AN: In response to "Where's Carl?" I'll give everyone a little insight to me here. I develop characters more and more as I get to know them. Carl is a character that I haven't gotten to know yet. I've been playing with him a lot in my mind and trying to figure out how I'm going to take him out of being a flat "extra" and bring him fully into play, but he's just not found his niche yet. That being said, assume that he is there and he's not forgotten about, I'm just not ready to bring him out yet as one of the main characters. I have to feel him out some more. Every dog shall have his day, but today isn't his day…and tomorrow isn't looking good either. LOL
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Over breakfast everyone was smiles. Rachel, Rick, and Carl hadn't joined them, Rachel had decided to cook breakfast at their house. Everyone else was gathered together and looked very well rested. A night in a comfortable bed after what they'd been used to was a treat indeed.
"So, what did you do in your new house last night?" Sasha asked Maggie.
Maggie giggled. "We played."
"You played?" Sasha questioned.
"Yep. We played hide and go seek." Maggie said.
"And tag." Beth added. Everyone laughed.
"It's true." Glenn said. "We played until we all got really tired and then we went to bed.
"And then they played cowboy apparently." Beth said, blushing. "I told them this morning that we had to slide the bed out from the wall."
"We played too." Josh said. "We played tag, at least, but we did it naked."
"That, my man, is knowing what to do with the space you have." Glenn said. Brenda blushed and swatted Josh.
"Michonne, Daryl, what did you guys do?" Maggie asked.
"We are responsible adults." Michonne said. "There was no tag or hide and go seek. We took care of Hope and went to bed."
"Awww, hiss and boo. You're no fun." Maggie said.
"And we tested out the mattress." Daryl said. "Just to make sure it was good quality." Everyone laughed. Daryl blushed and Michonne even felt her own cheeks grow warm. "Tyreese," Daryl said when everyone had calmed down, "do you think you can help me move Lil' Asskickers crib to our house when we get done with breakfast?"
"Sure thing." Tyreese said.
"Carol's going to be living with us." Daryl added.
"Oh, Beth, was it your house that has that beautiful wooden rocking chair in one of the upstairs bedrooms?" Michonne asked.
"Yeah there's one in the room we aren't using." Brenda said.
"Would you be willing to part with it? I'd really love to put it in the nursery." Michonne said.
"Sure, we're not using it." Brenda responded.
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"Beth, come with me." Michonne called to Beth, who was just coming out of another house that they were cleaning out. Beth jogged over. "Let's go over to the next street." Beth followed her.
Michonne walked to the middle of the street.
"Give me your hatchet." Beth handed it to her, and Michonne noticed it was somewhat reluctantly. Michonne unsheathed her katana and handed it to Beth. "If you think you want one, we're going to practice." Michonne said.
Beth held the sword awkwardly and Michonne adjusted her wrist.
"Shouldn't we go in one of these houses and find a Walker?" Beth asked.
"If you think I'm going in a small space with you, Walkers, and my katana your first time out, you're crazy." Michonne said. Beth giggled. Michonne got behind her and tried to position her arm. "Now," Michonne said backing up, "just practice swinging it."
Much to Michonne's surprise, Beth swung the sword awkwardly and then it went flying, clattering along the ground. Michonne went to retrieve it.
"Break my sword and I'm gonna be pissed." Michonne said. "It's not a Louisville Slugger. The first rule of any weapon is to hold on to your weapon."
She picked up the katana and examined it. It was unharmed. She walked back to Beth who looked pretty upset. Michonne was still frowning, but she tried to soften it a little. Maybe the idea of pissing off Michonne was a little too much for Beth.
"Here, try again." Michonne handed Beth the katana again, got behind her, and tried to reposition her arm. Beth was stiff and barely moved when Michonne tried to pull her arm into position. Beth was nervous right now and Michonne wasn't sure if it was her or the katana that was causing it.
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"Sasha, come here." Maggie said, trying to be as quiet as possible and still get Sasha's attention. "You gotta see this, it's the cutest thing ever." Maggie said. Sasha jogged over to where Maggie was, crouched down and hiding behind a brick column, peeking around the side. Maggie immediately grabbed her arm and pointed. A short distance away she could see Beth and Michonne. Michonne was apparently trying to teach Beth to use her katana, and from the looks of it things weren't going great. "I wondered what they were doing when Michonne wanted to see Beth alone." Maggie whispered. "It's been hilarious. I can't hear much, but every time Beth drops the sword, Michonne yells at her and each time she does that, Beth gets a little stiffer. Right now she's made it to moving like a rusty robot. I'm waiting for the full mannequin effect."
