AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"We should walk back toward the highway," Carol said. "Let them know where we are."
Rick looked around him. They were standing, at this moment, in what would have once been a reception area to a hotel. It wasn't a grand hotel, not by any stretch of the imagination, and the sign that identified it as some sunny place or another was gone, but it was a hotel because all the rooms opened to the inside—and that was what had made them choose it and pass up the motel that they'd come to first when they'd dipped down the steep hill from the highway.
It had offered them no more than three Walkers. In less time than it would have once taken the people who cleaned the place to empty the garbage on the first floor, they'd dropped the three Walkers and dragged their bodies outside. Then, just for good measure, they'd barricaded the stairwell doors in case there was any chance of Walkers from higher floors somehow tumbling their way down and deciding to seek out a snack.
It wasn't the safest place they'd ever been, surely, but it was a good deal better than many of the places they'd stayed for a night. And this way, most of them would be able to actually have beds to rest. They'd even have, though no one would probably know what to do with it, more privacy than they'd had in ages.
"They'll find us," Rick assured her. "They'll be here before too long. Probably stopped for water."
Carol was clearly uncomfortable with him there, alone. She kept moving from her spot, pacing a short distance, and then returning like she didn't know what to do with herself. Her arms were crossed tight against her chest, closing him out—body language could speak volumes over what she said most of the time.
"Did you pick out a room?" Rick asked.
Carol glanced past him toward the door that led to the hallway of rooms, the place they'd call "home" for the night and then she shook her head slightly.
"I'll take watch," she said. "Probably just take the place of whoever relieves me."
"Why don't you take the night off of watch?" Rick asked.
What he really wanted to say was why didn't she take the opportunity to sleep? Why didn't she stay somewhere and seem to enjoy it, if only for a moment. She often took watch, staying up half of nearly every night, and eventually that was going to take its toll on her. It was going to take a toll on Daryl too since Rick knew that he had a tendency to stay up whenever Carol was up. He kept watch over her keeping watch.
And Rick was pretty sure that he knew why.
He'd told her to go. He'd told her that nobody wanted her there. And now she wanted to do just that. She wanted to go. And, as it turned out, everyone wanted her there. It had only been his pride—his fear—that hadn't wanted her there, tightly wound up in a body that wanted nothing more.
"Someone has to keep watch," Carol offered.
Rick watched her as she walked over, running her hand down the side of a snack machine, searching for the way to open it and relieve it of the few stale snacks inside—treats for them.
"It doesn't always have to be you," Rick said. "Other people can keep watch. You should sleep."
He joined her by the machine, seeing her worrying over how to get it open, and pulled out the pocket knife that he carried. She stepped to the side when he gestured for her to do so and he dropped the knife into the crack where he could jimmy the lock, finally swinging the door open as nicely as if he'd had a key to the machine.
She stared at him and he chuckled.
"Part of being a police offer," he said as he folded the knife and returned it to the pocket from which it had come, "is knowing how the criminals operate."
Carol studied the door a moment.
"You know many criminals that would go after a Twix bar instead of the money?" Carol asked.
Rick reached into the machine and plucked the Twix bar in question out of the coil that held it into place. He figured, from her mention of the snack, that it must be the one that she most desired of the fare offered there. He held it out to her and she regarded it.
"I might have been more that kind of criminal myself," Rick said. "So many rebellious youths find a life fighting crime."
He thought he saw a hint of a smirk from her and he pushed the candy bar at her again until she finally accepted it and held it in her hands. She looked at the probably stale candy like it was actually made of gold instead of simply tucked inside a gold wrapper.
But she didn't open it. Instead, she tucked it into her pocket.
"Michonne likes chocolate," she commented. "She can split it with Carl."
I couldn't even enjoy this candy bar if I thought that someone else might enjoy it more—that they might be more deserving of it.
That's what Rick heard.
He followed her when she walked toward the door of the hotel, the double doors that they'd forced open and then pushed closed again. She stood there a moment, looking out, trying to find any sign of the group that was some time behind them.
"I want to talk to you," Rick said, knowing that if he didn't find his courage now then he'd never find it. "I want to apologize…Carol…"
She looked at him, brow furrowed, and already started shaking her head.
"You already did that, didn't you?" She asked.
He almost laughed at her.
"No," he said. "No—not like I should. I haven't said everything I wanted to say. Everything I should say. Carol, I had…no right to tell you to leave. I know now that I didn't. We're family. We stick together. We take care of one another. And I don't have the right to tell anyone to leave."
Carol continued to stare at him, so seemingly unmoved at the moment that he almost wanted to reach out and shake her. He wanted something from her. Even if she refused to accept his apology, he wanted her rejection outright.
"I don't want you to leave," Rick said. "I didn't want you to leave then. I don't want you to leave now."
She shifted her weight, but it appeared that it was only to make her standing stance more comfortable. She maintained everything else exactly the same.
"Nobody wants you to leave," Rick said. "Tyreese—he watches you constantly. Daryl? He's there even when you don't know he's there."
"I always know he's there," Carol commented quietly.
Rick almost laughed again.
"So you see him," he said.
She nodded slightly.
