliet looked at them, like she couldn't bear people to notice them even though she displayed them. She often told an amusing story about someone at the event who hadn't earned a trophy – Juliet noticed with interest that it was never her who choked, crashed in to someone else, or whose saddle turned nearly upside down.

It was only that day, having managed to get a moment alone finally and having rushed back upstairs to the box Beth had given her, that she had finally put her finger on why, even though Beth was so sweet, she never fully liked the girl – she was jealous of her. It wasn't of her accomplishments, they didn't matter anymore and Juliet had earned enough of her own that it didn't bother her. It wasn't Beth's looks either, though she knew before the apocalypse she would have been before deciding 'fuck that' because it was never worth it. No, she'd realised, she was jealous of Beth's innocence. It was something she'd never really been allowed, growing up with someone like Ed was an unwelcome block on any kind of childhood she might have had. She'd had to be mature, silent, unseen, concepts she had understood so much better than Sophia, who of course she'd had to protect once she came along, be the parent that didn't try to hit her – because while she'd been at home it had only ever been try – and the one that didn't cry for hours in front of her.

Beth had never had these issues. She wasn't ashamed that she was jealous of her, anyone in her situation probably would have been. She wished she'd had the same loving family, gotten to be the baby, never seen a walker up close let alone throw her morals out of the window and kill one herself.

It annoyed her, and while it wasn't Beth's fault, she almost blamed her anyway.

Of course, Juliet had tried to do the whole young and reckless thing at college, but eighteen years of doing the opposite made her hate it almost instantly. She didn't like acting as though she wasn't the most mature person in the room, because she probably was, and so she'd taken back her composure after that first party and thought of herself as above them. She'd met others closer to her calibre in no time at all.

After ten minutes alone in Beth's room Juliet felt guilty and went downstairs to help again. No-one had even noticed her absence, Andrea and Jimmy had come back while she was away.

"Anything?" Juliet asked, not even hopeful that question might be met positively now.

"Sorry." Andrea said when she gave her a questioning look. "That kid is hopeless. Any longer out there and he definitely would have died. I'll go back out on my own if you want."

"The others are still out looking. Take the rest of the day off, relax." Juliet suggested, purposefully ignoring the look Lori was giving her. Andrea smiled and clapped her a little too hard on the shoulder before deciding she would keep watch on the RV. Lori huffed as she walked out.

The days tasks were mundane enough that Juliet could complete them by shutting her mind off totally and focussing on the unimportant things, like making all the pieces of carrot the same size. There was a lot to prepare for so many people. It was past three by the time they were finally done.

Beth offered to take her upstairs so she could read. She accepted. They sat in silence in Beth's room apart from the occasional hum from Beth as she attempted to write a song. It sounded pretty good actually, and Juliet was happy enough lounging on the floor reading single chapters from all the best books in the box Beth gave her.

It was the gunshot that brought them both back in to the apocalypse they'd forgotten they were in.

"What was that?" Beth asked.

"Gun, I think. Jesus, they harp on about us not shooting in case we attract more and they've probably brought a whole damn herd this way with that. Fucking morons." She was happy just to turn back to reading her book, and she did for all of two minutes before she heard a commotion downstairs, which soon came up and in to the bedroom next door. She jumped up quickly and went out in to the hall where Rick was standing.

"Who?"

"Daryl," Her heart stopped. "He's okay." It started again, and she felt a little less like her world had fallen down around her. "We thought he was a walker and we had it under control but Andrea didn't realise what was happening. She shot him from the top of the RV… But luckily Andrea's a lousier shot with that gun than any of us realised she was. Bullet only grazed him. There were other wounds too, he's obviously had a few accidents today… He'll be fine, Hershel says." Juliet glared at him for giving her a near heart attack.

"Starting with 'he's okay' was too simple for you?" she asked, irritated, going for the door handle. Rick shook his head and physically took her hand and dropped it back by her side. She glared at him again for treating her like a petulant child.

"Don't disturb them while Hershel's in there checking on him." She cursed him silently for thinking she would be a disturbance. She just wanted to check he was okay for herself then stand in a corner until he was done. It didn't seem a lot to ask since he'd basically nearly died, but Rick was adamant that she should wait out here until Hershel let her in. "He'll come and get you when he's done and not needed anymore, okay? Daryl's going to be fine."