Sasha crouched down behind Maggie and watched over her shoulder. It was true. Michonne was trying to move Beth's arms around, but Beth wasn't responding fluidly at all. Her movements were jerky. Michonne looked like she was performing some kind of elaborate dance because every time Beth swung the sword there was no telling where it would go and Michonne was trying to keep from being hacked to death by her own blade flying through the air.
Beth made another bungle and Maggie covered her mouth, trying not to laugh. Sasha did the same, but having been bumped by Maggie, she fell back on the ground, causing them both to try to stifle another laugh. It hadn't seemed to disrupt katana training, but it had gotten the attention of Carol who was passing by carrying a box of things she'd looted out of one of the houses.
"What are y'all doing?" She asked. They shushed her. She walked over to where they were and saw what they were watching. "Get out of there and leave them alone. There are tons of houses that need to be ridded of Walkers and we've only begun going through houses for supplies. There's more than enough work for you to do that you don't need to go spying on other people.
Reluctantly the two got up and, still giggling, headed back to work.
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"Beth, you have to loosen up." Michonne said, frustrated. "You're stiffer than half the Walkers I killed this morning."
Beth had become frozen almost. Entirely inanimate.
"Michonne…" She said timidly. "I don't like this. It feels weird and I don't like it."
"Already attached to your hatchet, huh?" Michonne said. Beth didn't say anything. Michonne took the katana out of her hands and sheathed it. "Hey, it's OK. We all get attached to our weapons. It's good to get attached to them. It means they make you feel safe, and feeling safe means that you probably are safe as long as you have it. I wouldn't want to just work with a knife, but Carol likes her knife more than anything else. I wouldn't want to be stuck in a situation with Daryl's crossbow, but he keeps it by the bed." Michonne said. Beth was just standing there, looking a little uncomfortable. Michonne smiled at her. Beth was sweet, and she was only just finding herself. Losing Hershel had been a new kind of wake up call for her. "Do you want your hatchet back?"
"Yeah." Beth said, taking it back from Michonne.
"Who knows, you may find yourself something you like better later, or you may always carry that hatchet with you. It doesn't matter as long as it gets the job done." Michonne said. They started walking back toward Carol's place to figure out what was next on the to-do list.
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"I'm pretty sure that this place is secure." Daryl said while they were all eating dinner, minus Rick, Rachel, and Carl who had barely come out of their house today, even to work while everyone else scuffled around doing whatever Carol, who had become the keeper of the to-do list, commanded. "Still, we need to come up with some kind of communication system in case something were to happen or someone needed someone. Carol wandering around last night got me worried. I mean if she'd been attacked no one would have known until this morning."
"Well, we can't just call each other anymore." Sasha said.
"Maybe we could." Tyreese said. "What about tin can telephones? We could run them through the windows of the houses and use them to create a kind of call chain."
"Do those things even work?" Josh asked. He'd seen them on television and he'd seen them in movies, but he'd never actually tried one for himself.
"They work, but they're not ideal." Carol said. "Besides, could we be sure that would be enough to even wake somebody up?"
"They could work, and they could always be a plan B idea or an extra step, but we're going to need more than that." Daryl said.
"What about those traffic cone looking speaker things?" Brenda offered. "If everyone had one then they could call for help."
"That's another idea." Daryl said. "But we'd have to find enough of them."
"Air horns?" Sasha threw out.
"Maybe. We could possibly combine them." Daryl said, wrinkling his brow. "I think we need watch too. It's gotta be different than it was at the prison, though. Whoever does it is gonna have to keep spendin' the night circlin' the entire neighborhood, so whoever's on watch at night gets the whole next day to rest and sleep. They'll be tired combinin' not sleepin' with circling the fences."
"Brenda and I'd be happy to take night watch until we figure it out. Both of us are better at stayin' up late at night than we are gettin' up in the morning." Josh offered.