"And I know—that you're there too," Carol said. "Or you wouldn't know that he's there."
Rick sighed.
"Don't leave?" He asked. He shook his head at her. "I'm not good at begging. I never have been. I've never been good at apologies either. Lori…she always used to say that I didn't know how to apologize and make it sound sincere. I was always—it always ended up being about me," he said, the last part striking him a little even as he said it.
It was true. Every apology he ever made, he made it more about himself than he did about the person that he was supposed to be apologizing to.
"Maybe it's not any different this time either," Rick offered when the thought ran through his mind.
"Maybe—" Carol started and then she stopped, shaking her head, but suddenly her body language had changed. She'd dropped her arms from their position of being tightly held against her chest. She was more relaxed.
"Maybe what?" Rick asked. "I want to hear what you've got to say."
"Ed was always terrible at apologies too," Carol said, her voice almost sounding like she wasn't so much responding to Rick as she was simply speaking to herself.
But those weren't comforting words at all and they weren't words that Rick wanted to hear.
"Maybe…the trick to apologizing is—you've got to mean it. You've got to mean that you want the other person to feel better. No matter how it makes you feel about yourself. No matter if…if you're forgiven or you're not. You've got to mean it because you're sorry for how they feel, not for how it makes you feel about yourself that they feel that way."
Rick nodded his head to himself. There was a lump of emotion lodged in his throat. Because he had so much that he wanted to say, but now he was struck with the question of whether or not anything that he had to say was really for Carol's benefit. Was it for her, or was it for Rick? If he begged her to promise him that she wasn't going anywhere? Who was that really for? If he told her that he wanted her back in his life. He wanted her to be his friend again…really his friend? His family? Wasn't it really for his benefit if she didn't necessarily feel the same way? And even if she did, wasn't he driven by his own selfish desires to make the request?
And if he told her anything else? If he told her things that he'd kept to himself? Feelings he'd had and thoughts he'd entertained? Were they for her?
He swallowed a moment, stewing over all of it, and nodding to himself to give himself something to do more than anything. Carol watched him for a moment, but then she turned her attention once more to watching out the door to see if she might see their group—a sign that the others had handled the last leg of the journey well and would be bringing provisions so that they might have something more filling to eat than anything they might scavenge out of the broken into snack machine.
"I uh…I…" Rick stopped and cleared his throat, fully aware of the unnatural sound of his voice when he finally decided to trust it enough to try to use it. "Carol. I'm sorry. I really am sorry. And I—"
He stopped when she looked at him, visibly sucking in a breath to wait for another self-centered apology. Her eyebrows raised slightly in preparation for her "automatic acceptance" of it.
Rick swallowed once more.
"I want you to have what you need to be happy," Rick said. "And—I want you to…live."
She chuckled lightly.
"I want to live too," she said. "Isn't that what it's all about? Survival? I suppose you were right, though—whatever happens? I'll make it, just like everyone else. Until I don't."
Rick shook his head at her.
"No," he said. "I want…I want you to live. That's what I want for you…for all of us…but for you too. I want you to live. Not just survive."
She stared at him then, the amusement gone from her face.
"I want that for you too," she said, her voice sincere. "I do. I want you to live. I want you to be happy. We may not find another prison, but whatever we do find? I hope that…"
She laughed to herself and then she looked at him with the lightest expression—the most sincere light expression—that he'd seen on her face in some time.
"I hope that whatever we find? Wherever it is? You get the chance to grow something—peas or…whatever it is. I hope you get that chance again. I want you to be happy, Rick." Carol said.
He smiled at her comment.
"What do you want?" He asked.
"For you to be happy," she responded quickly. "For—everyone to be happy."
"What do you want for you?" Rick asked.
Carol shook her head at him.
"Nobody's asked me that in so long that I don't think I could answer it," Carol said. "I don't think it would matter anyway. For now?"
She looked around.
"This'll do," she said.
She glanced back out the door in the same direction she'd been looking before.
"I see Michonne," she said. "They're coming. Help me get these doors open?"
Rick moved to help her and as he threaded his fingers with hers into the crack between the once automatic doors so that they could pry them open, they barely brushed each other.
Even her energy felt different at the moment, just from that touch. Everything about her seemed a little different, a little more familiar.
"Rick?" Carol said whenever they'd finished prying the doors open and stepped aside to allow the others to come through when they arrived in a matter of minutes. "I accept your apology—and I'm sorry too. For what it's worth."
She had no idea. She couldn't possibly fathom, at the moment, what it was worth.
And she couldn't imagine, honestly, how much was suddenly on Rick's mind now that the main concern—the concern of really feeling that she accepted his apology and was willing to forgive him—was out of the way.
But Rick already knew that he probably wouldn't sleep a wink. And, he also knew, that he was going to take possession of the last of the Twix bars that the broken into machine had to offer.
It wasn't much in the way of giving her what she wanted, and he might never be able to really give her what she wanted, especially since she claimed not to know it for herself, but it was at least a start. It was a step in the right direction.
And these days? Each step mattered—their mantra, after all, was that each step was one step more toward where they were going. And Rick supposed that didn't only have to apply to the ground that was passing beneath their feet.