"I'll be the judge of that." she huffed as she slumped down against the wall outside the room. If she wasn't getting to go in she would wait as close as possible until she was allowed to. She couldn't say whether it was just a 'fuck you' to everyone who wouldn't let her in or so she could hear everything that was happening and run in like the cavalry if it sounded serious. Not that she'd be any help. "Do me a favour, when you see her, tell Andrea she's a fucking idiot." Juliet was seething at her, rage which for once seemed well placed and fair. They weren't allowed guns on Hershel's property, and they weren't supposed to shoot walkers anyway in case it drew others near. Maybe if she'd abided by the rules and stopped trying to prove something to people who were never going to listen, she might not have ended up doing this.

"Don't worry. I will. I'm sure she feels pretty bad."

"I'm sure she's not feeling as bad as Daryl though, considering she didn't get shot." Juliet snapped back at him. He looked like he might laugh and didn't dare to. He left her alone not long after that. She wasn't sure whether that was preferable or not. Everyone else had obviously been told to stay away, whether from the room or just from her she didn't know.

Juliet counted every minute until she was allowed in. Fifty seven. At one point, Lori sat on the floor opposite her. She ignored her. Rick and Shane went in, came out, told them both he was fine. She ignored them and continued tapping nervously on the floor. They mentioned Sophia, her doll, and left her out of the conversation. She continued ignoring them to make a point, though she remembered every word and planned on saying something biting to them both about it later. They all left her alone. Each minute had felt longer than the last, and the more time that passed, the less sure she was that he was going to be okay. When he came out again she stood immediately.

"Okay, you can go in. He said to tell you if you're going to cry you're not allowed in."

Daryl looked battered, beat up, bruised, and yet ultimately, he was alive. Nothing compared to the relief that washed over her when she saw him sitting up in a cream, flowery, feminine bedroom he could not have looked more out of place in. She was torn between throwing her arms around him and screaming at him, so in the end she did neither and simply stood awkwardly at the end of the bed.

"So who shot me?" he asked, breaking the silence as soon as Hershel left the room again. "He wouldn't tell me."

"Andrea. She thought you were a walker apparently." Juliet's eyes fixed on the bandage wrapped around his head. Another inch and he'd have been dead. That made her both furious and terrified. "I'm unofficially not speaking to her on account of it. She nearly killed you."

"She didn't though. Lousy shot."

"How are you so calm about this? I want to kill her!"

"Stop carin' so much." Silently, she wished she could. "It's not worth it." It was. "She didn't do any real harm, you're close, you'll get over it by tomorrow mornin'."

"No I won't. I thought you were going to die."

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us." His words hung in the air uncomfortably. She felt selfish for only having thought about how she felt about it all. He'd been the one who nearly died, the one who'd been shot and lord knew what else while he was out looking for her sister. Daryl tried to sit up and she rolled her eyes before going over to help him. "Y'know, I don't need your help."

"Tough shit, you're getting it." Juliet told him firmly as she arranged the pillows behind him and guided him back to rest on them. He looked somewhere between irritated and thankful and she decided to ignore them both. She settled down in the chair beside the bed, dragging it a little towards the bed so she could keep a closer eye on him. Just as she'd sat a timid little knock came at the door – she knew immediately it would be Beth. Anyone else would have just come in after, not waited for her to shout on them to do so.

"Hey!" she said brightly. "I'm so sorry you're not feelin' well Daryl."

"I was feelin' fine until I got shot in the head. I don't have a cold, girl, I'm mortally wounded." Beth looked horrified at her mistake and Juliet rolled her eyes. Most of the time when Daryl used a word of three syllables or above he was trying to make a joke, and doing badly because people were too scared of him to be able to tell the difference.

"Don't worry Beth, he thinks he's being funny. Bullet wound or not, Dixon, I am not above smacking you around the head. Did you need something?"

"Yeah, Jules, they told me to tell you dinner's ready."

"I'm not hungry. I think I'll stay up here, if you're okay with that?" She was only asking to be considerate and planning on staying put even if he told her not to.

"For once the company's not bothering me so much." Juliet hid her smile.

"Okay. I'll get them to leave some for you in case you get hungry later." Beth assured her as she walked out, probably glad to get away from Daryl.

"At least try and be nice to her?"

"I am nice."

"She found me this box of books earlier. She's trying to make sure I feel at home here. Just stop scaring her so much?"

"No use in her makin' you feel at home here. We're only here until we get Sophia back, then Hershel's going to kick us out just like he's been sayin' since we arrived. Makin' ties here is pointless. Jules."

"Shut the hell up. I don't have the heart to tell her I hate nicknames."