"What about some kind of big drum or a gong or something like that?" Glenn said. Everyone looked at him for a minute. "Knock it off, guys." He said.
"Yeah, we know you're Korean." Daryl said.
"I'm serious, if we got something loud like that we could drag it to the center of our street. At least then there'd be some kind of "everybody up" method we could use to let everyone know at once that something was going on." Glen said.
"You know, that ain't a half bad idea, Glenn." Daryl said. "But where we gonna get somethin' like that?"
"Maggie and I saw one." Glenn replied. Daryl looked at him funny.
"We did, on the way to the hardware store, that's what made him think about it because I thought about it too." Maggie said.
"They're serious." Michonne offered. "There was a restaurant in town that had one out front. It used to be pretty good food."
"Fine." Daryl said. "We'll get it, but the rest of you sleep on it. We need a security system, alarms, and ways to communicate some kind of distress from house to house."
"We'll stay up tonight doing a kind of half watch." Josh offered. "Even though we don't really have a solid plan yet it'll do us good to start getting' conditioned to the idea."
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Back at the house, Carol and Michonne had decided to put Judith's crib in the nursery with Hope.
"I just Hope doesn't wake her up all night." Michonne said. "She still doesn't sleep through the night. She was sitting in the rocking chair feeding Hope and Carol was wiping Judith down and getting her ready for bed. Judith was smiling at her and chewing on her hand.
"She's a good sleeper." Carol said. "I'm worried she's behind, though. She isn't walking, and she babbles, but she doesn't talk."
"How old is she?" Michonne asked.
"I don't know. Do you know how old Hope is?" Carol said.
"Not really." Michonne admitted. "I have a rough idea."
"Well the idea gets rougher the older they get." Carol said.
"So she hasn't even said 'mama' or 'dada' yet?" Michonne asked.
"You know, Michonne, I don't think Judith knows what 'mama' or 'dada' is, so she hasn't said them. We don't say them to her." Carol said. She started dressing the baby.
Michonne felt sorry for Judith for a moment because what Carol had said was true. Despite that she had a father, she didn't have a daddy, and even though it was obvious that Judith loved Carol, she didn't really have a mama either, since Carol never would have dared to tell her to call her that.
Michonne thought about Hope. Hope would know very plainly who her mama was and her daddy was, if nothing happened to either of them. What would Carol be to her? Would she be her aunt or would she just be her Carol? What about Judith? They'd likely grow up as sisters if this was a type of lingering arrangement, and Michonne couldn't imagine they'd go anywhere from here where Carol and Judith weren't part of their household. What would they think of each other as? They'd be the only children around, unless someone else got pregnant or Michonne, herself, had another child.
"Do you think the titles mean anything anymore?" Michonne asked, burping Hope who spit up a little. Carol handed her a rag.
"Titles?" Carol asked, picking Judith up and putting her in her crib.
"You know, like "aunt" and "uncle" and "cousin"…those kinds of things." Michonne said. Carol thought about it a minute.
"Since we're all we've got, I don't guess they do." Carol said.
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"How long do you think we'll stay here?" Michonne asked Daryl when she was finally in bed.
"I don't know, 'Chonne, but it's gonna be a while. Just from the little bit of salvagin' we did today we could stay a while and we ain't even gon through half the houses just inside the fence." Daryl said. "We'll start siphonin' gas out the cars to see what we can get next, but with the towns we can get to I reckon' we'll be here a nice little while."
Michonne hoped they would. This place felt even safer than the prison, and Michonne had to admit that she was pretty fond of their bed. If she'd picked the mattress out herself it couldn't have been more suited to her tastes.
Daryl didn't know why Michonne was suddenly curious about the length of their stay, but he could guess from the little bit that he'd learned about her.
"You can relax, 'Chonne. You got some time to just relax. We'll have to move on eventually, but it ain't for a while." Daryl said. "We're home for a while."
He must have figured out what she was thinking, because she responded by rolling over and kissing him with the kind of long and leisurely kiss that she gave him when she was relaxed and content. He responded to her, pulling her to him and wrapping his legs around her, making sure they were as close to each other as they could possibly get. No matter how long they were here, or where they ended up, he wasn't worried as long as he could plan ahead far enough to make her want to give him those kinds of kisses.