AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
Sorry that it's taken me so long to update. I'll try not to be so tardy next time.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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It was still dark when Rick woke because no light trailed in through the farmhouse windows. He lie there listening to the sound of Carol breathing next to him in the otherwise silent room.
She was sleeping beside him. She was entirely lost in her dreams. Her guard was never more down than it was at this moment. If he shifted his body, even a fraction of an inch, he could feel the warmth of hers. He could feel the slight pressure of her head, barely resting on his arm.
She trusted him.
If there was anything he probably didn't deserve in this world—anything that he really didn't deserve—it was that.
He didn't deserve her trust.
Yet, here she was, sleeping beside him—trusting him entirely. Even after he'd done what he'd done and proved to her that he wasn't very trustworthy at all. He'd shown her, first hand, that he could and would hurt her. He'd shown her that he was quick to judge and quick to act and slow to think.
He'd proven to her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was volatile and dangerous to her well-being. He could shut himself down enough to let her drive off after he'd threatened to leave her standing on the sidewalk alone.
And still, she trusted him.
The thought of it slammed into his chest like a brick wall collapsing down on him.
Because she'd trusted others before that had hurt her. And he knew that she'd trusted Ed—even though he'd hurt her time and time again.
Rick couldn't take back what he'd done, but he could at least resolve not to make her ever regret giving him that trust again.
When the sun started to come up the room began to lighten with its rays. They seeped in through the window panes. They crawled slowly across the floor and must have crawled up the side of the bed because they slowly crawled toward Rick—across the blankets.
The room was a nice room. It was the kind of room in the kind of farm house where he could imagine people—in a different world and in a different time—growing old together.
Maybe it was the perfect room for new beginnings too.
Carol started to stir slowly. He watched her as her mind fought the last war between waking and sleeping. There was an internal struggle—even though he wasn't entirely sure if it was or wasn't related to something she was dreaming—and it came through on the features of her face. Before they were relaxed and calm. She looked peaceful—so much younger than he knew her to be.
As she neared waking? They drew up a little more in concern or light distress and her eyelids fluttered.
Rick considered letting her finish out the battle, realizing that he wasn't accustomed to watching her when she woke in the morning, but finally he decided that he didn't want to see her suffer—even if it was just fighting with herself over five more minutes of peaceful sleep.
He moved the arm that she was barely resting her head on, most of it having slid off to the mattress, and slid it so that he somewhat collected her up and pulled her to him. She woke with the movement, jumping at first.
"Shhh..." he hissed at her.
She opened her eyes to him. She looked confused for a second and then slowly came into her reality before she smiled at him...a soft smile. He wasn't used to seeing that smile, on that face, in the first rays of the morning light—but he was certain it was something he could easily become used to.
He smiled back at her.
"You were having a bad dream?" He asked.
She furrowed her brow.
"Was I?" She asked.
"It looked like you were," he said. "I woke you up. I didn't think—there wasn't any reason for you to have one."
"Some days? This whole world feels like a bad dream," Carol replied. "Sometimes it's the nightmares that are the nicest places to be."
Rick felt his stomach knot up.
More than likely, he'd been the cause of at least one of those nights when nightmares were preferable to reality. He moved the arm that was partially wrapped around her to pull her toward him and she put the effort into moving the rest of the way.
She was coming to kiss him—he knew it. He could feel it, but she stopped short. She hummed in her throat.
"Morning breath," she said as a word of warning and an explanation for her halting.
He chuckled at her and closed the distance himself, lifting himself up to meet her. He didn't notice the morning breath that he was supposed to find so offensive. All he noticed was the feeling of her lips against his and the satisfaction that came when she opened her lips to his tongue's request.
He followed after her when she moved to break the kiss until he couldn't physically move any farther without breaking it to change his position.
The smile was back, broader than before, and there was something else in her expression. Even if Rick didn't know precisely what it was, he was happy to have had something to do with putting it there.
"We have to get up," she said. "People are going to want breakfast and—if I'm around? Nobody seems able to even light a fire."
She laughed to herself.
"If I stayed in bed all day? Tonight we'd go out and find them all sitting around a box of supplies, staring at it, starving slowly to death," Carol teased.
Rick laughed.
"You deserve the time off," he said. "I think they're all grown. They've done OK when they had to."
"Judith will be up soon," Carol said.
"Michonne is so good with her," Rick teased, reaching his hand cupping the back of her neck. He squeezed gently, massaging the muscles there. It must have felt good to her because her eyes did an unexpected type of flutter at the sensation that it caused.
"We have to get up," she said. "And—if we're really doing this? You've got to talk to Carl."
As almost an announcement that the inconsiderate sun—rising and interrupting everyone's peace from the night before—had woken others up, there was the clopping down the hall of someone's heavy footfalls just outside the door.
Rick hummed.
"Everybody's up," he said. "And we have to get out of this room. So—I think we're really doing this."
Carol smirked.
"I could go out the window," she offered.
He sat up, leaned toward her, and kissed her on the forehead this time. She laughed quietly.
"Let's go," he said. "I'm going to find Carl first—not that it's a secret. But—I'm going to find him first."
"I'll go make breakfast," Carol said. She laughed to herself again. "If anyone says anything? I'll just threaten to stop cooking if they don't stop talking."
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Rick sat on the edge of the bed that Carl had occupied and held Judith. She was calm and sweet and content with the bottle that they had to offer her for breakfast—nothing fancy since the water for the formula had been room temperature, but it was gourmet for Judith.