"You need to toughen up. Can't afford to feel sorry for people anymore."

"I feel sorry for you."

"Well I get that. I nearly died, accordin' to you. That's somethin' to actually feel sorry about."

"Andrea's the one who should be feeling sorry considering she nearly killed you." Juleit said bitterly, remembering how angry she was at her for what she had done. She understood sometimes decisions had to be made quickly, but even if it had been a walker, not Daryl, she would have been in the wrong. Shooting a gun was careless and idiotic. That wasn't up for debate.

"Stop."

She smiled, and turned her attention to talking about something else – anything else that popped in to her head. Beth, the books she'd given her, how Shane and his misogynistic crap was still annoying her, Carol and how she'd ignored her all day, how that was both starting to get on her nerves and something of a relief. At some point during the conversation, without warning, as her hand lay on her bed drumming her fingers as she talked about how controlling Lori was being and how irritating that was, he took her hand. He was drifting in and out of sleep and it was a rapid, jerked action that made her think he'd just woken and didn't quite know where he was. Looking over confirmed this, and their eyes met. She hoped to silently convey that she wouldn't be offended if he dropped it, but he made no move to, and neither did she.

She was happier than she had been for days.

Daryl

The pain medication was making him woozy, and he drifted in and out of sleep as Juliet spoke at a hundred miles an hour about whatever popped in to her head. It didn't bother him in the least, he tried to listen and interjected with the occasional one word comment, but other than that he treated it almost as a white noise machine, which she seemed to take as a compliment rather than offensive. She didn't want a conversation, she just wanted to vent. He was enjoying her company nonetheless.

Every time he fell asleep he saw Merle again. In some he was taunting, cruel, so much worse in his imagination than he'd really been. He goaded him for not being able to find Sophia, for failing at this as well as everything in his life, for caring about the group he was never supposed to become a real part of. In others he was simply violent. In the worst one, the arrow that had pierced his side was back, pinning him to the soft ground, yet somehow, it was peaceful. It only lasted a few seconds before his brother was at his side.

"I lost a hand. Did you give a shit? No. Think it's time for me to show you the same courtesy."

In all the other, he woke up before any real harm was done to him. He lost his hand in that one and woke up convinced it was gone. When he saw it wasn't he grabbed on to Juliet's hand, resting on the bed, as if to check it still worked. He saw her looking confused. He didn't take his hand away. She didn't ask him to. They sat like that for an hour at the very least.

It was late when Juliet finally said she needed to get some food or she was going to faint.

"Only for twenty minutes." she assured him as though he couldn't cope here without her.

You can't, he reminded himself.

She stood up, stopped moving completely for a minute and looked at him deeply, searchingly. It didn't make him as uncomfortable as it should have done. He knew she was just concerned about him, even though he didn't want her to be. It wasn't that he didn't want her sympathy, well, not entirely. He silently hated that he'd made her so worried. He felt guilty.

"Stop worryin' about me and go eat."

"Sorry. Just… just glad you're not dead." She reached over to him after a moment and her hand ghosted over the bandage on his head. "Don't scare me like that again. I refuse to lose you too. I couldn't cope with that now. Ever probably." she amended. He managed a faint smile.

"I ain't goin' anywhere."

"I'm going to make sure you keep that promise, because damn, you are a danger to yourself when I let you go out there on your own. I'm going to make sure you're properly chaperoned by someone who doesn't impale themselves on their own weapon, meaning me, at all times. I mean, fuck, and Shane thinks I'm the one that can't handle things out there." She rolled her eyes. They both knew it was all said fondly, but he couldn't help agreeing with her.

She leant down and kissed his cheek softly. Just an 'I'm glad you're still alive' gesture, if those existed. She lingered there a moment too long. A knock came at the door and she moved away gracefully as it opened without looking guilty. There was nothing to look guilty about.

"Daryl, I brought you some food." Carol said softly, as though she had any other tone of voice. "Juliet, I was going to bring you some, but Beth thought you needed a break from your bedside duties and she wouldn't let me take anything up. There's a plate in the kitchen if you want it."

"You guys read my mind, I was just about to go get something. I'll leave you to watch the invalid." Juliet said with a laugh as she walked out. She left the door slightly ajar.

"How you feeling?" Carol asked as soon as she was gone. He noted that she'd said the bare minimum to her daughter, remembering something Juliet had said about her having ignored her. He almost wanted to say something, but knew he'd just become exasperated if he got involved. He'd just let Juliet vent to him and keep out of it.

"About as good as I look." he replied.

"Hopefully the food will help." Her smile was weak, but he appreciated her trying. He wouldn't say so.

"She said you'd been cookin' all day. Said Lori made her do it."

"She wanted to help. She said she didn't want to be useless if she wasn't out searching with you today, don't believe a word of it. She'd just trying to keep her air of being above us all." Daryl thought she was doing a pretty good job of that. "I guess you could have used her out there more than we could have in here today, huh?"

"That's what she was sayin'. She was angry because Shane thinks she's the incapable one and she's not the one injured in bed." Carol laughed.

"She's not the one who shot you either." Carol pointed out, a more genuine smile passing across her lips this time. "I'd say that makes her more capable than you and Andrea. And me I suppose. She never found that hard." The silence was more thoughtful than uncomfortable. She leaned over and gave him a very quick kiss on the forehead. He winced away and felt bad for doing it. He wasn't uncomfortable with it, it was just too quick a movement for him not to.

"Watch out. I got stitches." he said. It was more joking than anything else. He managed a small smile for her because it might help. He wasn't sure whether it did or not, that was probably dependant on whether she believed it was real.

"You need to know something." Daryl looked up at her. "You did more for my little girl today than her own daddy ever did in his whole life."

"I didn't do anything Rick or Shane wouldn't have done." He was caught off-guard and embarrassed by the praise she gave him. It wasn't that he didn't know it was true; he'd seen Ed around camp, heard the stories Juliet told, though she was never explicit about his actions, apart from that one time she was drunk in the CDC, and it was nothing he hadn't guessed. Juliet and Carol both had the same air about them as he did.

"I know. You're every bit as good as them. Every bit." Carol paused for a moment, as if wondering whether she should add what she was about to. "Juliet thinks so. She trusts you more than me, more than anyone and every day when she comes back from looking with you she says the same thing to us, she says 'I couldn't do this on my own'. You're all that's kept her sane since Sophia… disappeared. You don't know how grateful I am for that, because God knows anything I say to her is just going to make it worse." He understood then that Carol wasn't ignoring her spitefully or because she blamed her, but because she had no idea how to deal with Juliet when she was emotional. She was so level-headed, keeping everything pushed down, and suddenly she couldn't. Carol had only just learnt to deal with her like that without pissing her off and arguing. This was new territory.

"Thank you." It was all he could say. He meant it.

"I'll leave you in peace for a few minutes. I'm exhausted. She won't be long."

"Tell her she doesn't have to come back up. She should go out to the RV, get some rest."

"I will, but I think we both know that isn't going to make any difference to whether she does or not."

She did come back, of course, barely fifteen minutes later, smiling to herself. She parked herself back in the chair she had claimed and opened the book she had brought with her.

"You just gonna ignore me?" he asked immediately, smirking. She looked up.

"No, I'm going to read to you. That's what I do when Sophia's sick. My voice seemed to send you to sleep earlier and I've exhausted all other topics." she teased him. "You'll like this book. Probably. If not then I like it and I don't care. It's like fairy tales but darker with more explicit death. And sex, but I'm not reading those parts out in case Carol comes back in." He gave her a look and she rolled her eyes. "Of what I was in the mood to read, it was either this or Wuthering Heights, and you'd hate that so much more." He had to agree with her on that.

"Fine. Read your creepy murder porn book to me." he said, still smirking.

"It's not… Oh, whatever. Go to sleep if you're so offended by it." she challenged him.

"No, I'm interested now."

She read it and laughed to herself at certain parts, citing 'vegetable analogies' as her favourite, absurd part of the book every time she came to one. He didn't know quite what this meant, but the book was good. A little over the top, but when he commented on this she said it was supposed to be. It was definitely more interesting than he remembered fairy tales being, but then he remembered so few. His mom had only told him them when he was very young and she was sober, which wasn't very often.

She read with her head resting on the bed after a while because she was tired. Her voice kept trailing off and her eyelids closing. She refused to leave the room.

She fell asleep like that. He took the book from her hand and forced himself up from the bed so he could put a blanket over her so she didn't get cold. He was quiet, but she didn't stir at all. She was emotionally exhausted. Again, he felt bad for putting her in that position. He didn't wake her, though he was tempted to put her on the bed and take the chair himself. It was civil, not gentlemanly, he told himself. In the end he left her there. If she woke, she might go outside for fear of bothering him with her presence and he wanted her there. She was soothing in the most manic way possible.