A few feet from him, Carl went about the full gamut of grooming that their lives now allowed them.
"Can I talk to you? For just a minute?" Rick asked for at least the second time.
"I've been listening, Dad," Carl said. "But you're not talking."
"Can you sit down for a minute? Let's really talk?" Rick asked.
Carl looked annoyed—even at the end of the world, teenagers could apparently still look at their parents as though they were the dumbest people alive.
"I promise to make it quick," Rick said, biting back a laugh. "It won't—interrupt too much of your busy day."
"We need to move on, Dad," Carl said. "Soon. We can't stay here too long. We'll attract Walkers. The fences here?"
Rick held up his hand to stop Carl's "lecture" on their travels.
"We're leaving," Rick said. "Today. Tomorrow at the latest. It's safer here than it has been in other places we've stayed. We'd be fine for the night. Sit? Please?"
Carl sighed and came to sit on the bed with all the aggravation that his frame could handle. He disturbed the bed enough when he dropped his weight that Rick shook and Judith lost interest in her bottle for a moment.
"What?" Carl asked.
Rick considered lecturing him on how he addressed everyone, but he decided to fight his battles.
"You know that I loved your Mom," Rick said.
Carl looked at the floor between his shoes.
Rick didn't read into that. Maybe Carl didn't think that he had love Lori. But then—admittedly even Rick wasn't sure that he had loved her like he should have.
Or maybe Carl was just tired of hearing it and having to, in some way or another, confirm it for Rick. Rick knew he'd said it a number of times—and he wasn't positive, either, if that was for Carl's reassurance or for his own.
"I loved your Mom," Rick said. "But—Carl—she's not coming back."
"She's dead, Dad," Carl said. "I know—I shot her, remember?"
Rick swallowed and hummed.
"I know," he said. "And you shouldn't have had to do that. I wish—I wish you would have never had to do that."
"But I did," Carl said. "We do—we do what we have to do. I wasn't going to let her turn."
"You did the right thing," Rick said. "I wish that you didn't have to, but you did the right thing. I hate—that you and Judith don't have her..."
"Dad!" Carl said sharply.
Rick looked at him.
"Mom's gone," Carl said. "She's gone and—I miss her. But she's gone. Judith—she'll never know her, but Mom? She's gone."
Rick laughed ironically to himself.
"You've got to stop doing that," Rick said. Carl looked at him with question on his face. "Parenting me," Rick said. "You've got to—you're not the parent."
Carl's expression changed slightly and Rick had his attention drawn away for a moment because Judith finished her bottle and fussed to have her position changed. He shifted her around, patting her back, to prompt her to burp.
"What do you want to talk to me about?" Carl asked.
Rick realized he'd almost forgotten, for the moment, why it was that he'd even come in here and almost forced his somewhat reluctant teenager to sit and speak for a moment.
"Carl...I..." he stopped.
He shook his head.
"I don't know..." Rick continued, realizing that the words weren't coming like he wanted them to.
How was he supposed to do this? How was he supposed to tell Carl that he was involved with Carol? He'd never imagined this moment because, before all this had happened, he'd never imagined a time when he wouldn't be with Lori. And since this had happened?
He'd never imagined that he'd fall in love. And he knew that's what it was. But he'd never prepared for it to happen.
"Just say it," Carl said.
Rick looked at him.
"I already know what it is," Carl pushed. "I do."
It was Carl's turn to look amused.
"Dad, don't look so surprised," Carl said. "I know. I think—everybody does. You're not as good at sneaking around as you think you are."
"I'm not sneaking around," Rick responded.
Carl laughed.
"So you admit it?" Carl said.
Rick couldn't help but be amused then.
"This wasn't how this was supposed to go," Rick said.
"You didn't seem to know how it was supposed to go," Carl said. "So—now that I know? You want to tell me?"
Rick nodded his head. It still took him a moment, though, to actually get the words out.
"Carol and I—are together," Rick said. "We decided, last night, that we're—Carl, we're serious. We're—we're really going to do this."
Carl looked back at the floor for a moment, at the spot between his feet, and then he looked back at Rick.
A hint of a smile on his lips.
"Do you love her?" Carl asked.
Rick swallowed.
"I do," he said. "I—don't think I've told her...not like I want to. But—I do."
"I won't tell," Carl teased.
Rick nodded his appreciation.
"Do you love her more than you loved Mom?" Carl asked.
"I loved your mom," Rick said. "And—I love Carol. But—I love them both differently. I don't love them the same. I'm not sure if you can love two people exactly the same."
"But you love her the same way?" Carl asked.
Rick thought about it a moment and finally answered it simply by nodding. Carl mirrored the nod.
"I don't expect her to replace your mom for you, Carl," Rick said. "And—for Judith? I don't want you to think that we're not going to tell her about your mom, about her mom."
"Dad," Carl said, interrupting Rick. "I don't think—you're not trying to replace Mom. We loved her. We still love her. But she's gone."
Rick nodded again.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
"And..." Carl offered, "We love Carol too. She's—she's the closest thing that Judith has to a mom. And—she's good to me too."
"She loves you," Rick said.
"And she loves you?" Carl asked.
"I hope so," Rick said. "I think so."
Carl nodded and got up from his spot on the bed.
"Breakfast?" He asked, apparently ending the conversation.
"We've got to get ready to leave, right?" Rick asked.
Carl nodded his head without any real commitment.
"Tomorrow?" Carl said, reaching and taking Judith who went to him happily enough. "I think—the fences will hold for the night."
"You're the boss," Rick said.